Author: Badalian Vardan

Traffic through Upper Lars re-opens after halt

YEREVAN, September 1. /ARKA/. Traffic through Upper Lars border
checkpoint (Stepantsminda-Lars road) re-opened around 13:30-14:00 on
August 30 after the halt due to a landslide on August 20, Armenian’s
ministry of transport and communication reported.

About 150 cars crossed the border within the first hour of resumption.
Traffic for buses and trucks was re-opened on August 31.

The re-opening was scheduled for an earlier date, but was delayed due
to heavy rains on August 28-29 raising the water levels in the river
and flooding of the road.

The traffic will be closed again on Stepantsminda-Lars at night on the
next days to complete repair works, according to the report. -0–

Armenia and Karabakh Presidents visit Stepanakert’s “Silk plant” Co Ltd

13:23, 1 September, 2014

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. On 1st September Presidents of
the Artsakh Republic and the Republic of Armenia Bako Sahakyan and
Serzh Sargsyan visited the Stepanakert “Silk plant” Co Ltd and got
acquainted with the enterprise’s activities. The Central Information
Department of the Office of the Artsakh
Republic President informed “Armenpress” that the Presidents visited
the Great Partnership Company’s newly opened sewing workshop founded
by the Italian “Sartis” brand, which to open more than 450 new work
places.

President Sahakyan considered important the establishment of this
plant qualifying it as a successful example of international
cooperation capable of supplying high quality production for domestic
and foreign markets.

The Presidents were accompanied by vice premier Arthur Aghabekyan and
other officials.

ARMENIE
Grand Tobacco va installer un équipement moderne d’une valeur de 2,7
millions d’EURO

L’entreprise canado-arménienne basée à Erevan Grand Tobacco va
commander un équipement italien moderne une valeur de 2,7 millions
d’euros pour la coupe et le traitement des feuilles de tabac a annoncé
le directeur exécutif de l’entreprise Samvel Sahakian.

Il a parlé aux journalistes après que le président Serge Sarkissian
ait visité l’entreprise. Il a déclaré que le lancement du nouvel
équipement permettra de créer 130 nouveaux emplois.

Avec cet équipement la société est en mesure de traiter 3,8 tonnes par
heure. Selon Sahakian, le nouvel équipement permettra de minimiser la
teneur en goudron et en nicotine dans les cigarettes.

Selon Grand Holding, la co-propriétaire arménien de Grand Tobacco, 5,8
millions de $ ont été investis dans l’usine au cours des cinq premiers
mois de cette année. Ce chiffre est censé croître de 9 millions
jusqu’à la fin de l’année.

L’argent a été utilisé pour l’achat d’un équipement allemand moderne
qui peut produire 8000 cigarettes par minute, ainsi que sur l’achat de
lignes de conditionnement italiens avec une capacité de production de
400 paquets par minute.

lundi 1er septembre 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

AZERBAIDJAN
Bakou critique le sénat de Californie

L’Azerbaïdjan a dénoncé jeudi le sénat de l’État de Californie de
pousser le gouvernement américain à reconnaître le Haut-Karabagh comme
une république indépendante.

Le Sénat de Californie a adopté une résolution correspondante
mercredi, trois mois après son passage par la chambre basse de la
Chambre de l’Etat américain où résident des centaines de milliers
d’Arméniens.

La résolution dit que le Karabagh a été > et incorporé dans
l’Azerbaïdjan soviétique malgré >. > dit le
document fortement soutenu par des groupes de lobbying
arméno-américains.

L’ambassade américaine a minimisé jeudi la résolution en disant que la
politique étrangère est la prérogative exclusive du gouvernement
fédéral à Washington. La politique américaine sur le conflit du
Karabagh ne sera donc pas affectée par le projet de loi en Californie
a déclaré l’ambassade dans un communiqué cité par l’agence de presse
azérie APA.

Cette déclaration intervient quelques heures seulement après que le
ministère des Affaires étrangères de l’Azerbaïdjan ait rejeté la
résolution comme un simple >. Le porte-parole du
ministère, Elman Abdullayev, a déclaré aux journalistes que cela est
le résultat de fortes pressions exercées par >.

Good education is deed, not just words, says Armenian education professional

10:55 * 01.09.14

Ahead of the September 1 Knowledge Day, Tert.am has interviewed Anahit
Bakhshyan, a deputy director of the National Institute of Education.
Commenting on younger generation’s education and upbringing, the
education official said she believes that it is important to have good
examples on the upper levels of government to breed responsibility in
the younger generation.

What do you find to be a number one problem in our educational system?

It is to prepare good citizens for the Republic of Armenia; I mean
educating a human being who knows the law and his or her rights, as
well as the rights of others to be able to protect and be protected
and to serve the country. For me, this is the most important thing. My
experience shows that the children having the seed of a good citizen
do well at school and know what to do to be useful.

What prevents your words from becoming a reality?

Those children do not have that example. To make our school-children
patriotic and responsible citizens, it is necessary to have such
examples on the upper levels. But because our authorities have few
examples of the kind – I don’t say they do not have any at all – they
should never expect the society to become more civil. Today’s society
is more civil as it is than it was a couple of year ago.

As you spoke about patriotism, schools have now introduced new
subjects that still need to pass a probation period. The Ministry of
Education and Science, in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense
and the volunteers’ union Yerkrapah [Defender of Land]. is elaborating
a concept aimed at patriotic-military education.

It is impossible to have such a subject. I am very sorry to note that
Mr Ashotyan [the minister of education and science] is an author of
such an initiative, but knowing him, I say that he very well knows or
must be aware that this isn’t something to be achieved through a
concept. Patriotic-military education is something every teacher has
to put into his or her subject if that person is really a patriot and
a devotee. It’s a problem every teacher has to resolve while teaching
each subject. No system is needed for them. I have to return to my
previous statement that a patriotic education is an example of
upbringing. If the government today equips and takes care of a school
in a border village the same way as it does in the capital, a child
who is growing up will say, ‘my country loves me, so I love my country
too, and I will serve it. Patriotism is a deed, not a word.

Armenian News – Tert.am

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Aug 29 2014

Armenian soldier detained in Azerbaijan freed

29 August 2014 – 5:45pm

Armenian serviceman Akop Indzhigulyan, who had been detained in
Azerbaijan, has recently been freed and handed over to some other
country, the Azerbaijani branch of the International Red Cross
Committee says in a statement.

The soldier was detained on August 7-8, 2013 in the vicinity of Agdam.

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Aug 29 2014

OSCE Minsk Group should react to Yazidis’ colonization of Karabakh,
Azerbaijan says

29 August 2014 – 4:59pm

The OSCE Minsk Group should react to the colonization of
Nagorno-Karabakh by Yazidis launched by the Armenian authorities, the
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry says in a statement. According to
Azerbaijan, such a move prevents a peaceful resolution of the conflict
and violates the Geneva convention.

Lawyers and political analysts interviewed by Vestnik Kavkaza agreed
that the move violates international law.

According to the Director of the Diplomatic Resolution of
International Controversies Centre of the Russian Academy of Economy
and State Administration, Dmitry Matveyev, the decision made by
Armenia is by all means illegal.

“Because Nagorno-Karabakh and seven neighbopuring districts of
Azerbaijan are recognized by the international community as a part of
Azerbaijan, any moves taken by Armenia, including accommodation of
refugees, is illegitimate,” the expert said.

The Deputy Director General of Information and Analysis Centre of the
University of Moscow, Alexander Karayev, noted that he deplores the
fact that even though the international community condemns such
actions it has no possibility of preventing them.

Global Voices Online
Aug 30 2014

Azerbaijan’s President Doesn’t Really Get Twitter. He Doesn’t Really
Get Azerbaijan, Either

Whatever country Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev is tweeting
about, it can’t be Azerbaijan.

In Azerbaijan, innocent men and women are thrown into jail on trumped
up charges. Corruption is so ingrained that the Organized Crime and
Corruption Reporting project named Aliyev as its Person of the Year in
2012. Public morale is low, people live in a constant state of fear,
and the dominant regime rigs its way to victory at every election. Nor
are things good with the neighbors: the ongoing conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan, more than two decades old, isn’t about to
resolve itself any time soon.

But one man sees Azerbaijan through a different lens. Ilham Aliyev,
who inherited the position of Head of State from his father, Heydar
Aliyev, is not only of the opinion that Azerbaijan is doing well, but
that it is winning on every front ` politically, economically, and
most importantly, militarily. To share his opinions Aliyev takes to
Twitter where one can find him under @presidentaz. For anyone familiar
with Azerbaijani realities, the presidential feed is bitterly ironic,
if at times darkly entertaining.

The persons in charge of President Aliyev’s Twitter account seem to
have little knowledge of the platform and its aim. The president’s
tweets often end in (cont) and a link to the `Twit longer’ app, more
or less defeating the purpose of Twitter. Elsewhere in the post-Soviet
world, authoritarians have figured out that succinct means success in
social media. But Aliyev’s feed reads like one long speech regularly
interrupted by a pesky 140 character limit. Often the tweets on his
English-language feed lack grammar and appear to contradict
themselves.

Most problematically of all, though ‘ the feed is full of lies.

Azerbaijan is probably the freest country in the world

One of the topics Aliyev is happiest to tweet about is freedom and how
much of it Azerbaijan has. Apparently, plenty:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

The freedom of assembly is fully guaranteed in our country. The
freedom of religion is also fully provided in our country.

Religious rights organization Forum 18, disagrees, noting: ‘freedom of
religion or belief and related human rights such as the freedom of
expression and of assembly remain highly restricted’ in Azerbaijan.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

The freedom of assembly is fully guaranteed in our country. The
freedom of religion is also fully provided in our country.

4:54 AM – 16 Jun 2014

Religious rights organization Forum 18, disagrees, noting: ‘freedom of
religion or belief and related human rights such as the freedom of
expression and of assembly remain highly restricted’ in Azerbaijan.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

We`ve put a lot of efforts to develop democracy, rule of law, provide
fundamental freedoms.

Again, the ongoing crackdown in Azerbaijan paints a different picture.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

We stand for the freedom of the media because freedom of the media
means democracy. The media help the (cont)

Aliyev’s critics maintain the country’s leadership has ensured no such
media exists. So-called `linkages between the government and society’
come in the form of cheap shows about dating, marriage, and news
segments that have very little respect for journalism.

Reporters Without Borders rated Azerbaijan 160th out of 180 countries
in its 2014 Press Freedom Index.

We love peace but we are always ready for war. Always.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Only the peace-loving policy of the Azerbaijani state is a guarantor
of stability in the region.

It is hard to say which stability @presidentaz is talking about and
what is meant by the general reference to the `region’. The conflict
with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh has simmered since before
independence, boiling over in sporadic border fights between the two
countries.

In early August @presidentaz caught the attention of the world media
by threatening to reignite war with Armenia after the deaths of
Azerbaijani soldiers in contested territory.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

The war is not over. Only the first stage of it is. But the second
stage may start too.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Just as we have beaten the Armenians on the political and economic
fronts, we are able to defeat them on the battlefield.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

We will restore all of the occupied and destroyed cities. We will
return to this land, we live and will live with this idea.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

We will restore our sovereignty. The flag of Azerbaijan will fly in
all the occupied territories, including Shusha and Khankandi.

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Our position is based on justice and international law. Our principled
stance has earned us further respect both in the region and the world

A global role model

As the country develops @presidentaz believes `the reputation of
Azerbaijan is gradually enhancing’. In fact, his government is doing
so well, it can serve as an inspiration for other states around the
world.

In fighting corruption:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Azerbaijan`s experience which completely eliminates corruption and
ensures transparency in provision of (cont)

`Collecting money’:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

If transparency had not been provided, we could not have collected so
much money.

Providing housing:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

By the end of this year the number of handed out apartments will reach 500.

And ensuring equality:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Equitable distribution of national wealth is one of the major
achievements of our country. As a result, the (cont)

Finally, if any of that seems like fantasy, @presidentaz reminds readers:

Ilham Aliyev `’ @presidentaz Follow

Our words never differ from our actions.

For more continue reading directly from his Twitter account @presidentaz.

RELIGION
L’appel des patriarches des Eglises d’Orient

Pas moins de huit patriarches et chefs des Églises orientales viennent
de lancer un appel déchirant à la communauté internationale pour
stigmatiser les . Réunis le 27 août à Bkerké (Liban), le siège du
patriarcat maronite (fidèle au Vatican), ils ont appelé le monde à
assumer leur responsabilité dans . Ils demandent à
la communauté internationale de ne pas se tromper d’adversaires et d’>.

dimanche 31 août 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

The Cut review: Fatih Akin’s Armenian genocide epic draws blood

Tahar Rahim is a mute father searching for his children in the
aftermath of a conflict cinema has tended to neglect. His story is
compassionately handled, but the film lacks the subtlety of Akin’s
earlier, non-English language work

Peter Bradshaw in Venice

theguardian.com, Sunday 31 August 2014 12.10 BST

Echoes of Pasolini’s Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew …
Rahim with daughters in The Cut.Photograph: Indiewire

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
asked Adolf Hitler, and this mass murder in 1915 by the Ottomans of
the minority Armenian population is still a hugely controversial
subject, especially in Turkey where there is resistance to assuming a
retrospective burden of genocidal shame. Fatih Akin, the
German-Turkish film-maker, has made it the starting-point for a
heartfelt, if soapy Zhivago-ish quest epic, his first English-language
movie; he directs, produces and co-writes with Mardik Martin, the
veteran screenwriter who worked with Scorsese on Raging Bull and Mean
Streets.

It’s a big, ambitious, continent-spanning piece of work, concerned to
show the Armenian horror was absorbed into the bloodstream of
immigrant-descended population in the United States, but it is a
little simplistic emotionally, especially in its latter half as the
film trudges across America with its hero. It doesn’t have the
sophisticated nuance and wit of Akin’s contemporary German-language
movies, like Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007).

A still from The Cut Photograph: Indiewire

This horrifying historical episode is neglected in the cinema —
although Atom Egoyan addressed it in his 2002 film Ararat; Akin takes
it on in good faith, although Armenian communities may take exception
to the fact that he actually dramatises, on screen, the brutal deaths
of 30 or so victims. The part can stand for the whole of course, but
the total numbers involved are not specified.

Tahar Rahim plays the embattled hero Nazareth, a blacksmith and
Armenian Christian who is torn from his wife and twin daughters by the
Ottoman authorities for a supposed military conscription which is
nothing more than slave labour on a work gang and a forced march
heading to racial annihilation. But he encounters decent Turks: a
civilian prisoner who pretends to cut his throat at the orders of a
soldier, but merely stabs him in the neck, leaving Nazareth alive but
mute. Nazareth scrambles away, an undead fugitive from history: a crew
of Turkish army deserters help him with food and water.

He is finally taken in by a soap manufacturer: the ambiguous metaphor
is there if we want it — the soap which genuinely cleanses, or merely
something with which powerful people will wash their hands of
responsibility. The manufacturer attempts to give some of his wares to
soldiers, and calls after them: “The whores of Aleppo will thank you!”
Poor, mute Nazareth becomes obsessed with one thing: finding his
daughters, now young women, a mission which will take him on a journey
of thousands of miles.

A still from The Cut Photograph: PR

It is this journey which is frankly the film’s weaker aspect. There is
little historical or political contention in it, and not much actual
drama; the horror itself recedes in the memory to be replaced by a
long search and a long haul, with disappointments verging on the
farcical, in the course of which Rahim’s character does not grow or
change that much. He remains pretty boyish-looking, despite some grey
hairs at the end. (At the beginning of the movie, in fact, he has a
look of Pasolini’s Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew.) And
he is mute, of course, which means that there is not much in the
script for Tahar Rahim to work with, and he gives what amounts to a
very subdued performance although interestingly one moment when he
does comes alive is in his entranced reaction to a silent movie show:
Chaplin in The Kid. Nazareth’s eyes light up like a child’s.

But otherwise the movie is not much leavened with comedy or happiness.
It’s understandable. The Cut can mean the brutal act of murder itself;
it can mean the division of husbands from wives, parents from
children, and it can mean the present from the past, the insidious
amputation of memory. Whether The Cut encompasses this last sense is
up for debate, but it is a forceful, watchable, strongly presented
picture and a courageous, honest gesture from Fatih Akin.