Author: Badalian Vardan

TEXT OF FRENCH LAW WAS COPIED FROM WIKIPEDIA

The Times (London)
April 2, 2015 Thursday

by Charles Bremner

A French MP has admitted that she tabled a parliamentary bill with a
preamble largely pasted from Wikipedia. Valerie Boyer, 52, copied text
from the free internet encyclopedia setting out reasons why France
should officially recognise the 1915 Assyrian genocide. Wikipedia
describes it as “the mass slaughter of the Assyrian population of the
Ottoman Empire during the First World War” and blames it on the Turks.

The text, published in the official parliamentary journal, retained
Wikipedia’s index numbers and hyperlinks, although these were later
removed.

Ms Boyer, the Union for a Popular Movement MP for Marseilles,
acknowledged using copied text but insisted on BFM TV, a news channel,
that she “had the extract verified by specialised teachers”.

She was the author of a 2011 bill making denial of the Armenian
genocide by Turkey a criminal offence. The Assyrian massacres were
bound up with the genocide. Turkey denies responsibility.

The new bill is to be debated later this year. Discovery of the
plagiarism was mocked on social networks under the hashtag #epicfail.

‘ORHAN’S INHERITANCE’ DIGS THROUGH HISTORY TO REVEAL FAMILY SECRETS

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
April 3 2015

By Elfrieda Abbe

As a taxi takes Orhan Turkoglu through the barren Anatolian countryside
where the “land is heavy, the atmosphere so pressed it makes it hard
to breathe,” his mind wanders. He’s on his way to Karod, his childhood
home, to pay his last respects to his beloved grandfather Kemal.

A Turkish businessman living in Istanbul, he’s not eager to return
to this provincial outpost where “every person, object, and stone has
some sort of covering, a layer of protection made from cloth, brick,
or dust.”

“Men and women cover their heads with skullcaps and head scarves.”

They also apply this protection to their speech and ideas, he surmises.

Much has been covered up in Aline Ohanesian’s impressive debut
novel,”Orhan’s Inheritance.” She scrapes away the dusty layers with
the skill of an archaeologist on a dig to reveal family secrets and
shames set against a backdrop of historical atrocities.

The family is stunned when Kemal leaves their home to an Armenian
woman, Seda Melkonian, who lives in Los Angeles. Orhan goes on a
mission to persuade her to sell the house back to him for his father
and aunt.

A modern man who is distanced from historical events, he’s unprepared
for the disdain with which he is treated at the Armenian retirement
home where Seda lives.

In her late 80s, Seda doesn’t want the house that once belonged to
her happy family or the painful memories that come with it. She agrees
to sign the papers, if he will leave her alone. But Orhan insists on
finding out her connection to his dede.

“The woman before him is like an ancient tapestry whose tightly woven
threads could tell quite a tale, if only he knew how to unravel them.”

He realizes the loose thread that will free the story is his
grandfather’s sketchbook. When she see’s Kamel’s drawing of the
mulberry tree that stood in her family’s yard, she cannot stop the
words from pouring out.

It’s 1915. The Ottoman Empire has Germany in World War I, and Armenians
are viewed as an internal threat. One day her uncle is taken away,
then her father.

Soon all Armenians are “deported,” ordered to leave their homes with
only a few possessions. Seda’s childhood friend Kemal, a talented
Muslim teenager who worked for her father, tries to save the headstrong
15-year-old, but she refuses to leave her family. What happens on
that deadly march is Seda’s story.

A melancholy past hangs over the characters. Seda survives, but not
without great loss and the pain of guilt.

Kemal becomes a sharpshooter in the military and returns a hero. He
builds a multinational textile company on what the Melkonians left
behind, but takes no pleasure in money and is haunted by the memory
of Seda. It’s for the reader to find out what happens when he meets
Seda again.

Through his photography and education, Orhan escapes the brutality
of his father’s beatings. But the very thing he loves leads to his
arrest and torture when one of his photos raises suspicion that he
is a communist.

Auntie Fatma, the rock of the family, who raised both Orhan and his
father, has a shadowy past.

Such sorrow in Ohanesian’s hands is not a heavy burden for the reader.

Through the beauty and humanity of her central characters, the story
transcends suffering. While Orhan inherited his family’s business,
he learns his real inheritance is his grandfather’s compassion,
acts of kindness and generosity.

“A white day sheds light; a dark day sheds darkness,” Orhan tells
Seda on his first visit. Ohanesian’s novel is that “white day.”

CYPRUS CRIMINALIZES DENIAL OF 1915 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Big News Network, Australia
April 3 2015

VoA – News Thursday 2nd April, 2015

NICOSIA – Cyprus on Thursday made it a crime to deny that Ottoman
Turks committed genocide against Armenian Turks a century ago, a move
likely to rile its old rival Turkey as peace talks on the ethnically
split island remain stalled.

The Cypriot parliament passed a resolution penalizing denial of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, modifying existing
legislation, which required prior conviction by an international
court to make denial a crime.

“Today is a historic day,” said Yiannakis Omirou, parliament speaker.

“It allows parliament to restore, with unanimous decisions and
resolutions, historical truths.”

The east Mediterranean island, split in a Turkish invasion in 1974
after a brief Greek-inspired coup, was one of the first countries
worldwide in 1975 to recognize the Armenian killings as genocide. It
is commemorated on April 24.

The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey
accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in
1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this
constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians
and foreign parliaments.

In a statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic
said the Cypriot resolution was “null and void to us and not worthy
of comment.”

“Those who have tried to exploit the events of 1915 at every
opportunity by using base political calculations have not been able to
achieve any result until now and won’t do so in the future,” he added.

Armenia accuses the Ottoman authorities at the time of systematically
massacring large numbers of Armenians and deporting many more,
including women, children, the elderly and infirm, in terrible
conditions on so-called death marches.

The issue has long been a source of tension between Turkey and
several Western countries, especially the United States and France,
both home to large ethnic Armenian diasporas. Cyprus, too, has an
Armenian population.

Cyprus has been at loggerheads with Turkey for decades. Its ethnic
Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations have lived estranged in the
south and north respectively since 1974. Seeds of division were sown
earlier when a power-sharing government crumbled amid violence in 1963.

Thursday’s resolution was passed by Greek Cypriot lawmakers, who now
make up the island’s only internationally recognized parliament.

CYPRUS AMENDS LAW TO CRIMINALIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL

Associated Press International
April 2, 2015 Thursday 1:37 PM GMT

NICOSIA, Cyprus

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) – Cyprus’ parliament has legislated to criminalize
the denial of the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by
Ottoman Turks a century ago.

Parliamentary speaker Yiannakis Omirou says that through a unanimous
vote, lawmakers can make denial of any historically proven massacre
a crime.

Omirou said after a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Thursday
that Cyprus was the first country to raise the issue of recognizing
the Armenian genocide at the U.N. General Assembly in 1965. The event
is widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying
the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Armenians mark the centenary of the killings on April 24.

100-meter long Armenian tricolor flag was waved in front of Bundestag

14:15, 4 April, 2015

YEREVAN, 4 APRIL, ARMENPRESS. On April 3, a 100 meter long Armenian
tricolor flag symbolizing the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide was waved in front of the Bundestag (National Assembly) of
Germany in Berlin. As the event organizer, “Tigran Mets” Charitable
Foundation reports to “Armenpress”, near the building, President of
the Foundation, participant of the Artsakh liberation struggle,
photojournalist Srapion Gevorgyan was joined by active members of the
German-Armenian community, after which a flashmob was held at the
coast of Shpre River. The Armenians of Germany waved the 100-meter
Tricolor Flag symbolizing the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide in front of the Bundestag and respected the memory of the
innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide with 100 seconds of silence.

The participants of the action also waved the tricolor flags at the
place where Soghomon Tehleryan had shot Minister of Internal Affairs
of the Young Turks and main organizer of the Armenian Genocide, Talaat
Pasha as part of Operation Nemsis on March 15, 1921.

After being waved in different parts of Armenia and Artsakh and in
the Armenian Diaspora, the 100-meter Tricolor made by members of
“Tigran Mets” Charitable Foundation will be placed on top of Mount
Ararat in April.

Bankruptcy supervisor demands a bribe of 12 thousand US dollars

12:58 | April 4,2015 | Official

During the preliminary investigation of a criminal case examined in RA
Special Investigation Service the director of LL Company Seyran K.
informed that the bankruptcy supervisor of the LLC on October 7, 2014
demanded from him a bribe in the amount of 10 thousand US dollars to
prolong the process of alienation of the reals estates by auction,
mortgaged in the bank with the purpose of securing the fulfilment of
the credit liabilities of LL Company, and thus to grant him an
opportunity to acquire the mortgaged property. Besides, conditioned by
a problem in the bookkeeping documents of LL Company, the bankruptcy
supervisor also demanded from him a bribe of 2 thousand US dollars.

A new criminal case has been instituted in RA Special Investigation
Service on materials of the criminal case instituted against an
official carrying out special state service – the judge of Lori Marz
(region) General Jurisdiction Court Khachatur Khachatryan and the
accomplished preliminary investigation thereof pursuant to part 3,
Article 200 of RA Criminal Code.

Preliminary investigation is underway.

SIS

Analyst: Armenia can play major role in transfer of Iran energy resources

12:52, 04.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia, Iran
Theme: Politics, Analytics

YEREVAN. – The international agreement that was reached on Thursday,
and with respect to Iran’s nuclear program, has a great importance for
Armenia, Iranian Studies specialist Rudik Yaralyan told Armenian
News-NEWS.am.

In his view, Armenia, which maintains neighborly relations with Iran,
now will get the opportunity to collaborate with this country, and in
the energy sector, first and foremost.

“Once the sanctions [on Iran] are lifted, Iran will attempt to draw a
roadmap, whereby its energy resources shall be exported to Europe,”
Yaralyan said, and added: “And in this sense, Armenia, being on its
path, may play an unprecedented role.”

The analyst did not consider the option of exporting the Iranian
energy resources via Azerbaijan to be feasible.

“Azerbaijan has traditionally been under Turkey’s political pressure,
and therefore Turkey itself will obstruct that, first of all,” the
Iranian studies specialist noted, and added; “In the case of
Azerbaijan, its interests will be disregarded, and that country will
stay out of the game.”

Armenia News – NEWS.am

Global Decline in Sugar Prices Not Reflected in the Armenian Market

04.04.2015 11:46 epress.am

Food prices around the world have been decreasing at a fast rate; in
particular, global prices of sugar and vegetable oils fell to their
lowest level since 2009,Haykakan Zhamanak daily wrote on Saturday,
April 4. However, as the daily pointed out, the global dip in the
prices is not reflected in the food prices in Armenia, even when the
majority of these products is imported.

According to the official statistics, sugar prices in Armenia have
increased by 10 percent in the past year, while in the global market
the prices went down by 23 percent (within a year, the price per ton
went down to $367 from its previous value of $480 on the London Stock
Exchange).

“Taking into account the devaluation of the national currency in this
period, sugar prices in Armenia should have been reduced by almost 9
percent, i.e., the price per kilo should be AMD 325, rather than the
current AMD 370, in which case the sugar importer (“manufacturer”)
would not have lost anything in revenues. Meanwhile, the current sugar
importer, “Alex Grig” company, which has “no relation to Samvel
Aleksanyan whatsoever,” receives an additional profit of 45 drams per
kilo of sugar. That amounts to AMD 4,5 billion, or $9 million a year,”
the daily wrote.

Note, the monopoly on sugar imports to Armenia belongs to “Alex Grig”
company which is owned by ruling Republican Party MP, oligarch Samvel
Aleksanyan.

ARMENIE
L’Arménie construit un parc solaire de 30 MW

L’Arménie a annoncé le lancement de la construction d’un parc solaire
de 30 MW dès 2016.

Pour rappel, la centrale nucléaire de Metsamor couvre environ 30% des
besoins énergétiques du pays. 41,9% de l’électricité est également
fournie par une centrale thermique, et 29,2% par une centrale
hydroélectrique. Le pays a tendance à privilégier la construction de
petites centrales hydroélectriques pour préparer sa transition
énergétique mais il fait des efforts notables pour se diversifier
notamment dans la géothermie et l’éolien (0,03% de l’électricité
produite).

samedi 4 avril 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

“Angels” and “Demons” of Film Director Hovhannes Galstyan

Hovhaness Galstyan: ArmInfo’s interview with film director Hovhaness
Galstyan, the winner of Hayak Armenian
National Film Award 2012 and international film festivals for the film
“Bonded Parallels.”

by Karina Manukyan
Saturday, April 4, 20:38

What kind of heroines does the national cinematography need?

Armenian cinema needs true heroines and honesty, in general. Not
pseudo-honesty. This requires talent, experience and stagecraft.
Otherwise, it is impossible to make a great movie.

What do you mean by saying a true heroine? Is she strong or weak? Is
she a woman who fights for her happiness or the one that reconciles
herself to her lot?

True means alive. If you watch a woman in the film and you can’t get
her off your mind for a day, two, and five years, it means that she
was a true heroine.

She can be both strong and weak at the same time. I mean the heroine,
not the actress.

The heroines in your film “Bonded Parallels” are very interesting.
They do not afraid of being criticized. They just strive for
happiness. Why did you choose such heroines? Was it a deliberate
decision or happy coincidence?

My heroines had real prototypes. That’s not the issue, however.
Insincerity penetrates deep into the mind of the author and then into
the characters he creates, if the author cares for such unnatural
things as public opinion etc. The author should discover himself,
analyze his own angel and demon, and then create his like. Art is
privacy, even such collective art is movie.

Have you already discovered your angel and demon?

Well, I am still discovering.

What about the heroine of your new film “Lucid Place?”

The principal character in “Lucid Place” is a man, but he is in the
company of women, Marie and Janette. The other characters unveil him.
That is why these two women are very important to me and to him.
“Lucid Place” is my first film where I try to seriously research a
male character. As strange as it may seem, these two women help me
discover him. This shows how often we do not understand ourselves and
how hard it is to discover your own ‘angels’ and ‘demons.’ My hero is
Gabriel – a choreographer at 44 – I should have known him very well,
inherently. However, I had worked on the character for 2 years until
those two women helped me discover him.

Do you mean that only a woman can discover a man?

The character is revealed when he occurs in an unusual situation and
has to make crucial decisions. His choice, not the set phrases that
flooded the movie, is what demonstrates that he is a true and
autonomous character. The hero needs action, which is impossible
unless he is not alone. He needs also other heroes. In my film, these
are heroines. However, if Gabriel were a football player or a miner,
maybe, I would reveal him with help of other male heroes… In the
“Lucid Place,” women reveal the hero. However, it is not an axiom.

Have you already decided where to shoot the film?

We have decided the place. However, it is very hard to decide when to
start. Thanks to our partner, the location outside Armenia is found –
it is the south of France, Languedoc. We have chosen the location
inside Armenia too. We will start shooting as soon as the financial
bag is full by 70%-80%. I will not dare to start, unless there is
sufficient funding, like I did when making the “Bonded Parallels.”
Then I sought to make my first film to prove to myself that I can do
it. Now, I have different goals.

What are your goals now?

To be caution with compromises and do everything to the maximum.

You said the true image of a woman lives for years. Can you name the
heroines you can’t get off your mind?

Julianna from The Red Desert. I am still in love with her.

How has she gained your heart?

She was full of life, impressive, huggable. I was 16 then, not older.
I was at high school.

I cannot but ask you. What kind of honesty do you think the Armenian
cinema needs?

I cannot say what is the honesty formula, but a man always strives for
the truth. Lie, hypocrisy, falsehood are abhorrent to human beings. A
spectator feels falsehood at once. He either leaves cinema or watches
the film till the end with disgust. False films cannot enjoy
popularity. When we learn to make films that will be screen
internationally, we will realize what honesty we lacked. So far, we
have nothing to do but pretend that we have what to be proud of. Some
15 films are screened in the country every year and very few of them
enjoy popularity… To call it cinematography is self-deception.

A good film that will “break into Hollywood” requires good funding.

Georgian film “Corn Island” and the Georgian-Estonian film
“Tangerines” broke into Hollywood, let alone Alejandro González
Iñárritu. Integration process is not easy: it requires talent, luck,
policy, cinematic environment… Many of the films made in Armenia lack
this all.

You are very critical about the local cinematography…

Not me, but the professional cinematography society. I just try to
look into the reasons of such situation. Our films have neither been
presented at big festivals nor screened internationally for 25 years
already. As long as we don’t care for that, we will continue to watch,
not make, great films.