Author: Harutyunian Christine

Luchtzak Aviation, Belgium
Jan 16 2005

Armavia cancels flights to Europe: poor sales

SN30952 writes “Armenia’s flagship airline, owned by Russia’s
second-biggest Sibir airline, has cancelled weekend flights between
Yerevan and three major European cities, despite growing demand.

Armavia, the Russian-owned private carrier, stopped flying in
weekends to Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris as from this month,
immediately after obtaining exclusive rights to the flights from the
Armenian government.
Armavia cited poor ticket sales to justify the move. Armavia’s sole
Western European destination now is Paris.
The cancelled flights used to be operated by Armenian International
Airways, a small private company now facing uncertain future. Its
traffic rights expired last month and were transferred to Armavia
which thus effectively became the sole Armenian-based airline.
Or how to kill an airline?

Austrian Airlines, the third largest carrier of passengers to and
from Armenia, increased the frequency of its regular Vienna-Yerevan
flights. OS flies presently five days a week.”

RIA Novosti. Russia
Jan 13 2005

ARMENIA HOPES TO FREE ITS PILOTS FROM AFRICAN PRISON

YEREVAN, January 13 (RIA Novosti) – Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanyan intends to make an official visit to Equatorial Guinea in
mid-February. The main question to be discussed during the visit is
the fate of Armenian pilots who received a lengthy jail sentence for
trying to organize a coup in that country last November.

According to Oskanyan, the authorities of Equatorial Guinea have
already declared their readiness to receive him, and the date of the
visit is being coordinated.

>From January 2004, six Armenian pilots worked in Equatorial Guinea
onboard an AN-12 registered in Armenia. Late on March 7, the Armenian
pilots were arrested in Malabu, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, for
participating in a coup attempt and engaging in espionage activities.
The Armenian pilots bluntly denied all charges.

On November 26, 2004, the Malabu court sentenced the crew chief to 24
years in prison and the other crewmembers to 14 years.

A South African citizen accused of masterminding the coup attempt was
sentenced to 63 years in jail, while his three compatriots to 50-60
years. Local citizens facing the same charges received a one-year
sentence.

The lawyer of the Armenian pilots has appealed this sentence in the
Supreme Court of Equatorial Guinea.

Financial Times (London, England)
January 10, 2005 Monday
London Edition 1

The dangers of pick’n’mix history
By MARK MAZOWER

In 1401, while besieging the city of Damascus, the Mongol ruler
Tamurlane, whose armies had plundered their way from Moscow to Delhi,
summoned the scholar Ibn Khaldun. Who better to lay bare for him the
secrets of civilisation and political power than the author of that
enduring masterpiece of world history The Book of Lessons. History,
according to Ibn Khaldun, acquaints us with great figures of the past
and allows us to be guided by their example.

The all-conquering Tamurlane was a smart and argumentative man, keen
to glean any insights the past could provide. But was he able to
predict the triumphant successes that followed, or the later division
of his vast empire? Ibn Khaldun, who reminded his readers that
victory and superiority in war come from luck and chance – and that
no dynasty can expect to last more than four generations – would not
have been surprised by either.

The idea that history’s value lies in the lessons it offers us goes
back a long way. Cicero described the past as “the teacher of life”;
Hegel saw knowledge of it as the precondition for self-awareness and
freedom. And what Novalis called “the magic wand of analogy” is still
waved vigorously. Ahead of the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush
warned the United Nations against following the miserable example of
the League of Nations, while Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister,
insisted he would not be remembered for appeasement. Historically
minded dissenters dismissed Mr Blair’s implicit reference to Neville
Chamberlain, likening him instead to Eden or Gladstone, imperial
interventionists whose sincerity was matched only by the catastrophic
consequences of their actions. Iraq in 2003 was thus turned,
depending on the viewpoint, into 1939, or 1956, or 1882.

No doubt history offers statesmen (and their critics) a handy
rhetorical weapon. Once historical events embed themselves in the
public imagination, they easily become a shorthand for basic moral
concepts such as treachery (Pearl Harbor), cowardice (Munich),
heroism (Dunkirk) and evil (the Third Reich). But the mere invocation
of these over-familiar names scarcely provides lessons in any
meaningful sense. When those who favoured invading Iraq likened
Saddam Hussein to Hitler, they were not actually interested in
comparing the two men or their regimes. Hitler for them meant not the
historical flesh-and-blood figure but the demonic image that still
dominates the public consciousness of the west as the epitome of
wickedness.

Plundering history in this way can be downright dangerous and lead
unwary policymakers down the wrong path. Has Condoleezza Rice, former
Sovietologist, been helped or hindered in her role as national
security adviser by her reading of how communism collapsed in 1989?
Believing that overwhelming US military superiority was what really
ended the Soviet one-party state, it was tempting to imagine Tommy
Franks spreading democracy in the Middle East, too. Tempting – but
the analogy turned out to be a false friend. And how nice it would
have been if the success and tranquility of the post-1945 Allied
occupations in Germany and Japan really had offered reliable pointers
to Iraq’s post-invasion political trajectory. Yet this parallel,
frequently drawn by think-tanks and policy insiders, is little more
than wishful thinking. Taking occupation seriously as a historical
category would have meant pondering the French experience in Algeria,
the Russians in the Caucasus, or the Italians in Ethiopia. History is
not a pick’n’mix box of candy, in which you can pick only the sweet
ones.

Yet before we write off the whole idea of learning from the past, we
should try to distinguish the stuff of public debate from something
less noisy but more substantial. Selling policy is one thing; but
history can also act as a kind of reality check within the process of
policy formation itself. Comparison and analogy, properly conceived,
are the life-blood of historical analysis, but they depend on an
important kind of detached open-mindedness and a willingness to
explore both the similarities and the differences between the cases
being considered. Why should we not discuss how the treatment of the
Armenians in the first world war compares with the treatment of the
Jews in the second; or ask how the way Palestinians are governed in
the occupied territories differs from the way whites ruled blacks in
South Africa after 1948? Or why should we not explore the contrast in
all its complexity between the defeated Axis powers in 1945 and Iraq
today? Historical insights flow from such comparisons and there are
lessons to be learnt – about states and their ideologies, their
intended and unintended consequences – both for those making policy
and for those wishing to comprehend it.

Taken in the right spirit, therefore, history can provide its own
unique kind of help to understand the present. As a discipline it is
neither predictive, nor a practical guide to action: its lessons are
not so specific. Yet it remains an essential tool for scrutinising
the easy moralising, the ideological certainties and the expansive
claims that batter our ears. It can serve as a politician’s
cheerleader, but it can also weigh policy assumptions and contexts.
And a final heretical thought: should the present provide the only
test of its value anyway? Two centuries ago, Friedrich Schlegel, the
German critic, suggested that the study of the past gives us “a calm,
firm overview of the present (and) a measure of its greatness or
smallness”. Our normally democratic age likes to demand that history
serve it; but then it vanishes like Tamurlane’s empire and becomes
history in its turn. Maybe there is a lesson there too.

The writer is professor of history at Columbia University

IRNA, Iran
January 11, 2005 Tuesday 11:32 AM EST

Electricity transmission to Turkey via Iran

Tehran, January 11

The managing director of Azarbaijan Regional Power Company said here
on Tuesday that 245 million kilowatt/hour electricity have been
transmitted from Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran during the first
eight months of 2004..

Fatah Qarebagh added that the transmission operation took place under
a tripartite agreement signed by the three states.

Under an agreement on the exchange of energy between Iran and
Azerbaijan, Qarebagh said that Iran imported 530 million
kilowatt/hour electricity from Azerbaijan, while exported 380 million
kilowatt/hour to the Autonomous Republic of Nakhichevan.

The official also announced that over 390 million kilowatt/hour
electricity were exported to Armenia during the first half of the
1383, while 82 million kilowatt/hour were imported from Armenia
during the said period.

ArmenPress
Jan 10 2005

LESS ARMENIANS SOUGHT ASYLUM IN 2004

YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS: The number of Armenians who
sought asylum in 36 developed countries in the first nine months of
2004 fell by 4.1 percent against the same time span of the previous
year-from 4,119 to 3,951.
In the first half of the passed year Armenians sought asylum
mainly in France, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria.
According to a government-affiliated department for refugees, the
number of Armenians who sought asylum in the first nine months of
2004 was 6 percent less than that of Georgians but 1.3 percent higher
than that of Azeris.
Among CIS member countries the majority of asylum seekers were
from Russia, followed by Georgia, Azerbaijan was seven in the list.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
January 9, 2005 Sunday 12:42 PM Eastern Time

Georgia-Russia railroad ferry line to open in late January

By Tengiz Pachkoria

TBILISI

A railroad ferry line between the Georgian port of Poti and the
Russian port of Kavkaz on the Krasnodar territory will open in the
end of January, a source in the Georgian Railroad Department told
Itar-Tass on Sunday.

At first the line will function once in three days, and each
ferryboat will carry 24 train cars. The traffic may grow busier in
the future. Georgia, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia can
use the ferry line.

Georgian and Russian experts have coordinated the text of an
agreement on opening the railroad ferry line. The agreement will be
signed during a Georgian visit of Russian Transport Minister Igor
Levitin on Monday.

NYU’s GREY ART GALLERY PRESENTS RARE GLIMPSE OF PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
FROM THE ARAB WORLD

Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography
A Project by Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari – Arab Image Foundation

January 11-April 2, 2005

New York City, October 25, 2004. In Mapping Sitting, two contemporary
artists present installations that dynamically disclose how
photographic portraits operated in the Middle East over the last
century. On view at the Grey Art Gallery from January 11 through April
2, this timely and topical exhibition was conceived by Walid Raad-a
media artist based in New York and Beirut and best known for his
innovative project titled The Atlas Group-and Akram Zaatari, a
prominent video artist, filmmaker, and curator who lives and works in
Beirut. Raad and Zaatari have devised four sections based on the
Middle Eastern tradition of `surprise’ street photography, on
itinerant photography, on institutional group portraits, and on
passport images. The latter features over 4,500 postage stamp-sized
passport portraits, while a video projection presents group photos of
military soldiers taken in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt
in the first half of the 20th century.

Raad and Zaatari reveal how Arab portrait photography not only
pictured individuals and groups, but also functioned as commodity,
luxury item, and adornment. Their installations feature diverse
photographs from the Arab Image Foundation-an archive in Beirut
housing more than 70,000 images taken by professional and amateur
photographers from the late 19th century to the present.

Collectively, the photographs convey pluralistic and dynamic Middle
Eastern communities through the lenses of indigenous
photographers-images far different from photos of the region
circulating widely today in the popular press.

Mapping Sitting presents four distinct practices: studio passport
photography; institutional group portrait photography; the street
tradition of ` photo-surprise’; and portraits by itinerant
photographers. These four forms are examined through the works of
Tripoli-based Armenian photographer Antranik Anouchian (1908-1991);
Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (born 1930); various group
portrait photographers who were active in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria,
Egypt, and Iraq between 1880 and 1960; and early 1950s street
`photo-surprise’ images by Setrak Albarian and Sarkis Restikian of the
Photo Jack Studio in Tripoli, Lebanon. Addressing the proliferation of
photographic portrait industries in the Arab world, the exhibition not
only raises questions about portrait photography in the Middle East,
but also about portraiture, photography, and visual culture in
general.

The history of photography in the Arab world is not well documented.

Introduced in the Middle East by colonial occupiers in the mid-19th
century, photography was, at first, dominated by Western practitioners
who focused primarily on antiquities, regional landscape, and exotic
traditions. Local photographic production flourished after Yessai
Garabedian, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, held the first
photography workshop in the region in the 1860s.In the years that
followed, photographic production continued to expand, especially as
Armenian exiles, many of whom had been trained as photographers, fled
Turkey for Islamic countries. With the arrival of Kodak box cameras in
the 1880s and 1890s, the appetite for photographic images increased.

As photography spread throughout Middle Eastern culture, modernization
was transforming the region. The social, political, and economic lives
of the emerging nation-states gave rise to nationalist liberation
movements alongwith evolving awareness of geography and
identity. Modern building methods and urban planning were implemented,
labor and women’s movements developed, and new literary and artistic
forms focused on identity as the central issue in developing
socio-political realities. Contrary to Western images of the Arab
world, which often depicted marginalized or dehumanized subjects,
photographs by indigenous Middle Eastern residents captured the
quotidian lives of these changing communities. Concentrating on
commercial photography, Mapping Sitting’s creators Walid Raad and
Akram Zaatari-artists who also function inthis instance as
curators-pose a number of questions: What historical, aesthetic,
philosophical, and cultural conceptions of photography are repeated
and/or questioned in these images? What can we learn about notions of
identity from these portraits? Keeping in mind the peculiar conditions
of production, distribution, and consumption of the images, Mapping
Sitting also investigates how these photographic practices reveal
characteristics of nascent national identities.

Walid Raad is Assistant Professor of Art at Cooper Union in New York
City.

His works include textual analysis, video, and photography
projects. He has recently performed at the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris; the House of World Cultures, Berlin; and the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, London. In 2002,his Atlas Group was included in the
Whitney Biennial, New York, and Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. Akram
Zaatari is the author of more than 30 videos, including This Day
(2003), How I Love You (2001), Her + Him Van Leo (2001). His writings
appear in critical and scholarly journals such as Parachute,
Framework, Bomb, Al-Adaab, and Al-Nahar. Zaatari is a co-founder of
the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut; Raad sits on the organization’s
board.

Mapping Sitting is complemented by a 250-page publication that
includes 840 photographs, designed by Mind The Gap Productions in
Lebanon, and co-edited by Karl Bassil, Zeina Maasri, and Akram Zaatari
in collaboration with Walid Raad.

In conjunction with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Cooper
Union,a series of public programs will explore the multiple issues
this timely exhibition brings to light. The Grey Art Gallery and the
Arab Image Foundation are organizing a national tour of Mapping
Sitting.

The exhibition is made possible in part by the Islamic World Arts
Initiative, a program of Arts International generously supported by
the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, and the New York State
Council on the Arts. The Grey Art Gallery presentation is made
possible in part by the Abby Weed Grey Trust. Educational programs are
supported in part by the Grey Art Gallery’s Inter/National Council.

IT IS SUGGESTED THAT 1600TH ANNIVERSARY OF CREATION OF ARMENIAN
ALPHABET TO BE INCLUDED INTO JUBILEE ARRANGEMENTS OF UNESCO

YEREVAN, December 30 (Noyan Tapan). The program on jubilee
arrangements was discussed at the sitting of the Jubilee Commission on
the 1600th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian
alphabet. According to the RA government’s press service, the proposal
on the inclusion of the 1600th anniversary of the creation of the
Armenian alphabet into the list of the jubilee arrangements of UNESCO
was among over 20 arrangements. A great theatrical performance,
pilgrimages and excursions to Oshakan, to the Mausoleum of Arshakuni
kings, as well as to other sights will be organized in the jubilee
year. The international conference on Armenian Studies dedicated to
the creation of the Armenian alphabet, the scientific-creative
conference, the electronic conference entitled “Information
Technologies and Armenian Letters” will be held during the year. The
jubilee arrangements will complete with a solemn soiree at the
National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet after
Al. Spendiarian. The RA Prime Minister instructed to sum up the
results of the discussion till January 15, 2005 and submit the entire
variant of the program to the commission for approval during the next
sitting, taking into account all the proposals.

Islam Online, UK
Dec 31 2004

Protestant Proselytizers Eye 10% of Turks: Report

Turkey is a pre-dominantly Muslim country.

CAIRO, December 31 (IslamOnline.net) – Protestant missionaries are
planning to proselytize some 10 per cent of Turkey’s 70 million
population by 2020, the Turkish army warned in a report published
Friday, December 31.

Up to one million gospels are planned to be distributed among the
Turkish people during this period, Turkish daily Zaman reported
Friday, citing the `Proselytizing Activities in Turkey and the World’
report.

The missionaries are trying to fill the `spiritual void’ left by the
youths’ ignorance about the basic tenets and rituals of Islam,
according to the report.

The proselytizers are playing on pitting the Sunnis and the
`Alawiyyin against one another to preach about the Christian faith,
the report added.

“Alawiyyin are originally a sect of the Shi`ah called `Nusayriyyah’.
The Nusayriyyah is a movement that emerged in the third century after
Hijrah. They claim that `Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) is
God-incarnated.

The Turkish army report further said that the Protestant missionaries
intend to establish a religious institute to prepare a generation of
theologians in Turkey.

It put at 69 the number of unofficial churches and places of worship
related to other communities, including 47 churches for the
Protestants, nine for the Baha’is and 13 for Jehovah’s Witnesses
sect.

The Baha’iyyah is also a Shiite sect that was named after one of its
leaders, Husayn Nuri. This faith emerged as a Shiite sect that was
led by some Shiites who totally deviated from Islam.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) are members of a worldwide Christian
religion who actively share with others their beliefs about God and
faith.

They use the Hebrew name of God, commonly rendered Jehovah in
English, and embark on visible proselytizing, including personal
visits to neighbors, and conducting free home Bible study courses,
according to the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

Thousands Proselytized

The report further said that 15,000 Turks have been converted to
Christianity, and other sects like Baha’iyyah over the past few
years.

Of the converters, 185 Muslims have officially changed their religion
to Christianity over the past three years and only one to Judaism,
the report added.

No law explicitly prohibits proselytizing or religious conversions in
Turkey. Many prosecutors and police, however, regard proselytizing
and religious activism with suspicion, especially when such
activities are deemed to have political overtones, according to the
daily.

Approximately 99 percent of Turkey’s population are Muslim, the
majority of whom are Sunni.

In addition to the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, there are an
estimated 5 to 12 million `Alawiyyin, according to the US State
Department.

There are several other religious groups, mostly concentrated in
Istanbul and other large cities.

While exact membership figures are not available, these include an
estimated 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians, 25,000 Jews, and 3,000
to 5,000 Greek Orthodox Christians.

These three groups have special legal minority status under the 1923
Lausanne Treaty. There also are approximately 10,000 Baha’is, an
estimated 15,000 Syrian Orthodox (Syriac) Christians, 3,000
Protestants, and small, undetermined numbers of Bulgarian, Chaldean,
Nestorian, Georgian, Roman Catholic, and Maronite Christians.

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Dec 29 2004

List of Armenia’s top homosexual officials forwarded to President

Armenia’s Supreme Union of Racists has sent the list of the country’s
seven top homosexual officials to the President, Prime Minister and
chairman of the National Security Council in a sealed envelope.
The Union has warned that the names of the officials will be made
public if no urgent measures are taken against them.