Author: Badalian Vardan

news.am, Armenia
Oct 22 2011

Russia urges US to show respect – Russian FM

October 22, 2011 | 14:36

MOSCOW. – Russia understands US interests in Central Asia and South
Caucasus, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov stated on the air of a Russian
radio station.

`Russia is quite respectful toward them as states [in Central Asia and
South Caucasus] that have the right to choose their partners. That is
why the interests which the United States, European countries, and
other countries have in Central Asia and South Caucasus are dictated
by those regions’ important territorial position in terms of the
danger of terrorism and drug trafficking, and this touches upon the
interests of Russia, Europe, and US.

The issue is about the energy transport conduits which pass through
that territory and connect the East and the West. We understand these
interests, but we also want for the interests of non-regional players
to be carried out in this geopolitical region by way of respecting the
interests of local states and the Russian Federation, too, taking into
account the close ties that connect us with the former Soviet Union
countries of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and European neighbors,’
Russian FM concluded.

Two Italians arrested in Yerevan over fraud charges

13:41 – 22.10.11

Police have apprehended two Italians in Yerevan suspected of
orchestrating large-scale frauds.

According to a press release by the police, a 62-yearl-old Yerevan
resident came to Arabkir police station on October 21 and said he
recognized Vincenco Torino and Antonio Kave when he saw them in a TV
program called Duty Section.

The Yerevan resident claimed the Italians had abused his trust and
taken the equivalent of 900 euros in Armenian drams.

Vincenco Torino and Antonio Kave have been arrest and an investigation
is underway.

Tert.am

Hraparak: The `brain’ of the gang group
10:25 – 22.10.11

The paper claims it has learned that Surik Hakobyan, the father of
Artiusha Hakobyan who was recently arrested on suspicion of heading a
gang group that committed several robberies in Yerevan, met with
Armenia’s Police Chief Alik Sargsyan.

Hakobyan told the paper that the meeting was held upon his request.

Hakobyan said he asked police chief to make sure who wants to
recognize his son as the head of the gang group, claming that his both
sons arrested during that raid, are innocent.

`I said, `but did you find anything from my son’s house> Does anybody
know him or has anybody seen him being there,” said he, adding that
Alik Sargsyan, however, said it was Artiusha Hakobyan who led the gang
group.

Tert.am

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT AND OSCE MEDIATORS DISCUSS KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS

news.am
Oct 21 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN.- President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan received on Friday
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Bernard Fassier, Robert Bradtke, Igor
Popov and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office
Andrzej Kasprzyk.

The officials discussed the issues related to current stage of the
Karabakh peace process, presidential press service informed Armenian
News-NEWS.am.

President Sargsyan and the mediators also touched upon necessity to
strengthen confidence measures between the parties to the conflict.

SARKOZY IN THE CAUCASUS
by Kamer Kasim

JOURNAL OF TURKISH WEEKLY

Oct 21 2011

USAK Center for EU Studies

During his recent visit to Armenia, President Nicolas Sarkozy of
France made statements which sparked reaction in both Turkey and
Azerbaijan. This was not just because they reflected a general
tendency by France to accept Armenians’ historical claims against
Turkey but also because they contained messages regarding Turkey. It is
well-known that the Armenian diaspora has an established place in the
French political system. During election campaigns French politicians
endorse Armenia and Armenian claims of genocide in order to pick up
Armenian votes. President Sarkozy’s remarks have to be viewed within
the context of the presidential elections due in France in 2012. In
addition it is striking that the French president’s visit to the
countries of the southern Caucasus. Because of its petrol and natural
gas resources, as well as its population size and income levels,
Azerbaijan is usually considered to be the most important country of
the southern Caucasus, but despite France’s energy interests in this
country, Sarkozy gave priority to Armenian.

Azerbaijan will no doubt closely review this fact.

France is also the co-chairman of the Minsk Group, set up by the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to resolve
the Nagorno Karabagh dispute. The Minsk Group has not only failed
to find a solution and France in particular has not maintained
an impartial stand. In March 2008 the UN General Assembly adopted
a resolution concerning occupied Azerbaijani territory. Both the
co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group voted against the resolution
which stressed the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and called on
Armenian forces to withdraw from the Azerbaijani territory that they
are occupying. This shook Azerbaijani confidence in the Minsk Group.

Inside the EU there was discussion about the possible removal of
France from the joint chairmanship of the Minsk Group and the EU being
represented there instead. France vehemently opposes this proposal.

France is trying to play a role in the Middle East and the Caucasus
out of proportion to its strengths and its actions there suggest that
it places its French identity about its EU identity. Turkey possesses
more soft power than France does in the Middle East and Caucasus and
its influence there is steadily growing. The transformation which
we call the ‘Arab Spring’ is causing the emergence of a style of
popularly-based government and in the future this factor will operate
even more in favour of Turkey. This situation makes France uneasy.

Sarkozy opposes Turkey’s accession to the EU and he regards the
Armenian genocide claims as an instrument to deploy against the
Turkish candidacy. The French head of state jumbles historical facts
and cannot confront his own history, so naturally there is nothing
whatsoever that he can say to Turkey.

Looking specifically at Sarkozy’s visit to the southern Caucasus,
it was the messages relating to his own domestic politics delivered
during the Armenian leg of the journey which attracted attention.

During his visit to Azerbaijan, the essential stress was on cooperation
between the two countries in the field of energy. Another noteworthy
point was that Sarkozy’s called for talks on the Karabagh Problem
to be reviewed within the framework of the Minsk Group and that
he sounded excessively optimistic on the subject. During his visit
to Armenian, Sarkozy remarked that the existing status of Nagorno
Karabagh was not sustainable indefinitely and this was favourably
received in Azerbaijan. But Sarkozy does not hold that the occupation
of Azerbaijani territory there should end and that UN Resolutions
on the issue should be enforced. The President’s visit to Georgia
was taken up with discussions of events during the Russian-Georgian
conflict of 2008 and subsequently. As France was president of the EU
at the time of the crisis, Sarkozy met President Medvedev then and
a six point Declaration of Principles was agreed.

This declaration made the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a matter
for international discussion but Russia has nonetheless recognized
the independence of these two areas. Sarkozy stated that he had
been able to obtain the maximum result by obtaining the withdrawal
of Russian forces from all Georgian territory outside Abkhazia and
South Ossetia and these remarks were criticised by some observers in
Georgia. Alexander Rondeli, President of the Georgian Foundation for
Strategic and International Studies, says that the situation being
described as a ‘maximum result’ was not really a gain if it simply
secured the withdrawal of Russian forces from territory occupied in
August 2008 and not that occupied earlier.

In neither of its roles – whether in its efforts to find a solution for
Nagorno Karabagh as joint chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group or in the
quest for a settlement in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008
and later – France has not been an effective player. What is more,
these were issues where the EU could play an effective role by acting
in unison, but by suppressing the EU role and giving priority to its
own issues, France has impaired the influence of the EU.

DR. KEVORKIAN’S FAMILY WANTS HIS PAINTINGS BACK AND THE LAS VEGAS MOB EXPERIENCE FILES FOR CHAPTER 11

mediabistro.com

Oct 21 2011

Museum News in Brief

Two pieces of random museum news to share to close out the week
for this writer. First, the organization that you would think had
found the perfect subject matter in the perfect locale with the most
perfect visitor base has run into some trouble. Earlier this week, the
Las Vegas Mob Experience museum filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The
museum had opened just this past spring and apparently had spent too
much constructing its building only to receive too few visitors.

However, despite being in debt to the tune of just shy of $6 million,
the Wall Street Journal reports that a holding corporation may have
stepped in to help buy it out of its troubles.

Elsewhere, and completely unrelated unless you tie the two together by
having museum in common, the Armenian Library and Museum of America in
a suburb of Boston is fighting off the estate of right-to-die activist
Dr. Jack Kevorkian over 17 works of art the recently deceased doctor
had painted. The AP reports that the family wants to include the
pieces in an auction next week of the doctor’s effects and estimates
the paintings, many of which “depict death or dying and could provoke
or disturb viewers” are worth somewhere between $2.5 and $3.5 million
(one of the paintings was made “with a pint of his own blood”). The
counter-argument argues that the pieces were donated specifically
to the museum, where they have hung since 1999. The family debates
that, saying Kevorkian only lent the art to the museum temporarily
while he was serving a lengthy prison sentence for assisting in a
patient’s suicide.

MAN WHO DIDN’T KNOW HIS RACE SPEAKS
By Amy Schweitzer

Grand Island Independent

Oct 20 2011

Imagine discovering you are not the person, or even the race, you
grew up thinking you were.

Michael Fosberg, the keynote speaker at the Multicultural Coalition
Conference in Grand Island Thursday, found out when he was in his
30s that his biological father is African-American.

He told his story of self-discovery of family and race in a one-man
play he wrote about his life. It is called “Incognito.”

After Fosberg~Rs mother and stepfather divorced in the early 1990s,
he began asking questions about his father, whom he hadn~Rt seen
since he was 2 years old.

“It was like I~Rm a jigsaw puzzle and there is this one last piece
missing that I need to find to complete the picture,” he said he told
his mother.

Knowing only his father~Rs name and the last city he was known to
have lived in, Fosberg was able to find his father. But in the first
phone call, he learned his mother had left out a few details.

“There~Rs one thing I~Rm sure your mother never told you ~W I~Rm
African-American,” his father told him. Because Fosberg has very
light skin, he had never guessed he was part black.

“I went from growing up in a middle class white family to being a
black man in the blink of an eye,” Fosberg said, adding that at first
he was angry with his mother for not telling him sooner, but then a
friend helped him realize what she had probably gone through as her
parents forced her to come live with them.

She was a 19-year-old, first-generation immigrant Armenian girl in 1957
forced to leave the man she loved to return to a mostly hostile family
environment and raise her child as a single mother, Fosberg said.

Once he met his father, whom he looks just like, and the rest of his
“black family,” he started thinking about where he stood as far as
race was considered.

“What race am I? Am I white? Am I black?” Fosberg asked himself,
adding that he believed he was more than a label or a race.

“I’m a triple A – African-American-Armenian,” Fosberg with a smile,
also wondering if he is “less black” because he was never persecuted
for his race growing up.

“I was not raised black. I did not live through the black experience.

I was not singled out because of the color of my skin,” he said. “Did
I have to have that experience to be black?”

He told the audience that he has come to believe that although
ethnic groups certainly share some cultural similarities, everyone
has different experiences.

“There are cultural differences among all of us,” Fosberg explained.

“There is no one black experience or white experience or Hispanic
experience.”

Always an actor, about seven years after finding his father, he first
performed “Incognito” and he has been performing it for schools,
civic organizations and conferences for the past eight years.

“As a biracial person, and there are many of us now, we have an
obligation to help bridge the gap between the races and cultures,”
he said. “We all look for differences first. What if we looked for
similarities first?”

AZERBAIJANI LOBBY BEGINS TO GROW SPROUTS – NEWSPAPER

news.am
Oct 21 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN. – The Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional
Cooperation carried out several programs, in recent times, which deal
with a variety of European universities, Aravot daily writes. And
the Centre’s director Stepan Grigoryan recorded an interesting fact:

“There is a fairly large number of Azerbaijani academics who work
in very important European universities, which provide the future
presidents and other senior officials of those countries. They [the
Azerbaijani scholars] occupy significant positions. It is clear that
they introduce their ideology, [and] push forward their position,
which creates an environment. This is a process which later will
yield quality, and this is a result of precise and determined activity.

Tremendous amount of money is spent on those people, and it is not
surprising that Azerbaijani lobby is slowly beginning to grow sprouts,”
Aravot writes.

KARABAKH CONFLICT TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT WHILE DECIDING ON AZERBAIJAN’S -UN OFFICIAL

news.am
Oct 21 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN.- The membership of five new states to the UN Security Council
is still under discussion, UN Resident Coordinator/ UNDP Resident
Representative in Armenia Dafina Gercheva said at a press conference
on Friday.

Gercheva stated that Azerbaijan also claimed for the membership. While
making a decision, ding the fact of unsettled conflicts in the region,
especially Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, will be taken into account,
as well as the consequences which Azerbaijan’s possible membership
may have in efforts into settling the conflict.

She stressed that UN has no mediating function in the settlement of
Karabakh conflict. However, it supports OSCE MG sparing no effort
for solution to the conflict through peace and in accordance with
the international norms.

WAS IT REALLY GENOCIDE?

Namibia Economist

Oct 21 2011

Written by Administrator

Dear sir,
An often heard expression in connection with our past is ‘genocide’.

It is unclear what the genocide in the context of the uprising of
the Herero was. What makes a colonial war as ugly as the annihilation
wars waged in other parts of our world?

Let us look at examples that had an aim to eradicate peoples. The old
Romans fought such a war against the people of Karthago; Turkey tried
to exterminate the Armenians, Hitler went against the Jews and some
African people went against each other, for instance the Rwandan and
Burundi people will be a good modern example. Genocide is nothing less
than the serious, planned attempt to annihilate a people or part of it.

This was not the case in the then German-Southwest Africa. The Germans,
a mere handful of people, were truly invited by the Herero people
to protect them against the Nama people; the Herero and Germans
signed a contract. Even the Nama people, at a later stage, signed
such a contract and all the indigenous tribes accepted the rule of
the Kaiser. The Schutzgebiet and its hierarchy was established.

The Schutzgebiet was a rather poor country at that time. Besides the
enormous wide, ‘open’ space, little riches could be seen; the presence
of diamonds and uranium were unknown. The South produced nothing;
its people, the Nama and Oorlam tribes hunted or stole domestic stock
from each other and they made war against any opponent deemed weaker
than themselves, especially the Herero, from whom they stole cattle
by the hundreds of thousands over the years.

Yes, the Herero produced cattle, really lots of cattle. However,
these huge herds of cattle were their wealth and wealth in its final
form and seldom sold, seldom butchered – we all know it. Milk was a
staple food, not so the meat of the cattle. The Nama warlords sold
these cattle, mainly in exchange for weaponry, clothing, groceries
and alcohol from South African dealers.

What attracted the Germans were, indeed, the wide but actually not
so open, and rather waterless spaces and to acquire part of these
was their aim. However, the land, tormented by wars and its people
decimated, had to be appeased to make it fit for use. This was highly
important. It was also important for them to have cheap labour.

A ‘genocide’ on the Ovaherero and other tribes would not have served
their aims altogether and was never planned; an empty land, bare of
people would have made the colony worthless. We have to think again
about these facts before we attempt to speak about a ‘genocide war’.

And before we judge what happened about a hundred years ago, we have
to look at the general thinking of that time.

We also have to try to evaluate the human thinking about the [value]
of other human beings, about wars, imperialism, about how humans
justified wars and all of these issues and many more in relation of
the change of times and dynamics of perceptions.

If some of us try to judge what happened in a way to be ‘politically
correct’ now, they may be factually very wrong. They will be wrong
politically too. Today we are building a nation by looking forward.

Building monuments to remember a certain genocide will quickly expose
other ‘genocides’. Asking for reparations from Germany will certainly
open the way for our San and Damara people to ask for reparations
from the Herero and Nama who hunted these people down and killed or
enslaved them and drove them into the mountains and deserts. Both
Herero and Nama did it in the olden times, when their perceptions
of San and Damara were different from their perception about a human
being altogether.

P. Rudolf Windhoek (Letter shortened – Ed.)