Author: Babajanian Karo

FRANCE
Le caricaturiste de la presse arménienne Krikor Amirzayan : on a tenté
de tuer la Liberté !

Krikor Amirzayan, caricaturiste de la presse arménienne qui avait
rencontré nombre de ces caricaturistes disparus s’exprime sur son site
facebook sur le drame d’hier à la rédaction de Charlie Hebdo :

“Aujourd’hui à Paris on a tenté de tuer la Liberté ! Celle de penser
et de l’exprimer librement. Que mes collègues caricaturistes qui sont
morts pour leurs idées sachent que la liberté d’expression continuera
car si les hommes sont mortels, personne ne pourra assassiner les
idées. A vous mes chers et inoubliables collègues Cabu, Charb,
Tignous, Wolinski et Maris et tous les autres qui sont tombés
aujourd’hui sur les chemins de la liberté d’expression, y compris par
la dérision, j’affirme que vos idées sont éternelles et elles
perdureront.”

jeudi 8 janvier 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

Martyr poets’ works to symbolize Genocide centennial

13:30 * 08.01.15

Songs written on the verse of the Armenian poets who fell victims to
the 1915 Genocide will be played this year in commemoration of the big
tragedy’s centennial.

Most of the songs are now available on tape records, the merited
Armenian musician, Daniel Yerezhisht, told Tert.am, describing the
move as yet another step towards reaching a full recognition of the
20th century’s first major crime against humanity.

“One of my songs was selected as an anthem for the Siamanto school.
This was one of the most remarkable developments of the year,” he
said.

The musician added that they have numerous other songs, as well as
initiatives to realize ahead of the Genocide centennial.

Summing up 2014, Daniel Yerazhisht pointed to academic achievements
and numerous concerts and festivals which he said was the major
creative success of 2014.

Commenting upon the population’s hardships, he recommended treating
them as tests that need to be overcome to strengthen the nation. “The
more socially just our country, the more powerful it is,” he noted.

Greek Orthodox church sells Jerusalem land to Jewish investors

NIS 80 million deal solves capital’s leasing problems through 2051.

By Ranit Nahum-Halevy | Mar. 18, 2011 | 2:15 AM
Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theofilis III.

This Day in Jewish History / Finally, construction on the Knesset begins
By David B. Green | Oct. 14, 2014 | 1:48 AM

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate sold most of its leasing rights to
large swaths of Jerusalem to a group of Jewish investors last week.
The NIS 80 million agreement puts an end to the long draw-out land
affair – at least for the next 140 years.

In the deal, signed March 10, the Patriarchate sold most of its rights
to lease the land it has held in Jerusalem to a group of Jewish
investors from Israel and abroad. The group includes the Ben David
family, one of the wealthiest in Jerusalem, who are large property
investors and partners in Givot Olam Oil Exploration.

The sale includes 85 parcels on hundreds of dunams of the capital’s
most expensive properties, including in the very pricey neighborhoods
of Rehavia, Talbieh, Baka and Katamon.

Hundreds of projects have been built on the land, including
residential, commercial and almost everything else. The properties
include the Wolfson Towers that overlook the Knesset building, the
Neve Granot neighborhood below the Israel Museum, Liberty Bell Park,
the Great Synagogue, the old Ottoman train stations, hotels, offices
and residences.

The Israel Lands Administration manages the Patriarchate’s properties,
in the name of the Jewish National Fund. The ILA and the Patriarchate
are signed on leasing agreements through 2051, but the ILA will sign
the renewed leases in the future with the group of Jewish investors.

Theofilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, signed the agreement
himself, along with his deputy for financial matters.

The deal will give the buyers the ownership rights on the new land as
of 2051, and they have already started talks with the ILA over the
conditions of the renewal of the leases in 2051.

The agreement has long-term political significance though it may not
make economic sense for the buyers, said property assessor Koby Bir.

“There are those who may say the amount [paid] is too low … But, the
investors bought the rights starting only another 40 years,” he said.
“Only then will they become the owners of the land and can sign the
agreements to renew the leases,” he said.

Bir said the deal was high risk. “No one promises that tomorrow
morning, or in a few years, the JNF will start making deals to renew
the leases,” he said. “But now the land is being managed by a group of
Jewish investors and the Palestinian threat has been removed. We have
already heard that the investors are chasing after the ILA, and [the
ILA] will not just let them make any amount they demand. The ILA is in
no hurry.”

Politics and parcels

The story goes all the way back to just after the founding of the
State of Israel. The Patriarchate, the historic owner of the land in
question, signed a leasing deal with the JNF. The new country needed
land to develop the new capital, but the Patriarchate adamantly
refused to sell any land, and instead only agreed to lease it out.

In 1952 the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate signed the deal which left it
with formal ownership of the properties, but all the rights to use and
develop the land were transfered through a long-term lease of 99 years
to the JNF, until 2051.

The original terms allowed the JNF to sublease the land to various
developers, which built on the properties – including thousands of
homes. But the original lease stated that the Patriarchate would once
again receive the full and sole rights to the properties when the
lease runs out in 2051.

To prevent a situation where the residents and others using the
properties would have to negotiate individually with the Patriarchate
in the future, the state carried on secret negotiations for decades in
an attempt to convince former Patriarch Diodoros I to agree to extend
the lease.

But political pressure, mostly from Palestinian groups, kept Diodoros
from signing. Israel was also worried that after the establishment of
the Palestinian Authority, the new body would reach an agreement with
the church over the land.

In early 2000, a deal was formulated by Jacob Weinroth, the attorney
representing the JNF. The new lease was to have been extended to 2150
in return for $20 million. The sides even signed a letter of intent,
but the deal was canceled shortly after with the Patriarchate claiming
the buyers had defrauded the church. Various repercussions from this
failed deal and the myriad accusations are still being heard in court.

Azerbaijan Snubs the West
By Joshua Kuchera
Jan. 8, 2015

[Joshua Kucera is a journalist and author of The Bug Pit, a blog on
military and security issues in Eurasia.]

On Dec. 26, authorities in Azerbaijan raided the local bureau of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. government-funded service, seizing
computers and ordering the office shut down. Earlier that month,
police had arrested Khadija Ismayilova, a RFE/RL reporter and the
country’s most prominent investigative journalist, on dubious charges
of inciting someone to commit suicide. (The alleged victim has since
recanted the accusation, but Ms. Ismayilova remains in jail.)

These events have been reported abroad largely as marking a further
constriction in Azerbaijan’s already tiny space for alternative points
of view. And they are that. But they also suggest a dramatic change in
the geopolitics of the volatile Caspian Sea region: the Azerbaijani
government’s growing hostility toward Washington.

Azerbaijan is in a prime location, wedged between Russia and Iran on
the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea. Since gaining independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991, it has been a strong partner of the United
States. It has worked with Washington to break Russia’s energy
monopoly in the region by supporting the construction of oil and gas
pipelines to Turkey. It is a key transit point for military cargo to
and from Afghanistan. And the government in Baku has forged close ties
with Israel, based primarily on the trade of weaponry and oil.

A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable described Azerbaijan’s foreign policy as
characterized by `pragmatism, restraint and a helpful bias toward
integration with the West.’ Baku’s orientation toward the West was
always in service of two priorities: maintaining its grip on power and
taking back the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan lost
to ethnic Armenian separatists in the early 1990s. But as Russia’s
dramatic new foreign policy changes the strategic landscape across
Eurasia, Baku appears to be recalculating whether its ties to the West
really are advancing its own goals.

The attack on RFE/RL followed months of extreme anti-Western rhetoric.
Top Azerbaijani government officials have accused the United States
ambassador to Baku of `gross interference’ and former Foreign Minister
Carl Bildt of Sweden of being an American spy. In early December, the
president’s chief of staff, Ramiz Mehdiyev, published a 13,000-word
article claiming that the C.I.A. was contriving regime changes in the
post-Soviet space (the so-called color revolutions). It also called
Azerbaijan’s human rights activists a `fifth column’ of the United
States.

The dominant criticism is that Washington, acting through NGOs and
human rights groups, is trying to destabilize the Azerbaijani
government. In fact, human rights activists have criticized American
and European governments for being too soft on Baku. Washington has
called the raid on RFE/RL merely `cause for concern.’ In spite of
Azerbaijan’s dismal human rights record, it has been awarded prestige
projects like the chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of
Ministers in 2014, and it will be hosting the European Games this
summer.

Anti-American rhetoric from Baku is not unheard of, but its recent
intensity, seemingly unprompted, and its reliance on Kremlin talking
points suggest a shift toward Moscow.

Russia has a collective security agreement with Armenia, maintains a
large military base there and provides the country with discounted
weaponry. It’s never been clear how Russia might intervene in a war
between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, but Baku’s
repudiation of America makes Russia less inclined to get involved in a
fight against Azerbaijan.

The United States, for its part, will never intervene militarily on
Azerbaijan’s side. And the payoff for Baku of putting up with
Washington’s hectoring on democracy and human rights shrinks as the
West loses influence worldwide. It’s a measure of the Azerbaijani
government’s disdain of Washington that the raid on RFE/RL was
conducted just days after Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with
President Ilham Aliyev on the phone.

In an interview in December, Ali Hasanov, a top presidential adviser,
was asked why the government began to so sharply criticize the United
States but not Iran or Russia. `Because they don’t criticize us,
that’s why,’ he said. `Russia, Iran, and China, too, deal with us on
the basis of noninterference in our internal affairs.’

Washington, meanwhile, increasingly judges partner nations according
to their opposition to Russia. At her confirmation hearing in
September, the new United States ambassador to Uzbekistan ‘ one of the
most repressive governments on the planet ‘ praised the country as `an
increasingly important partner,’ thanks to `its deliberate, reliable
resistance to Russian pressure.’ Azerbaijan’s mimicry of Russian
rhetoric and rapprochement with Moscow is an implicit threat to
Washington: Give us what we want, or we’ll go over to Russia.

The United States doesn’t need to give in to this blackmail. Yes, the
stakes are high: As Washington works to isolate Russia economically,
Azerbaijani natural gas has become an even more important alternative
to Russian gas for European customers. And Baku’s geopolitical shift
could upset the fragile balance that has kept tensions over
Nagorno-Karabakh from turning into a full-scale war.

But it would be short-sighted for Washington to sacrifice its
principles just to shore up support against Russia. Moscow’s current
geopolitical moment is only temporary. While the pro-Russia forces in
Baku appear to be ascendant for the time being, other powerful blocs
favor closer ties to the West.

Failing to stand up for human rights and democracy, including the
rights of its own RFE/RL, would make the United States look weak and
sap its supporters. Expecting to be arrested, Ms. Ismayilova herself
asked foreign governments to speak loudly in defense of the dozens of
political prisoners in Azerbaijan. `I don’t believe in human rights
advocacy behind closed doors,’ she wrote. `People of my country need
to know that human rights are supported.’

NewsDay
Jan 8 2015

Meline Toumani grapples with Armenian history in new book

Updated January 7, 2015 5:22 PM
By JOANNA SCUTTS. Washington Post Book World Service

THERE WAS AND THERE WAS NOT: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in
Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond, by Meline Toumani. Metropolitan, 286 pp.,
$28.

The title of Meline Toumani’s memoir, she tells us, is the traditional
opening for a storyteller in both Turkey and Armenia. Like “once upon
a time,” it signals to the listener that what follows is not to be
confused with history: It happened, and it did not. But unlike the
Western fairy-tale opening, Toumani’s story is rooted in a specific
year: 1915, when — depending on who’s telling the story — there was
and there was not the beginning of a genocide.

This is not a dispute about facts. Toumani dispenses in a paragraph
with those: In 1915, a “history-shifting number of Armenians” were
killed or driven out of the dying Ottoman Empire, until by the time
the modern Turkish state was founded in 1923, only 200,000 were left,
of 2.5 million who had lived there for millennia. Since then, Turkey
has kept silent about or denied the violence, and ever since the term
“genocide” was coined after World War II, the global Armenian diaspora
has fought to have the events of 1915 recognized as such. As this bold
and nuanced book reveals, recognition and denial — there was and
there was not — are two sides of the same story.

Toumani was born in Iran and raised in New Jersey. Her Armenian
identity was forged and maintained through language, religion and an
all-consuming hatred of Turkey. She describes attending a summer camp
in Massachusetts as a child, where the joy of spending time among
people who looked and spoke like her came at the price of nodding
along to a bloodcurdling celebration of terrorist violence against the
Turkish state. But as she grows up and becomes a journalist, she
begins to question the orthodoxies binding her community together and
to wonder whether the goal of genocide recognition is “worth its
emotional and psychological price.”

Toumani realizes that if she wants to tell stories without an agenda,
to find her way to “artistic objectivity,” there’s nowhere to turn but
in the direction of her enemy. Her first trip to Turkey is a tour of
the remnants of Armenian culture in the rural southeast. It’s during
this trip, in 2005, that Toumani meets Hrant Dink, the editor of a
progressive Armenian newspaper in Istanbul. At the time, Dink was
dealing with the fallout from a series of articles he had written
exploring the psychology of the Armenian diaspora, in which he
suggested that Armenian hatred of Turkey had become “like a poison in
their blood.” His comments had been misunderstood as insulting Turks
by saying their blood was poisonous, and he was under official
investigation. Not quite two years later, in January 2007, Dink was
shot dead in the street outside his newspaper’s offices by a
17-year-old who had read online that the editor had insulted his
countrymen’s blood.

Dink’s murder was a turning point for Toumani, spurring her to return
to Turkey, to live in Istanbul, study Turkish, and interview as many
Turks and Armenians as possible to try to understand the range of
views on the “Armenian issue.” What follows is the story of a
two-month stay that stretches into two years.

There’s the moment in her Turkish class, just after Toumani has
reluctantly admitted she’s Armenian, when a glamorous French student
proudly announces that she lives in a mansion that once belonged to
Enver Pasha — one of the chief architects of the genocide. Toumani’s
response is a mixture of uncertainty, anxiety and latent fury: Is this
ignorance? Deliberate provocation? A power play? Again and again, her
interactions in Turkey carry with them this kind of doubt, pressuring
even the most innocent daily exchanges and making it clear before long
that an objective accounting of the “Armenian issue” is impossible.

Toumani’s emotional responses to her experience in Turkey, and her
honesty in navigating and describing them, lend her story the
authority that can come only from a storyteller who recognizes that
history is a matter of both fact and feeling. Toumani is ultimately
less interested in what makes a person Armenian, Turkish or anything
else than in what can happen when we start to think beyond those
national identities.

The Metropolitan, Canada
Jan 8 2015

Je Suis Charlie

By Father John Walsh on January 8, 2015

The world must stand up for freedom, freedom of expression; freedom,
pure and simple! History has proven that the denial of freedom is the
greatest obstacle to our development as human beings. The greatest
freedom we have is to seek the truth. Truth will make you free. What
is the truth about Je Suis Charlie?

Although we seek truth that is absolute and therefore self-evident,
truth is not absolute, it is relative to the events and circumstances
in which we seek the truth. It is not situational but must be
situated in the time and space in which truth is sought after. In the
case of Charlie Hebdo, people use their pens as satirists and draw
cartoons lampooning people and events in depictions that may be
considered extreme to wake people up who otherwise would be very
content to live with the status quo.

The truth is that world-wide humanity is complacent and unmoved by the
most extreme horrors humanity can imagine. We remained silent in the
face of the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian Holocaust, the genocide in
Rwanda, and we remained silent about the need to educate girls until
Malala was short in the head. I consider that extreme. Is it not
extreme pain to suffer from starvation, from dislocation and being one
of the 52 million refugees looking for a safe place to live? Is it
not extreme cold for the homeless right here in many North American
cities?

Satirists are doing the world a service by using their pens to draw
not what the eye sees on paper but drawing our attention to serious
issues affecting all of us, sometimes far away and sometimes in our
backyard, and provoking us in extremis because otherwise we, as human
beings, would not react in a manner that would move us to act on these
issues. The satirists who depict religious figures do so in the
extreme because religion fails, time and again, to be self-critical.
Any religion that tolerates any form of murder, for any reason
whatsoever, needs to be self-critical and do whatever needs to be done
to re-interpret their “sacred” texts to completely obliterate any
interpretation of a “sacred” text that can even hint at condoning
murder. Texts are sacred when the truth they advocate is for the
betterment of our world and for the betterment of humanity. No
culture is sacred. No religious culture is sacred. The sacred reality
we must uphold and never stop defending is the dignity of each human
being. Our dignity is our extreme expression of who we are as human
beings. The massacre in Paris tries to deny our need to look
ourselves in the mirror and recognize ourselves for who we really are.

Shahe Mazbanian Joins Small Business Lending Team for Union Bank

Wednesday, January 7th, 2015

Shahe Mazbanian

LOS ANGELES–Union Bank on Wednesday announced that Shahe Mazbanian has
joined the company as a business development officer for the Business
Banking group’s Small Business Administration (SBA) lending team.
Mazbanian is responsible for providing lending solutions to small
business owners through SBA and other government loan programs, and
for identifying and developing new client relationships primarily for
the Los Angeles region. Based in Los Angeles and Glendale, he reports
to Managing Director Kirsten “Didi” Hakes, who heads the bank’s SBA
lending team.

“We are excited to have Shahe join our growing SBA lending team,” said
Hakes. “His financial industry experience and strong SBA lending
background will be an asset in enhancing existing client relationships
and building new ones with business owners throughout the Greater Los
Angeles region.”

Prior to joining Union Bank, Mazbanian was a business development
officer at City National Bank, where he focused on centers of
influence and new business acquisitions. He also worked at Bank of
America as an SBA and credit solutions specialist focused on SBA 504
and 7A loan origination.

Active in the community, Mazbanian is a member of the Armenian Chamber
of Commerce and also works with the Los Angeles and Hispanic Chambers
of Commerce.

Union Bank’s Business Banking group serves businesses with up to $15
million in annual revenues and offers a variety of products and
services for business owners, including deposit solutions, loans,
lines of credit, specialized credit programs and online business
products.

MUFG Union Bank, N.A., is a full-service bank with offices across the
United States. The Bank provides a wide spectrum of corporate,
commercial, retail banking and wealth management solutions to meet the
needs of customers. The Bank also offers an extensive portfolio of
value-added solutions for customers, including investment banking,
personal trust, capital markets, global treasury management,
transaction banking and other services. With assets of $110.9 billion,
as of September 30, 2014, the bank has strong capital reserves, credit
ratings and capital ratios relative to peer banks. MUFG Union Bank is
a proud member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (NYSE: MTU), one
of the world’s largest financial organizations with total assets of
approximately $2.4 trillion. MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation, the
financial holding company and MUFG Union Bank, N.A., have corporate
headquarters in New York City.

Enemy Breached Ceasefire 400 Times Last Night

Lragir.am
Country – 07 January 2015, 12:29

According to the operative data of the Defense Army, in the night of
January 6 and January 7 the enemy breached the ceasefire over 400
times, during which over 6000 shots were fired in the direction of the
Armenian positions, using different firearms, including 60-mm mortars
(6 shells) and RPG 7 grenade launchers (11 shells).

In the result of the counteraction taken by the front units of the
Defense Army the activity of the enemy was suspended.

ROYAUME-UNI
Le British Foreign Office publie un rapport sur la diaspora arménienne

Le British Foreign and Commonwealth Office a publié un rapport
intitulé “Diaspora de l’Arménie – Son Rôle et influence”.

Le rapport présente l’évaluation par le Royaume-Uni des réalités de la
diaspora arménienne et liste certaines des réalisations concrètes de
la diaspora, tout en minimisant le rôle que la diaspora joue dans la
vie de tous les jours de l’Arménie.

Conservant sa politique de longue date de négation du génocide
arménien, le rapport fait référence aux événements de 1915 comme les
“violences intercommunautaires de 1915.”

Ci-dessous, nous présentons le rapport sans révisions du texte.

Diaspora de l’Arménie – son rôle et influence

POINTS CLÉS

L’Arménie a, en termes proportionnels, la plus grande diaspora de tout
ancien État soviétique, en grande partie concentrée en Russie, les
Etats-Unis et la France. Cela a été une énorme source de soutien pour
l’Etat arménien. Mais cela a aussi régulièrement agi comme un frein
sur la portée des manoeuvres d’Erevan, en particulier sur le conflit
du Haut-Karabakh et les relations avec la Turquie. C’est susceptible
de rester le cas à l’avenir.

La communauté de la diaspora arménienne la plus politiquement active
est aux États-Unis, celle dont l’accent est mis sur la réalisation de
la reconnaissance officielle par les États-Unis du > de
1915 est susceptible de s’intensifier au cours des deux prochaines
années. En revanche, la communauté arménienne en Russie reste
largement d̩sengag̩e du lobbying politique Рmais pourrait-on voir un
changement au fil du temps ?

mercredi 7 janvier 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

DERNIERE MINUTE-HAUT KARABAGH
2 soldats Arméniens tués lors de la réplique aux tirs intenses de
l’Armée azérie qui compte au minimum 7 soldats morts dans ses rangs

Selon le ministre de la Défense de la République du Haut Karabagh, la
nuit dernière -du 5 au 6 janvier-l’Azerbaïdjan a violé à 320 reprises
le régime du cessez-le-feu avec plus de 5 000 tirs en direction des
positions arméniennes. Les Arméniens ont répliqué à ces tirs qui sont
intenses ces derniers jours. Selon Stepanakert 2 soldats Arméniens
(originaires du Haut Karabagh) sont morts dans ces opérations, les
forces azéries comptant de leur côté au minimum 7 morts dont
l’officier Eldar Mamedov. L’Armée arménienne contrôle la situation sur
le terrain.

Krikor Amirzayan

mardi 6 janvier 2015,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com