Author: Emil Lazarian

allAfrica.com
The Central African Republic Formally Begins Participation in the IMF’s
General Data Dissemination System
International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC)
July 16, 2004
Posted to the web July 19, 2004
Washington, DC
The Central African Republic has begun participating in the International
Monetary Fund’s General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), marking an
important step forward in the development of the country’s statistical
system. Comprehensive information on its statistical production and
dissemination practices were published on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards
Bulletin Board (DSBB) on
June 14, 2004.
The GDDS, established by the IMF in 1997, provides a framework to assist IMF
member countries to develop their statistical systems with the objective of
producing comprehensive and accurate statistics for policy-making and
analysis. It addresses the quality and the dissemination of data. In
addition, the DSBB for the Central African Republic shows the country’s
plans for improvements in its statistical infrastructure and its related
technical assistance needs. This information provides the international
community with useful information to develop and coordinate their technical
cooperation projects in the Central African Republic.
Since its inception, 78 countries have participated in GDDS and have had
their metadata published in the IMF’s DSBB. Of this total, four countries
(Armenia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic) have graduated to
the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).
Mrs. Carol S. Carson, Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department, noted
that GDDS participation was a milestone for these countries. “I am pleased
to note that the Central African Republic has joined the large number of
countries already participating in the GDDS. The commitment being made by
the Central African Republic to improve statistics is an important one,
allowing the country to take full advantage of this framework for developing
their economic, financial, and socio-demographic data.”

Pasadena Star-News, CA
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
July 17 2004
Measure on Armenian killings fought by GOP leaders
Schiff’s genocide amendment threatened
By Lisa Friedman
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A provision deploring the massacre of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire after World War I has run afoul of Republican leaders
and the Bush administration, who are demanding it be stripped from a
foreign aid bill.
The largely symbolic amendment by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, would
forbid Turkey from using U.S. funds to lobby against a resolution
designating the killing of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and
1923 as a genocide.
The law already prohibits foreign governments from using American
foreign aid to lobby. Schiff, however, acknowledged his real goal was
to put the House on record as recognizing the Armenian genocide.
His amendment passed by voice vote late Thursday.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, reacted angrily Friday, issuing
a statement belittling Schiff’s provision. He and House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., vowed
the resolution will never see the light of day.
“Our relationship with Turkey is too important to us to allow it to
be in any way damaged by a poorly crafted and ultimately meaningless
amendment,” Hastert said.
Eliminating the amendment will likely avert a diplomatic crisis with
Turkey, a NATO ally that is home to the strategic Incirlik Air Base.
But the dispute also has provoked a furor in Southern California,
home to more than 54,000 Armenian-Americans.
“We find it deeply offensive that these officials would let a foreign
nation impose its dictates on Congress,” said Armen Carapethian,
spokesman for the Glendale-based Armenian National Committee of
America-Western Region.
“If we don’t recognize past genocides, then future genocides will
occur.”
Armenians estimate more than 1.5 million died in a planned genocide
campaign. Turkey has consistently denied the assertions, putting the
number at about 300,000 and contending that thousands of Turks also
died in what was a multi-party conflict during the last years of the
Ottoman Empire.
Hastert also was responsible for shelving an Armenian genocide
resolution in 2000. At the time, Turkey threatened not to renew the
mandate for U.S. forces using the Incirlik Air Base to patrol what
was then the no-fly zone in northern Iraq.
Schiff noted Friday that Turkey’s threats to France and other
European nations that have recognized the genocide have not
materialized, and said he isn’t worried about retaliation.
“Our relationship with Turkey will survive recognition of the
Armenian genocide,” Schiff said.
Schiff said supporters of the amendment will fight to keep the
language in the bill, which will be negotiated by House and Senate
leaders.

The Real Roots of Muslim Hatred
FrontPageMagazine.com
June 3, 2004
By Andrew G. Bostom
“Are you Muslim or Christian? We don’t want to kill Muslims.” That’s
what the Islamic terrorists reportedly told their innocent prey during
a murderous shooting spree last Saturday in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that
left at least 17 civilians dead in the initial assault.(1) How are we
to interpret such repeated acts of terrorism, targeting non-Muslims?
Perhaps the most influential contemporary doyen lecturing to us about
“Islamic fundamentalism” has asserted, in multiple writings since 1990
(2), the following: fundamentalism and its accompanying “Muslim rage”
derive exclusively from a steady decline in the geopolitical power of
Muslim states, evidenced, most dramatically, by the official dissolution
of the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I, and the creation of the
State of Israel after World War II. Despite his erudition, this doyen
appears unwilling to examine an obvious alternative explanation for
the etiology and persistence of Muslim animus toward non-Muslims- what
Muslim children, for generations, have been taught to think about the
infidel “other,” regardless of the geopolitical circumstances.
E.W. Lane wrote an informative firsthand account of life in Egypt,
particularly Cairo and Luxor, composed after several years of
residence there (first in 1825-1828, then in 1833-1835). James
Aldridge in his study Cairo/ /(1969) called Lane’s account “the most
truthful and detailed account in English of how Egyptians lived and
behaved.”(3) Egyptian Muslims, Lane explains, regarded/ /”persons of
every other faith as the children of perdition; and such, the Muslim
is early taught to despise…I am credibly informed that children in
Egypt are often taught at school, a regular set of curses to denounce
upon the persons and property of Christians, Jews, and all
other unbelievers in the religion of Mohammad.”(4) Lane, who had
perfect command of Arabic and went on to write a colossal
Arabic-English lexicon, translated the prayer below from a
contemporary 19th century text Arabic text. It contains curses on
non-Muslims,/ /”which the Muslim youths in many of the schools in
Cairo recite, before they return to their homes,* *every day of their
attendance.”(5) One typical curse is:
“I seek refuge with God from Satan the accursed. In the name of God,
the Compassionate, the Merciful. O God, aid El-Islam, and exalt the
word of truth, and the faith, by the preservation of thy servant and
the son of thy servant, the Sultan of the two continents (Europe and
Asia), and the Khakan (Emperor or monarch) of the two seas [the
Mediterranean and Black Seas], the Sultan, son of the Sultan (Mahmood)
Khan (the reigning Sultan when this prayer was composed). O God,
assist him, and assist his armies, and all the forces of the Muslims:
O Lord of the beings of the whole world.* *O God, destroy the infidels
and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion. O God,
make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their
feet to slip, and give them and their families, and their households
and their women and their children and their relations by marriage and
their brothers and their friends and their possessions and their race
and their wealth and their lands as booty to the Muslims: O Lord of
the beings of the whole world.”(6)
Not surprisingly then, Lane describes how the Jews, for example, were
“often…jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely
for passing on the right hand of a Muslim…(The Jews) scarcely dare
ever to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the
meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a
false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against
the Qur’an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his
jaded
ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by
calling the beast a Jew.”(7)
Over five decades later, in Tunis, 1888, the following personal
account reveals further evidence of the visceral abhorrence and
hostility inculcated in Muslim children, specifically, toward
non-Muslims: “(The Jew) can be seen to bow down with his whole body to
a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking
him in the face, a gesture that can prove of the gravest
consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In
such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has
been the custom from time immemorial.”(8)
Mary Boyce, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and a pre-eminent
scholar of Zoroastrianism, spent a 12-month sabbatical in 1963-64
living in the Zoroastrian community of Iran (mostly in Sharifabad, on
the northern Yazdi plain). During a lecture series given at Oxford in
1975,(9) she noted how the Iranian ancestors of the Zoroastrians had a
devoted working relationship (i.e., herding livestock) with dogs when
they lived a nomadic existence on the Asian steppes. This sustained
contact evolved over generations such that dogs became “a part in
(Zoroastrian) religious beliefs and practices…which in due course
became a part of the heritage of Zoroastrianism.”(10) Boyce then
provided an historical overview of the deliberate, wanton cruelty of
Muslims and their children towards dogs in Iran, including a personal
eyewitness account:
In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and
Zoroastrian, and were prepared to go…full of hope, into a crowded
Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian
lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boys…The
evidence points…to Moslem hostility to these animals having been
deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a point of
opposition to the old (pre-Islamic jihad conquest) faith (i.e.,
Zoroastrianism) there. Certainly in the Yazdi area…Moslems found a
double satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both
afflicting an unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who
cherished him. There are grim…stories from the time (i.e., into the
latter half of the 19th century) when the annual poll-tax (jizya) was
exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a Zoroastrian and a dog together,
and flogging both alternately until the money was somehow forthcoming,
or death released them. I myself was spared any worse sight than that
of a young Moslem girl…standing over a litter of two-week old
puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod
foot. The puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she
merely said blankly, ‘But it’s unclean.’ In Sharifabad I was told by
distressed Zoroastrian children of worse things: a litter of puppies
cut to pieces with a spade-edge, and a dog’s head laid open with the
same implement; and occasionally the air was made hideous with the
cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties on the Moslems’
part added not a little to the tension between the communities.(11)
Sorour Soroudi, an Iranian Jewish woman and academic, whose family
left Iran in 1970, published this recollection:
“I still remember the rhyme Muslim children used to chant when they
saw an Armenian in the streets, ‘Armeni, Armeni-dog, sweeper of hell
are you!’ “(12)
A decade later, anti-infidel discrimination intensified and became
state sanctioned policy with the ascent of the Khomeini-lead Shi’ite
theocracy in Iran.(13) Professor Eliz Sanasarian provides one
particularly disturbing example of these policies, reflecting the
hateful indoctrination of young adult candidates for national teacher
training programs. Affirming as objective, factual history the
hadith(14) account of Muhammad’s supposed poisoning by a Jewish woman
from ancient Khaibar, Sanasarian notes, “Even worse, the subject
became one of the questions in the ideological test for the Teachers’
Training College where students were given a multiple-choice question
in order to identify the instigator of the martyrdom of the Prophet
Muhammad, the ‘correct’ answer being ‘a Jewess.'”(15)
The ongoing proliferation of Saudi Arabian-sponsored educational
programs rife with bigotry against non-Muslims has been well
documented. A recent comprehensive report provided unambiguous
examples of these hatemongering teaching materials, accompanied by
this triumphal pronouncement from a Saudi royal family publication:
“The cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has been astronomical,
amounting to many billions of Saudi riyals. In terms of Islamic
institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly
financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 2,002 colleges
and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic
countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and
Asia.”(16)
Vilification of non-Muslims has been intrinsic to the religious
education of Muslim children and young adults for centuries, an
ignoble (and continuing) tradition that long antedates the modern or
even pre-modern Muslim “fundamentalist” revival movements. We must
acknowledge this reality and begin to think and act beyond the
well-intentioned but limited constructs of even our most respected
doyens. Perhaps it would be wise to heed the sober advice of this
courageous madrassa dropout and secular Muslim “apostate” Ibn Warraq:
First, we who live in the free West and enjoy freedom of expression
and scientific inquiry should encourage a rational look at Islam,
should encourage Koranic criticism. Only Koranic criticism can help
Muslims to look at their Holy Scripture in a more rational and
objective way, and prevent young Muslims from being fanaticized by the
Koran’s less tolerant verses…We can encourage rationality by secular
education. This will mean the closing of religious madrassas where
young children from poor families learn only the Koran by heart, learn
the doctrine of Jihad – learn , in short, to be fanatics…My priority
would be the wholesale rewriting of school texts, which at present
preach intolerance of non-Muslims, particularly Jews. One hopes that
education will encourage critical thinking and rationality. Again to
encourage pluralism, I should like to see the glories of pre-Islamic
history taught to all children. The banning of all religious education
in state schools as is the case in France where there is a clear
constitutional separation of state and religion is not realistic for
the moment in Islamic countries. The best we can hope for is the
teaching of Comparative Religion, which we hope will eventually lead
to a lessening of fanatical fevers, as Islam is seen as but another
set of beliefs amongst a host of faiths.(17)
Until Warraq’s recommendations are heeded, we can look forward to an
endless jihad/.
/ENDNOTES:
1.) Reuters, “Gunmen hunted “infidel” Westerners”
//Sun May 30, 2004 06:30 AM ET,
;storyID=520188&section=news
< html?type=topNews&storyID=520188&section=n ews>
2.) i.e., Bernard Lewis, for example, in 1990

; November/December
1998 <; "License to Kill: Usama bin Ladin's Declaration of Jihad", Foreign Affairs; 2002 ; 2003 m 3.) Quoted by J.M. White, in his introduction to, Lane, E.W./ /An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, New York, 1973, p. v. 4.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 276. 5.) ^ Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 575. 6.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 575. 7.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, pp. 554-555. 8.) Fellah. "The Situation of the Jews in Tunis, September 1888.", Ha-Asif (The Harvest) [Hebrew] 6 (Warsaw, 1889), English translation in, Bat Ye'or, The/ /Dhimmi-/ /Jews/ /and/ /Christians/ /Under Islam, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985, p. 376. 9.) Boyce, Mary. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (based on the Ratanbai Katrak lectures, 1975), 1977, Oxford. 10.) Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, p. 139. 11.) Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, pp. 141-142. 12.) Soroudi, Sorour. "The Concept of Jewish Impurity and its Reflection in Persian and Judeo-Persian Traditions" Irano-Judaica 1994, Vol. III, p. 155 (footnote 33): 13.) See Tabandeh, Sultanhussein. A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, translated by F.J. Goulding, London, 1970, pp. 17-19. Tabandeh was a Sufi Shi'ite ideologue whose writings had a profound influence on Ayatollah Khomeini's discriminatory policies towards non-Muslims in Iran, as discussed in Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious Minorities in Iran, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 24-27. 14.) Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 47, Number 786: Narrated Anas bin Malik: "A Jewess brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it. She was brought to the Prophet and he was asked, 'Shall we kill her?' He said, 'No.' I continued to see the effect of the poison on the palate of the mouth of Allah's Apostle." 15.) Sanasarian, E. Religious Minorities in Iran, p. 111. 16.) Stalinsky, Steven. "Preliminary Overview. - Saudi Arabia's Education System: Curriculum, Spreading Saudi Education to the World and the Official Saudi Position on Education Policy," Middle East Media Research Institute <;Area=sr&ID=SR01202#_edn25>,
December 20, 2002.
17.) Warraq, Ibn. “A True Islamic Reformation,”
<; FrontPageMagazine.com, May 19, 2003 Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and occasional contributor to Frontpage Magazine. He is the editor of a forthcoming essay collection entitled, "The Legacy of Jihad". From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Humanities Magazine, DC
July 14 2004
Recreating Pompey for Modern Eyes
By Cynthia Barnes
In 55 B.C.E., Romans applauded the debut of the world’s first modern
entertainment complex, a mammoth structure constructed by Gnaeus
Pompeius Magnus–better known as Pompey the Great, military conqueror
and rival to Julius Caesar. The showy consul named the theater for
himself. Today, using archaeology, three-dimensional modeling,
virtual reality technology, and digital research, architecture
experts are slowly raising the curtain on the Theater of Pompey.
“It’s shockingly enormous,” says James Packer, a Northwestern
University professor. “The scale is just astonishing.”
Crowds of between twenty-five and forty thousand people flocked to
see the latest spectacles played out on the 260-foot-wide stage.
Modern sports fans would recognize the curved stadium seating, the
barrel vaults, the VIP balconies–everything but the lack of
advertising–and feel right at home.
Pompey also had a curia constructed for meetings of the Senate. It
was here that Julius Caesar met his death, assassinated before a
statue of the theater’s namesake.
The Theater of Pompey became the model for all theaters throughout
the Roman Empire, says Packer. The plan for its seating areas and
façade served as models for the amphitheaters that inspired the
design for many contemporary sports venues.
Packer is directing the excavation of the theater as part of a
research project begun in 1996 with Richard Beacham of the University
of Warwick (U.K.). In 2002 Packer joined with archaeologist Cristina
Gagliardo, architect Dario Silenzi, and engineer Massimo Aristide
Giannelli to undertake the first excavation of the theater since
1865.
Until the end of the Roman Empire in the West, the Pompey Theater
remained the preferred venue for theatrical representations in the
capital. Yet, despite its renown and architectural significance, the
Theater of Pompey’s structure almost completely disappeared through
the centuries.
Today, the façade of a movie theater conceals the entrance to a
fortress and the piazza known as the Campo dei Fiori subsumes the
remains of the theater. The inner curve of the theater’s orchestra
survives in the Palazzo Pio’s curved façade along the Via di Grotta
Pinta. Its outer curve can be seen in the Via dei Giubbonari, the Via
Della Biscione, and on the Piazza Pollarola. These outlines hint at
what the theater once was. Leisure gardens were enclosed within the
Porticus Pomeianae, a rectangular colonnade. An elaborate temple
honored Venus Victrix, or Venus the Victorious. Galleries displayed
rare works of art from throughout the Roman world. A bronze statue of
Hercules–now in the Vatican Museum–probably adorned the stage
building or the Porticus Pompeianae. The story goes that the statue
was struck by lightning, removed from its original position, and
buried next to the south foundation walls of the Temple of Venus
Victrix, outside the theater, where it was found.
Built on the marshy “Field of Mars” beyond Rome’s seven hills, the
theater’s design took advantage of new techniques in vaulted concrete
architecture with sloping barrel vaults, which supported the internal
seats and a curved stone façade. Two imitators–the Theater Marcellus
and the Theater Balbus–were quickly constructed, and the design was
widely copied throughout the Mediterranean basin. The grandeur of the
theater and the sumptuous occasions held there astounded contemporary
Romans. Dio Cassius reported on the reception Nero gave the Armenian
king, Tiridates I:
Not merely the stage but the whole interior of the theater round
about had been gilded, and all the properties that were brought in
had been adorned with gold, so that the people gave to the day itself
the epithet of “golden.” The curtains stretched overhead to keep off
the sun were of purple and in the center of them was an embroidered
figure of Nero driving a chariot with golden stars gleaming all
around him.
After the fall of Rome, the Pompey Theater remained in use until
medieval times. It was repaired around 500 C.E. by Theodoric, king of
Gothic Italy. In the ninth century C.E., it was included in the
Einsiedeln itinerary, a document listing the sights of Rome written
for Christian pilgrims during the reign .of Charlemagne. By that
time, flooding from the Tiber and continuous occupation had taken its
toll, but the structure was still recognizable as an ancient theater.
By the year 1100, two Christian churches had been built on the site,
and the transformation of the theater into other structures had
begun. The church of Santa Maria in Grotta Pinta was built into one
of the vaults under the semi-circular seating area called the cavea,
and houses were built into the theater. Beginning about 1150, the
powerful Orsini family began buying out and combining these houses,
creating a powerful fortress from which they controlled the road to
Naples.
The assimilation continued. Pompey’s masterpiece was built into and
buried under the buildings near the Campo dei Fiori. The structure
became integrated into the medieval neighborhood. Archaeological
excavations by Victoire Baltard, a French architect working in the
first decades of the nineteenth century, and Pietro Righetti, then
owner of the Palazzo Pio, cleared and reburied only part of the
monument. Their reports detailed the plan of the curved lower section
of the façade of the seating area and the circular corridor behind
it, and Righetti reported fragments from the upper storeys of the
Temple of Venus Victrix.
Most medieval and ancient remains from the theater are unaccounted
for. The city is awash in archaeological treasures, and fragments
uncovered before today’s strict accounting methods often were not
tagged or labeled as to their origins. “There are storerooms
throughout the city filled with piles of capitals, slews of column
shafts, fragments of friezes. In earlier times, all these things were
put in storerooms,” says Packer. “When they were transferred, no
information was transferred with them. So we know that there were
pieces from Pompey. They are mentioned in earlier records, both
published and unpublished. But we haven’t been able to find these
things. We don’t know what’s become of them.”
Stripped of their archaeological context, the fragments are reduced
to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. From 1996 through 2001, Packer
collaborated with Beacham to document the accessible surviving
remains of Pompey’s theater.
Choosing new spots to excavate is no easy task. The modern streets
that pave over the site present both political and practical
problems. Disrupting traffic and rerouting underground electrical and
sewer utility services from the neighborhood is not feasible. Cellar
rooms under the theater’s cavea are accessible from Ristorante Da
Pancrazio–the arched barrel vaults of the old theater now make a
cool and cozy ceiling for diners enjoying Roman specialties such as
roast lamb with potatoes, spaghetti alla carbonara, and ravioli
stuffed with artichoke hearts.
But because these cellar rooms were filled with concrete, they cannot
now be excavated without damaging foundations and subjecting
residents to the sound of the pneumatic drills required to cut
through the fill. Extensive excavation could weaken the foundation of
centuries-old buildings like the Palazzo Pio, an archaeological and
architectural treasure in its own right.
The research in 2002 took place in one of the Palazzo Pio’s cellar
rooms, a part of the theater’s ambulacrum–the walkway, or circular
passage immediately behind the façade–adjacent to the foundations of
the stairs that led through the cavea to the Temple of Venus Victrix.
At the beginning of the excavation, researchers found that the room
had been filled with rubble from excavation in 1865 and from
post-World War II construction at the adjacent restaurant.
Removal of this detritus cleared the top of the medieval
archaeological strata that filled the excavation area and yielded
fragments of ancient, medieval, and eighteenth-century pottery. A
medieval wall closed one end of the ambulacrum. In a hole cut through
it were blocks of stone and an ancient impost block, which the
excavators temporarily left in place at the end of their season.
Rubble was hand-carried in plastic bags up a steep and narrow
staircase. “It was quite a chore,” Packer says. He and his colleagues
plan to install a small conveyor belt for the next excavation.
Packer is gathering information for a multi-authored monograph. The
Pompey Project will feature a computerized online database that spans
the entire history of the site. Virtual reality renderings of the
theater, acoustical renderings and sight lines, all known textual
references, plans of modern structures along with detailed plans of
the ancient remains, and digital photographs of all artifacts and
remains recovered at the site will be included.
It is the virtual reality modeling that may give the theater an
audience undreamed of in ancient times. By rebuilding the theater
three-dimensionally in cyberspace, any person on the planet with
access to the internet can stroll the gardens, admire the stage, or
marvel at the travertine marble-clad grandeur of Pompey’s monument.
They can examine the ornate temple where Venus received her
offerings, or even stand in the portico where Caesar met his end.
Cynthia Barnes is a writer in Columbia, Missouri.
Northwestern University received $35,000 in NEH support for the
excavation of the Pompey Theater.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Tucson Weekly, AZ
July 14 2004
Melding of Musicians
Jesse Cook travels to multiple continents for collaborators on his
latest album
By JOAN SCHUMAN

Jesse Cook

I’ve almost burnt a hole in Jesse Cook’s newest CD, returning again
and again to the seamless transition between the first and second
tracks.
“Prelude” slams into “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” with a punch of violins and
cymbals and deep, deep drums banging against each other before Cook’s
signature flamenco guitar bursts forth. And then, 25 seconds into the
second track, Maryem Tollar blares the lyrics of this traditional
Andalusian tune in a subterranean alto. An Egyptian string ensemble
headed by Hossam Ramzy in Cairo is responsible for haunting threads,
while back home in Toronto, Cook has enlisted Chris Church to
electrify the violin on the first track.
“It didn’t start as a master plan,” explains Cook of his aptly dubbed
fifth album, Nomad. We spoke by phone between gigs on his 14-city
U.S./Canada tour, which brings him and his Toronto-based band through
Tucson on July 24.
“I usually record at home in my own little studio. I tend to do all
the writing, arranging and producing myself. But I wanted to be far
enough away to get perspective.”
Cook was determined not to let distance drag down his dream of
incorporating musicians on several continents into the 12 tracks that
make up his Juno (Canada’s Grammy equivalent) award-winning album.
“I also was dying to work with Simon (Emmerson) of the Afro Celt
Sound System. So we called him in London and he loved the idea. He’s
the one who introduced me to Hossam who said, ‘Man, you need some
strings on here.'”
In the end, Cook grabbed musicians from London, Madrid, Cairo,
Toronto, Nova Scotia and, in the States, Milwaukee, Austin and Los
Angeles.
Paris-born and Toronto-raised, Cook already had four albums under his
belt before embarking on his latest project. Since 1995, he’s
produced CDs that have soared to the top of Billboard’s World Music
charts in the United States and gone gold in Canada–albums with
quirky one-word titles mostly on the Narada label (Tempest in 1995;
Gravity a year later; Vertigo in 1998; and finally Freefall in 2000).
His last two albums featured musicians from further reaches–like
Djivan Gasparyan (dubbed the god of Armenian Duduk) and Danny Wilde
of the Rembrandts, among others.
The Gypsy Kings influence is noticeable, as are hues of the Afro
Celts’ arrangement. At Narada, he shares a lineup with a litany of
world musicians including Lila Downs, Shelia Chandra, Jai Uttal and
Baka Beyond–all mavericks fusing their own styles into new genres.
Danny Wilde comes back for a cameo on Nomad, and Cook’s masterful
guitar yields its fiery, familiar taste–a smorgasbord of expressive
rumba and flamenco arrangements–a gypsy amalgam if there ever was
one.
“Montsé Cortés is a legend in gypsy music,” Cook says, discussing the
singer’s willingness to lend her vocals to “Toca Orilla,” the last
track on Nomad.
“Gypsy is a very guarded music. Sharing it with a foreigner like
me–a mungicake–is amazing,” concedes Cook of his admittedly “white
bread” status.
As for any fears of putting together an album with musicians living
far away from each other, Cook says it wasn’t that difficult.
“Hossam invited me to stay in his Cairo apartment, and it just
snowballed from there. It made sense to contact my vocalist friend
Maryem, who happened to be in Egypt at the time. She actually lives
three blocks away from me here in Toronto,” he adds with a chuckle.
“Once you get the travel bug, it’s pretty easy to just grab the
laptop and go. It’s amazing. I was flying home from Europe and I’m
mixing with 64 tracks on my Mac right there in row 13.”
He’s quick to add, “Just because you have the capability of recording
on the fly and have access to these tools, it doesn’t mean everyone
can be a producer. Remember, it’s in the ears.”
Going to where the musicians live is crucial, says Cook. “I’m not
sure you get the best take when musicians aren’t at home. In their
own space, they’re in the groove.”
The liner notes to Nomad hint at adjustments, however. Cook sprinkles
in bits and pieces of his album journal.
Cairo, January 11, 2003, 3:15: One of the violinists has arrived. The
first musician to show for a 2 p.m. call. Cairo time. Got to love it.
“I expected to have a hard time due to my Western origins. They all
thought I was from the States. I expected more hostility, post-Sept.
11. But people were great,” says Cook about his hosts. “I guess
politics operate above humanity.”
Nomad isn’t just different from Cook’s other albums for its melding
of musicians.
“Most of my previous music is instrumental. But I knew I wanted
lyrics and singing on this album. So, scary as it was, I made a demo
so I could generate interest in this project. It’s really awful, if
you’ve ever heard me sing. You begin to understand what a great
singer can do for a song–it makes it or breaks it.”
So, Cook wrote the tune for Montsé Cortés in her range. But he took a
different tact for Brazilian singer Flora Purim.
“I was just writing another version of ‘Girl from Ipanema,’ and then,
ironically, her CDs just flew across my desk and the project clicked.
I went to L.A. to record her voice tracks.”
Liner notes expand on his process for Purim’s track, titled “Maybe.”
It’s not so much Bossa Nova as it is Brazilian samba meets rumba
flamenco.
“I love eclecticism,” says Cook. “Finding a flow is important and a
bit of a trick. Basically, all the tunes are rumbas. The guitar is
front and center, chugging away.”
He adds, “I think people are obsessed with division–culturally,
spiritually and musically. For me as a musician, the similarities are
far greater than the differences. In Tibet, for example, when we
played there, it didn’t matter what language we were singing in or
even talking in. It’s the music that’s the universal language. Boy,
that sounds clichéd. But it’s true.”
For Cook, it’s all music from the planet Earth.
When I asked him to describe contemporary music in one sentence, he
responded quickly.
“It’s music of the next millennium. Our travel time is shorter now,
though we cover great distances, compared to say, France in the 18th
century. It changes how we listen. So, Britney Spears now has a
Bollywood string riff, and people don’t hear it as such. They just
hear that they like it.”
Yet with the shrinking of travel time and the ubiquitous ability to
taste everything, Cook says the business of musical genres and
audience promotion is slower to catch on.
“Here in Canada, the CD went gold. In the States, it’s more of an
underground following. Is it the music business or a cultural thing?
I don’t know. Some songs did quite well, even charted on the radio.
But not in the States. Oddly, “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” charted in the
United Arab Emirates.”
With all this globalism, Cook says he had the hardest time,
ironically, working with one musician closer by in the States.
“Once I decided I wanted to work with the BoDeans on the track ‘Early
on Tuesday,’ I went looking for Kurt Neumann in Austin. We made all
the arrangements, and I’m about to leave Toronto, and the SARS scare
hit. Kurt cancels, saying we all had cooties up here,” Cook quips.
“I spent a good deal of time convincing him that we’re all OK. No one
I knew had gotten sick–it’s a big city, you know. But Kurt wasn’t
taking any chances. The running joke later was that I’d be somewhere
in the States working, and I’d call Kurt in Austin just to tell him I
was doing OK.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
The Age, Australia
July 15 2004
D-Day for accused Olympic athletes
Friday is D-Day for two Australian Olympic athletes accused of drug
offences.
Weightlifter Caroline Pileggi will learn whether her appeal against
being dumped from the Athens Games is successful, and cyclist Jobie
Dajka is expecting to learn the outcome of police investigations into
him.
Accused cyclist Sean Eadie, meanwhile, will have a nervous weekend.
His appeal against a drugs infraction notice for allegedly importing
banned human growth hormones will be heard in the Court of
Arbitration for Sport in Sydney on Monday evening.
Pileggi, who was to have been Australia’s first Olympic female
weightlifter, was dropped from the Athens team after refusing a drugs
test in Fiji in June.
But she told the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Melbourne that
she fled from two drug testing officials in Sigatoka, Fiji, because
she did not know who they were.
“I didn’t feel safe,” she told the tribunal.
One of the New Zealand testing officials, acting on behalf of the
Australian Sports Drug Agency (ASDA), later admitted that he was not
familiar with the regulations and had not correctly identified
himself at their first meeting.
He also said he had not followed the correct procedure for signing
the form.
“The circumstances were less than ideal,” Vaughan Jones told senior
Tribunal member Narelle Bell.
Dajka expects to know the outcome of police investigations into his
case, including possible links with an Adelaide veterinarian.
Dajka, 22, has had his nomination for the Athens team suspended
pending police inquiries and continuing investigations by former WA
Supreme Court judge Robert Anderson, QC.
The clock is ticking on a number of other matters which need to be
resolved before the July 21 deadline for finalising Australia’s
Athens team, expected to number 475.
These include:
+ A Customs check on all potential Athens team members to determine
whether any of them may have been involved in importing banned
substances. The Australian Sports Commission expects results on
Friday. These will be forwarded to the Australian Olympic Committee,
which is waiting to finalise the team.
+ The result of a drugs test on former Armenian weightlifter Sergo
Chakhoyan. Chakhoyan, who served a two-year suspension after testing
positive at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane in 2001, was recently
tested in Armenia. A spokesman for the ASDA said the outcome was
expected in the next few days.
+ The outcome of four appeals by track and field athletes who missed
out on selection – Patrick Johnson (100m, 200m), Tim Williams (4x100m
relay), Annabelle Smith (400m), and Paul Pearce (4x400m relay). The
appeal will be heard in Sydney on Friday and the results are expected
on the day.
Mountain biker Josh Fleming was added to the Athens team after
successfully appealing his original non-selection.
Cycling Australia’s appeals tribunal found that the selection
criteria had been incorrectly applied.
Fleming, 28, replaces South Australian Chris Jongewaard, 24.

Sierra Sun, CA
July 15 2004
McIver dies at 95
Azad “Victoria” McIver, possibly one of Truckee’s most local locals,
passed away Tuesday, July 13 at the age of 95.
Born Azad Josepian in Harpoot, Armenia, in 1908, McIver survived the
Armenian genocide and left her homeland at age 6. In 1922 she came to
Truckee at age 14 with her older sister, Roxie, to meet up with their
brother, Richard, who came to town in 1916.
McIver attended grammar school at the old school house on Church
Street. She worked as a waitress at the Pastime in downtown Truckee
for nine years. McIver’s brother owned the Pastime, Manstyle Barbers
and the Donner Hotel, in addition to many acres of land in Truckee at
the time.
While working at the Pastime, McIver met her late husband, Jim
McIver, a local blacksmith who delivered mail to Tahoe City. They
were married Aug. 10, 1944 in Reno.
In 1949, McIver’s brother donated land and resources to help build
Tahoe Forest Hospital. As the beneficiary of her since-deceased
brother’s estate, McIver donated land for the hospital’s expansion in
1997.
McIver was preceded in death by her sister, Roxie, brother, Richard,
husband, Jim, and many other Truckee locals whom she called friends
and family. McIver is survived by many friends and family in Truckee
and surrounding areas.
Services for McIver were held Thursday, July 15. See Sierra Sun’s
July 21 midweek edition for more on the life of Azad “Victoria”
McIver.

Armenianow.com
July 16, 2004
Cool Relief: Armenian summer melts under 14 factories of ice cream
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
With temperatures rising toward the dreaded 40-degree (104 Fahrenheit) mark
of recent summers, Armenians look for relief from a source once only dreamed
of: Real ice cream.
In the hard years of 1988-93, mothers tried to pacify children with
home-made versions of ice cream that rarely came close to the real thing.
14 companies produce “baghbaghak” in Armenia.
“I have a special notebook where all my ice cream recipes are written, but
however hard I tried still my children were saying it doesn’t taste like the
ice cream in stores,” says Nazeni Mkrtumyan, a housewife.
Today, however, 14 companies produce ice cream in Armenia.
“In summer, about 40 percent of our daily income comes from selling ice
cream, and Tamara and Ashtarak Kat are selling the best,” says the manager
of Milena store Artur Minasyan.
Tamara, in 1992, was the first company to start producing ice cream after
independence, but its quality was far from today’s standards. (During Soviet
times there were three-four types of ice cream in Armenia, but none as good
as today’s quality).
In 1995 Ashtarak Kat entered the market, followed by the rest that today
offer an unimagined paradise of cold sweets.
All the selection of ice cream producing companies in Armenia was thoroughly
studied by Anna National Association of Consumers in 2003. According to the
president of the association Melita Hakobyan, the research that lasted 6
months included a market study, monitoring, sociological poll carried out
among 1,000 people, tests done in 4 laboratories and tasting by an 11-member
panel of specialists.
The poll found that about 40 percent of consumers prefer Ashtarak Kat; 30
percent, Tamara; about 20-25 percent favor Shant, while the other 11
companies (ASA, Grand Candy, Yerevan Penguin and others) get only seven
percent of the market.
“Our next most important step was laboratory tests which were carried out at
3 laboratories accredited by the RA Accreditation Council and at one
inspection laboratory which has all the modern facilities and which we
trust,” says Hakobyan.
After laboratory tests, tasting and visits to plants the committee gave 98
points (on a 100 scale) to Ashtarak Kat, 94 to Shant, 82 to Shant, 81 to
Grand Candy. The rest did not score 80 points, which means they fall below
acceptable standards
Samples of different ice creams were taken from the city’s different
communities. In the center 85 percent of ice cream corresponded to its
expiration date. In the suburbs, however, 25 percent of ice cream was found
to violate health standards (such as being kept with other food products, or
stored above accepted temperatures).
Some companies weren’t happy with Hakobyan’s assessment of their product.
Often, in order to save electricity, sellers turn off refrigerators during
the night. But according to specialists, re-freezing ice cream can create
bacteria that lead to illness.
Hakobyan, herself, became a victim of bad ice cream during the testing.
“I was getting treatment for a month, feeling for myself the situation of
over 100 consumers who applied to us with complaints; who have had various
poisonings and diseases because of bad quality ice cream,” she says.
Besides suffering health damage as a result of these tests, president of the
association Hakobyan, also suffered moral and psychological pressure. After
several TV programs during which together with members of the committee,
Melita Hakobyan presented results of the research, she was receiving many
threatening phone calls.
“They (ice cream companies) would call a lot and say ‘We’ll destroy you, we’
re coming now with our guns’ and so on, and I was telling them not to
bother, that I shall go to them myself, I have nothing to be afraid of, I
only now that there’s a product that is a threat to people’s health and I
consider it my duty to warn the consumer about it,” assures Hakobyan.
Together with Armenian ice cream producing companies today, there’s also the
ice cream of Algida company. According to the manager of importing company
Cleopatra Anahit Dervishyan, this kind of ice cream is not a competitor to
the local production.
“Of course, I’m not saying that Algida is so good that they cannot compete
with it, our local ones are very good, too, but Algida has totally different
taste peculiarities and is made with other technology and raw material,”
says Dervishyan.
>From the freezer to the waistline?
Algida is produced in 150 countries, but is imported into Armenia from
Trabzon, Turkey.
This brand of ice cream was also tested by the National Association of
Consumers. Unlike the local brands, Algida is the only one with packaging
that fully corresponds to the law, by listing in detail the ingredients.
Among the ingredients are preservatives not found in the local product. If
local ice creams can be kept from 4 to 5 months, Algida can be kept a year
and a half.
Prices of Armenian-produced ice cream bars range from 50 drams (about 10
cents) to 450 (about 90 cents).
According to saleswoman Naira Muradyan most of her customers prefer local
ice cream. According to her, children who often don’t have a lot of money
buy cheaper ice cream, like ASA, or Grand Candy, and the adults mainly buy
Ashtarak Kat or Tamara.
“It has often happened that a child asked the parent to buy Algida but the
parent refused, saying that it’s Turkish,” says Muradyan. “But it’s not the
child’s fault, it really is very tasty, but not as good as our Tamara,”
continues the young saleswoman jokingly and enjoys the cold ice cream
covered with chocolate.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEW IRANIAN AMBASSADOR HANDS CREDENTIAL TO KOCHARIAN
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS: Ali Reza Haqiqian, the newly
appointed ambassador of Iran to Armenia, handed today his credentials
over to president Kocharian. Kocharian’s press office said the new
ambassador conveyed the warm greetings of Iranian president Mohammad
Khatami to Kocharian. The ambassador was quoted as saying that Iran
appreciates highly Armenian president for keeping the bilateral
relations in the focus of his attention. He also added that
Kocharian’s visit to Iran in 2001 is perceived in Iran as a turning
point in mutually beneficial cooperation.
Congratulating the ambassador on taking a new tenure president
Kocharian said the ambassador received a serious legacy. He also
assessed the current level of diverse Iranian-Armenian relations
positively, saying they should be developed further. He said
concurrently with active political contacts economic interaction is
moving towards a qualitatively new phase, encompassing infrastructure
development with several major projects underway.
The new ambassador said he will exert all efforts to see all
majorjoint projects materialized. The two men also said the upcoming
visit of Iranian president to Armenia in autumn will give a serious
boost to bilateral relations. Also regional issues, the Karabagh
conflict regulation were discussed. Iran-Armenia relations were
considered a weighty factor for regional stability and peace.

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th Street NW Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet:
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 13, 2004
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918
ANCA JOINS WASHINGTON, DC PROTEST TO STOP GENOCIDE IN SUDAN
— New York Congressman Charles Rangel Arrested
during Demonstration at Sudanese Embassy
“When human lives are in jeopardy, there should be outrage”
— Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
WASHINGTON, DC – Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
staff and activists joined with Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY)
and leading African American and human rights activists at a
demonstration today outside the Sudanese Embassy calling for U.S.
and international pressure to end the genocide in the Darfur region
of Sudan.
The protest, organized by the Sudan Campaign, featured the arrest
of Congressman Rangel, a senior New York legislator who serves as
the Ranking Member on the influential U.S. House Ways & Means
Committee. He was arrested for trespassing by the police after
stepping to the door of the Embassy. He was released within hours
from a Washington, DC jail after paying bail of fifty dollars.
ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian, Government Affairs Director
Abraham Niziblian and the ANCA “Leo Sarkisian” Internship program
participants, led by Director Arsineh Khachikian, joined the noon-
time protest which included some hundred and fifty activists and
representatives from a diverse coalition of Sudan Campaign partner
organizations including the Congressional Black Caucus, Center for
Religious Freedom at Freedom House, Institute on Religion and
Democracy, American Anti-slavery group, Wilberforce Project, and
Christian Solidarity International, among others.
“We marched today, in the name of all Armenians, to do our part to
help end the cycle of genocide,” said Hamparian. “As the
descendents of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, we bear a
special burden to fight intolerance and to demand moral leadership
– and decisive action – from our government to prevent hundreds of
thousands of deaths in Darfur.”
During the demonstration, Niziblian, in an interview with the
Associated Press (AP), was quoted as saying that, “A lot more
people should be protesting and taking to the streets now.” This
AP report, along with several photos from the demonstration, have
since appeared in New York NewsDay, CBS News wire, and a host of
other publications and media outlets. Significantly, the lead AP
photo featured Congressman Rangel, in handcuffs, being escorted by
police with an “Armenians against Genocide” poster in the
background.
The Sudan Campaign is led by Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, co-founder of
the Congressional Black Caucus, and Joe Madison, a civil rights
activist and radio personality in the Greater Washington, DC area.
The group has been holding noon-time protests in front of the
Sudanese Embassy for the past month, during which several leading
human and civil rights activists have been arrested.
Speaking to the protestors prior to his arrest, Congressman Rangel
said, “When human lives are in jeopardy, there should be outrage.”
During his remarks, Madison announced that he is launching a hunger
strike until the Sudanese government takes action to end the
obstruction of humanitarian assistance from reaching hundreds of
thousands in need in Darfur.
On Wednesday, July 14th, Robert Edgar, a former member of Congress
and the current president of the National Council of Churches, will
be arrested in front of the Sudanese Embassy. Similar protests are
planned in Boston, New York, San Antonio, San Diego and Toronto.
Over the past month, the ANCA has called attention to the
atrocities in Sudan through a series of letters to Congressional
offices, urging them to take a stand to stop the cycle of genocide
through support of Congressional initiatives regarding Sudan as
well as for the Genocide Resolution (H.Res.193, S.Res.164), which
reaffirms U.S. commitment to the principles of the Genocide
Convention. On June 23rd, Niziblian participated in a press
conference organized by the Congressional Black Caucus and Africa
Action. The ANCA has urged Armenian Americans to add their names
to the Africa Action petition drive for Sudan, by visiting
Some 30,000 have already perished over the past 18 months in
Darfur, Sudan, with approximately one million forced to flee their
homes. If the Sudanese government does not take action to allow
the distribution of international humanitarian assistance, the
death toll could rise to 350,000, according to conservative
estimates.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress