Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

ANALYST: FOUR NON-COALITION PARLIAMENTARY FACTIONS ARE PART OF “CORRUPTION PIE”

[ Part 2.2: “Attached Text” ]

April 07, 2014 | 19:04

YEREVAN. – Four non-coalition parliamentary factions are a part
of criminal oligarchic system and are struggling not for system
changes but for a part of “corruption pie”, analyst Ruben
Mehrabyan said.

Political scientist recalled that famous political forces have
repeatedly reached deals with this system to the detriment of
citizens. Consequently, Mehrabyan said there is neither a group of
four, nor opposition. There is only six parties in the parliament.

This is the reason why National Assembly is the main obstacle to the
implementation of reforms in the country.

“The parliament has become not even a theater, but circus. In
these circumstances, the only way to achieve changes is to form
new political forces from among the members of Armenian civil
movements,” he said.

From: Baghdasarian

ALT MEDIA COVERING HERSH EXPOSE

Seymour Hersh Reveal by Amy Goodman In Democracy Now & TruthOut

New Expose’ by Seymour Hersh by Patrick Martin
In World Socialist Webnews & CounterCurrents

Sy Hersh Does it Again by Michael Collins
In the Peoples Voice and OpEd News

Media Blackout Over Syria by Brad Hoff In Global Research & Levant
Report

Red Line & Rat Line by Sy Hersh In LRB, Information
Clearinghouse, Democratic Underground, Turkish Digest

From: Baghdasarian

Sarkisian & Sarkisian: Side By Side Exhibitions of Two Contemporary Artists

Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

‘Dusted’ by Peter Sarkisian

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.–The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is
presenting the long-overdue California survey of video artist Peter
Sarkisian (born 1965, Glendale, Calif.) in the exhibition “Sarkisian &
Sarkisian,” which also includes a survey of the artist’s father, Paul
Sarkisian (born 1928, Chicago, Ill.), a member of the avant-garde
movement in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s.

For the exhibition, OCMA Interim Director and Chief Curator Dan
Cameron selected 23 video sculptures by Peter Sarkisian along with 22
paintings by Paul Sarkisian to develop a thematic bridge between the
separate bodies of work; tying together two accomplished careers that
achieved distinctively different practices. The exhibition is on view
April 13 through July 27, 2014.

Although it employs a single title, “Sarkisian & Sarkisian” is
experienced as side-by-side survey exhibitions of two contemporary
artists who happen to be father and son, working in different media.
Paul has been an accomplished and dedicated painter for six decades,
while Peter studied film directing at Cal Arts and has produced video
installations since the mid-1990s. Within an exhibition layout in
which an equivalent amount of visual attention is dedicated to each
artist’s work, a connection between the two bodies of work emerges in
the shared artistic device of trompe l’oeil, whose translation as
“fool the eye” is an apt summation of how both artists use pictorial
illusion to achieve very different ends.

“Sarkisian & Sarkisian” began as a straightforward overview of nearly
twenty years of work by Peter Sarkisian, whose spatial integration of
film, video and sculpture results in precisely calibrated multi-media
works that consistently challenge the viewers’ perception of reality
and illusion. From the groundbreaking work Dusted (1998), which
utilized projection on the five faces of a cube to create the illusion
of a mother and infant son inside; to the comical/violent antics of
Registered Drive, Full Scale #1, (2010), in which a full-size model of
a Ferrari Modena body serves as the frame for a driving lesson from
hell, Sarkisian’s work employs video to punch through the spatial
limits of pictorial space.

One of the leading members of the generation of video-based sculptors
that emerged in the 1990s, Sarkisian’s work, while not as widely known
as that of older video artists like Gary Hill or Bill Viola, is widely
regarded among curators and writers within this still relatively
specialized field. As Sarkisian’s work follows its evolutionary arc to
his more recent robotic and levitation pieces, the technical
challenges he is forced to overcome become increasingly difficult for
ordinary viewers to grasp, and more hypnotically engaging.

Paul Sarkisian began his career in the mid-1950s as one of the
founding members of a cooperative gallery in Pasadena whose members
also included George Herms and Richard Pettibone. Although his work in
the 1950s was heavily indebted to abstract expressionism, by the early
1960s he was making assemblage-based paintings that led to large-scale
figurative paintings of an almost photographic precision. Early
exhibitions at Pasadena Art Museum (1968) and Santa Barbara Museum of
Art (1970) cemented his growing reputation as one of the most
promising of an emerging generation of painters, as did his
participation in documenta5 in Kassel, Germany, curated by Harald
Szeeman. In 1972, as a sign of his growing disillusionment with the
increasingly commercialized art market and the pigeon holing of his
work as ‘photo-realism; Sarksian moved with his wife and son to the
outskirts of Santa Fe, where the next decades of his artistic
development remained all but hidden from the art establishment.

As Sarkisian’s painting developed from realism to trompe l’oeil to
what became even more erroneously labeled as ‘abstract illusionism,’
his exploration of illusion was gradually supplanted by an a growing
emphasis on exploring the qualities of surface in abstract painting,
and his work increasingly emphasized large, open expanses of saturated
color and dense, opaque polymer resins. With less than twenty examples
of his work covering the years from 1971 to 2009, it is only possible
to touch on the high points of this development, but the monotypes
that occupied his attention in the 1990s, his giant monochromes of the
early 2000s, and his recent collaged abstractions are all sufficiently
represented to give viewers a taste for his unique artistic
trajectory.
“Sarkisian & Sarkisian” is curated by Interim Director and Chief
Curator Dan Cameron. Significant support for the exhibition is
provided by Dick and Dottie Barrett and the Levy Foundation

From: Baghdasarian

ITAR-TASS, Russia
April 5, 2014 Saturday 03:39 AM GMT+4

OSCE Minsk Group prepares meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian leaders – statement

VIENNA April 5

– Co-chairmen of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are preparing a meeting to be held soon
between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh
Sargsyan on the conflict settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, a
predominantly Armenian ethnic region in Azerbaijan, a joint statement
says.

The statement by co-chairmen from Russia, France and the United States
was issued after Friday’s meeting in Moscow with Azerbaijani and
Armenian foreign ministers Elmar Mamedyarov and Edward Nalbandian.

The ministers “discussed the possibility to hold the summit in the
near future, and stressed the importance of achieving progress on
specific issues”, the document says.

The statement authors also called on the top diplomats of Azerbaijan
and Armenia to “make serious steps to reduce tensions in the region
and continue the process of peace settlement”.

The previous meeting of Aliyev and Sargsyan took place in Vienna in
November 2013.

Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence from Azerbaijan at the end of the
1980s, which resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that
claimed the lives of 25,000-30,000 people between 1988 and 1994. Since
then, the territory has been controlled by Armenia.

The OSCE Minsk Group, which comprises Russia, France and the United
States, acts as a mediator in the conflict.

From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIE
Près de 4000 femmes à Erevan ont subi des examens médicaux gratuits

Près de 4000 femmes dans la capitale arménienne ont subi des examens
médicaux gratuits qui sont généralement payés dans le cadre d’une
campagne de printemps annoncée pour les femmes du 8 mars au 7 avril a
annoncé la municipalité d’Erevan.

La campagne est soutenue par la municipalité d’Erevan et le ministère
de la santé, et est dédié au mois des femmes qui va du 8 mars qui est
marqué comme étant la Journée internationale de la femme et au 7
avril, qui est marquée en Arménie comme la journée de la maternité et
de la beauté.

Dans ce laps de temps les femmes ont pu se rendre dans leurs
polycliniques et en cas de besoin ont reçu des services gratuits dans
les hôpitaux de la ville.

dimanche 6 avril 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

Photo
Il y a 20 ans, un génocide au Rwanda – Photos

Entre avril et juillet 1994, quelque 800 000 hommes, femmes et
enfants, principalement Tutsis, ont été massacrés au Rwanda. La
qualification de génocide pour désigner ces crimes et la conclusion
que l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) n’a su ni l’empêcher ni la
faire cesser plus tôt sont retenues, en novembre 1994, dans la
résolution du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU qui institue le Tribunal
pénal international pour le Rwanda, puis en 1999, par la commission
mandatée par le secrétaire général de l’ONU, Kofi Annan.

dimanche 6 avril 2014,
Jean Eckian (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

Armenian, Azeri FMs meet with OSCE MG Co-Chairs in Moscow

10:14 05/04/2014 » REGION

On April 4, Acting Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian,
Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov, OSCE Minsk Group
Co-Chairs Igor Popov, Jacques Faure, James Warlick, as well as
Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej
Kasprzyk met in Moscow, the press service of Armenian Foreign Ministry
reported.

The negotiations touched upon the possibility of arranging a
high-level meeting in the near future.

The Co-Chairs continued discussions with the Ministers on ways to move
forward the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

Source: Panorama.am

From: Baghdasarian

ANC discusses Armenia’s new political situation after PM’s resignation

April 05, 2014 | 17:15

YEREVAN. – The opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) convened a
board session on Saturday.

The board members conferred on the new political situation in Armenia,
following Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s resignation, the ANC
informed.

ANC Vice Chairmen Levon Zurabyan and Aram Manukyan presented the
course of the ongoing deliberations with the other three
non-ruling-coalition parliamentary factions: Prosperous Armenia, ARF
Dashnaktsutyun, and Heritage.

The ANC Board members exchanged views on the probable developments as
a result of Sargsyan’s resignation
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan on Thursday submitted his resignation
to President Serzh Sargsyan, and the President accepted the PM’s
resignation.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

From: Baghdasarian

Only complete government change can solve crisis in Armenia – opposition MP

12:50 * 05.04.14

In an interview with Tert.am, Lyudmila Sargsyan, an opposition MP from
the Armenian National Congress, said she finds a complete change to be
the only way out of the political crisis in Armenia. She said Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s resignation has not absolutely influenced
the parliamentary opposition’s plans for achieving a coup d’etat.

Ms Sargsyan, the demand for the prime minister’s resignation was
actually met. So what are you now planning to call for? What if you
say, perhaps, the resignation of [President] Serzh Sargsyan?

We naturally have to direct our efforts to that, strive for steps and
achieve that resignation as a result of a demonstration wave.

Do you think the Prosperous Armenia party will direct its efforts to
Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation? Have there been discussions of the kind?

We will continue the discussions. I do not want to name a specific
political force, but I believe we all seek for a full government
change.

Don’t you even wait till a new candidate’s name is made public?

We are not a Napoleon, so the flight of our mind never goes that far.
But I think we still have time for consultations and debates. To the
best of my knowledge the [opposition] quartet is now in the middle of
discussions. I think the time will come for us to unveil the roadmap
of our platform.

The PAP said, nonetheless, that they would be content with the prime
minister’s replacement unless the [new premier] is from the Republican
Party of Armenia. The RPA met them half-way, so it’s quite possible
that the [new cabinet chief] will not be an RPA member. Available
analyses now say that the quartet’s collapse will be inevitable should
the PAP name a proper candidate for the prime minister.

Such analyses are absolutely possible, especially by the interested
parties, forces and analysts who definitely wish to frustrate the
quartet’s plans. That’s normal, as each unit pursues its own
interests, at times receiving guidance from different sides. I treat
that as quite a normal process. But I know the quartet is dominated by
other moods, so only a government change can help the country overcome
a crisis situation as this.

From: Baghdasarian

FRANCE
Truelle, théière… objets de l’exil au musée de l’immigration

Une théière d’Algérie, une étole de grand-mère russe, une boîte
ciselée aux couleurs de l’Arménie… Des objets, souvent triviaux,
font leur entrée au musée de l’Histoire de l’immigration, où ils
accompagnent des récits d’exil et d’intégration.

Quand elle quitte son Argentine natale, à l’ge de 17 ans, pour fuir
la junte, Frida Rochocz cache dans sa poche une boulette de mie de
pain, travaillée pour ressembler à une petite tête aux yeux creux.

C’est un flirt, prisonnier politique, qui lui a donné. Pendant des
années, elle garde sur elle cette figurine. “Elle me donnait la force
de continuer”, raconte-t-elle. En 2005, elle retourne enfin dans son
pays, retrouve le jeune homme, plus si jeune. “Il n’en avait aucun
souvenir. La tête a alors pris une autre dimension, j’ai pu m’en
débarrasser.”

Au lieu de finir au fond d’une poubelle, cette boulette d’à peine cinq
centimètres se retrouve en vitrine dans la nouvelle “galerie des dons”
du musée de l’Histoire de l’immigration, rouverte mardi sur 450 m2.

Cette galerie, inaugurée en 2008, expose dans le palais de la porte
Dorée, à Paris, des objets intimes donnés par des immigrés et leurs
descendants, accompagnés d’un récit du donateur.

L’enjeu : “rappeler que les histoires individuelles construisent
l’histoire collective” et “faire changer le regard sur l’immigration”,
explique la commissaire Hélène du Mazaubrun, chargée des collections
ethnographiques au musée.

L’écrivain François Cavanna fut le premier contributeur, en cédant la
truelle de maçon de son père Luigi. “J’aurais pu être maçon, mais il
n’a pas voulu que je fasse un travail manuel, il a dit +c’est trop
dur+”, racontait alors l’auteur des Ritals, décédé en janvier.

Les bottes du dernier poilu –

Le dernier des poilus, Lazare Ponticelli inhumé en 2008 aux Invalides,
a confié les bottes qu’il portait dans les tranchées. Arrivé pieds-nus
de son Italie natale, à neuf ans, il y voyait le symbole de sa
contribution à la France. Peu à peu, les legs ont afflué et le musée a
dû leur faire une place. La galerie rénovée présente 250 items, contre
une quarantaine auparavant, et 37 récits de vie. Certains, comme des
papiers d’apatride, symbolisent l’exil. D’autres représentent plutôt
l’enracinement, à l’instar de ces cartes de militant communiste ou
syndicaliste.

Mathieu Do Duc va jusqu’à illustrer l’impossibilité du retour au pays
natal. Parti du Vietnam à sept ans, il n’y est retourné que 39 ans
plus tard. “C’était difficile, j’ai compris que je n’appartenais plus
à ce pays.” Il a alors donné les photos de ce séjour au musée “pour
clore le dossier, faire le deuil et passer à autre chose.” Quant aux
descendants d’immigrés, ils ont cédé des objets qui leur rappelaient
leurs origines, rendant hommage à leurs aïeux. La metteur en scène
Macha Makeïeff a ainsi découpé en deux une étole de sa grand-mère
russe : elle a donné une moitié au musée, gardant l’autre pour ses
souvenirs.

Avant de sortir de la galerie, un “arbre à dons” invite les visiteurs
à proposer de nouvelles offrandes. Chaque suggestion sera soumise à un
comité des acquisitions, qui pourra les verser officiellement aux
collections de ce musée national.

“On craint que la réouverture de la galerie n’entraîne de nouveaux
dons”, plaisante Luc Gruson, le directeur du musée. “Il faudra trouver
de nouvelles modalités, sur internet ou dans des catalogues pour les
valoriser”, prévoit-il, fier de raconter “l’histoire de l’immigration
par les gens qui l’ont vécue et non vue par la société d’accueil ou
les politiques.”

samedi 5 avril 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian