Author: admin

Times Union, Albany, NY
March 13 2005

Close and ‘The Shield’ make sense

By MARK McGUIRE, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, March 13, 2005

Go back four years ago: Could you imagine Glenn Close joining a TV
show and taking second billing?
The star of “The Big Chill” and “Fatal Attraction” taking a
theoretical back seat — on a basic cable show? It would make no
sense.

Makes sense now, especially when you’re talking about FX’s “The
Shield.”

Close plays Capt. Monica Rawling, who takes over the Los Angeles
precinct that includes volatile Detective Vic Mackey (Michael
Chiklis), one of the most indelible characters on TV today. By the
end of the first episode of the fourth season (airing at 10 p.m.
Tuesday), I was ready to declare them to be arguably the strongest
tandem of actors on any current series. You may come up with a better
pair; I did say “arguably.” But Close and Chiklis have to be in the
debate.

Close, who turns 58 on Saturday, is as good as advertised, displaying
her trademark ability to slip into roles without overwhelming the
part. Maybe the best compliment you can give her is that you stop
concentrating on the fact it’s Glenn Close by about the second
episode. (By the way: She looks ridiculously good in jeans and a
jacket.)

Rawling arrives at “The Barn” even as former boss David Aceveda
(Benito Martinez) — who was elected to the City Council last year —
hovers in the background. A street cop who rose through the ranks,
she recognizes the value of a bruiser like Mackey, even as she
realizes his hothead streak can make things go very, very wrong. Then
again, if she knew Mackey like viewers of the first three seasons of
“The Shield” know him, Vic would be in cuffs.

One of her first impressions of Mackey is watching him come close to
a brawl with Aceveda, whose blistering evaluation of Vic submarined a
promotion.

“One happy family, huh?” Rawling says to Wyms (CCH Pounder), whose
own career was stymied last season when she ran afoul of the district
attorney’s office.

“Oh, yeah,” Wyms replies. “You hit the jackpot.”

In the world of “The Shield,” clean cops like Wyms often find
themselves on the outs; the dirty ones get ahead. As season four
begins, Mackey’s strike team has been disbanded, but their past
illicit activities — especially ripping off the Armenian mob — will
continue to have repercussions.

While most of the team attempts to stay legit and keep in the new
captain’s good graces, Mackey’s former sidekick, Shane Vendrell
(Walton Goggins), is working vice and also working the angles.
Without Mackey to rein him in, Goggins and his new partner — a
veritable rookie — are headed for trouble. If Vendrell goes down,
Mackey and the rest are sure to follow.

Close’s addition makes the cast of “The Shield” as overloaded with
talent as the Yankees’ lineup, but she isn’t the only big-screen star
to join up: Anthony Anderson (“Barbershop”) plays Antwon Mitchell, a
former gangbanger and drug slinger who returns to Farmington
preaching community revitalization. In reality, he’s back controlling
the streets.

With its strong ensemble cast and guerrilla-style camera work, “The
Shield” is most remarkable for its portrait of the brutal concessions
decent people make in the effort to seek civic justice and personal
advancement. At the same time, the show’s bad guys carry a streak of
decency; they can’t be dismissed as amoral monsters. The gray area
between right and wrong provides the thematic setting for some of the
best shows on TV, including “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood” and “Lost.”
It’s also the terrain where the men and women of “The Shield” patrol.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LEADER OF “SELF-DETERMINATION UNION” PARTY CALLS UPON TO
REESTABLISH OLD ARMENIAN ORTHOGRAPHY

YEREVAN, MARCH 11. ARMINFO. At today’s press-conference, Leader of
the “Self-Determination Union” party Paruyr Hayrikyan called upon to
abandon the present-day orthography of the Armenian language and to
reestablish the Old-Armenian or “Mesropyan” orthography.

In his words, all the Armenians over the world use the Armenian script
created by the author of Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots, and on that
script the Bible has been translated. Only the independent Republic
of Armenia abandons it and uses the orthography imposed to Armenian
people by Stalin and Bolsheviks. Celebrating the 1600th anniversary
of the Armenian alphabet is at least immorally, Hayrikyan thinks. He
intends to appeal to the National Academy of Sciences and to call
upon to reestablish the “Mesropian” orthography.

Answering the question on why Hayrikyan and his team-mates did not
raise this question early in 90’s when he was a Parliament’s member,
the SDU leader said that a Law on language was adopted just due to his
efforts, but “the foreign agents and, first of all, the Russian special
service, stealing into all the spheres” prevented its realization. -r-

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

It is indeed political
Saturday, March 12, 2005
TDN editorial by Yusuf KANLI
Yusuf KANLI

It’s difficult for Turks and others who have not been to Armenia and
who have no idea of the components making up Armenian nationalism to
understand Yerevan’s outright rejection of a Turkish proposal for a
genocide study.

For Turks, Britons, Spaniards, Israelis, Arabs and other nationalities,
the concepts of “homeland,” religion, history, national pride and
such, and even the idea of things as simple as the success of the
local soccer team, constitute the bulk of what creates a sense of
belonging to the country and the nation. The love for the homeland
and for the nation and the sense of belonging are the driving elements
that produce a nationalism which is not based on racism or chauvinism.

Don’t we have racial and chauvinistic preoccupations? Unfortunately
we do, and they are among the reasons why we have been struggling for
the past decades to democratize this country and enhance individual
rights and liberties and acquire a higher level of freedom of
expression. Though we sometimes wrongly portray this struggle in
Turkey with the clichéd “Westernization” or “Western vocation of
Turkey” rhetoric, what we have been involved in is indeed just a
fight to preserve our differences while at the same time becoming
a more homogenous society, replacing a concept of nationality that
includes racial connotations with an understanding of constitutional
citizenship, creating a national identity that provides room for
sub-identities, making all citizens of this nation and all parts of
the country equal and thus boosting the perception of belonging to
this state and nation.

Had they not developed a sense of belonging, could the Israelis have
survived thousands of years of rejection and humiliation, many wars,
the Inquisition and a heinous Holocaust in addition to a campaign of
anti-Semitism that still exists in many societies albeit to a much
lesser degree?

But if one looks at Armenia, is there any element that can create
a sense of belonging among Armenians dispersed around the world to
the land-locked state next door to Turkey? Armenia is incapable of
becoming a center of attraction or placing itself at the center of
nationhood for Armenians. It won its independence a decade ago with
over 3.5 million people, fought a foolish war of expansion against
Azerbaijan and occupied a substantial piece of territory — ignoring
all international calls to hand it back to Baku — and now has a
population of barely 1.5 million, while the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh
and adjacent Azerbaijani territories are virtually deserted except
a few settlements.

The “genocide monument” in Yerevan has more importance to Armenians
anywhere in the world than the entire Armenian territory does
because while the country has been unable to become a centerpiece of
nationhood, that monument is its symbol. For Armenians, the alleged
genocide is not a matter for historians; it is the backbone of their
nationhood, and they cannot risk it being challenged.

Therefore, remarks of Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan
claiming that the alleged genocide was not a matter for the historians
but a political issue that had to be resolved politically were just
expressions acknowledging this reality.

Oskanyan and other political leaders in Yerevan as well as the Armenian
diaspora, which has successfully transformed the “genocide campaign”
into an international industry, knew better than the Turks that there
is not even one document proving a systematic campaign of genocide
by the Turks against the Armenians. There is nothing more than some
memories, letters and propaganda booklets prepared by the powers
fighting against Turkey in World War I. That’s why the Turkish call
for genocide studies under the auspices of UNESCO received such an
immediate cold shoulder from Yerevan. Armenia simply cannot face the
risk of being stripped of the glue of its nationhood.

–Boundary_(ID_NGZR07S7xA8LCs/6R7sWCQ)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Daily News
March 10 2005

Turkey ready to face past
Thursday, March 10, 2005

The CHP’s Elekdag is confident that Ankara is now well placed to tell
the West to encourage scholarly investigation into genocide
allegations instead of just listening to the Armenians and passing
resolutions recognizing what they say as fact

FATMA DEMÝRELLÝ

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News

In a rare show of solidarity, the Turkish ruling and opposition
parties have joined forces to call for an impartial investigation by
historians into allegations that Armenians were subject to genocide
at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire, a bold response to a
decades-old Armenian campaign and mounting international pressure to
force Turkey to recognize the alleged genocide.

The two-party agreement, which came after a Tuesday meeting between
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main opposition Republican
People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal, requires a three-step
strategy of initiating a joint investigation of Turkish and Armenian
historians; opening of national archives to scholars, not only in
Turkey and Armenia but also in other countries concerned; and the
establishment by an international organization, such as UNESCO, of a
notary mechanism to make sure the investigation will be conducted in
a strictly scientific manner.

The initiative is hailed as unique because it represents a break
with the traditional Turkish reaction of denying allegations and
condemning parliamentary acknowledgements of them, which has prompted
calls in Europe for Turkey to dare to face its past.

“This is motivated by a desire to be proactive; a desire to stop
being defensive and start an offensive,” said Þükrü Elekdag, a deputy
in the CHP, during an interview with the Turkish Daily News. A former
diplomat who worked extensively on the Armenian issue, Elekdag is the
architect of the strategy that was adopted on Tuesday by both the
ruling and opposition parties.

Parliaments in a number of European countries have passed
resolutions recognizing the allegations that 1.5 million Armenians
were killed in a genocide campaign from 1915-1918, the twilight years
of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies the allegations and says
Armenians were killed in a partisan war that also claimed many Muslim
Turkish lives. Turkey also accuses Armenians of carrying out
massacres while siding with invading Russian troops. No serious
scientific investigation has been carried out so far to shed light on
this disputed in history.

Turkey has threatened severing ties with countries whose
parliaments acknowledged the allegations. Observers warn a much
bigger wave of pressure to recognize the alleged genocide may descend
upon Turkey in the months to come as Armenians across the world are
preparing for large-scale commemoration activities to mark the 90th
anniversary of the alleged genocide.

Elekdag said Turkey has a solid case to make now before the
Westerners are likely to push Turkey to recognize the Armenian
allegations as facts.

The issue is becoming more important in connection with Turkey’s
bid to join the European Union. Some conservative politicians in EU
countries have already argued that Turkey’s recognition of the
alleged genocide must be a condition for further progress in its bid
to join the EU.

The call for a scientific study is likely to get a better reception
in Europe than strong official condemnation of parliamentary acts by
Turkey. One Western diplomat described the investigation proposal and
the call for supervision by an international actor as “quite useful.”

“Parliaments in European countries have passed resolutions, and
what we did was to appeal to European lawmakers not to do so. But now
it is in a position to say something more meaningful. Turkey can now
tell them to encourage the proposed scholarly investigation instead
of passing resolutions on the basis of one-sided allegations,”
Elekdag said.

Getting ‘Blue Book’ right:

The Turkish initiative also includes attempts to invalidate charges
made in a World War I-era book written by British diplomat James
Bryce and historian Arnold Toynbee called “The Treatment of Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916,” or the “Blue Book,” as it is more
commonly known.

Turkish parliamentarians are now planning to send a letter to the
British House of Lords and House of Commons, asking the British
Parliament to declare the book a “propaganda tool” and thus deny its
arguments that Ottoman Turks had perpetrated a grave crime against
humanity on Armenians in the era concerned.

Elekdag called the book a “masterpiece of British wartime
propaganda” designed to win over the wavering pro-Entente neutrals,
in particular the United States. A letter drafted by Elekdag calling
on British lawmakers to declare the book propaganda material includes
footnotes referring to the British archives.

The “Blue Book” is one of the basic and most frequently cited
documents presented as a basis for Armenian genocide allegations.
Elekdag said even the British investigators who were trying to find
evidence for the alleged genocide to charge some 144 Turkish
officials detained by the then occupying British forces in connection
with the allegations did not use the book’s arguments as a basis.

–Boundary_(ID_IR6o91HA4ts9H75dUm74Gg)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Karabakh forces ready to repel Azeri attacks -NKR Defence Minister Seyran Oganyan

Ayots Ashkhar, Yerevan
12 Mar 05

Text of Armen Akopyan’s report by Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkhar on
12 March headlined “The enemy’s provocations have been prevented and
they are being duly repelled”

Even though the calm on the border is always relative, in recent days
the Azerbaijani side has repeatedly broken this seeming calm.

Nagornyy Karabakh Defence Minister Seyran Oganyan comments on the
situation on the border.

This week alone, the Azerbaijani armed forces have seriously violated
the cease-fire regime two or three times, resorting to sabotage and
similar acts near the defence lines of the Artsakh [Karabakh] armed
forces.

[Ayots Ashkhar correspondent] How would you explain the enemy’s
recent activity on the contact and demarcation lines? Do these steps
of the Azerbaijani side pursue only tactical goals or are we dealing
with well-prepared provocations?

[Seyran Oganyan] The recent events on the contact line give rise to
concern, especially as they are regular and are often accompanied
with gunfire. I do not think that these steps by the Azerbaijani side
pursue tactical goals. These are rather provocative acts and the
units of our defence army have taken and will continue to take
relevant steps to prevent them.

[Correspondent] How possible do you think is the supposition that the
Azerbaijani side resorts to such provocations only to find out the
combat readiness of the Armenian armed forces in order to launch more
large-scale attacks? If yes, what is your assessment of the situation
in this context?

[Oganyan] If we suppose that the Azerbaijani side resorts to such
provocations only to find out the combat readiness of the Armenian
armed forces, the recent events on the border, which were not in
favour of the enemy, open great opportunities to draw relevant
conclusions. In this aspect, the idea of launching large-scale
attacks in the future has no prospects. Our armed forces are on alert
and are able not only to repel any large-scale invasion, but also to
launch a proper counter-attack.

[Correspondent] What possible consequences will the enemy’s activity
on the contact line and constant provocations have?

[Oganyan] Additional tension and nothing else. I would describe the
Azerbaijani side’s steps on the front line as fruitless attempts to
achieve something, which will bring them nothing but unjustified
losses. The provision of security on the border is in the focus of
the attention of the NKR army’s command and personnel and it will be
defended under the principle “no falling back.”

[Correspondent] What is your assessment of the information
disseminated by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry and mass media that
it is the Armenian side that attacks and violates the cease-fire
regime?

[Oganyan] The Azerbaijani propaganda machinery as always is trying to
put Armenia in a bad light in front of the international community by
distorting facts. It is a special policy and in order to combat it,
we must take relevant steps and present the reality.

And the reality today is that apart from violating the cease-fire
regime, Azerbaijan is also constantly taking steps to move its
checkpoints closer to the lines of the NKR defence army. In such a
situation, the armed forces have to take relevant steps to solve
their tactical tasks, which are of great importance to it. They often
have a preventive nature as well. It is a reality that should be
presented to the international community.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZERBAIJAN CONSIDERS SOLUTION OF KARABAKH CONFLICT VIA FORCE, BUT AS
AN EXTREME MEASURE, ALIYEV STATED

PanArmenian News
March 12 2005

12.03.2005 05:27

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Azerbaijan considers the solution of the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict by force, but as an extreme measure, republic
leader Ilham Aliyev stated Saturday. “We want to solve the problem
peacefully. However, it is not a secret that we a ready to other means
of solution of the conflict. We are ready to negotiate till the very
last moment – even if 5% of hope for peace solution is present,”
Aliyev stated. It is clear that war is a humanitarian catastrophe.
However, we should be ready and we are ready to war,” the President
emphasized. Aliyev noted that “on the whole we feel the support of the
international community” and drew the attention to the PACE latest
resolution on Nagorno Karabakh. “For the first time the European
organization recognized Armenia aggressor, condemned the ethnic
cleansing, which formed good basis for the talks,” he considers.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Bulgarian News Network, Bulgaria
March 12 2005

Coming up

SOFIA (bnn)- Here is a schedule of events expected in Bulgaria on
Saturday:

[parts omitted]

VARNA–Ministers of transport of Armenia and Bulgaria Andranik
Manukyan and Nikolay Vasilev visit this Bulgarian Black Sea port.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Road to revolution
PhD? I’d rather be a terrorist
by Philip Marsden

The Times (London)
Weekend Review, Saturday March 12, 2005

>>From Berkeley graduate to Armenian freedom fighter is a small step
when history is on your side

I was too late. He was already dead. It was the summer of 1993 and I
had come to the Armenian front line to interview Monte Melkonian. But
a week or so earlier he had been caught in a skirmish near Agdam
and died instantly from a shrapnel wound. At his headquarters, his
men were in shock. In the canteen I sat down next to his aide. “Not
there,” he said reverently, “that was Monte.s place.”

During the previous four years Melkonian had become a legendary
commander in the Armenians’ post-Soviet war with the Azeris. What
interested me about him was that, unlike the 4,000 fighters he
commanded, he had not lived for 70 years under Soviet rule. He was
from California, a third-generation Armenian, brought up in the most
liberal state in the Union.

In recent years our idea of political radicalism has been overshadowed
by the chilling logic of the suicide bomber. Even with the changes in
the Middle East, it is unlikely that the divisions and destitution
that breed such extremism will disappear overnight. Disenfranchised
in Iraq’s Sunni triangle or imprisoned in the hellish slums of Gaza,
those who strap explosives to their bodies or drive a four-wheel bomb
into a crowd have, by definition, nothing on this earth left to lose
but their lives.

But there have always been other radicals, those who do have a choice,
who are fewer in number but of much greater influence – those who
throw away privilege or a good education for the life of political
outlaw. Che Guevara swapped medical training for peasant-based
revolution and died for it. The maverick Marxist Carlos the Jackal
was born into a wealthy Venezuelan family but became an effective
KGB-trained killer. George Habash passed out top of his class in
paediatric medicine, but went underground to set up the guerrilla group
PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). And how different
the world would look if Osama bin Laden, with a degree in civil
engineering, had accepted a steady job in the family’s property empire.

Monte Melkonian, too, had had professional options. In the late
1970s he graduated from Berkeley. He was a brilliant pupil who spoke
several languages. His thesis on Urartian rock-tombs attracted the
attention of Oxford University’s archaeology department and earned
him a place there to do his PhD. Instead he jumped on a plane for the
Middle East. There began a 15-year odyssey that ended, cheek-down,
on a dusty road in Armenian-occupied Azerbaijan.

Melkonian’s career also reveals the profound shift in radical
ideology – from revolutionary Marxism to nationalism, from the
invocation of class struggle to the invocation of history or God. Like
post-modernists everywhere, freedom fighters have rediscovered the
power of tradition.

In My Brother.s Road, Melkonian’s elder sibling charts Monte’s bloody
passage through this period. He began as an agitator, organising
strikes in Iran to help to topple the Shah. He then travelled north
to Iranian Kurdistan and witnessed the disciplined Kurdish peshmerga
rebels. But it was in the large Armenian quarter of Beirut that
his involvement began to shift away from internationalism: in the
free-for-all of the Lebanese civil war he first took up arms to defend
his fellow Armenians.

I first heard about Melkonian in Beirut in the winter of 1991. The
stories of his years there in the late 1970s seemed redolent of that
era, a time of flared hipsters, radical chic, Patti Hearst and the
Baader-Meinhof Gang. Gradually, Melkonian was being pulled towards
a more particular cause, the one that haunts all Armenians. In 1915
decades of persecution had ended with the entire Armenian population
of eastern Turkey being deported or murdered. More than a million
died. Many of Melkonian.s family were refugees from this time. It was
a wound that did not heal with the passing years. In fact, faced by
Turkish denial that it happened at all, resentment grew more intense.

During the 1980s, living the life of a tramp guerrilla, Melkonian wrote
many articles and monographs. In these you can sense his ideology
coming into conflict with a growing nationalism. With ever greater
difficulty, he squeezed the Armenian question into the context of
left-wing orthodoxy, believing for instance that Armenia.s independence
from the Soviet Union would be a terrible error.

Meanwhile, amid the anarchy of warring Lebanon, Melkonian.s
actions grew increasingly militant. He learnt to use aliases, false
passports and a spectacular range of weapons. He crossed the path
of Abu Nidal and Black September. He attended the joint training
camps of the Bekaa Valley where the region’s dispossessed – Kurds,
Palestinians and Armenians – wriggled under barbed wire and dreamt
of killing Turks and Israelis. In time Melkonian became involved with
the vicious Armenian terrorist group ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for
the Liberation of Armenia). He set off a bomb in Milan. In Athens he
leant into the car of a Turkish diplomat and shot him and, by mistake,
his 14-year-old daughter (this was to become his greatest regret). He
trained the Armenians who occupied the Turkish Embassy in Paris.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Armenians
and Azeris of the south Caucasus were unpacking decades of mutual
animosity. War was breaking out over the mountainous region of
Karabakh and Melkonian travelled to Soviet Armenia for the first
time. There he was confronted with the reality of failed socialism. In
the mountains, Armenian villagers took up hunting rifles to defend
their homes and attack their Azeri neighbours. By the end of 1991,
the hunting rifles were being replaced with heavier weapons as a
full-scale war erupted, the first in a pattern of post-Soviet wars
in the Caucasus and the Balkans.

Melkonian found his guerrilla training invaluable. In lecturing
his fighters on the wider context of the fighting he turned not to
ideology but to history. “Lose Karabakh,” he said, “and you will be
turning the last page of Armenian history.” He feared that, squeezed
between Turkey and Turkic Azerbaijan, Armenians would be driven from
their last pieces of territory and the work of 1915 would be completed.

His drawing on the grievances of the past was finding echoes throughout
the old Soviet bloc and in the Middle East. In the north Caucasus in
the 1990s, the Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was stirring his people
with talk of the “300-year war with the Russians”, a war that began
when Peter the Great landed in Dagestan in the 18th century. Milosevic
had already woken the Serbs by invoking the Battle of Kosovo Polje
600 years earlier.

More recently, bin Laden has talked of the Crusades as having never
ended while in Israel the old Zionism of kibbutzes and secularism has
been eclipsed by the militant Jewish settlers of the West Bank. They,
too, have a loss to correct, referring to the lands of Israel and
Judah in the Time of the Kings, a full 3,000 years ago.

My Brother’s Road; An American.s Fateful Journey to Armenia by Markar
Melkonian (IB Tauris, 18.95)

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Georgia’s anti-corruption experience unacceptable for Armenia, aide says

Arminfo
11 Mar 05

Yerevan, 11 March: Georgia’s anti-corruption experience is unacceptable
for Armenia, the Armenian president’s adviser on issues of fighting
corruption, Bagrat Yesayan, has said.

Georgia’s anti-corruption strategy is unacceptable for international
organizations as well because they have sharply criticized the Georgian
methods of fighting corruption, Yesayan told a news conference today.

Speaking about the situation in Armenia, Bagrat Yesayan said a great
number of complaints concerned law-enforcement and judicial bodies,
as well as the mayor’s office of Yerevan.

“Even though in most cases these complaints were unfounded, their
number speaks volumes,” he said.

Bagrat Yesayan added that many violations were registered during the
construction of the Northern Avenue. According to him, materials on
some of these cases have been submitted to the prosecutor’s office.
The president’s adviser said there were several high-ranking officials
among the violators.

He said 352 criminal cases had been started in 2004 following
investigations in the areas of civil service, national security,
taxation and customs services, and the police. A total of 1,289
investigations were conducted, as a result of which 1,339 disciplinary
violations were discovered, 105 people sacked, while materials on 46
cases were forwarded to the prosecutor’s office.

Yesayan added that the council he heads received 603 complaints about
government officials in 2004.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian premier sacks deputy heads of state property department

Arminfo
11 Mar 05

Yerevan, 11 March: By the decision of Armenian Prime Minister
Andranik Markaryan, Pavel Edigaryan and Aram Davtyan were relieved
today of the post of deputy chiefs of the Armenian government
department for the management of state property, the press service of
the Armenian government has informed Arminfo new agency.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress