Zaman, Turkey
Jan 17 2005
Peace Summit for Karabag
By Anadolu News Agency (aa)
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart
Robert Kocharyan will reportedly meet this summer to negotiate the
region of Upper Karabag, which has been under Armenian occupation.
According to Azeri APA news agency, Russia has promised to help the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk
Group with mediation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
FUNERAL LITURGY SERVED IN MOTHER SEE OF HOLY ETCHMIADZIN ON THOSE WHO
DIED OF TSUNAMI
ETCHMIADZIN, January 17 (Noyan Tapan). A funeral liturgy was served
on those who died of the December 26 tsunami in South Asia under the
leadership of Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II in the Mother See
of Holy Etchmiadzin on January 16. According to the Information System
of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, RA Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs Armen Barkhudarian, the foreign ambassadors and diplomats
acrredited to Armenia, art workers and numerous believers participated
in the liturgy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
EurasiaNet Organization
Jan 16 2005
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: ANNUAL REPORT PAINTS BLEAK PICTURE IN MANY FORMER
SOVIET STATES
Andrew Tully 1/16/05
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL
The Iron Curtain fell nearly 15 years ago, but Human Rights Watch
says it is mostly business as usual in much of the former Soviet
Union. That’s according to “World Report 2005,” the annual survey
conducted by Human Rights Watch.
According to the rights advocacy group, all of Russia is effectively
controlled from Moscow, elections in Belarus are laughable, abuse of
prisoners is the norm in Uzbekistan, while Armenia and Azerbaijan are
run by authoritarian regimes as the two countries continue their
standoff over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Only Ukraine shows tentative signs of becoming an open society, but
democratic developments there are too recent to show a trend.
In Russia, the report says, police torture and the violent hazing of
military recruits continues. And it blames the government of
President Vladimir Putin for the disappearances and extrajudicial
executions of opponents in Chechnya. At the same time, it criticizes
Chechen rebels for similar abuses, as well as for the deadly school
siege in Beslan in September.
The Human Rights Watch survey also points out that Putin has drawn
virtually all power to himself. It points not only to the Kremlin’s
control of all electronic media, but also to Putin’s move to have
regional governors not elected locally but appointed by the
president.
Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s acting executive director for
Europe and Central Asia who oversaw the study of the countries of the
former Soviet Union, said no one should be surprised at Putin’s moves
to centralize power in the Russian presidency, given that he has
always favored a rigidly strong central government.
Denber told RFE/RL that Putin probably believes that centralizing
power will help keep politicians honest. But she added that it might
be just as difficult for members of the presidential administration
to stay honest as it is for local governors.
“I’m sure that from the Kremlin’s perspective, having governors
appointed is a path toward decreasing corruption. But from another
perspective, you could just look at that as moving corruption to a
different place,” Denber said.
Belarus, too, continues to be run as if it were a Soviet state,
according to Human Rights Watch.
It points to the elections for the 110-member Chamber of
Representatives in October, in which the opposition did not win a
single seat. The report says this was accomplished, at least in part,
because the state controls all national television stations and most
radio outlets.
And it accuses the government of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of
harassing the country’s media through the closing of independent
newspapers and arresting journalists on libel charges.
Denber said such behavior is nothing new in Belarus. But she said the
fact that Belarusians are seeing more of the same year after year
makes matters worse there.
“When you see a lack of change, when you see a repetition of
elections that are empty exercises and that shut out the opposition,
that is tantamount to things getting worse,” Denber said. “When you
see the state continuing to crack down on civil society groups and on
the press, it’s more of the same, but it actually constitutes a
worsening of the situation.”
The human rights records of neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan are
also not improving, according to the report. It says the political
life of Armenia, for example, continued to focus throughout 2004 on
the fraud-tainted presidential elections of the previous year.
The survey says there were calls for the resignation of President
Robert Kocharian, and notes that the government violently broke up
protests, raided opposition offices, arrested opposition leaders and
supporters, and even attacked journalists.
The political life of Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was similarly affected
in 2004 by the presidential election of 2003, which also was
fraudulent. Last year, the report says, Azerbaijani opposition
leaders were subjected to unfair trials in which they were charged
with responsibility for some of the violence that followed the
election.
All of this takes place against the backdrop of the on-again,
off-again conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the predominantly Armenian
exclave in Azerbaijan. Denber said the leaders of both nations have
subtly used the dispute as a way to keep people’s minds off each
country’s political shortcomings.
Another trouble spot is Ukraine. Human Rights Watch details what it
calls the mostly successful efforts of the government of President
Leonid Kuchma to limit political freedoms since the country achieved
independence in 1991.
The document says these political abuses led to the presidential
election in November, in which Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was
declared the winner, even though most outside observers found it
riddled with fraud.
Supporters of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko rallied in vast
numbers in downtown Kyiv, and the country’s Supreme Court eventually
called for a new election a month later — which Yushchenko won.
Denber said that, given 13 years of political corruption in Ukraine,
Yushchenko’s election offers real hope to the Ukrainian people
because they have demonstrated their own power as engaged and
educated voters. And she said their insistence on fair elections won
them powerful allies in Europe.
But Denber added one caveat: “There’s a huge onus now on Yushchenko
precisely because there are these expectations. And it would be
really sad if, instead of delivering on promises, the new government
ends up not delivering and in the process perverting the rule of law.
And that would make a lot of people very disillusioned.”
She said a disillusioned Ukrainian electorate could lose faith in the
system and eventually turn to a leader like Putin — one who promises
greater strength, but delivers less democracy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia)
January 16, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition
Overdue for frivolity
by Michael D. Reid, Times Colonist
After playing so many roles on the dark side of the spectrum — a
conflicted American president (Thirteen Days), a grieving father (The
Sweet Hereafter), a treacherous husband (Double Jeopardy) and a
sinister CEO (I, Robot) — Bruce Greenwood says he couldn’t have been
happier when he got the chance to switch to the bright side for
Racing Stripes.
“This is a little more frivolous, a little more fun and long overdue
for me,” says the boyishly handsome Canadian actor of his role as a
rugged Kentucky farmer in the kiddie comedy about a plucky zebra who
thinks he’s a racehorse.
Greenwood, 48, plays Nolan Walsh, an overprotective widowed single
dad and former horse trainer who with the best of intentions tries to
dissuade his teenage daughter (Hayden Panettiere) from riding her pet
zebra in the Kentucky Open.
“The sentiment is so genuine and it just really appealed to me on a
really visceral level,” says the Quebec-born actor during a
homecoming visit to Vancouver. This is the city where his father, a
geology professor, moved the family when Greenwood was 11 after
living in Princeton, N.J. and Bethesda, Md. He still considers B.C.
his home even though he lives in Los Angeles.
“It’s a nice uplifting film to do and it has humour and a couple of
tears — and that’s entertainment, dammit,” adds Greenwood. For an
actor best known for his serious roles, he’s such a wisecracker you
wonder why he doesn’t do comedy.
When asked if he’d like to play funny on screen, he jokingly lashes
out in his deep, gravelly voice.
“Michael! Michael!” Greenwood answers in a sing-song voice, playfully
stretching out the words.
“D’uh, yeah. Why don’t you make the call? If you could make that
happen for me, I’d be thrilled. They just don’t know.”
Greenwood says while his phone may not be ringing 24/7 from studio
executives looking for the next Bill Murray, he figures his
“off-the-wall” humour is part of the reason he gets along so well
with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan.
The actor has appeared in three of the Victoria-raised auteur’s films
— in The Sweet Hereafter; as a melancholic tax inspector obsessed
with a stripper in Exotica; and as the star of a film that dramatizes
the Armenian genocide in Ararat.
“Atom’s sense of humour is very black and bizarre and dry and ironic,
and quite broad, also,” says Greenwood. “We make each other laugh and
I think that helps.”
He also agrees with the observation Egoyan has another comic side to
him that many of his devotees don’t see.
“Atom has a very juvenile sense of humour and I think more people
should know that,” he deadpans. “He’s not nearly as clever as he
seems.”
Greenwood, who trained at the University of British Columbia and the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, has made substantial strides since
doing theatre in Vancouver and landing his 1986 breakthrough role as
Dr. Seth Griffin on St. Elsewhere.
Shifting smoothly from television to film, the former student of
Kerrisdale’s Magee Secondary went from playing characters on TV
projects such as Knot’s Landing and Peyton Place: The Next Generation
to a slew of Hollywood features — including Wild Orchid, Passenger
57, Disturbing Behaviour and as a nasty, spit-polished military
bigwig in Rules of Engagement.
Ironically, Greenwood found himself returning time and again to shoot
“runaway productions” in the city he left in the early 1980s after
landing minor roles in Bear Island (1979) and First Blood (1982)
during the B.C. industry’s infancy.
While he would become best known for roles such as the title
character living a Kafka-esque nightmare in the TV series Nowhere Man
and the humourless internal affairs investigator in Hollywood
Homicide, Greenwood also got to strut his romantic side as a
lovestruck late-night talk show host in The Republic of Love, Deepa
Mehta’s film based on the novel by the late Carol Shields.
Last year, he put on an upper-crust British accent to play Lord
Charles, the dashing bachelor confidante of Annette Bening’s
high-strung London stage star of the 1930s in Being Julia, Istvan
Szabo’s film based on the Somerset Maugham novel.
He’s at a loss to explain why he has such a knack for accents, except
to credit the influence of a childhood friend.
“I’ve always had it,” he says with a shrug. “A good friend of mine
who does the most brilliant accents I’ve ever heard installs alarms
for a living. I grew up with him and kept hearing all these accents.”
Working steadily on films shot in exotic locales from Budapest (Being
Julia) to South Africa (Racing Stripes) means Greenwood has a nomadic
lifestyle.
The actor and his wife of 20 years, fellow Vancouverite Susan Devlin,
don’t get much of a chance to just hang out at their home in Los
Angeles, although the avid musician is setting aside a chunk of time
to “work around the house” and jam with friends, as the accomplished
singer-guitarist did at last year’s Courtnall Celebrity Classic here.
“I’m always on the road,” says Greenwood, who flew back and forth
between Budapest and Vancouver to shoot Being Julia and I, Robot, and
last year also jetted off to locations for various films in England,
Halifax, Toronto and South Africa.
Greenwood also just wrapped a Vancouver shoot opposite Madeleine
Stowe for Saving Milly, a CBS television movie about the
life-changing experiences of Chicago political journalist Morton
Kondracke and his wife Milly, an activist in the ’60s who was
diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
“Saving Milly was one of the heaviest experiences of my career,” he
says. “It would have been nice to start the year off with something
more frolicsome than that.”
Greenwood also went to Utah last year to reunite with Thirteen Days
director Roger Donaldson on The World’s Fastest Indian, starring Sir
Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, a New Zealander who made the world’s
fastest Indian motorcycle in the 1920s.
He says his most rewarding experience of 2004, however, was playing
Truman Capote’s longtime companion Jack Dunphy opposite Phillip
Seymour Hoffman in Capote, a drama that focuses on the eccentric
author’s years writing In Cold Blood.
“Hoffman’s the most succinct, dedicated actor I’ve worked with,” says
Greenwood. “He’s really devoted to making it work and making it real.
It was kind of an eye-opener for me. He really raised the bar.”
With a laugh, he says it made it easier to bear the inclement weather
on location in Winnipeg.
“It was brutally cold,” he recalled with a shiver. “My wife and I
found some great linens there.”
He says working with Hoffman was worlds apart from acting opposite
the animals in Racing Stripes, whose live-action footage was mated
with animatronics and computer-generated imagery to create the
illusion they were mouthing dialogue.
“The animals don’t really care about your acting,” deadpans
Greenwood. “You can be acting up a storm and they’ll rip the back
pocket off your pants or wet your shoes.”
He recalls taking one of the many zebras used to portray Stripes into
the barn for the scene in which he tenderly dries off the abandoned
baby circus zebra that his character rescues.
When it started getting “inky and twitchy,” he held it a little
tighter. The zebra was not amused.
“It got quite antsy, hurled me to the floor and started kicking me
repeatedly,” he said. “It hadn’t read the script, obviously.”
Although W.C. Fields famously advised actors never to work with
children or animals, Greenwood begs to differ.
He says he had a ball in the company of co-star Panettiere and
assorted roosters, pelicans, goats and ponies.
“It was full-on crazy, wacky barnyard all the time and when one adult
would do something right the other animal would wander off and nibble
the grip or something.”
Still, there were moments when fun turned to frustration.
“Almost never would you see two animals do something right at the
same time. So the rooster would get it in one take and the goat would
get 40 takes.”
Greenwood says the end result was worth it, though.
“Generally when I watch a movie I’m in, it’s over a curved elbow with
fingers spread in front of my eyes and I’m so nervous, but this one
was different.”
GRAPHIC: Color Photo: Bill Keay, CanWest News Service; Actor Bruce
Greenwood says he’s happy with the switch to a family film after
roles in some dark dramas. ;
Color Photo: Warner Bros.; Bruce Greenwood appears with Hayden
Panettiere and a competitive zebra in Racing Sripes, a new family
film that combines live action and computer-generated animation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA)
January 14, 2005 Friday
Idaho Edition
?Healthy skeptics? find spirituality by following Ancient Traditions
by Virginia de Leon Staff writer
Kamori Cattadoris is a skeptic.
“The healthy kind,” explained the founder of Ancient Traditions
Community Church, a new congregation in Hillyard. “The kind that
wants to know truth. Not the cynic who rejects everything.”
Although she spent years questioning religious doctrine, Cattadoris
was still open to finding a path to God.
Spirituality eventually became possible for her, she said, through
ancient teachings found in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Sufism,
Tibetan Buddhism and other traditions.
After starting a study group four years ago for “healthy skeptics” in
search of faith, Cattadoris and her husband, Bob, bought an old
church building in north Spokane and established Ancient Traditions.
On Saturday, the new church will open its doors to the community by
offering several activities that emphasize traditional ethnic music
and dance, as well as Middle Eastern foods that members have spent
the past few days preparing.
Ancient Traditions is not a new religion, members say. While its
teachings are based on early Christian principles, it is an
interfaith congregation that doesn?t force anyone to believe in
anything, Cattadoris said. Their goal is to work together in pursuit
of personal transformation ? to “drop our inflated self-importance,”
she said, and to “seek God within the human heart.”
At the altar of the church sanctuary is a large wooden cross, left
behind by the previous congregation. “We?ve made it our own,” said
Cattadoris, emphasizing that the group is not exclusively Christian.
To the right of the altar is a Tibetan gong; to the left in another
corner hang half a dozen handmade bells from India. The white walls
will eventually be decorated with Egyptian papyrus and Tibetan art
painted on rice paper. The church?s library includes books like the
Quran, the Dalai Lama?s “Training the Mind” and Jon Kabat-Zinn?s
“Wherever You Go, There You Are.”
Many who joined this group have been influenced by the teachings of
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an Armenian mystic, author and composer
who established a religious movement in the 1920s through the
Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.
Born in 1872 in Alexandropol near the Russo-Turkish frontier,
Gurdjieff spent years in Central Asia, North Africa and other areas,
where he came into contact with esoteric teachings. As a result, he
developed his own teaching: that ordinary people could attain a
higher state of awareness. After his death in 1949, Gurdjieff?s
followers started spiritual centers all over the world.
While Gurdjieff study groups exist throughout the United States, the
Spokane crowd is one of only two in the country that has evolved into
a church, Cattadoris said.
“We are an experiential group,” said Lyn Lamb, who joined Ancient
Traditions last year when it was still a study group. Through her
interaction with other members, she has focused on certain tasks each
week that include refraining from negative thinking and an emphasis
on self-observation ? actions, she said, that have given her more
awareness.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)
Jan 16 2005
President Issues two Decrees
Damascus, Jan 16, (SANA)-
President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday issued decree number 13 for 2005
to ratify cooperation protocol between Syria and China in the gas and
oil field.
Another decree to endorse a cooperation accord between Syria and
Armenia in the field of health and medical sciences was issued today
by President Assad and entitled decree number 14 for 2005.
S. Younes.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
“ONE SHOULD SPEAK OF ARMENIAN TRAGEDY MORE RESPECTIVELY,” FORMER PRIME
MINISTER OF TURKEY SAYS
ISTANBUL, January 14 (Noyan Tapan). “Chirac was mistaken in his
statements not in the least. The deportation took place indeed, even
if one may not call it Genocide. The people endured a lot, there were
numerous victims. Hence, one should speak more respectively of it. As
the matter concerns the tragedy, doesn’t it?” such a statement was
made by former Prime Minister of Turkey Mesut Yilmaz in the air of the
“Aber Turk” TV channel. According to the “Marmara” newspaper of
Istanbul, Kyurshat Bumin, a journalist of the Turkish “Eni Shafak”
newspaper, highly estimated Yilmaz’s abovementioned statement.
“Indeed, it was quite unexpected to hear such a thing from the person,
who achieved the post of the Prime Minister. One will not hear such a
statement even from an ordinary MP,” the author of the article
emphasized. He also held an opinion that one should approach the
problems like “land claims” or “compensation of damage” more
competently and evenly. Only then, according to him, “we will see how
difficult it is to have a collective memory based on negation. One
should free himself from the sense of guilty, which doesn’t alive us
alone,” writes Bumin.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
EVERY MONTH 10 RESIDENTS OF JAVAKHK TO PASS FREE MEDICAL EXAMINATION
AT CENTER OF MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS OF AKHALKALAKI WITH SUPPORT OF UNION
OF ARMENIAN RELIEF
AKHALKALAKI, January 14 (Noyan Tapan). – A-INFO. The Javakhk branch of
the Union of Armenian Relief (UAR) provided the population of the
region with free hospital places at the Center of Medical Diagnostics
of Akhalkalaki. According to Karine Tadevosian, the Chairwoman of the
Union of Armenian Relief (UAR), the diagnostic center is obliged to
examine every month 10 residents of Javakhk free of charge. According
to preliminarily made statements, vulnerable people will be examined.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
RECEP ERDOGAN: IF ARMENIA DOES NOT ADMIT KARS TREATY FROM 1923, THEN
LET THEM NOT BE OFFENDED
YEREVAN, JANUARY 14. ARMINFO. “If Armenia does not admit the terms of
the Kars Treaty from 1923, then let them not be offended”, Prime
Minister of Turkey Recep Tayip Erdogan stated at a news conference in
Ankara concerning the results of his visit to Russia.
At the same time, he stressed that Turkey does not want to have
offended neighbors, but it aspires to regulate the problems with
Armenia, and “Armenia’s vacating the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan” must become a pre-condition here. “We have always taken
positive steps to meet Armenia halfway, in particular, we are working
towards establishment of land communication between the two countries
and organizations of private air transportation”, Erdogan mentioned.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Interfax
Jan 14 2005
Tbilisi ready to welcome NATO special envoy
Tbilisi. (Interfax-AVN) – A group of NATO experts has arrived in
Tbilisi to prepare the official opening of an office of the NATO
Special Representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia,
Nikolai Laliashvili, chief of the defense policy and European
integration department in the Georgian Defense Ministry, told
Interfax- Military News Agency Friday.
According to him, the office will open in Tbilisi in February.
“It will be in Tbilisi, but will deal with Azerbaijan and Armenia,
rather than Georgia only,” he added.
He emphasized that the NATO special representative’s appointment is
an extremely important event for his country in terms of stepping up
the interaction with the Alliance, especially in light of the
organization’s approving of the program of cooperation with Georgia
in 2004.
The decision to send liaison officers and a special representative of
NATO to Transcaucasia and Central Asia was made at the NATO 2004
summit in Istanbul.
U.S. citizen Robert Simmons, NATO Deputy Secretary General, was
appointed the Alliance’s Special Representative for the South
Caucasus and Central Asia, who is expected to visit the countries in
the region from time to time. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer introduced Simmons to leaders of the countries in question
during his November visit to the South Caucasus.
The Tbilisi office will also include Romualds Razhuks, the 49-year
old advisor to the Latvian defense minister and the former vice
speaker of the Latvian Seimas, who will be the liaison officer
coordinating the activities with Simmons.
Georgia voiced its intent to join NATO during the Prague summit in
2002.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress