Author: Chilingarian Babken

FILM – OTHER CINEMA – ONCE SEEN, NEVER FORGOTTEN
by Gareth Evans

Time Out
May 16, 2007

This week, Londoners will get a rare chance to marvel at the unique
work of Patrick Bokanowski, an overlooked genius of film, according
to Gareth Evans

After seeing ‘L’Ange’ at Cannes in 1982, the legendary French critic
Michel Chion described it in Cahiers du Cinema as ‘a "2001" produced
under the same conditions as "Eraserhead"’. Surely such a work is
part of cinema’s canon – even its cult wing? Sadly not, but for anyone
who was in the Cannes audience that day, or who saw it in its limited
Paris, US and Japanese releases, Patrick Bokanowski’s extraordinary
feature is likely to have remained an unforgettable experience.

In these days of global DVD retrieval of even the most obscure
grindhouse ‘classics’, it is rare to encounter the works of a filmmaker
one is astonished by, and whose absence from conventional registers of
the ‘great’ feels scandalous. Armenian documentarist Artavazd Peleshian
is one such giant; Bokanowski is another. Both share a preference
for the short form and both exist in dialogue with other art forms,
especially painting, poetry and music. But both also make films that
deploy the unique qualities of cinema, sculpting with image, sound,
colour and light to provoke an imaginative response.

Bokanowski, who lives in Paris with his wife and long-time
collaborator, musician Michele, is at once a technical pioneer,
advancing the visual reach of cinema with every film he makes, and an
artisan, a dedicated craftsman in the same vein as Jan Svankmajer,
Stan Brakhage or the Brothers Quay. Over 35 years, and in fewer
than ten shorts and one feature, he has developed a personal cinema
unfettered by narrative but resonant with a visual viscerality.

Studying photography, optics and chemistry, he works with mixed media
– live action, models, engravings – but manipulates the image in a
frame-by-frame optical printing process that allows engagement with
the very building blocks of film.

‘What makes me begin a new film,’ he says, ‘is nearly always an
impulse, a desire – or a sort of technical fury which pushes me to
try and see something that I’ve not already seen. Often, my trials
lead to nothing; but sometimes, I find one or more methods, then
images, then sequences that seem to work, that stand up to my own
doubts and criticisms. Little by little, a central thread appears,
less the result of ideas than desires.’

His 1991 short ‘La Plage’ took a day in the life of a beach and
turned it into a symphony of phenomena that embodied the delights
of sun and surf, the pleasures and the solitude of the shoreline,
through an intensifying distortion of the image that felt closer to
the experience of being there than any realist approach.

It is, however, in ‘L’Ange’ (1982) that the full scale of his
achievement is evident. A truly unclassifiable 70 minutes of pure
cinema, it follows an unidentified wanderer as he or she climbs a
vast staircase within an undefined space. Unsettling and disturbing
episodes occur on various landings: a suspended puppet is savagely
sliced, a Vermeer-esque maid repeatedly brings milk until the jug
smashes, a bald man combs his head in a tin bath, tiny figures try
to rescue a naked woman in a vast landscape – while the journey is
interspersed by brilliant flashes of light and great floods of water.

The location is unclear, the journey’s purpose obscure, but the impact
of the work, working visually and sonically deep into the unconscious
and the imagination, is neither. Very rare screenings of Bokanowski’s
work in London this week will provide a singular encounter with a
genuine artist of the cinema.

Patrick Bokanowski will introduce his films at the Cine Lumiere on
May 22.

COE TO HOLD HEARING ON KARABAKH CONFLICT IN BERLIN

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.05.2007 16:28 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Monitoring Committee of the Council of Europe
decided to hold a hearing on ‘frozen conflicts’ in Berlin in November,
said Samed Seyidov, the head of the Azeri delegation to PACE.

The preliminary decision of the Monitoring Committee will be confirmed
at PACE summer session, according to him. Hearing on the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict will be also held in November.

THE TURKISH GENOCIDE OF ASSYRIANS AND ARMENIANS
By Prof. Ove Bring
Translated from Swedish by Munir Gultekin.

Assyrian International News Agency
May 15 2007

Editor’s note: the following speech was delivered to the Swedish
Parliament on January 1, 2007.

(AINA) — In March 2003 the Swedish organisation "Levande historia"
arranged a seminar in the town of Uppsala with the theme "The genocide
on Armenians and other Christian groups in 1915". I attended in my
capacity as a legal expert on international law, but the two most
important contributions were presented by two historians, Klas-Goran
Karlsson from the university of Lund, and David Gaunt from the
university college of Sodertorn. They both confirmed that genocide,
in a general sense, had taken place in the then Ottoman empire during
the First World War.

The strange thing with this seminar in Uppsala was that Turkey’s
embassy in Stockholm had sent a historian from Ankara to give a
contrasting picture to the picture they suspected the seminar would
confirm. The discussion between the historians reached a complete
deadlock and the event was commented on later by Turkey’s largest
newspaper, describing Swedish scientists with derisive words of abuse.

This controversy should never have taken place from a purely historical
point of view because the scientific research done on this issue is
relatively clear.

There are very many witnesses from 1915: missionaries who were there
in the Christian areas; consuls from western countries who reported
back to their embassies about what happened; German military attaches
who reported in the same way; and the American ambassador Morgenthau in
Constantinople who gave reports about his contacts with the government
of the Young Turks, especially about a conversation with Turkish war
minister Enver Pasha, in which the minister assured that what took
place was ordered by the government.

A document was published already in 1916 entitled The Treatment
of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916 by James Bryce,
British expert in political science, and Arnold Toynbee, a
historian. Bryce had previously been ambassador to the USA and had
led an investigative commission during WWI about alleged war crimes
in occupied Belgium. Toynbee was in the beginning of his career as
a world famous historian.

Johannes Lepsius, a German missionary in Anatolia, was given a task
by the authorities in Berlin during the same period of time. He
was ordered to compile German diplomatic correspondence concerning
Armenia. The documentation of Lepsius was published in 1919 in
Potsdam. A number of scientific works published in modern times have
completed the picture. Prof. David Gaunt published his book Massacres,
Resistance, Protectors 2006. It covers the fate of all the Christian
groups of eastern Anatolia during WWI.

It all started in Constantinople on 24th April 1915 when several
hundred leading Armenian intellectuals were arrested, deported and
murdered. It was assumed that their Orthodox belief made them friends
of the Russians and thus a security risk. Orders followed demanding
cities and villages in the east to be emptied on their Christian
population. The Armenians were to be removed southwards and death
marches and massacres followed. The camps they were removed to in the
Syrian desert were not any new settlements; they were an end station
of starvation, assault and misery.

The western allies issued a proclamation on 24th May 1915 in which
they described what was going on as a"crime against humanity
and civilisation", announcing court proceedings against guilty
individuals after the war. No such court proceedings, apart from a
few exceptions, ever took place, but the expression "crime against
humanity" was coined.

According to The United Nations Convention on Genocide ratified
in 1948, the affected population must constitute an ethnically or
religiously definable group in order for the term genocide to be
applied to them. This criterion is fulfilled retroactively in the
case of the Assyrians and Armenians.

It also requires an intention from the perpetuators to annihilate
the group entirely or partly. This criteria of intention is the most
difficult to prove. Yet I advocate that the research of history has
been able to prove since long time ago such an underlying political
purpose: to clear the Ottoman Empire from foreign elements and build
a homogenous Muslim state.

The order of the regime of the Young Turks from April 1915 to
clear cities and villages from Armenian elements is documented. The
following order, on how to handle the people who are driven together
and deported, is lost, probably destroyed in an early stage. But the
certainty of the existence of such a brutal order, in practise an order
for partial annihilation, is made clear from a later order by Talat
Pasha, Minister of Interior, to the governor in Diyarbekir. It is made
clear in a telegram from Constantinople from 12th July 1915 that the
regime needs to put itself in a more positive light because of the
international protests. Talat Pasha issues directives saying that
the killings which are lacking in discrimination against Christian
groups (in general) must stop, i.e. the special treatment issued for
the Armenians must not befall the Assyrians. This was the meaning
of the telegram; the genocide committed against the Armenians was
acknowledged, but it was not to spread to other Christian groups.

The Swedish word for genocide, folkmord, has been used by Hjalmar
Branting (a famous Swedish prime minister) during an Armenia-meeting
on 27th March 1917. He said:

"We are not talking about minor assaults but about an organized and
systematic genocide (folkmord), worse than we have ever witnessed in
Europe. It has been about annihilating the population of the entire
area, drive the survivors out in the desert with the expectation that
they will not endure but that their bones will whiten in the desert
sand. This genocide is unparalleled among all appalling acts of the
war. Our hearts have ached when we have read about it."

(Socialdemokraten, the official publication of the Swedish Social
Democratic Party, 28th March 1917).

There was no juridical term for these events during WWI, but the term
used by the allies "crime against humanity" was to gain political
validity through the regulations of the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

What a Swedish government, minister, parliament or parliamentarian
committee could say about the Armenian and Assyrian tragedy is
that it is about massacres that were described as a crime against
humanity in 1915 and which could today, from a juridical point of
view, be described as genocide. The current Turkish republic has no
juridical responsibility for these events as it is a successor state
of the Ottoman Empire, but today’s Turkey has a democratic identity to
guard and it has a responsibility to make sure that freedom of speech
is functioning. To be able to freely debate the past and sometimes
take a moral responsibility for the damage inflicted on others is a
feature of civil democratic societies.

An investigation was launched in 1997 in Sweden to find out about our
trade revenue from Germany during the Second World War. A report named
"The Nazi gold and the Bank of Sweden" (SOU 1998:96) established that
gold ingots had been received from looted occupied countries and we
had even possibly received gold taken from teeth from the death camps
in the east. Sweden then gave around 40 million kronor to the Jewish
centre in Stockholm as a form of moral compensation.

Swiss banks had enriched themselves in a corresponding way during the
war. As the years passed the banks even incorporated the bank accounts
of murdered Jews with their own funds. A storm of protests in the USA
in 1998 led the Swiss banks to form a solidarity fund to be used for
compensation of survivors. A court in New York announced later that one
of the banks would pay compensation amounting to 1.25 billion dollars.

There are more examples of how a debate in democratic states has led
to compensation. The money itself cannot compensate for lost lives,
but the willingness to pay compensation marks guilt and responsibility
and a will for reconciliation. The fact that one is recognized
as a victim, as an object of a historical and massive injustice,
gives a confirmation of ones identity from the perspective of the
affected group.

It is obvious that an open discussion in Turkey about the events
of 1915-1918, without any obstacles from article 301 of the Turkish
penal code, would benefit Turkey’s application for EU membership.

Our politicians are eager to claim that the Assyrian and Armenian
genocides are an issue for the historians. But the same thing is not
claimed about the Holocaust. The fact that the events of 1940-45
are an issue for politicians and diplomats was recently confirmed
by the United Nations General Assembly when it adopted a resolution
condemning all denials of the Holocaust. But Seyfo, the year of the
sword as it is called by Assyrians (1915), is considered immature
for political judgements. I like to uphold that the historians
have done their job and they have done it well when it comes to the
genocides of 1915-18. They cannot point to documents from any Turkish
equivalence to the Wannsee-conference, but they have collected enough
material to show there was a deliberate intention to commit what we
today call genocide. One cannot ask scientists to agree totally;
they have not agreed totally regarding the Holocaust either. But
the stage of knowledge about the Assyrian and Armenian genocides is
not insufficient to the degree that allows timid politicians to hide
behind arguments of claimed indistinctness.

With this said, I do not claim that now is the right occasion to
mediate historical truths on the international stage. It might not be
the correct time. But it is concurrently time for our politicians to
inform themselves about the factual matter and handle it in a moral
manner. What we today call genocide did really take place in the
eastern part of the Ottoman Empire year in 1915 and even the years
that followed. Furthermore, the affected were different Christian
groups — Armenians and Assyrians. It is time for our politicians to
acknowledge that serious historians have confirmed this historical
writing and that there is no reason to question their conclusion.

Prof. Ove Bring is one of Sweden’s foremost legal experts on
international law. He is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration
in The Hague and a member of the International Law Delegation of the
Swedish Foreign Office. This speech was delivered by him during the
conference on the Assyrian genocide in the Swedish parliament on 30th
January 2007.

DESPITE CEASE-FIRE ANNIVERSARY, SITUATION REMAINS TENSE IN KARABAKH
By Fariz Ismailzade

Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
May 15 2007

Last week, Armenia and Azerbaijan marked the 13th anniversary of the
cease-fire signed between the two governments in the Kyrgyz capital,
Bishkek, in 1994. But not only does the situation between the two
countries remain tense, the prospects for peace keep getting smaller
and smaller, with the risk that the current fragile status of "no war,
no peace" will break at some point.

Many local analysts in Baku believe that despite the official
cease-fire, cross-border shootings and murders of both soldiers and
civilians has not stopped since 1994. The Azerbaijani daily newspaper
Sherg has put the number of murdered persons from the Azerbaijani
side since 1994 at close to 5,000. The last victim was killed just a
week ago. APA News agency reported that Vahab Abdurrahmanov, a soldier
from the Azerbaijani army, was killed by an Armenian sniper from the
occupied Agdam region. Such violations of the cease-fire take place
on an almost daily basis and usually last from 30 minutes to as much
as two hours.

Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense Safar Abiyev acknowledged that the
situation on the border remains tense. Speaking to journalists on May
9, he said, "Armenians violate the cease-fire and the Azerbaijani
army responds." Abiyev also added that as long as the occupation
of the Azerbaijani territories by the Armenian army endures, the
"difficult situation" will continue.

Another point of tension in the last year has been the frequent capture
of the prisoners by both sides. Due to the unclear border demarcation
and the mountainous landscape, soldiers from both sides get captured by
the opposing side and often become a bargaining chip in the political
negotiations. Azerbaijani civilians also get captured. In just the past
year three Azerbaijani soldiers were captured by Armenians, which, in
the words of Azerbaijani military expert Uzeyir Jafarov, constitutes
"nonsense" and shows the lack of professionalism in the army.

Recently, Azerbaijani army soldier Samir Mammadov was captured by the
Armenians and reportedly refused to return home. Instead, he asked
international mediators, such as the International Federation of the
Red Cross and the Red Crescent, to transfer him to a third country.

The Azerbaijani government and Mammadov’s parents refuse to believe
that this appeal is genuine, and believe he wrote it under duress
from the Armenians.

"As we understand, Armenia is putting pressure on Samir and does not
want him to return to Azerbaijan. They speak on his behalf as if he
did not want to come back. This is a lie," Abiyev said to journalists
on May 9.

Mammadov’s mother, Tarana Mammadova, appealed to Azerbaijan’s President
Ilham Aliyev, "We ask the president to help us take back our son. Samir
is not only our son, he is an Azerbaijani. Though we cannot meet with
the president, we ask him to help us to take our son back. I believe
that Samir will return and serve his motherland honorably."

It must be noted, however, that the Azerbaijani authorities take the
return of the arrested Azerbaijani soldier very seriously and with a
great deal of caution, because captured soldiers risk being recruited
by the Armenian intelligence services. Such a case occurred in 1994,
when the Armenian intelligence services ordered captured Azerbaijani
soldier Azer Aslanov to organize terrorist attacks in Baku in return
for his mother’s freedom. Azer Aslanov subsequently organized a terror
attack on a metro station in Baku.

Last year, Vusal Garadzhaev, a soldier of the Azerbaijani army, was
seized and released from Armenian captivity on December 23, 2006,
and then subsequently arrested in Azerbaijan. The Investigatory
Department for Grave Crimes of the Military Office of the Public
Prosecutor has initiated a criminal case against Garadzhaev under
Articles 274 (betrayal of Motherland) and 338.1 (breaking the rules
of combat duty) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan.

The situation is likely to continue as hostilities keep growing due
to the lack of any progress at the negotiating table. Last week,
speaking in front of the displaced persons from Azerbaijani town of
Shusha, President Ilham Aliyev said that all seven occupied regions
around Karabakh must be returned before the status of Karabakh can
be decided. He also added that the Armenian side is willing to return
five of the seven occupied regions. However, the May 12 parliamentary
elections in Armenia and the upcoming presidential elections in both
countries reduce the likelihood of a peaceful compromise. This, in
turn, means that the cross-border violations of the cease-fire and
the mutual capture of the soldiers will continue.

(Sherg, APA News Agency, AZTV, Interfax, Today.az, Karabakh.co.uk,
May 10-14)

AZERBAIJAN-FRANCE RELATIONSHIPS TO REMAIN UNCHANGED IN SARCOZY’S PRESIDENCY

TREND News Agency, Azerbaijan
May 15 2007

Azerbaijan, Baku / Òrend corr A. Gasimova / The coming to power
of Nicola Sarcozy will not change anything with regards to the
relationships between Azerbaijan and France, the director of the
research program at the Institute of Strategic and International
Relations of France, politician Lor Delkur stated.

Delkur reported on May 15 that last winter the French Senate did not
adopt the law in favour of criminal responsibility for the fabricated
genocide by Armenian people, and therefore proved its neutrality
towards the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Moreover, in her opinion, Azerbaijan is an important economic partner
for France in the Caucasus. France takes 6th place in foreign trade
turnover of Azerbaijan and 4th place amongst its foreign investors.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline has provided new opportunities for
French oil companies.

Delkur noted that since 1997 France had been the co-chairman of the
OSCE Minsk Group on the peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. According to Delkur, France maintains
its relationships with Azerbaijan through the European Union and the
European Neighbourhood Policy program.

Azerbaijan jointed the program in 2004.

After the fall of the USSR, France began to develop the policy of
Russia’s leadership in the region resting upon historical bonds.

However, in 1992-1994 the country began showing interest in the CIS
countries and the relationships between Azerbaijan and France began
to develop, especially in the last decade. In 1993, an agreement on
friendship and co-operation with Azerbaijan was signed. A number of
top-rank visits have been made since 1993 -1994. The first official
visit of Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev to France was made in
January, 1997. Ilham Aliyev (current president) visited France in 2004.

Nicola Sarcozy was elected president on May 6. He received 53% of
the votes. Sarcozy’s main rival, Segolen Ruayal, received 47% of the
votes. The inauguration of the new President will take place on May 16.

–Boundary_(ID_q6pGSgaNtUZpDhjjpLw30g)–

Armenia

_ ()
14/05/07

EU CONGRATULATES ARMENIA FOR WELL RUN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Today, European Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner `commended
thepeople of Armenia and their leaders" on the fact that the May 12
parliamentary elections were conducted largely in accordance
international standards for democratic elections.

This declaration followed the publication of a joint statement by the
OSCE’s International Election Observation Mission, which concluded
that the elections `demonstrated improvement from previous ones’ and
were `largely in accordance with international commitments’.

Ms Ferrero-Waldner added that `Armenia has thus made an important step
forward in fulfilling a key priority of the EU / Armenia Action Plan
underthe European Neighbourhood Policy. I am confident that the new
parliament, together with the new government, will continue firmly on
the path of reform. This is vital for the Armenian people as well as
for the future of our relationship."

Marie Anne Isler Beguin, who headed the EP delegation in Armenia,
concurred: "with their participation in these elections, Armenian
citizens have made a further step towards European democratic values
as foreseen and promoted by the EU Neighborhood Policy. The EU
delegation encourages the Armenian people to continue in this
direction in view of forthcoming elections."

Leo Platvoet, the Head of the delegation sent to Armenia by the
Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, shared in the general
enthusiasm:"we congratulate the Armenian people on showing the will to
hold democratic elections. Some challenges remain, such as
intertwining between political and business interests and improvements
are still needed to the electoral complaints procedure. The Council of
Europe and its Assembly continue to stand ready to assist Armenia in
this process."

Europe’s positive assessment of the electoral process in Armenia
should be of considerable importance to the future of the relationship
between the EU and Armenia.

The party that obtained most votes in the elections was the ruling
Republican Party, followed by Prosperous Armenia, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, the Rule of Law Party and the Heritage
Party. Other parties didnot pass the 5% threshold.

REGISTERING DOZENS OF VIOLATIONS, CHOICE IS YOURS NGO, NEVERTHELESS,
POSITIVELY ESTIMATES PROCESS OF ELECTIONS

YEREVAN, MAY 14, NOYAN TAPAN. During the May 12 parliamentary
elections the observers of Choice is Yours NGO registered dozens of
violations at various polling stations of Armenia. NGO Chairman
Haroutiun Hambartsumian reported at the May 14 press conference. In
his words, there were many cases of illegal voting among the
violations.

According to organization’s preliminary report, simultaneous voting of
three voters in the same voting cabin was registered at polling
station N 4/07.

Unauthorized persons accompanied many voters, many of which were old
people, by cars to voting cabins at Hrazdan’s polling station N 25/13,
they marked in ballot-papers instead of them and threw them into
ballot-boxes intead of voters.

Open voting was held at Abovian’s polling station N 28/13. Voters
enveloped ballot-papers at commission member sealing ballot-papers
giving him a possibility to see the result of their voting. Open
voting was also held at Gavar’s polling station N 22/19.

At polling station N 1/09 voter Astghik Mkrtchian found an unknown
signature near her name in the electoral roll. Similar cases were also
registered at polling stations N 10/30 and 34/29.

In H. Hambartsumian’s words, "these and other cases of illegal voting,
as well as facts of having illegal influence upon voters are difficult
to prove "de jure," but indeed voter buying, which has taken roots
among us, shades improvement registered in the preelection period." He
added that nevertheless, their organization on the whole estimates the
process of elections positively,, as "the situation was worse" during
the previous elections.

ARMENPRESS

CIS OBSERVERS PRAISE ARMENIA FOR HOLDING FAIR AND
TRANSPARENT PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

YEREVAN, MAY 13, ARMENPRESS: Election observers
from former Soviet republics praised today the
authorities in Yerevan for taking all measures to
ensure conduction of fair and transparent
parliamentary elections on May 12.
Presenting the findings of a team of observers from
the CIS, head of the mission and CIS secretary general
Vladimir Rushailo said the procedure of party
registration was just and unbiased, while the election
campaigning process was open.
He said the monitors witnessed a number of
technical faults which, however, could not have any
impact on the final outcome.
Rushailo continued to praise the government for
creating all conditions to secure a transparent ballot
and equal conditions for all contesting political
groups.
The CIS observation team included 230 observers
representing legislative and executive powers of their
countries.
The long-term CIS observation team of 39 monitors
spent several weeks in Armenia in the run-up to the
polls.

Danbury News Times, CT
May 13 2007

Memories of Mother’s tall tales
I miss my mother. Not necessarily the old lady in the wheelchair who
died six years ago not really knowing who I was. I’m remembering the
Mother who was my best friend for so many years, who was always
there, who could make most things all right.
And the Mommy.

She gave me so many fanciful explanations when I was a little girl,
as I suspect most mothers do by nature and tradition. I don’t think I
was meant to believe a lot of it, and I didn’t, really.

I was small during World War II, and I remember asking who Hitler
was. Mother told me he was a very bad man who stole people’s lunches.
I guess this was the level of evil she thought a 3-year-old could
deal with. She was probably right.

She also told me that thunder peals were actually men bowling in the
sky. That seemed reasonable to me–my father bowled, so I knew about
that noise and was never afraid of storms.

The moon was made of green cheese. I guess nobody tells kids that any
more. After all, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and he wasn’t
carrying crackers.

Another fantasy was that you could catch birds by pouring salt on
their tails. I used to run around the back yard with a saltshaker,
chasing birds. I pretty much knew even then this was all make-believe
— but just in case . . .

(Fortunately I never came close to catching a bird, because I have no
idea what I would have done with one.)

There were a lot of far-fetched things I half-believed as a little
girl, because Mommy said so. Like if I ate my bread crusts I’d have
curly hair. Well, here I am 60-odd years later, still eating every
crust in sight, and still with stick-straight hair — just like my
mother’s, in fact.

I was encouraged to eat everything on my plate, because "Think of the
starving Armenians." I didn’t know what Armenians were, but I
certainly never had much trouble emptying a plate.

(I still instinctively do that, starving Armenians or not. And my
husband, raised on the same theory, today almost always leaves
something on his plate as a sign, I firmly believe, of silent
rebellion.)

Mother teased that if I swallowed a watermelon seed, a melon would
grow in my tummy. Hmmm — that could actually explain a lot . . .

And if I ate too much of anything, like a pie or cookies, I’d likely
turn into one. (Unfortunately, I never believed that one at all.)

I think every kid in my generation "knew" if you dug a hole deep
enough you’d get to China. I remember my little friend Joann and I
set out to do that. We dug for a while, found some pieces of broken
dishes, and decided we were there — we had found china!

Mother said if I made an ugly face it would freeze that way. (She was
wrong, I think.)

She also told me I was going to ruin my eyes if I kept on reading in
bed by the light of the hall fixture.

She may have been right, there — I was wearing glasses by the age of
10.

Other people had their tales as well. My father claimed eating potato
skins would grow hair on your teeth.

My grandmother used to say (in fun), "I’ll give you 2 cents if you .
. ." She stopped doing that, though, the day I presented her (in fun)
with a bill for 16 cents.

But Mother was the one who knew best. What she said mattered, even if
I knew it was silly.

I miss my mother.

PanARMENIAN.Net

International community has big expectations from Armenian election
12.05.2007 15:36 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ As result of the election Armenia will have good
parliament and, consequently, good government, Armenian Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian said. The parliamentary election will reflect
the political balance of forces in the republic, according to him.

`I hope the election will be held well. The will of the people should
be realized. The interim reports of the international observers fix a
positive tendency as compared to the previous elections. If today’s
vote concords with the tendency of the pre-election month we will
receive a good assessment of international observers, Vartan Oskanian
said.

`The international community has big expectations from the Armenian
parliamentary election. I was in Strasbourg on the eve of the election
and the attention was focused on our vote. All are hopeful for a fair
and unmarred election and I do not see reasons for a negative
conclusion,’ he said, Novosti Armenia reports.