Month: August 2008

CAUCASUS BURNING
By Thomas De Waal

Wall Street Journal
09051099.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Aug 19 2008

So much has been left in ruins in the Caucasus in the past week. What
chance is there of a salvage operation?

The landscape is littered with wreckage. First South Ossetia was
ravaged; now Georgia is experiencing a great tragedy. Amid the wider
carnage, the greatest losers are the 25,000 or so ethnic Georgians of
South Ossetia. Only a month ago Ossetians and Georgians were buying
and selling from one another in South Ossetia by day even as armed men
in their villages exchanged fire at night. Now those Georgians face
total dispossession, their homes burned by South Ossetian irregular
fighters. Around 50,000 Georgians in Abkhazia are still in their homes,
but they face a precarious future. These people have the greatest
moral right to pass judgment on a long list of culprits.

Russia’s guilt is of course the most blatant. The Russian army
has unleashed atavistic violence and allowed Ossetians and North
Caucasians to follow in its wake, reinflaming interethnic hatreds
that had begun to fade after the wars of the 1990s. The cost of this
will be there for years and Moscow should pay the price, in terms
of both economic compensation for the wreckage it has caused and
international opprobrium. On the latter, Germany could take the lead
by threatening to cancel the joint Nord Stream project — a Russian
gas pipeline with a political agenda, designed to bypass Moscow’s
critics in Poland and the Baltic states.

Next in line for criticism is the Georgian leadership, which has now
all but lost the two disputed territories. Georgia is a small nation
under threat from the Russians, and in the short term Georgians
will rally around their leader. But there almost certainly will be
a reckoning with their impetuous president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Since coming to power in 2004, Mr. Saakashvili has been a man in
a hurry. His economic reforms are impressive, but he was courting
trouble from the start when he promised to win back Abkhazia and South
Ossetia within five years. A brief look at the Balkans, Cyprus or
Northern Ireland tells you that complex ethno-territorial conflicts
need more time to heal than that. Yet Mr. Saakashvili deliberately
thawed the (misleadingly named) "frozen conflicts," challenging
the Russian-framed peacekeeping operations and moving his security
forces closer to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He kept up the economic
isolation of the two territories and rejected any initiatives to open
them up — for example, by allowing the Abkhaz to trade with Turkey —
as a threat to Georgian sovereignty.

His rhetoric was just what the Russians wanted to hear and they moved
in to fill the vacuum economically, politically and militarily. Many
Abkhaz were unhappy about being swallowed by Russia, but the argument
that Moscow was guaranteeing their security trumped all others. Now
the Russians are triumphant.

How did Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, which was greeted with
such euphoria by Georgians, end up like this? I was present at
Mr. Saakashvili’s first press conference after the revolution. There
he said explicitly — and in Russian — that in contrast to his
predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, he wanted "normal relations"
with Russia.

Vladimir Putin, pushing first as president and now as prime minister to
build the resurgent Russia that we saw rampaging through Georgia last
week, played a leading role in this. But it is hard to imagine the wily
Mr. Shevardnadze allowing himself to get sucked into a war with Russia.

Many Washington policy makers played their part, too. They loved the
idea of a new "beacon of democracy" run by thirtysomething economic
reformers astride an important energy corridor and standing up to
Russia. But they all too often neglected to pay attention to what
Georgia was actually doing. The Georgians basked in American attention
and felt emboldened to challenge Moscow even more. When President
George W. Bush stood on Freedom Square in Tbilisi in May 2005 and
told Georgians, "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy,
but you will not travel it alone," they believed it meant something.

When I asked a senior U.S. official four years ago what Washington
would do if Russia attempted a military assault on Georgia, he said,
"We won’t send in the U.S. cavalry." But now it looks as though this
was precisely what Mr. Saakashvili was counting on.

As for Europe, France and Germany might say that their cooler
approach to Georgia all along looks wise in retrospect. But they have
little to be proud of. The EU had the opportunity to approve a new
border-monitoring force for Georgia in 2005, when the Russians blocked
the continuation of the old one under the aegis of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But France and Germany vetoed
the plan. The unarmed force could have been an early-warning system
had it been in place this year, and might have helped deter the
Russian campaign.

* * * Few Western policy makers have engaged seriously with the South
Caucasus, and they would do well now to ponder the fact that South
Ossetia was not even the most dangerous of the region’s conflicts. That
dubious honor goes to Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory dispute between
Armenia and Azerbaijan. There, tens of thousands of troops face each
other across 110 miles (175 kilometers) of trenches, and angry rhetoric
is strong on both sides. The fragile Karabakh cease-fire is observed
by just six unarmed European monitors. If the world wakes up to the
danger of the cease-fire breaking, there will have been at least one
good outcome from the Georgian tragedy.

Negotiations over the Karabakh conflict have been fruitless so far,
but they have come up with a useful formula for squaring the separatist
circle. A draft peace plan under discussion would defer the issue of
the status of the disputed region of Karabakh itself. Instead, the
region would have some interim status short of statehood while other
issues, such as the return of Azerbaijani land currently occupied by
Armenians outside Nagorno-Karabakh, are resolved and refugees begin
to return home.

That kind of solution now looks to be the most desirable one for
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Abkhaz and Ossetians themselves have
far more reason to want to live well with their Georgian neighbors than
the Russians do. Giving them some kind of international guarantees
and more power to dictate their own futures is the only way to lift
the Russian wolf off their shoulders and allow at least some Georgian
refugees to go home.

Yet it is probably too late. The Russians now have a tight grip and
will try to keep others out. President Dmitry Medvedev said last week
that Abkhaz and Ossetians "do not trust anyone but Russian troops…We
are the only guarantors of stability in the region."

Answering that charge is a big physical and moral challenge for both
Europe and the United States. If they want to fix things in the
region, they need to consider a new version of the mass peaceful
intervention they made in the Balkans from the mid-1990s, in the
form of policemen and peacekeepers, human-rights investigations,
and large-scale economic investment. It would be expensive, but in
the end it would probably cost much less than doing nothing.

Mr. de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting in London.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DO WHITE PEOPLE REALLY COME FROM THE CAUCASUS?
By Derek Thompson

Slate

Aug 19 2008

How Caucasians got their name.

Russia continues to occupy the former Soviet state of Georgia, despite
agreeing to a cease-fire last week. "The Caucasus is a difficult
and complicated place," one Russian political scientist told the
Financial Times, referring to the small mountainous region between
the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea that comprises Georgia, Armenia,
and Azerbaijan. Wait, do white people really come from the Caucasus?

It’s highly unlikely. There are scholarly disagreements about how
and when some of our dark-skinned ancestors developed lighter skin,
but research suggests humans moved across the Asian and European
continents about 50,000 years ago. Some anthropologists think that
natural selection would have favored lightening mutations as humans
moved away from the equator and faced a diminished threat from
ultraviolet exposure. In this case, it’s possible that light skin
would have evolved in many places independently.

So why do we call white people Caucasians? The term was popularized by
the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who in 1795 divided
the human species into five races: Caucasian, the "white" race;
Mongolian, the "yellow" race; Malayan, the "brown" race; Ethiopian,
the "black" race; and American, the "red" race. He considered the
Caucasians to be the first race on Earth, consistent with the common
conception of the Caucasus as a place of human origin. The Bible
describes Noah landing his ark at a place called Mount Ararat, which
was thought by Europeans of Blumenbach’s time to be on the modern
Turkish-Armenian border. (Ararat is still the name of the largest
mountain in Turkey.) In Greek mythology, Zeus chained Prometheus to
a rock in the Caucasus.

PLEA DEAL REACHED FOR OHIO MAN ARRESTED OUTSIDE OBAMA EVENT

WTTE
Aug 19 2008
OH

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Prosecutors have reached a plea agreement with
an Ohio man who was accused of carrying an unlawful knife outside an
Iowa hotel where presidential candidate Barack Obama and his family
stayed during a campaign visit in July 2007.

Armenian native Davit Zakaryan is expected to plead guilty to a simple
misdemeanor charge of interference with official acts.

Prosecutors this month dismissed the knife charge as part of a
plea deal. Wapello County attorney Allen Cook says that under the
agreement, Zakaryan will get a 30-day suspended sentence and pay a
minimum fine. He will not have to serve any time in jail unless he
violates terms set by the court.

Zakaryan was living in Cincinnati but selling campaign memorabilia
in Iowa.

SOME OF ARMENIAN OLYMPIANS RETURN TO HOMELAND WITH THEIR PRIZES

Noyan Tapan
Aug 19, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 19, NOYAN TAPAN. Thousands of fans met Armenian
Olympians, who returned to Armenia from Beijing, at Yerevan’s Zvartnots
Airport on August 19. Among them were Greco-Roman wrestlers Roman
Amoyan (55 kg) and heavyweight Yuri Patrikeyev, weightlifters Tigran
Gevorg Martirosian (69 kg), Gevorg Davtian (77 kg) and Tigran Vardan
Martirosian (85 kg), each of whom took a 3rd place and won a bronze
medal at the 29th Beijing Olympic Games.

The President of the National Olympic Committee of Armenia Gagik
Tsarukian handed laurel wreaths to the prize-winners and their coaches
and delivered a speech of praise. The RA deputy minister of sport
and youth issues Khachik Asrian also welcomed the Olympians.

Expressing gratitude to the government, heads of sport organizations
and coaches on behalf of the sportsmen, weightlifter Tigran
V. Martirosian promised that they will do their best to strengthen
the prestige of Armenian sports by their new victories.

BOXER HRACHIK JAVAKHIAN SECURES AT LEAST BRONZE MEDAL FOR HIMSELF AT BEIJING OLYMPICS

Noyan Tapan
Aug 19, 2008

BEIJING, AUGUST 19, NOYAN TAPAN. Boxer Hrachik Javakhian overcame
the quarter final barrier at the Beijing Olympic Games on August
19. Doctors did not allow his Korean rival to enter the ring, as a
result of which H.

Javakhian reached the semifianls without a match and secured at least
a bronze medal for himself.

The Armenian free-style wrestlers started their competitions in
Beijing with a defeat. Martin Berberian (60 kg) was beaten by a
Canadian wrestler.

DIPLOMATIC RUBBLE
by Eric Walberg

The People’s Voice
/voices.php/2008/08/19/diplomatic_rubble
Aug 19 2008
TN

Russia’s firm response to the Georgian gamble in Ossetia is being
interpreted in various ways, but the reality is clear.

Analogies of the Ossetia fiasco and its fallout with past events are
coming thick and fast. Condoleezza Rice — bless her heart — says,
"This is no longer 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia." James
Townsend, a former Pentagon official now with the Atlantic Council,
compared the situation to Hungary in 1956. In both cases, the Russians
being, well, the Russians. Neocon Charles Krauthammer says Georgia
needs "the equivalent of the Berlin air lift." The Baltic statelets
and Poland go back further yet, arguing it is a replay of Hitler and
Stalin’s invasions of their territory, prompting Poland to quickly sign
on the dotted line for US missiles (against the Iranians, of course).

But the most telling analogy is with Iraq and its ill-fated invasion
of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait indeed had been a province administered
from Baghdad for millennia, so Saddam Hussein understandably coveted
it, as Saakashvili does Ossetia. Hussein was convinced that the US
had given him the green light after he had spent 10 years fighting
the US’s latest bete noire, Iran , just as Saakashvili was given a
similar ambivalent go-ahead to invade Ossetia . Even Townsend admits,
"I think they misunderstand our eagerness and enthusiasm and think we
are going to be behind them for anything." Russian Ambassador to the
UN Vitaly Churkin said it best: "It is hard to imagine that Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili embarked on this risky venture without
some sort of approval from the side of the United States."

Taking this line of argument to its logical conclusion, perhaps
the Americans encouraged the Georgian president in order to test
the Russian reaction and to observe the preparedness of the Russian
military. Yet another analogy with the present crisis is the 1930s
Japanese occupation of Manchukuo. They made an incursion at Nomonhan
to test the Russians. After General Zhukov destroyed their attacking
force, they decided to leave the Russians alone, despite subsequent
pleas by Hitler.

Saakashvili’s strategy is also reminiscent of the Israeli conquest
of 1948: by bombing the civilians he shows he wanted to have Ossetia
without its native Ossetians. To this end he bombarded the capital,
Tskhinvali, causing half the residents to crossed the mountains to the
Russian side. Fortunate for the Ossetians, and unlike the Palestinians,
they had a reliable patron.

Georgians are noted for their fiery nationalism, but it’s not clear
that this time they are lining up behind their rash president. Former
Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze has said that Georgia
made a "grave mistake" by advancing into South Ossetia. The witty
Shevardnadze, who is also a former Soviet foreign minister, said the
crisis would not cause a new Cold War, as "the new Cold War has long
since been instigated by the USA , through the Americans’ so-called
missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland."

Referring to Russia ‘s incursion into Georgia , President George W
Bush said that invading a sovereign country that poses no threat is
"unacceptable in the 21st century." John McCain echoed this: "In
the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations," as if this
is all some ghastly 20th century mistake, and as if the last eight
years have witnessed a blossoming of world peace. In fact, the 21st
century has already involved lots of nations invading other nations,
though predominantly by the US and NATO. And given the anti-Russian
policies by the US and its new clients in the recent past, the likely
annexation of South Ossetia to the Russian Federation could well be
followed by Abkhazia and Sevastopol.

It is not inconceivable that Crimea, eastern and southern Ukraine —
all of which are predominantly Russian — could follow suit. None
of these potential annexations would require much force, nor would
they be surprising, and would certainly not be pretexts for the
US launching WWIII. In an interview with Forbes magazine in 1994,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, eulogised by the West only a few weeks ago
for his fanatical anti-communism, called for "the union of the three
Slavic republics [ Russia , Ukraine , Belarus ] and Kazakhstan ." He
explained that Lenin had given up several Russian provinces to Ukraine
and in 1954, Khrushchev made a "gift" of the Crimea to Ukraine. "But
even he did not manage to make Ukraine a ‘gift’ of Sevastopol ,
which remained a separate city under the jurisdiction of the USSR
central government." Belarus and Kazakhstan are already so close to
Russia they could be considered part of the federation, but Ukraine is
playing Saakashvili’s odious game of cozying up to the US and NATO,
and is thereby creating an atmosphere where Russia will have to do
something to protect itself.

Solzhenitsyn’s prescription included withdrawing all Russians from
Central Asia and the Caucusus, and is impracticable. Despite Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin’s admiration for him, it is unlikely that
Russia will ever abandon the latter or repatriate millions of Russians
from the former. On the contrary, Russia has a residual "imperial"
duty: as the successor of the Soviet Union, it is duty-bound to protect
Russians living throughout the ex-Soviet Union. Nor can Russia allow
Saakashvili to ethnically cleanse the Ossetians, if only for practical
reasons: fifty thousand refugees from South Ossetia would destabilise
the northern Caucasus . But the essential point about the arbitrary
borders under socialism and the migration of nationalities to and fro
for many decades makes a mockery and potential tragedy of treating
the new "republics" in terms familiar to the West.

Ignoring this fundamental reality has caused inestimable suffering
already in the former Yugoslavia, as Solzhenitsyn predicted long
before Srebrenica, Kosovo and now Ossetia . Unfortunately, Bush et
al are operating on autopilot, as even reluctant German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, on her lightning visit to succour Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili, defiantly announced, "Georgia will become a
member of NATO if it wants to — and it does want to."

Employing its own perverse logic, Poland quickly finalised an agreement
to host the infamous US missile "defence" shield. The US administration
even dropped its supposed opposition to supplying short-range Patriot
missiles, which are highly mobile and can be redeployed easily to
counter, say, Russian missiles responding to a US strike, a point
which was not lost on Russia. So it should surprise no one that a
senior Russian general said that Poland had just made itself a target
of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

To add fuel to the nuclear meltdown, NATO wannabee Ukraine announced
on Saturday that the demise of a bilateral Russian-Ukrainian defence
agreement earlier this year "allows Ukraine to establish active
cooperation with European countries" in missile defence. Ukraine’s
Foreign Ministry said Kiev could invite European partners to integrate
their early warning systems against missile attacks. This is yet
another blatant provocation of Russia , which has no intention of
starting a war, but has a nuclear arsenal ready to reply to any first
strike, a policy which the current US administration embraces.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has also ordered commanders of
Russia ‘s Black Sea fleet, based in Sevastopol, to seek permission
before moving warships and aircraft. Moscow said its commanders
would disregard the order as its forces answer solely to the Russian
president.

The current upping-the-ante is both childish and dangerous. Russia is
not weak and in disarray any longer, and could very easily — and with
excellent historical justification — annex Sevastopol and even the
entire Crimean peninsula, where Russians and Tatars constitute 70 per
cent of the population and which was a part of Russia since the time
of Catherine the Great. At the same time, Russia is not belligerent or
warlike, unlike a certain other superpower, and foolish "presidents"
of "republics" would be wise to recognise they must live side-by-side
with this powerful nation, and make the best of it, not the worst. In
case this point is still not clear, if Ukraine stops its provocations,
it need have no worries of any loss of "sovereignty".

The duplicity of the West is everywhere in this current crisis. Even
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cease-fire proposal signed by both
Georgian and Russian presidents was a ruse. Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov revealed that the document that Saakashvili approved
did not contain an introduction that had been endorsed by Russia,
South Ossetia and the other breakaway region, Abkhazia. Meanwhile,
US military planes are flying in "aid" and the US has announced it
will henceforth have a permanent presence in Georgia.

Because of the very real threat that Georgian troops, backed by their
American friends, could easily try again to destabilise things, the
Russians are understandably unwilling to abandon the western Georgian
city of Gori, which has a military base.

Tellingly, Bush referred Friday to efforts to resolve the conflict
not with the Group of 8 industrial nations, which includes Russia ,
but with the G-7, using the designation of the group before Russia
joined. Ousting Russia from the G-8 has been a keystone of McCain’s
foreign policy for years.

Bush et al don’t realise that apart from the Baltics, which had
two decades of independence before WWII, these ex-Soviet states are
not really states at all, but fiefdoms of the most odious part of
the former Soviet elite, now trying to play western-style electoral
politics, with disastrous consequences. By pretending otherwise and
threatening Russia for its understandable security interests, the US is
playing with fire. "What worries me about this episode is the United
States is jeopardising Russian cooperation on a number of issues
over a dispute that at most involves limited American interests,"
said Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute in Washington .

By opening NATO to bits and pieces of the SU and Yugoslavia, by
pushing Russophobic, vengeful Polish and Czech governments into
hosting missiles which can be easily aimed at Russia, the US should
be prepared for the possibility of a greater Russia, just as it should
be resigned to a greater Serbia, which would include Serbian enclaves
in Kosovo. This is what so far defines 21st century realpolitik.

Military defeat may actually be very good for the Georgians. The first
thing the Georgians did when they became independent after the 1917
Russian Revolution was to expel all Armenians and confiscate their
property. After WWII, Georgian Joseph Stalin expelled the Chechens from
the Caucusus and the Germans from Prussia. The Ossetians and Abhkaz
had good cause to distance themselves from Georgian chauvinism. We
can only hope that the fiasco in Ossetia will let the Georgians — and
the Ukrainians — rethink their attitude towards all their neighbours,
including the Russians.

WHY DOES SOUTH OSSETIA WANT INDEPENDENCE?
By Paul Sonne

Georgiandaily
Aug 19 2008
NY

South Ossetians say they deserve independence. Georgians say South
Ossetia is part of their country.

Both sides have a convincing argument, thanks to the complicated
history of the Caucasus.

Regardless of who started the fighting, Soviet history is partly to
blame for the tanks that rolled into South Ossetia this month.

"Without understanding Soviet history, you miss the whole point of what
has been going on," said Ronald Grigor Suny, a professor of history and
political science at the University of Michigan. "Basically what the
structure did was solidify and institutionalize ethnic differences."

Though predominantly Russian, the Soviet Union was home to about 100
ethnic groups.

Vladimir Lenin and his comrade Josef Stalin spent years trying to
figure out how to keep them all under control.

The larger groups like the Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and
Armenians had their own "union" republics, 15 in total, which made
up the Soviet federation.

The smaller groups like the Chechens, Ossetians, Tatars and Bashkirs
had special homelands within those republics, known as "autonomous"
regions or districts. A bit like Native American reservations, these
districts enjoyed special privileges and status.

South Ossetia was one such district, located inside the republic of
Georgia. So was Chechnya, located inside Russia.

Suny compared the government structure to a Russian nesting doll:
the autonomous districts are the innermost doll, located inside the
15 union republics, inside the U.S.S.R.

"It’s a situation where you have conflict built into the very structure
that was created by the Soviet Union," he said. "You had local Ossetian
claims, regional Georgian claims, and then big Soviet claims."

The Soviet Union tried to draw these minorities into the larger Soviet
culture, but also encouraged ethnic consciousness.

During the early Soviet period, the Kremlin created autonomous regions,
chose local ethnic leaders for Communist Party posts and promoted
indigenous languages, even creating alphabets for some languages that
didn’t have them.

The idea was to promote minorities in a way that would give them
a stake in the Soviet enterprise in other words, convince them not
to revolt.

"The formation of autonomous republics was partly genuine concern,
involving ethnographers, for ethnicities," said Stephen Kotkin, a
professor of Russian history at Princeton University, but it was also
"partly mischief, imperial divide and rule."

The system worked under tight Kremlin control. But then the Soviet
empire began to unravel in the late 1980s.

The Georgians launched a nationalist movement. To the surprise of some
Georgians, South Ossetia and Abkhazia having experienced some level
of self-rule as autonomous regions launched nationalist movements of
their own.

The Georgian nationalist leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia sent troops to
quell the unrest, and war broke out. The Russians became what Suny
calls "forced separators" of the two sides.

"When the Union dissolved … these two Trashcanistans bandit statelets
wanted out of Georgia," Kotkin said. "The short, nasty wars of 1990 to
1992 resulted in stalemate: de facto, but unrecognized independence."

The two regions have been de facto independent ever since.

In light of the history, both Georgians and South Ossetians would seem
to have a legitimate claim to the disputed territory. The conflicting
claims simply have different justifications.

Georgia, Suny said, has a legitimate claim to the land on the grounds
of territorial integrity. South Ossetia was located within the
boundaries of Georgia, and by international law, boundaries cannot
be changed unless both sides agree.

Kosovo was an exception.

South Ossetia, he said, also has a justifiable claim but on the grounds
of national self-determination: the idea that any nationality that
sees itself as a nation should have the right to rule itself.

But the fact that both sides have justified claims to the land hardly
stopped war from breaking out this month, leaving numerous innocent
people dead. In fact, that may have made things worse.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HOW MANY TIMES LOS ANGELES TIMES?
By Harut Sassounian

The California
19.08.2008

Even though I am getting tired of requesting the same correction from
the Los Angeles Times every few months, the newspaper’s reporters do
not seem to get tired of making the same mistake!

Readers can probably guess by now that I am talking about another
improper reference to the Armenian Genocide in the Times. This time,
reporter Agustin Gurza is the culprit.

In the newspaper’s Calendar Section of August 9, Mr. Gurza wrote
a lengthy front-page feature article about the U.S. debut of the
Armenian Navy Band — a 12-piece folk-fusion ensemble from Armenia —
at the prestigious Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

I was surprised and annoyed to read in that article, the following
mischaracterization of the Armenian Genocide: "Armenians carry in
their collective DNA the memory of what they consider a genocide by
the Turks in the early 20th century." Mr. Gurza should have known that
the Armenian Genocide is universally acknowledged, except for Turkish
denialists and their paid cohorts. The reporter’s faulty statement
also violates the Times’ editorial policy on the Armenian Genocide.

Unfortunately, this is not the first such mistake by a Times’
reporter; nor it would be the last. In recent years, this newspaper
has published countless corrections on this issue. Over a year ago,
there was a20major confrontation between the Armenian community
and Times’ editors, when Managing Editor Douglas Frantz blocked the
publication of an article on the Armenian Genocide written by reporter
Mark Arax. The controversy was settled when Times’ Publisher David
Hiller reassured the community that no further deviation from the
newspaper’s established policy on the Armenian Genocide would be
tolerated. Mr. Frantz is no longer employed at the Times.

Six months later, reporter Richard Simon, in his October 3, 2007
article, once again mischaracterized the Armenian Genocide. Two days
after I complained to Mr. Hiller, the Times printed the following
correction: "Armenian genocide: An article in Wednesday’s Section
A about a bill to recognize the killing of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks as genocide said, ‘Armenians say that 1.5 million of their
people perished as part of a campaign to drive them out of eastern
Turkey.’ The statement should not have been attributed solely to
Armenians; historical evidence and research support the accuracy of
the term genocide."

Less than a year after that correction, reporter Gurza repeated
the same mistake in his August 9, 2008 article. Assuming that as an
entertainment reporter he may not be aware of his newspaper’s policy
on the Armenian Genocide, I called him on August 11 to let him know
about his possibly inadvertent error. As he was not at his desk,
I left a message on his voice mail.

When I did not hear from Mr. Gurza, I contacted directly the editors
of the Times. I received a prompt call the next day, saying that the
editors had reviewed my complaint, found it justified, and promised
to publish an appropriate correction shortly. Indeed, in the August
14 issue of the newspaper, the following correction appeared:

"Armenian band: An article in Saturday’s Calendar section about the
Armenian Navy Band, making its U.S. debut Friday at Walt Disney Concert
Hall, said ‘Armenians carry in their collective DNA the memory of what
they consider a genocide by the Turks in the early 20th century.’ The
statement should not have qualified the term ‘genocide’; historical
evidence and research support the accuracy of the term."

This correction is almost identical to the one published almost a
year ago.

Although some of our readers see a conspiracy behind the newspaper’s
repeated improper references to the Armenian Genocide, I disagree. I
believe that these errors are simply caused by uninformed or negligent
reporters.

Since hundreds of journalists work at the Times, and there is a high
turnover, it is understandable that new staff members may not be
aware of the newspaper’s policy on the Armenian Genocide.

Even though I am getting tired of contacting the Times, asking for
yet another correction, let’s look at the bright side. The editors of
the Times have always graciously accepted my complaint a nd promptly
published the requested correction.

Furthermore, each time that the Times makes such a mistake, it creates
yet another opportunity for the newspaper to reconfirm the facts of
the Armenian Genocide and remind both current and newly hired staff
of its time-honored policy on this issue.

GEORGIA USES OLYMPIC GAMES AS COVER TO ATTACK SOUTH OSSETIA
By Appo Jabarian

USA ARMENIAN LIFE
19.08.2008

During numerous previous decades, at a time when Olympic Games were
in progress, many warring nations voluntarily abstained from any
military activity. No country staged a military aggression against
another country.

Recently the former Soviet Republic of Georgia broke that
tradition. Using the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a distracting cover,
Georgia initiated a military aggression against the tiny breakaway
state of South Ossetia.

Apparently Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili hoped that the
international community would be preoccupied by the Olympics, and
his troops would stage a Nazi-style blitzkrieg attack against the
Ossetians.

But the Saakashvili plan backfired. Russia rushed to the rescue of the
Ossetians. Russia, determined not to squander away any opportunity
to punish Georgia for its NATO ambitions, counter-attacked with its
military might and literally subjected Saakashvili’s country to a
5-day military siege.

On Tuesday August 12, just before USA Armenian Life Magazine went to
press, the world media reported that Georgia unconditionally pulled its
occupation armies out of South Ossetia’s regional capital Tskhinvali
and signed a peace accord negotiated by President Nicholas Sarkozy
of France.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without
international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in
the early 1990s. Both separatist provinces are backed by Russia.

On August 12, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly
Churkin told CNN that "We do not want to believe that the United States
has given a green light to this adventurous act, But our American
colleagues are telling us that they’re investigating now what may
have happened in the channels of communication for Mr. Saakashvili
to have behaved in such a reckless manner."

Harut Sassounian, the Publisher of The California Courier, wrote in
his column: "In my judgment, Pres. Saakashvili, expecting political,
if not military, support from the West, miscalculated badly Russia’s
devastating reaction when he initiated last week’s surprise attack
on South Ossetia.

This breakaway region not only borders Russia, but its inhabitants
are citizens of Russia, giving the Kremlin ample reason to intervene
and carry out Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s declared intent
‘to punish’ Georgia’s President."

One hopes that Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Armenia’s and
Nagorno Karabagh Republic/Artsakh’s neighbor to the East learns from
his Georgian colleague Saakashvili’s dire experience of political and
military miscalculations. Back in March, Azerbaijan had organized a
military incursion against Armenia and paid dearly for its testing
of the Armenians’ determination to fight back.

As for the Armenians of Javakhk, the Armenian region in Georgia,
Saakashvili’s oppressive regime has been systematically impoverishing
them so that either they leave or assimilate. Below is an urgent
appeal for help released on July 24 by Javakhk Armenians:

"JAVAKHK NEEDS HELP OF THE WHOLE WORLD. Dear compatriots, the
democratic alliance ‘United Javakhk,’ a grassroots NGO, striving
to defend the human rights of Javakhk’s Armenians, was attacked and
crushed without any solid legal ground by Georgian Special Operations
Unit in the city of Akhalkalak."

The appeal continued: "At the current moment: 1) Over 500 Georgian
special police officers are stationed in Javakhk region of Georgia
(this is in addition to the regular police force); 2) Over 20 members
of ‘United Javakhk’ were thrown in jail without due course/legal
procedures; 3) The Georgian operatives too control over local
internet provider and independent radio station. A number of other
local media outlets are shut down, which effectively limits freedom
of the media and access of the general public to information for
the local population; 4) The office of "United Javakhk" had been
illegally searched and weapons were ‘found’ (allegedly all planted
by the Georgian police units); 5) The population of Akhalkalak and
the entire region is under the constant threat of illegal arrests,
beatings and other mass violations of human rights; and 6) Armenian and
Georgian media and state authorities do not comment on the situation."

Not long ago, Kosovo, another breakaway region-turned an
internationally recognized sovereign state, gained its independence
from the Republic of Serbia. Rightfully, the international community
rushed to recognize its independence.

But the international community’s duty should not have stopped there.

Setting the double standard aside, the world community should have
recognized South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence from Georgia,
and that of Nagorno Karabagh/Artsakh from Azerbaijan.

Having failed to complete its obligations, the international community
now shoulders the responsibility of the loss of thousands of innocent
lives in the Russia-Georgia-Ossetia war.

Future deadly aggression by the oppressive regimes of Azerbaijan and
Georgia will further saddle the community with more responsibility
for further human losses.

TURKEY EASES ARMENIA FLIGHT QUOTA

United Press International
Aug 19 2008

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Aug. 19 (UPI) — Turkey announced it was increasing
the number of airline flights in and out Armenia that will be allowed
to transit Turkish airspace.

The newspaper Hurriyet said the move was made to facilitate
humanitarian assistance and evacuations from Georgia.

Prior to the current crisis in Georgia air traffic was generally
routed over that troubled region.

It was not clear Tuesday if the new rules would be in place by
Sept. 6 when Turkey and Armenia square off in a World Cup soccer
qualifying match.