Month: December 2008

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55 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022-1112
Phone: 212.319.6383, x118
Fax: 212.319.6507
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PRESS RELEASE

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Queens College Audience Enchanted by Saroyan Celebration

On Sunday, November 23, 2008, the most anticipated celebration of the
William Saroyan Centennial took place in LeFrak Concert Hall of Queens
College, Flushing, NY. The program of drama, music, readings, and an
exhibit were well received by an appreciative audience of well over 150
dazzled Saroyan fans. Even before the actual start of the program, a
pleasant mood was created by an ensemble of Queens College music
students, directed by Ben Arendsen, playing Vivaldi and Mozart, followed
by "Missouri Waltz," one of Saroyan’s favorite numbers, by pianist Ivy
Adrian.

A few years before William Saroyan died, he penned a few lines in
appreciation of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, as follows:
"Always we are pleased about the astonishing, heroic, magnificent
achievements of the AGBU, which means simply all Armenians concerned
about all Armenians – gone, here, & scheduled to arrive. My profound
admiration and gratitude."

With this link between the world’s most renowned Armenian writer and the
world’s largest charitable organization, it was only fitting that AGBU
responded favorably to a request for financial assistance to mount a
William Saroyan Centennial Celebration, presented by the Aaron Copland
School of Music at Queens College, in conjunction with the Anthropology
Museum of the People of New York and the Armenian Cultural Educational
Resource Center Gallery.

Introductions about the readers and comments about Saroyan and his
legacy were made by Drew Keil, director and master of ceremonies. The
famous quote, "The Armenian and the Armenian," from Inhale and Exhale,
was read by writer/translator Aris Sevag, after which Stephen Valenti,
Professor of Accounting and Finance at NYU and an actor in his own
right, enlightened the audience about the worldwide Armenian population
of around 10 million. Keil then evoked Saroyan’s memory by reading from
the preface to Saroyan’s play "The Time of Your Life."

Welcoming remarks were delivered by Margaret Tellalian-Kyrkostas,
Executive Director of the Anthropology Museum and Armenian Center
Gallery, who had worked tirelessly for several months to ensure the
program’s success.

A musical interlude followed, with Ms. Adrian giving a spirited
rendition of "Ellis Island," Opus 3, a 1987 concerto written by
Margaret’s late son Mark Kyrkostas. Readings in tandem about Saroyan’s
life and works were done humorously by Edward Jamie, Jr., Chairman, and
Raymond Tellalian, President of the Museum and Gallery. Aris Sevag
followed with brief passages pertaining to the beginning and the end of
the illustrious writer’s life, bringing tears to many eyes. After the
reading of short stories by Valenti and Sevag, the audience delighted to
the performance by the aforementioned ensemble of Arno Babadjanian’s
composition for the Armenian production in Yerevan of "My Heart’s in the
Highlands."

The main feature, a gem of a production, was the moving presentation of
Saroyan’s 1941 one-act play, "Hello Out There." Actors Andrew Keil,
Sarah King, Theo Kyrkostas, Annie Schlegel-Kyrkostas, and Stephen
Valenti, under the direction of Drew Keil, played out man’s dilemma with
life’s predicaments, a theme that festered in Saroyan’s psyche and
works. Bishop Anoushavan Tanielian, Vicar of the Armenian Prelacy of the
Armenian Apostolic Church of America (Eastern United States), reminisced
about meeting Saroyan in Lebanon in the early 1970’s and summarized the
writer’s legacy as respect for both spiritual life and our material
environment.

The program came to a close with Saroyan’s own voice in a recording of
his 1939 CBS "Radio Play," followed by closing remarks from Margaret
Kyrkostas and the playing of "The Daring Young Man on the Flying
Trapeze" by the Queens College orchestra. A birthday cake was rolled
out on stage and the audience joined the performers in singing happy
birthday to "Bill," followed by the Armenian version sung by Bishop
Anoushavan Tanielian and Aris Sevag.

Having gained a greater familiarity with Saroyan’s legacy, most audience
members availed themselves of the opportunity to visit "William Saroyan
Remembered," an exhibit of photos and text about his life and works
expertly and lovingly prepared by Margaret Kyrkostas, which was on
display at the entrance to LeFrak Concert Hall. The exhibit was also
displayed at the Saroyan event at the Diocesan Center on 2nd Avenue on
Friday, December 5. The exhibit is now on display at the Rosenthal
Library of Queens College until February 28, 2009; for hours, call the
Museum at (718) 428-5650.

A reception in the Atrium of the Music Building afforded audience
members the opportunity to share their decidedly positive impressions of
the program, which was a most fitting tribute to the enduring legacy of
this worthy Armenian-American writer.

State Budget Project Affirmed in Parliament

December 29, 2008

NKR Government Information and
Public Relations Department

Today, with the majority of votes the NKR Parliament has approved the
project of the NKR State Budget 2009. The NKR Prime Minister Ara
Haroutyunyan noted in his brief speech that he is satisfied with the
results of the Budget discussions, which took place in the NKR National
Assembly, a constructive dialogue was carried on between the Executive
and the Legislative authorities. Though in the result of the world
economic crisis, an unfavourable condition to a certain extent was
created, without "Base Metals" the main tax-payer company, in the
second half of 2008, the private tax revenues increased by 50 percent
on the part of the other tax-payers. The total economic growth in the
Republic formed more than 14 percent. This index must be retained in
2009 as well,- the Prime Minister asserted. It was simultaneously
underlined that it is necessary to considerably raise the GDP in the
forthcoming year and to equalize it to the level of Armenia.
A.Haroytyunyan reported that a commission occupied with anti-crisis
problems, with the Prime Minister at the head will be created.

According to the presentation by the Head of the Government certain
steps to reduce and prevent the consequences of the financial and
economic crisis have been already taken. Particularly, changes with
this aim were implemented in the tax legislation.

The Prime Minister touched upon other undertakings and attitudes of the
Government due to which the outlined social and economic programmes
will be possible to implement in 2009.

NKR Defense Minister: `The party, having problems with Nagorno Karabakh
should be ready to negotiate with it’

2008-12-30 10:34

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

`Nagorno Karabakh is a sovereign state, which solves its issues on its
own’, the NKR Defense Minister, Lieutenant General Movses Hakobyan
stated at the press-conference devoted to the summing up of the year.

Welcoming the Armenian-Azerbaijani-Russian declaration as a document,
in which the idea of solving the Nagorno Karabakh issue by peaceful
means is fixed, the NKR Defense Minister noted: `No state can sign a
document instead of us. If someone wants to make relations with us,
including Azerbaijan, it should recognize us. The party, having
problems with the NKR should be ready to hold negotiations with it’.

According to him, the NKR Defense Army successfully realized its goals
in 2008 and is ready to start fulfilling the tasks of 2009.

On This Day: The USSR Is Born
December 30, 2008
Dulcinea

On Dec. 30, 1922, Russia and three other republics formed the constitution
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The USSR began with Russia and three other republics: Belorussia, Ukraine
and the Transcaucasian Republic (composed of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia). `
The new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire,’ writes
History, `and the _first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism_
( tory.do?action=3DVideoArticle&id=3D5644) .’

The government had an executive branch, called the Central Executive
Committee, along with a legislative organization called the Council of People’s
Commissars. _Government members were elected by local councils_
( /n.htm#ussr) , known as `Soviets,’ that went on to
the Congress of Soviets.

The USSR, also known as the Soviet Union, grew in the wake of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin. The Bolshevik Party, later renamed the
Communist Party, had full control over the Soviet government.

Lenin was in ill health when the USSR was formed and was not present at the
Congress. He did, however, release a letter called _`The Question of
Nationalities or “Autonomisation”_ () that
addressed his beliefs about the new union.

Though Russia’s subsequent actions would indicate otherwise, the Communist
Party wanted the various nations that made up the USSR to join or secede
willingly. `_We want a voluntary union of nations,_
( n.htm) ‘ Lenin said in a quote that appears on the wall of the
Central V.I. Lenin Museum, `a union which precludes any coercion of one nation by
another-a union founded on complete confidence, on a clear recognition of
brotherly unity, on absolutely voluntary consent.’

Josef Stalin followed Lenin as head of the Communist Party, and therefore
head of the USSR, ruling the country for its first three decades. Stalin
instituted `five-year plans’ designed to advance industrialization and build the
USSR into a world power. `Among the long-time plans of the USSR leaders was to
prove that the Communist ideology offered the only right way of development
and that the _Soviet Union dominated other major Superpowers of the World_
( ry/152/) ,’ writes Russia-InfoCentre.

During his rule, Stalin shaped the international reputation of the Soviet
Union, which grew to 15 republics by 1940. Stalin’s reign was marked by
government and army purges, the creation of a draconian secret police, and
government-engineered famines that killed millions.

The USSR existed until 1991, when Russia, Belarus and Ukraine-the three
remaining states that founded the Soviet Union-_declared that it was dissolved_
( -this-day/On-This-Day–3-Soviet-Republics
-Form-a- Commonwealth.html) . It was officially dissolved on Dec. 21 and
replaced with the Commonwealth of Independent States.
()

Leni n drew inspiration from the works of Karl Marx, who advocated socialism
and the collective ownership of land and resources. During the rule of Czar
Nicholas II, Lenin and many other Bolsheviks were exiled from Russia for their
revolutionary beliefs.

After the monarchy was overthrown in March 1917, _Lenin and the Bolsheviks
returned to Russia_ ( html)
to lead a second revolution. In October, the Bolsheviks were able to seizethe
White Palace and take over the Russian government. The Bolsheviks instituted
socialist rule, placing the country’s banks, factories and farms under
government control.

The BBC provides a timeline of the USSR, from creation to dissolution.
2551.stm

12/30/2008 11:52 AM
APOLOGIZING TO THE ARMENIANS
‘Eroding One of Turkey’s Biggest Taboos’
More than 25,000 Turks have added their names to an online statement
apologizing for Ottoman war crimes committed during World War I. SPIEGEL
spoke with campaign initiator Baskin Oran.

SPIEGEL: Since the beginning of your online campaign, more than 25,000 Turks
have signed a statement apologizing for war crimes committed by the Ottoman
Empire during World War I. More than a million Armenians lost their lives in
the catastrophic events which began in 1915. Is this the beginning of a
critical examination of the past?

Oran: The Turks who are now apologizing are not responsible for the sins of
1915. There is no collective crime, but there is a collective conscience.
With our campaign, we are eroding one of Turkey’s biggest taboos. But still, the
campaign is coming decades late.
SPIEGEL: Turkish nationalists say that you are damaging the country’s image.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan agrees.
Oran: I disagree. I think that our image abroad will actually improve.
Beyond that though, it is for the grandchildren of the Armenians who finally
should hear an apology — in a country like Turkey that has no "culture of
apology."
SPIEGEL: What effect will the campaign have on Turkish-Armenian relations?
Oran: The majority of Armenians welcome our initiative. But there are
hardliners who criticize that our petition does not specifically use the word
"genocide." They are afraid that our apology could foil Armenian demands for
reparations. Such people merely see us as lackeys of the Turkish state.
SPIEGEL: What kind of reactions have you received from Turkish citizens.
Oran: They have, unfortunately, been mostly negative. Every day, I
personally receive around 200 pieces of hate mail. Many accuse me of having insulted
the Turkish people. But one has to bear in mind: every child here learns that
Armenians killed Muslims. Our education is to blame for the country’s
collective amnesia. In eastern Turkey, though, it is true that in the pastmany
people suffered from Armenian revenge attacks.
Interview conducted by Daniel Steinvorth
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008

From: "Katia M. Peltekian" <[email protected]>
Subject: BAKU: Azerbaijani Diaspora wins information war against Armenia:

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Dec 30 2008

Azerbaijani Diaspora wins information war against Armenia: Chairman of
State Committee
30.12.08 13:01

Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 30 /corr. Trend News J.Babayeva / The Chairman
of the State Committee for Work with Diaspora of Azerbaijan, Nazim
Ibrahimov, considers that the Azerbaijan diasporas win the information
war against Armenia.

`All international organizations recognize Armenia as aggressor
country and accept Azerbaijan as the victim side. The entire world
recognizes realities of Khojali tragedy,’ Ibrahimov briefed the media
on Dec. 30.

The Head of the State Committee does not agree with the opinions that
the Azerbaijan diasporas lag behind others. `They all began to
function for many years earlier than the Azerbaijan diasporas, which
could reach positive results within a short period. Friendly relations
were established between the Azerbaijan and Jewish diasporas, since
Jewish lobby recognizes the force of the diasporas of Azerbaijan,’
said the chairman of State Committee.

Armenian diasporas analyze each step of Azerbaijani diasporas and this
testifies the authority of our organizations, he said. `The diasporas
are supported by a strong state and care of the wise President,’ said
Ibragimov.

The conflict between the two countries of South Caucasus began in 1988
due to territorial claims by Armenia against Azerbaijan. Armenia has
occupied 20% of the Azerbaijani land including the Nagorno-Karabakh
region and its seven surrounding Districts. Since 1992, these
territories have been under the occupation of the Armenian Forces. In
1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which
time the active hostilities ended. The Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group ( Russia, France and USA) are currently holding peaceful
negotiations.

On the night of 25 to 26 February 1992 the Azerbaijani settlement of
Nagorno-Karabakh, Khojali, was occupied by Armenian separatists, with
active participation of military personnel and army tanks of the 366th
regiment of the Russian army. In a matter of several hours, more than
600 unarmed Azerbaijani citizens, including 106 women and 83 children,
were brutally killed. The annihilation of the peaceful people
continued for several days during which time the Armenians executed
and killed prisoners, committed violence against women and children,
cut off the heads of Azerbaijani military prisoners and had them hung
up. During this crime, 487 people, including 76 juveniles were
physically disabled and 1,275 people were taken prisoner. Despite the
release of most of the prisoners, the fate of 150 people is still
unknown.

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Dec 30 2008

Azerbaijani diaspora will considerably develop and strengthen next
year: State Committee
30.12.08 12:31

Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 30/ Trend News, J. Babayeva/ Nazim Ibrahimov,
chief of the State Committee for Work with Diaspora of Azerbaijan, is
sure that the next year will mark a considerable development and
strengthening of Azerbaijani diaspora.

`Next year the Azerbaijani diaspora will get actively involved in the
public and political life of country where it is represented. Serious
changes are impossible in diaspora activities as it requires
systematic approach. The efforts yield results only several years
later,’ Ibrahimov said to reporters.

December 31 is a Solidarity Day of World Azerbaijanis.

2008 was very successful for Azerbaijani diaspora, he said. `Every
outgoing year can be considered successful for Azerbaijani
diaspora. Azerbaijani diaspora is developing and organizational work
has completed. Significant changes take place in daily life of
diasporas. Every diaspora organization began to get actively involved
in public and political life of the country it represents,’ he noted.

`Even Armenian websites highlighted efforts of the Azerbaijani
diaspora after meeting of the Coordinating Council of World
Azerbaijanis was held in Baku. It indicates that strengthening of
diaspora is on a right path. The diaspora has united around Azerbaijan
and policy of President and it informs the world about Azerbaijan’s
realities,’ he said.

If diaspora keeps on developing in this direction, it will be more
united around Azerbaijan in the coming years, Ibrahimov said.

Boston Globe, MA
Dec 30 2008

Defending clients, and choices

By Mark Shanahan
Globe Staff / December 30, 2008

Harvey, how could you?

That’s what every Armenian in Massachusetts is asking. They’re
demanding to know how famed defense attorney Harvey Silverglate could
take the side of the Turks in the legal standoff over the Armenian
tragedy.

Silverglate’s a stooge, they say, for effectively questioning whether
the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians nearly a century ago
amounts to genocide or an unfortunate, albeit unfortunately evil,
chapter in European history. They wonder if Silverglate, who’s Jewish,
would be so solicitous of those extremist screwballs who deny that
millions of his people perished in concentration camps during World
War II.

Even bigshots at the ACLU, which has been known to back a
controversial cause or two, are scratching their heads.

But, honestly, how couldn’t Harvey take the case? Beginning with a
group of stringy-haired Harvard students protesting the Vietnam War in
1969, the guy’s got a long track record of repping people the public
despises. What do Louise Woodward, Michael Milken, and Bernard Baran
all have in common? At one point or another, Silverglate sat at their
defense table. (To refresh, Woodward was the accused baby shaker from
Britain; Milken the junk bond king; and Baran the former Pittsfield
day-care provider and alleged pedophile who spent 22 years in prison
before Silverglate helped spring him in 2006.)

"There’s one thing that characterizes all of my high-profile cases,"
Silverglate says confidently. "They’re all innocent."

At issue this time is a lawsuit he filed in 2005 that claims state
education officials violated the First Amendment by removing material
from a human-rights curriculum questioning whether the mass killings
in the Ottoman Empire between 1915-1918 constituted genocide. (He
filed the lawsuit on behalf of a local high school student, two
teachers, and a Turkish-American advocacy organization.)

Silverglate insists the suit, which is still pending, is about free
speech, and not the fact or fiction of the genocide.

"It’s about the right of people to express differing viewpoints," he
says. "The school department had initially included scholarly articles
on both sides of the debate, but under political pressure, deleted
those articles that argued it wasn’t a genocide.

"That’s censorship," says Silverglate.

Nonsense, argue Armenians. They contend the Turks’ version of events –
that the deaths and deportations were the result of a massive armed
rebellion by Armenians that also killed many Turks – has been
discredited and isn’t entitled to equal time in the classroom or
anywhere else.

It’d be an understatement to say Armenians are upset with
Silverglate. (And too bad for him, Massachusetts has the country’s
second-largest Armenian population.) One prominent Armenian, Carolyn
Mugar – she of the philanthropic Star Market Mugars – lives next door
to Silverglate in Cambridge. While they’re not at each other’s throats
like the neighbors in Thomas Berger’s darkly comic novel, they’re also
not as chummy as they once were.

"The genocide is a fact of history at this point," says Anthony
Barsamian, a Wellesley attorney and spokesman for the Armenian
Assembly of America. "Denial is being put out of business. Free speech
is free speech, but there’s also right and wrong."

Even in the context of some of Silverglate’s previous celebrated cases
– he counseled the Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley and had a hand in the
Claus von Bulow case – this is considered by his critics to be a new
low. Barsamian, like a lot of Armenians, doubts he’d be in such a rush
to defend, say, folks who deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Oh, don’t be so sure. Consider this: During all the hubbub over
desegregation and school busing in the 1970s, a crew of neo-Nazis
showed up in Boston wearing whatever it is neo-Nazis wear. They were
promptly arrested for disturbing the peace, and detained.

The ACLU asked Harvey if he would give the Hitler-loving louts the
benefit of some legal aid. He did, without hesitation, and before long
the wannabe brownshirts were back on the street.

"Of all of my cases, fewer words never passed between me and a
client," says Silverglate, chuckling at the memory. "They didn’t thank
me, and I didn’t expect they would."

So, would he help Holocaust deniers?

"Absolutely. The First Amendment is useless if you only defend people
you agree with," Silverglate says. "My family was from Poland and
Russia, and they were all wiped out. I hold no brief for the
Nazis. But it’s not a crime to deny the Holocaust. It’s a position."

rticles/2008/12/30/defending_clients_and_choices/

Wall Street Journal
Dec 30 2008

Samuel Huntington’s Warning
He predicted a ‘clash of civilizations,’ not the illusion of Davos Man.

By FOUAD AJAMI

The last of Samuel Huntington’s books — "Who Are We? The Challenges
to America’s National Identity," published four years ago — may have
been his most passionate work. It was like that with the celebrated
Harvard political scientist, who died last week at 81. He was a man of
diffidence and reserve, yet he was always caught up in the political
storms of recent decades.

Zina Saunders"This book is shaped by my own identities as a patriot
and a scholar," he wrote. "As a patriot I am deeply concerned about
the unity and strength of my country as a society based on liberty,
equality, law and individual rights." Huntington lived the life of his
choice, neither seeking controversies, nor ducking them. "Who Are We?"
had the signature of this great scholar — the bold, sweeping
assertions sustained by exacting details, and the engagement with the
issues of the time.

He wrote in that book of the "American Creed," and of its erosion
among the elites. Its key elements — the English language,
Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of
law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals — he
said are derived from the "distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the
founding settlers of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries."

Critics who branded the book as a work of undisguised nativism missed
an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an "argument for
the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of
Anglo-Protestant people." The success of this great republic, he said,
had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans
to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old
affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization
and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep
attachments to America’s national identity. "The Stars and Stripes
were at half-mast," he wrote in "Who Are We?", "and other flags flew
higher on the flagpole of American identities."

Three possible American futures beckoned, Huntington said:
cosmopolitan, imperial and national. In the first, the world remakes
America, and globalization and multiculturalism trump national
identity. In the second, America remakes the world: Unchallenged by a
rival superpower, America would attempt to reshape the world according
to its values, taking to other shores its democratic norms and
aspirations. In the third, America remains America: It resists the
blandishments — and falseness — of cosmopolitanism, and reins in the
imperial impulse.

Huntington made no secret of his own preference: an American
nationalism "devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those
qualities that have defined America since its founding." His stark
sense of realism had no patience for the globalism of the Clinton
era. The culture of "Davos Man" — named for the watering hole of the
global elite — was disconnected from the call of home and hearth and
national soil.

But he looked with a skeptical eye on the American expedition to Iraq,
uneasy with those American conservatives who had come to believe in an
"imperial" American mission. He foresaw frustration for this drive to
democratize other lands. The American people would not sustain this
project, he observed, and there was the "paradox of democracy":
Democratic experiments often bring in their wake nationalistic
populist movements (Latin America) or fundamentalist movements (Muslim
countries). The world tempts power, and denies it. It is the
Huntingtonian world; no false hopes and no redemption.

In the 1990s, when the Davos crowd and other believers in a borderless
world reigned supreme, Huntington crossed over from the academy into
global renown, with his "clash of civilizations" thesis. In an article
first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a
book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The
war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and
blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing
the rest — Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox,
Buddhist and Japanese.

In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal
challenge to the West. "The relations between Islam and Christianity,
both orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the
other’s Other. The 20th-century conflict between liberal democracy and
Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical
phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation
between Islam and Christianity."

He had assaulted the zeitgeist of the era. The world took notice, and
his book was translated into 39 languages. Critics insisted that men
want Sony, not soil. But on 9/11, young Arabs — 19 of them — would
weigh in. They punctured the illusions of an era, and gave evidence of
the truth of Huntington’s vision. With his typical precision, he had
written of a "youth bulge" unsettling Muslim societies, and young,
radicalized Arabs, unhinged by modernity and unable to master it,
emerging as the children of this radical age.

If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the
lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis. I admired his work but
was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the
West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the
world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key
Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years
later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book
Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been
correct all along.

A gracious letter came to me from Nancy Arkelyan Huntington, his wife
of 51 years (her Armenian descent an irony lost on those who dubbed
him a defender of nativism). He was in ill-health, suffering the
aftermath of a small stroke. They were spending the winter at their
summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. She had read him my essay as he lay
in bed. He was pleased with it: "He will be writing you himself
shortly." Of course, he did not write, and knowing of his frail state
I did not expect him to do so. He had been a source of great wisdom,
an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him
in the regrettably small way I did.

We don’t have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the
field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main
commandeered by a new generation. They are "rational choice" people
who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon.

More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism
that marked Samuel Huntington’s life and work is derided, and the
American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and
simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos
men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran
through the work of Huntington’s final years.

Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins
University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is also an
adjunct research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

60172023141417.html

Azerbaijan Business Center, Azerbaijan
Dec 30 2008

Azerbaijanis in the UAE reported of their position during the
referendum to be held in March

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Azerbaijanis living in the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) will unanimously vote for offered amendments to the Constitution
during the referendum to be held on March 18.

The State Committee for Diaspora informed Fineko/abc.az that this was
reported during the event organized in JW Marriott Hotel in Dubai
devoted to the Solidarity Day of World Azerbaijanis. The event is
organized by the Community of Azerbaijanis and was attended by not
only Azerbaijanis, but also representatives of Turkish Diaspora, Iraqi
Turkmen and representatives of European people.

Head of the Community Samir Imanov told about history of the holiday
mentioning that the national leader H.Aliyev has initiated this
holiday and united the world Azerbaijanis.

The participants have been given the books `Armenian Terrorism’ and
`The Truth about Karabakh’ published under assistance of Heydar Aliyev
Foundation.