Author: Babajanian Karo

MUTUAL ACCUSATIONS IN THE AZERBAIJANI OPPOSITION CAMP

Thursday, 08 August 2013 12:06

What is the scenario of unitary opposition candidate, screenwriter
Rustam Ibragimbekov’s game?

A good opportunity for having a clear idea of the opposition forces
in the Azerbaijani political field has appeared: on the eve of the
presidential elections, each of them is intended to expose others’
nature.

They make mutual accusations, and in this context, it becomes clear
that there is no common view on an alternative candidate in the
opposition camp so far.

Last week, the Azeri media published a statement by the leader of one
of the opposition forces – Azerbaijani Citizens and Development Party,
Ali Aliyev, in which he demonstrated the activity of the National
Council coordinating the actions of the Azerbaijani opposition. Let’s
recall his idea, according to which the confusion among the political
forces within the Council is expected, as they are in completely
different political fields. He accused, first of all, leaders of
Musavat andOpen Society Parties Issa Gambar and Rasul Guliyev of
the confusion. And then he justified the formality of the National
Council’s struggle by the fact that, in fact, the political parties are
united by common principles, ideologies and methods of struggle and not
merely by the factor of presidential elections. The Musavatconsiders
that the issue of participation in the elections is indisputable,
and R. Guliyev’s party considers it right to boycott the elections,
if the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan refuses to register
Rustam Ibragimbekov as a presidential candidate. Aliyev’s assessment
cannot be regarded as unfounded, considering the fact of Guliyev’s
living outside Azerbaijan and his inability to return to the country
and to take part in the elections. And Issa Gambar, according to
Aliyev’s determination, is not going to occupy a princely hill,
but merely to pass to the “political pension”. Therefore, he needs
political dividends only for his personality.

The Azerbaijani political forces’ attention is mainly focused on
the single opposition candidate, Russian Federation citizen, famous
screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov, and in this respect, the views of
the opposition cause certain interest.

According to leader of the Azerbaijani Social-Democratic Party
Araz Alizade, recently, screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov has often
contradicted himself.

Alizade draws attention to the incoherent statements of the artist
related to the dual citizenship and nomination of another candidate
from the National Council. “Whatever he does is fabrication”,
Alizade stressed. At the same time, he expressed deep regret that
the experienced screenwriter has wrong notion of the presidential
elections, therefore, he cannot rely on the Azerbaijani people.

The July 29 interview of Radio Liberty with Rustam Ibragimbekov also
attracts attention. The candidate informed the media that he would
return on July 31 and would actively get involved in the pre-election
campaign. At the same time, he expressed his concern, saying that if
he returned to Baku, then the coming months could become the heaviest
in his life, since he would be arrested upon his arrival in Baku.

The Radio reported that a representative of the Azerbaijani
prosecutor’s office had stated that they would open a criminal case
against Chairman of the Cinematographers Union Rustam Ibragimbekov
who had held the position for many years, avoiding paying state taxes
in about $15.000 and, besides, appropriating the funds allocated from
the state budget for the East-West Film Festival.

On July 30, Ibragimbekov arrived in Tbilisi and not in Baku, where
representatives of the National Council held a meeting and decided to
appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin for accelerating the process
of single opposition candidate Rustam Ibragimbekov’s abandoning the
Russian citizenship. That’s why his arrival in Baku was delayed.

A day before the distribution of this news, the Azerbaijani unofficial
media ironically wrote that there were so many unresolved problems in
Azerbaijan that Ibragimbekov’s arrival or non-arrival in Baku meant
almost nothing.

The assessments in the opposition camp cause an impression that
opposition candidate Rustam Ibragimbekov is involved in a political
game rather than in a struggle. And, indeed, to follow the statements
made by the screenwriter from last year’s autumn up today, they seem
to confirm this hypothesis. First, he made statements from Moscow,
addressing Ilham Aliyev and giving him political lessons, leading to a
single idea – Azerbaijan cannot remain a totalitarian state, instead,
it should build its future in a democratic way. The screenwriter’s
second lesson given to Ilham Aliyev was that Karabakh is an Armenian
land and the misrepresentation of this reality will not increase the
rating of the ruling regime.

Some time later, Azerbaijani sources reported that Ibragimbekov
had arrived in Baku, met with representatives of the country’s
political forces, noting the impossibility of nominating Ilham Aliyev
for the third presidential term. It seemed that the Azerbaijani
intelligentsia from Russia was preparing for a radical revolution,
but this belief was ruined by his idea that nominating Mehriban
Khanum was right. ‘Revealing’ the possibilities of the Azerbaijani
First Lady, he actually put himself out of the political struggle. And
when he announced himself as a unitary opposition candidate during the
registration of presidential candidates, some politicians characterized
it as a kind of arrangement reached with the Azerbaijani President. And
now the opposition candidate is speaking about political persecution
by the authorities.

The future will show how events will develop. We believe that it is
necessary to add another fact to the abovementioned, which would
not be correct to ignore. According to preliminary information,
RF President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Baku is scheduled for October.

Political experts expressed an opinion that the Kremlin didn’t seem to
oppose Ilham Aliyev’s election for the third term. It can be concluded
that screenwriter Ibragimbekov’s game, so to speak, is integrated into
a big geopolitical game, and his arrival in Baku is losing its urgency.

Ruzan ISHKHANIAN

WIFE STABS HUSBAND TO DEATH IN STEPANAVAN

11:27 08.08.13

A 35-year-old resident of Stepanavan was found dead Wednesday
evening by ambulance workers who went to the house after receiving
an emergency call.

According to the Public Relations Department of the Police, the man,
K. Ayazyan, had died of stab wounds inflicted on his chest by his
wife, the 31-year-old Diana Sh. His dead body was found near the
building’s entrance.

The knife has been confiscated. A criminal proceeding is underway.

Diana Sh. reported to be in detention.

Armenian News – Tert.am

HAS PRIME MINISTER DEFEATED SAMVEL ALEXANYAN?

Ineligibility of a number of companies owned by oligarchs for state
procurement tenders may mark the beginning of economic transformation
in Armenia. No doubt, others will occupy the place of ineligible
“privileged” companies, and hardly through a fair competition.

However, the fact that some odious oligarchs were denied access to
state procurement is evidence to a big change.

Samvel Alexanyan’s companies, including Alex Grig, Natali Farm and
Lusastgh Sugar will not be eligible for bid opportunities. These
companies are known to supply sugar, medicine and other products for
state procurement. Moreover, Samvel Alexanyan is a monopole importer
of sugar, and his non-participation in state tenders may mean that
new companies will appear in the market.

This could be referred to as Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s first
victory who has been trying to oust “old” monopolists from the
main sectors. They hardly succeeded in civil aviation, sending Mika
Baghdasaryan to rest. They failed in import – Samvel Alexanyan did
not allow Carrefour to open a store in Armenia.

But now Tigran Sargsyan has set to deal with the sector where
state budget is mainly circulated. Several families “occupy” state
procurement who are the main “eaters” of the state budget. The decision
to deny them access to the state budget is highly important from the
point of view of diversification.

Has Tigran Sargsyan defeated Samvel Alexanyan? Alexanyan’s “silence”
means that he has also managed to “diversify” and register new
companies which will bid for tenders. If the government is committed
to diversification of state procurement, it must ensure transparency,
making known to the public to whom budget money goes and for what.

The state budget has stopped being the property of the authorities
which used to handle it as they wanted. The society understands that
the budget is their money and asks questions: where does the money go,
why do a couple of families get them, why nobody accounts for them?

The society of Armenia has changed though it still does not want to
believe. Meanwhile, the government has already believed and is taking
into account public opinion in its actions.

Naira Hayrumyan 11:31 08/08/2013 Story from Lragir.am News:

WILL SPRING ARRIVE IN ARMENIA BEFORE WINTER?

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Aug 7 2013

by Mehmet Fatih Oztarsu*

7 August 2013 /

The economic woes plaguing Armenia have contributed greatly to the
development of the Armenian culture of protest. With every passing day,
Armenians have begun to become more informed and to see in themselves
the real ability to run and direct their own country. And so, for
the first time ever in this post-Soviet era, Armenians are really
realizing the importance of reckoning with the leaders and oligarchs
who are running the country.

Over the course of the past two months, there have been a series of
topics — all of which have had economic troubles at their roots —
that have been the focus of some very interesting protests. In May,
protests started after announcements of increased fees for natural gas
purchased from Russia; these protests then increased in proportion
to the increases in costs in other areas announced by the Armenian
administration. While Yerevan began to pursue a range of alternative
plans following the natural gas crisis with Russia, plans made in
the Armenian capital to engage in an energy barter with Iran —
giving electricity in exchange for natural gas — were backed away
from after it was determined that Russia would not be happy about this.

When Armenians were then informed of 30 percent increases in
electricity costs before they had even had time to get over the
60 percent hikes in natural gas prices, tensions rose throughout
the country. Many opposition party fronts, like the Pan-Armenian
National Movement and the Heritage party, took to the streets to
underscore the point that the needs of Armenians are more important
than Russian interests. And when the people poured into the streets
to protest the government, the authorities, surprised in the face
of these unexpected protests, did step back. The national atmosphere
softened when the authorities promised that cost increases in energy
would be made gradually and in low amounts and that Armenians would
also be able to take advantage of assistance from the state.

The implementation of fee increases

Still trying to solve the country’s considerable energy needs, the
government decided to implement fee increases in a range of different
areas. This time around, following the protests centered on natural
gas and electricity costs, protesters from the Karabakh region began to
fill the city squares. Complaining about poor living standards and that
the government was not taking an interest in them, protesters accused
the Karabakh-rooted Armenian authorities of treason against the nation.

Protester Hacatur Hacaturyan asserted that while the country’s leaders
had at one time fought on the same front as the nation, they had now
forgotten their once-comrades-in-arms and had brought Karabakh to
the national agenda for the purpose of their own interests. Another
protester, Volodya Avetisyan, who was an army reserve brigadier,
said the thousands of other fighters from Karabakh would be prepared,
if necessary, to fight against this Armenian administration.

And so by now, the agenda was focused on the failed leadership of
the country by an unskilled administration. Just as the nation had
been looking at some of its very real problems, an announcement of fee
hikes in the area of mass transportation set the tension levels in the
national atmosphere even higher. The Yerevan Municipality, declaring
that bus fares would go from 50 to 100 drams and that minibus fares
would rise from 100 to 150 drams, said that this decision had been
made to help increase the quality of mass transportation services.

Now, the chain of fee increases that had begun with natural gas fee
hikes was showing up in every area of life for Armenians. Thousands of
people, whose socio-political movements were organized over various
social media platforms, moved into action just a few hours after the
latest fee hike announcements were made in the hopes of forcing the
Yerevan Municipality to reverse its decision. The capital’s city
squares filled with angry protesters as people declared that not
only did they not recognize the latest fare increases, but that they
would not be riding mass transportation vehicles at all in the times
to come. The protest movement, called “We will not pay 150 drams,”
quickly attracted thousands of supporters. And with protests that
lasted seven days, for the first time in Armenian history, a civilian
movement was successful in getting a city municipality to shelve a
decision on fee increases.

During the same period of time, another protest, called the Free
Vehicle movement, represented a different sort of first for the
country. The Free Vehicle movement saw taxi drivers and private
car owners working to transport protesters refusing to ride mass
transportation vehicles to wherever they wanted for free.

The ‘150 Dram’ protests

The “150 Dram” protests — which for the first time ever saw the
questioning of the oligarchy and the calling for punishment of
bureaucrats who were unfairly profiting from their own interests —
brought about another interesting situation. During these protests,
it was revealed that the head of the Transportation Department of
the Yerevan Municipality, one Henrik Navasardian, was in fact the
owner of a bus line, and certain figures in parliament were owners
of various taxi and private bus lines.

It was simultaneously revealed that Navasardian’s bus line, Dyako-Art,
was legally owned by his 22-year-old son Andranik, and that the prime
responsibility for the running of this company lay with his relative,
Artak Navasardian. While details of the situation began to trickle
out, various media organs began looking into the incredible level of
investments held by Armenian bureaucrats like Navasardian, asserting
that while this situation might in fact be somewhat acceptable, the
insistence by Navasardian and other members of the ruling elite on
new fare increases would not be accepted by the people of the country.

When details were further revealed that another of Navasardian’s sons,
Davit Navasardian, was the owner of Motion Time, a company providing
advertising services for mass transportation vehicles in Armenia,
the situation took on scandalous proportions. Even now, throughout
Armenia, protests are still ongoing, calling for the resignation of
the current oligarchy.

The Armenians, calling for the resignation of not only Prime Minister
Tigran Sarksyan but also many mayors and government ministers,
may turn to a number of different options if their leaders maintain
their level of failure and economic problems. If the energy crisis
in particular remains in place until wintertime, it seems clear that
many different and new types of protests might be seen in Armenia in
the time to come, though there is also great curiosity as to what
sorts of reactions the protests will elicit not only from Armenian
President Serzh Sarksyan, who has amassed his own fortunes, but also
from other top leadership figures.

*Mehmet Fatih Oztarsu is a strategic outlook expert on the Caucasus.

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TWO ARMENIAN REFEREES BANNED FOR MATCH-FIXING

The New Age Online, South Africa
Aug 7 2013

Two Armenian referees have been suspended for match-fixing after
they admitted attempting to manipulate a Europa League qualifier,
UEFA announced Wednesday.

Match referee Andranik Arsenyan and assistant, Hovhannes Avagyan,
both admitted to the Armenian football federation (HFF) trying to
fix the second leg of the first qualifying round match between Inter
Turku of Finland and Vikingur of the Faroes on July 11 this year.

Vikingkur won the game 1-0 to take the tie 2-1 on aggregate.

“The UEFA betting fraud detection system (BFDS) which monitors over
32,000 matches across Europe, including all first-division and UEFA
competition games had detected suspicious betting patterns around this
fixture, and this prompted the start of an investigation by UEFA to
which the HFF contributed closely,” said a UEFA statement.

The case will be dealt with by UEFA’s Control and Disciplinary Body
on August 22.

– Sapa-AFP (Picture: Reuters)

ADVANCEMENT IN TURKISH-AZERI TIES SEEN AS MESSAGE TO RUSSIA, IRAN

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
July 24 2013

The latest relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan can be understood
as a message from the latter to regional heavyweight Russia and even
Iran, analysts say.

Orhan GafarlA±, an Azerbaijani researcher at the Turkish think tank the
Wise Men Centre for Strategic Studies (BA°LGESAM), stated in remarks
to Today’s Zaman that relations between Azerbaijan and Russia have
grown more tense as Azerbaijanis have strengthened their relationship
with the US and Israel, which Russia views as being at the expense
of itself. Typically, Russia has been a large source of pressure to
Azerbaijan when it comes to regional issues.

“The advancement of military relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan
is important for both sides,” said GafarlA±. He explained that
Russia is currently trying to convince Azerbaijan to be included
in its Eurasian Union project – a proposed political and economic
union involving Russia and post-Soviet states – that it is trying
to make ready by 2015. But Azerbaijan is not welcoming of such a
request. “The relations between the two governments have been cold
during recent years, which is in parallel with Azerbaijan’s foreign
policy choices having a more Western vision day by day. For example,
[Russian President] Vladimir Putin and [Azerbaijani President Ilham]
Aliyev have not had any bilateral visits since 2010; they are only
having exchanges on the phone,” GafarlA± stated.

Turkey has been staging a major military exercise with Azerbaijan
since July 12 and it will continue until July 28. The military exercise
is being made as part of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Strategic Partnership
Agreement signed between the two in August 2010.

A statement from the Turkish military said the exercise focused on
infantry and mechanized divisions in Baku and Nakhchivan. “The aim
of the exercise was to bolster military cooperation between the two
countries and exchange data and experience,” the statement also said.

Azerbaijan-Turkey joint exercises will be held in Azerbaijan and
Turkey every year by turn.

Meanwhile, in a development that would create concern for Azerbaijan,
Russia promised earlier this month to upgrade its military base in the
Gyumri province of Armenia while also helping to bolster Armenia’s own
air forces. International reports say that such a step by Russia is
an effort to appease controversy with Armenia that began after Moscow
made a huge arms sale to Azerbaijan, a nation with hostile relations
with Armenia. A modernization project for Russia’s 102nd Military
Base at Gyumri, in northern Armenia near its border with Turkey,
and the airbase at Yerevan’s Erebuni Airport is to begin this year
and take several years to complete, Armenian officials have declared.

Meanwhile, the Iranian navy made a five-day military deal in the
Caspian Sea, where just last year Iran discovered an oil field. The
status of the Caspian Sea is controversial due to territorial claims by
Russia, Azerbaijani, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. It is another issue
of controversy between tense neighbours Azerbaijan and Iran, where
the former accuses the latter of intervening in its internal affairs.

The relations of Azerbaijan and Turkey have been strategically
developing during the last couple of years. The two have been having
annual meetings within the scope of the Azerbaijan-Turkey High-Level
Cooperation Council since 2011. The council is the first large-scale
joint exercise between Turkey and Azerbaijan, as the Azerbaijani chief
of the Main Operation Department of the Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Eyvaz
Jafarov, also noted in a speech during the opening ceremony of the
exercise in Azerbaijan.

Also, an official visit was made by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu last Tuesday to Baku for high-level meetings to discuss
all aspects of bilateral cooperation between the two countries,
with a special focus on regional issues. Turkish diplomats noted
that this is “the first, full-fledged bilateral meeting” between
Turkey and Azerbaijan in the last few years, as the two countries
have come together either in Azerbaijan or Turkey on the occasion of
international meetings.

In diplomatic terms, the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan have
also developed in recent years. An exchange programme that would
allow the two countries’ diplomats to work in each other’s foreign
ministries, which was started in September of last year, is thought to
be an important development for the mutual advancement of diplomatic
relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Sabir AskEroglu, a Russia analyst from the Ankara-based
think tank 21st Century Turkey Institute, maintained that the
increasing military and political relations between Turkey and
Azerbaijan would not in any way amount to being a guarantor in regional
issues – as in relations Russia has with Armenia.

“Azerbaijan has allies other than Turkey, such as the US and Israel.

On the other hand, Turkey would not like to take Russia on itself by
getting involved in the regional issues that Russia has a position on.

But souring relations between Turkey and Iran, especially due to the
Syrian crisis, would apparently strengthen the Turkish-Azerbaijani
alliance,” AskEroglu said.

BOOK: THE PROPHET OF GENOCIDE: LEGAL SCHOLAR RAPHAEL LEMKIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ARRIVES NEARLY 50 YEARS AFTER HE WROTE IT

The Forward
August 2, 2013

Gabriel Sanders is director of public programs at the Museum of
Jewish Heritage.

TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RAPHAEL LEMKIN

Edited by Donna-Lee Frieze Yale University Press, 328 pages, $35

Ten years ago, Samantha Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book A
Problem From Hell, a history of American inaction in the face of
genocide. As she awaits Senate confirmation to be the country’s next
ambassador to the United Nations, the book offers a glimpse into
Power’s political philosophy and a sense of whom she might want to
emulate as

America’s voice at the world body.

The hero of Power’s book insofar as a book on genocide can be said
to have a hero is Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal scholar who
coined the term genocide and fought to have the concept recognized by
the U. N. In Power’s telling, Lemkin emerges as a tireless crusader
who gives both form and name to the ultimate crime. And yet, Power’s
portrait is not entirely sympathetic. Her Lemkin is humorless,
arrogant, serious to a fault a longwinded nag whom correspondents on
deadline would avoid like the plague.

A decade after Power’s book, Lemkin is being given the chance to
speak for himself. When he died, in 1959 bitter, penniless and alone
Lemkin was nearly finished writing an autobiograstands phy. More than a
half-century later, Yale University Press, in an edition painstakingly
assembled from a variety of drafts, is now publishing the book.

By 21st-century standards, this is an unusual memoir light on
introspection, heavy on historical detail. As the book’s editor,
Donna-Lee Frieze, astutely points out, it is an autobiography that
ultimately gives way to a biography of the Genocide Convention that
Lemkin conceived and championed.

Born in 1900, Lemkin was raised on a farm in eastern Poland (now
Belarus) where he, his siblings and his cousins spent their days
running around as part of a happy gang. Lemkin’s idyllic perhaps
idealized portrait of farm life

in stark contrast with the solitary, urban life he later came to lead.

Lemkin describes as a formative experience the 1921 trial of Soghomon
Tehlirian, an Armenian accused of murdering a Turkish minister
identified as one of the architects of what later became known
as the Armenian Genocide. Tehlirian was acquitted; he had acted,
a Berlin court said, under psychological compulsion. For Lemkin,
there was deep irony in the verdict and a cautionary tale. Tehlirian,
who upheld the moral order of mankind, was classified as insane,
he writes. But can a man appoint himself to mete out justice? After
earning a law degree in Lvov, Lemkin became a public prosecutor in
Warsaw and an active figure on the international legal scene.

Among the notable features of Lemkin’s legal thinking is that he begins
talking about the destruction of groups as early as 1927. (He doesn’t
use the term genocide a combination of the Greek genos, meaning race,
and the Latin cide, for murder until 1944.) And though the Holocaust
clearly played a role in the evolution of his concept to say nothing
of the urgency with which he fought to have it enshrined into law
genocide, for Lemkin, was meant not as shorthand for the murder
of the Jews, but as a comparative term with deep, indeed ancient,
historical roots.

On September 6, 1939, Lemkin fled Warsaw and, with Nazi tanks blocking
the highways and the Luftwaffe targeting train stations, headed into
Poland’s forests. After the Soviets invaded from the East, he decided
to flee to then-neutral Lithuania. While there, he contacted a Duke
University professor who ultimately secured a position for him there.

But to get to North Carolina, Lemkin went the long way, traveling
through Latvia, then Sweden, where he briefly taught international
law, then to Moscow and on to the Pacific via the trans-Siberian
railway. From Vladivostok he traveled to Japan and then across the
ocean to Seattle. He topped things off with a cross-country train
ride. But while Lemkin found his way to freedom, the bulk of his
family did not. Close to 50 of his relatives perished.

Lemkin’s career in the 1940s and ’50s was animated by a kind of
survivor’s guilt. At certain moments, he addresses this directly: I was
ashamed of my helplessness in dealing with the murderers of humanity,
he writes, a shame that has not left me to this day. At other points,
his expressions of guilt are more oblique. Before leaving Poland,
he paid a final visit to his parents. His mother’s parting words
as reported by Lemkin seem more the product of wish fulfillment
than reality:

You realize, Raphael, that it is you, not we, who needs protection
now . [O]f all of us only you do not live the life of love. You
are the lonely and the loveless one. Still, you have been carrying
the burden of your idea, which is based on love . We know you will
continue your work, for the protection of peoples. Unfortunately,
it is needed now more than ever before.

It is the book’s falsest-sounding note and its most heartbreaking.

In Washington, D. C., Lemkin served as a consultant to the Board of
Economic Warfare and, later, as an adviser to the War Department. He
tried to draw attention to the fact that the Axis powers planned
nothing less than the destruction of the peoples under their control.

He sent a memo to FDR, encouraging a treaty banning genocide. The
president responded by urging patience. Lemkin worked with the
prosecution team at Nuremberg but was unhappy with the result. The
Allies decided their case against a past Hitler, he writes, but
refused to envisage future Hitlers.

The problem with Nuremberg, in Lemkin’s eyes, was that it linked
the destruction of groups with wars of aggression. According to
international law as it stood in 1945, Germany really became culpable
only when it crossed into Poland. Had the Nazis killed only German
Jews, they would not have been liable. Lemkin’s aim was to undo this
absurdity and uncouple genocide from war, and he ultimately succeeded.

In December 1946, the U. N. passed a resolution condemning genocide.

In December 1948, the General Assembly passed a law banning it,
and in January 1951, the Genocide Convention went into force.

Lemkin’s single-mindedness did not come without costs. He alienated
friends, made enemies and burned bridges. His work on the convention
kept him from teaching and earning. His health suffered. The final
pages of his book offer a chilling picture of hand-to-mouth living:
borrowing from one friend to repay another, mounting bills, moth-eaten
clothes. By book’s end, he is a humbled, dying man looking to lay
claim to the honor he felt was his due.

Lemkin has been called a prophet, and the term is not inapt. He
understood humankind’s capacity for destruction earlier and more fully
than any of his contemporaries. But prophets don’t always come in
appealing packages or say what you want to hear even from beyond the
grave. Critics can argue that Lemkin accomplished nothing. Genocide
marches on. But Rwanda and Srebrenica are not refutations of his
legacy; they are affirmations of his prescience. Without Lemkin, they
would have been atrocities. In the light of his Genocide Convention,
they were crimes.

TWO MORE PLEAD GUILTY IN CHURCH BURGLARIES

Orange County Register (California)
August 1, 2013 Thursday

by: Doug Irving Register writer, The Orange County Register

Two members of a break-in crew that targeted churches and other
religious centers pleaded guilty this week to burglary charges.

Robert Lee Dennis, 45, and Fernando Flores, 21, were sentenced to
a year in jail and ordered to pay restitution, Orange County court
records show. A third man, Daniel Ruben Cortes, pleaded guilty last
month and was sentenced to two years in jail. A fourth man charged
as a co-defendant, James Allen Dorscht, has pleaded not guilty.

The break-ins began around the first of the year, hitting four churches
in Santa Ana, half a dozen more in Anaheim, an Islamic center and
a Hindu temple in Irvine. The burglars pried open donation boxes or
stole safes, police said.

Investigators got a break May 1 when thieves hit Forty Martyrs Armenian
Church in Santa Ana. Surveillance video captured two men prying open
a door and removing a safe while a third man stood as a lookout. The
safe held $15,000, most of it proceeds from a bingo game, police said.

At one point, one of the men noticed the video camera and tried to
disable it with a screwdriver. Instead, it captured an image of the
man that police distributed to the public. Phoned-in tips led police
to Cortes, Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.

About a week later, Irvine investigators identified Dennis as a suspect
in the temple burglary, based on DNA evidence. He and Flores were
arrested at a Santa Ana commercial complex. Police said they found
burglary tools, a club and a shotgun in their vehicle, as well as a
credit card with Dorscht’s name on it.

When another church was burglarized – this time, a Korean Catholic
church in Irvine, where a safe was dragged away – a partial fingerprint
led investigators to Dorscht, Irvine police Lt. Julia Engen said. He
was arrested in June; police said they found the stolen safe and cash
in an apartment he was using. His trial is set for September.

City News Service contributed to this report.

DEBATE: ERDOGAN BLUNDERED BY STANDING BY MURSI

Asharq Alawsat (The Middle East), UK
July 30, 2013 Tuesday

Anybody watching Turkish TV over the last month could be forgiven
for thinking that Mohamed Mursi was Turkish. News channels that
broadcast wildlife documentaries during the recent Turkish protests
aired long and impassioned debates about what was going on just across
the Mediterranean. For pro-government commentators, it was a game of
“compare the coup”-exactly which Turkish military intervention did the
Egyptian one resemble the most? Was it 1960? 1971? 1980? 1997? (The
foreign minister reckons it was 1997.) Anybody risking a more nuanced
view faced accusations of groveling at the feet of tyranny.

Government circles in Turkey clearly fear that what has happened in
Egypt could happen to them. too. More radical Turkish secularists
doubtless hope it will. In reality, though, the parallels between the
two countries are tenuous. The Justice and Development Party always
was one of a kind, for all the talk in the Western press about it
being a democratic model for the region. So, as it falls, is Mursi’s
Muslim Brotherhood. It isn’t just that coups are almost unthinkable
in Turkey today, or that Turkey’s economy continues to grow while
Egypt sinks further into insolvency. It is, above all, that Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has charisma and guile and Mursi has little of either.

Yet there is one crucial thing, other than a shared ideological
heritage, that links the two men: the structural similarities of the
political groups that they lead. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr.

Erdogan’s political base owes its strength to its tightly-knit and
hierarchical grassroots network. In opposition, that made it immensely
resilient: it regrouped quickly after being swept from power by the
military in 1997. Between 2003 and 2008, it linked shields and fought
off military and judicial efforts to shunt it aside again.

But the same characteristics that gave it strength in the past
have left it ill-suited to rule in a consensual way since it took
full power. Mr. Erdogan’s political charisma has always depended
heavily on his having enemies. Enemies have enabled him to justify
the extraordinary hold that he has over his party apparatus. First
it was the Kemalist establishment. Then, with the army defeated,
it was Israel. Now that he stands at the zenith of his power, it is
the world, and half of his own people. Listening to him speak since
the street protests kicked off late in May has been like listening
to Saint-Just, the philosopher of the Jacobin Terror: “Since the
people has manifested its will, everything opposed to it is outside
the sovereign, and all that is outside the sovereign is the enemy.”

“I won more than half the vote, therefore I am the nation.” The
domestic implications of this vision of perfect social homogeneity are
obvious-society stops being a society and becomes a barracks. In Mr.

Erdogan’s case, though, there are also signs that it has rubbed off on
his vision of the wider world too, fatally weakening his pretentions
to regional leadership.

In the early years of his time in power, one of the guiding principles
of his foreign minister’s foreign policy was “zero problems with
neighbors.” In some ways, it is arguable whether the slogan differed
that much from the most famous statement of Turkish foreign policy
there is, Kemal Ataturk’s “peace at home and peace in the world”.

(Both, when you think about it, are the sort of cautious stance you
would expect the leaders of new and as yet unconsolidated regimes to
strike.) But it seemed to tally with the government’s move away from
Turkey’s traditionally conservative approach to the wider region
towards a more proactive approach, and again it went down well in
the West.

Gradually, though, and in parallel to Mr. Erdogan’s rise to absolute
power inside Turkey, his government’s claim to be a pragmatic
big brother to the region, a broker between Israel and Palestine,
willing even to push for peace with Armenia, morphed into something
more ideological. Ankara weakened its admittedly limited leverage
over Palestine through its strong support for Hamas. It fell out with
Iraq over its support of Tariq Al-Hashemi. It may now be supporting
radical Salafi groups against the Kurds in Syria. And it fumed over
the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood while Riyadh and other regional
capitals publicly gloated.

Mr. Erdogan’s mistake has been to fall victim to his own intoxicating
domestic rhetoric about being the voice of the people, the soul
of Anatolia, the long-awaited champion of pure Turkish and Islamic
values, and to assume that he speaks for a perfectly homogeneous mass
of people. He doesn’t. His support base is not homogeneous. Turkey
certainly isn’t. As for the wider Sunni Arab world, it couldn’t be
more disparate.

Islamist politicians like Mr. Erdogan are more powerful today than
they have ever been. Paranoia and a barracks-room mentality served
them well during their years in opposition. If the region is to
escape from a vicious circle of coup and counter-coup, of secular
authoritarianism followed by Islamic authoritarianism, though, they
need now to replace it with something more nuanced.

BREAKING AWAY FROM A BLOODY PAST

The Straits Times (Singapore)
July 30, 2013 Tuesday

Tourists visiting the Grandmother And Grandfather monument outside the
city of Stepanakert in the Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani region of
Nagorny Karabakh on June 26. A growing number of foreign tourists are
heading to the breakaway territory – which is not recognised by any
state – and say they are seeing a different side to its war-scarred
image. Wandering around the region’s largest town, Stepanakert, as
part of a tour group of people from places such as Italy and Taiwan,
French pharmacist Jordan Nahoum said that while he knew all about
Nagorny Karabakh’s bloody past, he was surprised by what he found.