Author: Chmshkian Vicken

CANADA HAILS NORMALIZATION OF ARMENIA-TURKEY RELATIONS

armradio.am
03.09.2009 11:21

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon on Wednesday welcomed
Turkey and Armenia’s progress in normalizing their relationship.

"The normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations will not only benefit
both nations and their citizens, but also enhance stability, security
and development within their turbulent and vital neighborhood,"
said Cannon, AFP reported.

Canada’s top diplomat also noted that he recently met with Turkey’ss
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul, "where he stressed the
importance of dialogue between Turkey and Armenia."

WHY DOES LIFE IN THE MIDDLE EAST REMAIN ROOTED IN THE MIDDLE AGES?
By Robert Fisk

AZG DAILY
04-09-2009

Opinion

According to a UN report, the global improvement in living standards
has passed much of the Arab world by. Robert Fisk explains why

Why is the Arab world – let us speak with terrible sharpness – so
backward? Why so many dictators, so few human rights, so much state
security and torture, so terrible a literacy rate?

Why does this wretched place, so rich in oil, have to produce,
even in the age of the computer, a population so poorly educated,
so undernourished, so corrupt? Yes, I know the history of Western
colonialism, the dark conspiracies of the West, the Arab argument
that you cannot upset the sheikhs and the kings and the autocrats,
the imams and the emirs when the "enemy is at the gates". There is
some truth to that. But not enough truth.

Once more the United Nations Development Programme has popped up
with yet one more, its fifth, report that catalogues – via Arab
analysts and academics, mark you – the retarded state of much of the
Middle East. It talks of "the fragility of the region’s political,
social, economic and environmental structures… its vulnerability
to outside intervention". But does this account for desertification,
for illiteracy – especially among women – and the Arab state which,
as the report admits, is often turned "into a threat to human security,
instead of its chief support"?

As Arab journalist Rami Khouri stated bleakly last week: "How we
tackle the underlying causes of our mediocrity and bring about real
change anchored in solid citizenship, productive economies and stable
statehood, remains the riddle that has defied three generations of
Arabs." Real GDP per capita in the region – one of the statistics
which truly shocked Khouri – grew by only 6.4 per cent between 1980
and 2004. That’s just 0.5 per cent annually, a rate which 198 of 217
countries analysed by the CIA World Factbook bet – which stood at
150 million in 1980 – will reach 400 million in 2015.

I notice much of this myself. When I first came to the Middle East
in 1976, it was crowded enough. Cairo’s steaming, fetid streets were
already jam-packed, night and day, with up to a million homeless living
in the great Ottoman cemeteries. Arab homes are spotlessly clean but
their streets are often repulsive, dirt and ordure spilling on to
the pavements. Even in beautiful Lebanon, where a kind of democracy
does exist and whose people are among the most educated and cultured
in the Middle East, you find a similar phenomenon. In the rough hill
villages of the south, the same cleanliness exists in every home. But
why are the streets and the hills so dirty?

I suspect that a real problem exists in the mind of Arabs; they do not
feel that they own their countries. Constantly coaxed into effusions
of enthusiasm for Arab or national "unity", I think they do not feel
that sense of belonging which Westerners feel. Unable, for the most
part, to elect real representatives – even in Lebanon, outside the
tribal or sectarian context – they feel "ruled over". The street, the
country as a physical entity, belongs to someone else. And of course,
the moment a movement comes along and – even worse – becomes popular,
emergency laws are introduced to make these movements illegal or
"terrorist". Thus it is always someone else’s responsibility to look
after the gardens and the hills and the streets.

And those who work within the state system – who work directly for
the state and its corrupt autarchies – also feel that their existence
depends on the same corruption upon which the state itself thrives. The
people become part of the corruption. I shall always remember an
Arab landlord, many years ago, bemoaning an anti-corruption drive by
his government. "In the old days, I paid bribes and we got the phone
mended and the water pipes mended and the electricity restored," he
complained. "But what can I do now, Mr, Robert? I can’t bribe anyone
– so no 002, was deeply depressing. It identified three cardinal
obstacles to human development in the Arab world: the widening
"deficit" in freedom, women’s rights and knowledge. George W Bush –
he of enduring freedom, democracy, etc etc amid the slaughter of Iraq
– drew attention to this. Understandably miffed at being lectured to
by the man who gave "terror" a new name, even Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
(he of the constantly more than 90 per cent electoral success rate),
told Tony Blair in 2004 that modernisation had to stem from "the
traditions and culture of the region".

Will a solution to the Arab-Israeli war resolve all this? Some of
it, perhaps. Without the constant challenge of crisis, it would be
much more difficult to constantly renew emergency laws, to avoid
constitutionality, to distract populations who might otherwise demand
overwhelming political change. Yet I sometimes fear that the problems
have sunk too deep, that like a persistently leaking sewer, the ground
beneath Arab feet has become too saturated to build on.

I was delighted some months ago, while speaking at Cairo University –
yes, the same academy which Barack Obama used to play softball with
the Muslim world – to find how bright its students were, how many
female students crowded the classes and how, compared to previous
visits, well-educated they were. Yet far too many wanted to move to
the West. The Koran may be an invaluable document – but so is a Green
Card. And who can blame them when Cairo is awash with PhD engineering
graduates who have to drive taxis?

And on balance, yes, a serious peace between Palestinians and
Israelis would help redress the appalling imbalances that plague Arab
society. If you can no longer bellyache about the outrageous injustice
that this war represents, then perhaps there are other injustices
to be addressed. One of them is domestic violence, which – despite
the evident love of family which all Arabs demonstrate – is far more
prevalent in the Arab world than Westerners might realise (or Arabs
want to adm iddle East. By all means, send the Arabs our teachers,
our economists, our agronomists. But bring our soldiers home. They do
not defend us. They spread the same chaos that breeds the injustice
upon which the al-Qa’idas of this world feed. No, the Arabs – or,
outside the Arab world, the Iranians or the Afghans – will not produce
the eco-loving, gender-equal, happy-clappy democracies that we would
like to see. But freed from "our" tutelage, they might develop their
societies to the advantage of the people who live in them. Maybe the
Arabs would even come to believe that they owned their own countries.

PATRONS TAKE CARE OF NEWBORNS IN TAVUSH REGION OF ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
01.09.2009 18:05 GMT+04:00l

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Hayastan All-Armenian Fund implements a charitable
assistance program Ororots (Cradle), for 30 socially disadvantaged
families of the Tavush region, having newborn babies. In the framework
of that program families were given bags with clothing and hygienic
supplies.

The program in Tavush was possible thanks to the German family
Veiedemann’s donation of $ 5 thousand Euros. The Ororots charitable
program operates since 2002, and has already provided assistance to
more than 1.150 families.

EYEWITNESS TO GENOCIDE; MEMOIR A RIVETING INDICTMENT OF THE SLAUGHTER OF ARMENIANS

Ottawa Citizen
August 30, 2009 Sunday
Canada

SECTION: BOOKS; Pg. B4

Armenian Golgotha

By Grigoris Balakian (translated by Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag)
Knopf, $42

"Finally, the horrible year of 1915 passed, leaving in its wake
mourning and wailing, blood and tears."

These words, full of pathos and grief, summarize the collected memory
of Grigoris Balakian concerning the Armenian genocide during the
second year of the First World War.

The epicentre of that monstrous affair was Der Zor, a city on the banks
of the Euphrates River surrounded by the vast desert that runs across
southeast Turkey, Mesopotamia and Syria. There, the author states,
lies the true "Armenian Golgotha." His figures are staggering. Of the
1.5 million Armenians deported to Der Zor from the interior provinces
of the Ottoman Empire in the summer and fall of 1915, about 800,000
were massacred, mainly by Turkish mobile killing squads (chetes),
and another 400,000 died en route from disease and starvation. Of
the Armenians who reached Der Zor, by August 1916 some 250,000 had
fallen victim to starvation and roughly 150,000 had been murdered by
roaming chetes; by August 1918, between 400 and 500 of the original
deportees were left.

Balakian’s narrative is the story of horrible suffering and tragic
murder.

The outbreak of war in September 1914 had caught Balakian in Berlin
studying theology. He at once decided to return to Constantinople,
and was among a group of about 250 Armenian assemblymen, bankers,
doctors, editors, merchants and teachers arrested by the Ittihad
(Committee for Union and Progress) government of Enver Ismail Pasha,
Jemal Pasha and Mehmet Talaat Pasha on April 24, 1915. What then was
dubbed the "night of Gethsemane" is today the date of the worldwide
commemoration of the Armenian genocide.

For the next three years, Balakian was taken on a march of death
into the interior of Turkey: Ekishedir, Chankiri, Kayseri, Hajin and,
finally, Ayran on the Euphrates River. As most of his colleagues fell
by the wayside due to starvation and murder, and as dozens of other
caravans of Armenian deportees joined his, Balakian became obsessed
with surviving in order to write the "horrific story" of the genocide.

Somewhere on that march he decided on the title, Armenian Golgotha. In
September 1918, back in Constantinople with the help of Austrian,
German and Swiss engineers working on the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway,
Balakian began to write. A volume of his narrative appeared in Vienna
in 1922. After a brief stint as prelate of Manchester, Balakian became
bishop of Marseilles, where he died on Oct. 8, 1934. A limited edition
of his memoir was published in Paris in 1959.

The book, newly published in English, is a powerful personal
narrative. The descriptions of the Armenian genocide are striking
and the author spares his readers none of the gruesome details. The
weapons of choice were those of the farmer, butcher and tanner
— axes, sickles, meat cleavers, pitchforks and knives — and the
tortures inflicted were horrendous: beheading, disembowelling, genital
mutilation and eye-gouging. Sexual violence was an integral part of
the genocide. Balakin repeatedly provides details of abductions and
gang rapes of women. The book is not for the faint of heart.

But those seeking a scholarly history of the Armenian genocide will
be disappointed. Balakian revels in stereotypes. The Armenians "for
thousands of years" were master craftsmen, architects, merchants,
physicians and scholars. The Turks "in their 600-year history" were
deceitful, duplicitous, and perfidious, a people who "left no trace of
memory of civilization except massacre, plunder, forced Islamization,
and abduction."

He also writes that the Germans were more than idle bystanders of the
genocide, they were its willing helpers in order to realize their
grandiose dream of using the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway to assault
India, the "crown jewel of the British Empire."

Even Balakian’s great hope for restoring the Armenian nation —
the Entente — proved to be a bitter disappointment. When a united
Entente fleet finally anchored off Constantinople in November 1918,
its commanders showed no interest in the Armenian genocide or in
Armenian nationhood, and instead allowed themselves to be debauched
by Turkish bribes and women. "God," in Balakian’s bitter assessment,
"remained silent."

The book would have lost none of its impact with careful editing,
removing countless repetitious accounts and phraseology and correcting
the many historical inaccuracies for the non-professional reader.

Its greatest shortcoming, of course, is the lack of source
materials. Throughout, and especially in Chapter 11 of Vol. 1, Balakian
refers to the "Plan for the Extinction of the Armenians in Turkey,"
yet he offers no solid evidence for the existence of such a formal
national "plan." Addressing this critical matter in the introduction
would have allowed the book to stand for what it is: a riveting and
powerful indictment of a genocide that became a paradigm for future
genocides, but that remains to be researched in Turkish archives by
Turkish scholars.

Holger H. Herwig is a professor of history at the University of
Calgary.

ANCA CALLS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA TO REJECT MISGUIDED FEDERAL APPEALS COURT DECISION

ARMENPRESS:
August 26, 2009
Yerevan

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) called on President
Barack Obama to reject a misguided federal appeals court decision
striking down a California law to allow for the return of Armenian
Genocide-era assets, and encouraged him to immediately and publicly
affirm that it is not the "express federal policy" of the United
States, as the court argued, to prohibit the recognition of this
crime by the Congress or the states.

Representative of the ANCA Elizabeth Chouljyan told Armenpress that
the letter follows a August 20th ruling of a three judge panel of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case of Movsesian
v. Versicherung A.G. (No. 07-56722), that struck down a California
law providing remedies for Armenian Genocide-era wrongs. The ruling
contended that state level recognition of this crime contradicts
"express federal policy" and is therefore unconstitutional.

"You bear direct responsibility, Mr. President, by virtue of your
failure to keep your repeated, crystal clear pledges to recognize the
Armenian Genocide, for the Court’s judgment that it is the official
policy of the Executive Branch of the United States government to
actively oppose proper recognition of this crime and, upon this basis,
to thus prohibit states from passing laws to help Armenian Genocide-era
victims seek to reclaim lost or stolen property," said Hachikian in
an August 25th letter to President Obama.

The California Legislature passed a law in 2000 giving heirs of those
who died or fled to avoid Armenian Genocide-era persecution until the
end of 2010 to file claims for old bank accounts and life insurance
policies. Class-action lawsuits brought by Armenian descendants in
California and other states led to a $20 million settlement with New
York Life Insurance Co. in 2005 and a $17 million settlement the same
year with French life insurer AXA.

CENTRAL BANK OF ARMENIA INTRODUCES 100,000 AMD BANKNOTE

ArmInfo
2009-08-24 20:10:00

ArmInfo. The Central Bank of Armenia has introduced 100,000 AMD
banknote, the member of the Board of the CB Vakhtang Abrahamyan said
during a press-conference today. This is one more step to ensure the
necessary cash flow and to support individuals and companies carrying
out big transactions.

Abrahamyan said that there was demand for such a banknote. "In order
to ensure effective cash flow, we have decided to diversify our
banknotes following the international experience. The issue of the
banknote will not cause inflation. The 50,000 AMD banknote has just
7% of the cash flow. The 100,000 AMD banknote will get no more than
3%. This will hardly have any influence on the economy." "Economic
decline does not imply stoppage of big deals. On the contrary, today
is the right moment for conducting such deals."

The coin expert of the Central Bank Gevork Mugalyan said that the
banknote had been made by de La Rue Currency company (UK) and was
very attractive for coin collectors.

The face side of the banknote pictures a fragment of Mkrtum
Hovnatanyan’s icon of King of Edessa Abgar V, the first Christian
Armenian king. At the background you can see a fragment of the map
of Edessa.

On the back side of the banknote you can see a fragment of the ancient
cloth picturing Thaddeus handing Abgar V a canvass with the image of
his teacher Jesus Christ, the image that cured the ailing king. Head of
the Payment and Settlement Systems department of the CB Simon Simonyan
said that the new banknote was even more fraud-proof than the 50,000
AMD one. "For the first time ever we have applied four-color engraved
printing. The banknote also has the second magnetic strip. We have
applied multi-color technique ensuring high multi-layer protection. In
terms of its fraud proofness this banknote meets all international
standards," Simonyan said.

RIA Oreanda, Russia
Aug 20 2009

ARARATBANK Credit Rating Increased

Tashkent. OREANDA-NEWS . The rating agency ArmRating/GlobalRating has
raised ARARATBANK’s credit rating from BB- to BB with stable
forecast. According to the evaluation agency bank analyst K.Meliqyan,
Bank’s rating results from the stable development, positive dynamics
and maximum transparency, reported the press-centre of ARARATBANK.

The possible increase in the dependence of the resource base on the
‘on-call” resources and private investors, also increase in
sensitivity to the currency and credit risks in conditions of the
financial crisis are among the factors which block the rise of
rating. However, these factors are somehow neutralized due to the
Bank’s participation in the stabilization policy of the government
which is maintained within the framework of the World Bank Credit
programs and in conditions of of having access to the anti-crisis
recourses, which are granted to the Republic of Armenia by Russian
Federation to create productive demand by giving credits to small and
medium businesses.

The rise of ARARATBANK’s rating from ‘BB-” to "BB" with stable
forecast is also a result of the increased political resources of the
bank’s main shareholder, the maintenance of the financial stability in
conditions of the worldwide financial-economic crisis and due to the
start of the Institutional Building Plan of the Bank implemented with
the support of EUROPEAN BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION and DEVELOPMENT.

According to the evaluation of the Head of ArmRating/GlobalRating
agency E.Lazarian, ARARATBANK has shown stable growth of its main
indicators, and in spite of the critical phenomena in the economy of
Armenia, which also touched the banking sector, it has kept the high
quality of the assets, enough liquidity and moderate sensitivity to
risks.

QUANTITY OF ACTIVE PLASTIC CARDS IN ARMENIA GROW BY ALMOST 30%

ArmInfo
2009-08-18 20:17:00

ArmInfo. By 1 August 2009, the number of active plastic cards in
Armenia grew by 28,4% to 403119 as compared with the same period of
2008, in July 2009 a total of 17002 cards were issued, this index
being by 2655 more than in June. The given cards were emitted by
Armenian Card payment system member banks.

The share of local ArCa cards was the biggest – 62% (248.6 thsd).Visa
cards made up 26% (103.6 thsd), MasterCard – 12% (50.9 thsd). At the
average, in July operations were carried with 233.4 thsd cards (58%
of the total number of active cards).

Armenian Card CJSC told ArmInfo that as of 1 August 2009, the number of
trade/service points in the given system (bancomats exclusive) amounted
to 2004. There were 2260 POS-terminals in the given trade/service
points. ArCa cards were served by 2235 POS-terminals, Visa – by 1530
POS-terminals, and MasterCard – by 1789 POS-terminals. In July the
number of trade/service points grew by 29 as compared with June,
POS-terminals – by 33. As of 1 August 2009, there were 509 bancomats
in Armenia.

ARMENIA TO HAVE A SPECIALIZED CUSTOMS SERVICE

PanARMENIAN.Net
20.08.2009 18:54 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In a session presided over by Prime Minister Tigran
Sargsyan, Government today passed a decision on creating a specialized
customs service under RA State Income Committee.

Customs office will deal with goods transported via international
mailing or courier services. Its procedures will apply to the entire
territory of Armenia.

Such decision was conditioned by the increased level of electronic
trading. Considering that not all Armenian customs services are
supplied with relevant equipment, it was found necessary to create
specialized customs office, RA Government’s press service reports.

Decision was adopted based on international experience, says government
release. Such kind of customs services exist in Great Britain,
Thailand, Russian Federation and other states.

2.7% INFLATION RECORDED IN ARMENIA IN JAN-JUNE 2009

ARKA
Aug 21, 2009

YEREVAN, August 21. /ARKA/. Armenia recorded 2.7% inflation in Jan-June
2009, National Statistical Service of Armenia reports.

Consumer prices rose 2.4% in July 2009, compared with December 2008,
and 2.7% deflation was recorded in July, compared with June.

Inflation was planned at 4% (±1.5%) in the 2009 state budget.