Author: Jirair Kafian

Consejo Mundial de Iglesias (Comunicados de prensa), Switzerland
Aug 2 2004
Middle East church leaders respond to Iraq bombings: solidarity and
work for peace needed
Middle Eastern church leaders have condemned attacks on Iraqi
churches and called for solidarity following bombings at churches
yesterday.
Speaking today at the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order
plenary commission meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bishop Nareg
Alemezian of the Armenian Apostolic Church (Catholicosate of Cilicia)
said: “This is the first time Christian churches have been targeted.
We condemn this attack and we are very concerned about it.”
Metropolitan Dr Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, from the Syrian
Orthodox Church of Antioch, urged Christians and Muslims to work
together for peace. “Solidarity is very important, both inside and
outside the region, both among Christians and between Christians and
Muslims,” he said.
Gregorios stressed that “the WCC and others should encourage anything
that brings Christians and Muslims together, not only in theological
dialogue but also in the dialogue of life and work.”
“I address my appeal to the Arab world, which can support any plan
for peace, and also to the Iraqi people themselves – if they are not
in solidarity, how then can they solve these problems?” he asked.
Alemezian called on international and local people to work for peace.
“This is not just a problem for Syrians and Armenians,” he said. “The
situation in Iraq is not isolated. It is related to the general
political situation in the world.
“We have a conflict, and we have to solve it – the US, the UN, all
parties involved in the creation of this situation, but also local
people and faith communities.”
Both leaders stressed the good relations between Christians and
Muslims in Iraq prior to the bombings.
“Christians are an integral part of the society they are living in,
they are not newcomers, they are not there for any superficial
reason,” said Alemezian. “Middle Eastern Christians are the people of
the land where Christ was born,” he added.
They both stressed the dangers posed by pressure on the nearly
1million Iraqi Christians leading to increased emigration.
“The diminishing number of Christians in Iraq is a terrible thing,”
said Gregorios. “The same picture is replicated in other countries
like Turkey, Iran, and Palestine. We are losing our people.”
Could a situation arise, they said, where there were no Christians in
the Middle East and no Muslims in the West? This would be “dangerous
for everybody,” said Metropolitan Gregorios. “This is very important.
It’s not good for humanity.”
According to news reports, at least 11 people were killed and dozens
injured as bombs exploded at four churches – two of them Syrian and
two, Armenian Orthodox – and a monastery.
Additional information: Juan Michel + 603 2148 9166 Melaka room +4179
507 6363
Para más información: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363
[email protected]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

New York Times
July 3 2004
First, Get a Green Card. Next, Hire a Publicist.
By GARY SHTEYNGART
Lately I haven’t been a good immigrant. I can’t get myself to work an
80-hour week. I won’t walk 20 blocks to save a subway fare. And I
don’t have that crazed, adrenaline-driven certainty that life will
soon get better for me or mine. Maybe it’s the gloomy times we live
in. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe it’s the war. But most likely it’s
that I’m sated — the young immigrant’s hunger and worries are gone.
I’m not fat and doughy just yet, but my midriff looks, to quote an
old friend, ”prosperous.”
Want and fear drive America: the want of security, dignity and wild
affluence, the fear of coming up short on all counts, the fear of
extinction in an unforgiving market economy that rewards only the
tireless and the unblinking. ”Remember the lesson of the . . . dodo
bird,” Monette Adeva Maglaya cautions the newcomer in her remarkable
new book, THE COMPLETE SUCCESS GUIDE FOR THE IMMIGRANT LIFE: How to
Survive, How to Thrive, How to Be Fully Alive (PDI Books, paper,
$19.95). ”One must learn to adapt or else, perish.”
I say Maglaya’s book is ”remarkable” not because it is a compendium
of bizarre clip art, well-worn inspirational cliches, practical
advice and religious hoo-ha, all of which it is, but because few
books have come closer to telling me what it means to be an immigrant
in America today. And if Maglaya is to be believed, it means living
in a land of turbo-Darwinism that would shock the likes of Huck Finn
and Augie March, a landscape of hucksters and dreamers, of
work-at-home schemes, fake children’s modeling contests and rampant
identity fraud. It means, for the most part, living in Southern
California amid tribes of Cambodian doughnut tycoons and Chinese
laundry empires. It means believing in God (and preferably Jesus
Christ), and making him (them) a part of everything you do.
Religious, resourceful, highly flexible and yet essentially
conservative, the immigrant is the most reliably American of all
Americans, the indispensable citizen, the bedrock of the American
dream with all its tainted pleasures and millennial lunacies.
That said, the face of immigration, or at least the face of
immigration guidebooks, is unrecognizable to me today. When my family
came to the United States from the Soviet Union around 1980, we were
given a slim instructional volume from a resettlement agency. Aimed
squarely at the Soviet immigrant, the book stressed the prodigious
use of deodorant and the need to grin painfully whenever an American
was present (”smell-‘n’-smile” is how I committed this advice to
memory).
As far as Maglaya is concerned, the modern superimmigrant has no need
for such obvious instruction. Instead, he should gain quick
proficiency with MapQuest and Google. Once these are mastered there
are ”very strong arguments” in favor of learning English, ”apart
from the usual benefit of being able to read road signs.” With
English and the yield sign under his belt, the immigrant faces the
quandary of finding a good house servant. Watch out, Maglaya warns,
for they don’t come cheap in this country. Immigrants who have had
”domestic help to do things for them” will be ”in for a shock.”
Now that the tempest-tossed refugee has secured the services of a
reputable manservant, it is time to find a suitable activity to
occupy his time. ”Should he go into business? Should he pursue the
arts?” These are all difficult decisions to make for someone who has
just sneaked across the Rio Grande, but if one finally settles on
entrepreneurship it is often helpful to ”get a professional
spokesperson or a mascot.” You know, to help out with publicity.
The author, who came to the United States in the 1980’s from the
Philippines with a master’s degree in communications, leaves us with
a list of recommended books, including Pat Buchanan’s ”Death of the
West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our
Country and Civilization” and other examples of ”the boat is full”
philosophy. Maglaya’s assessment of the way immigrant groups perceive
and treat other immigrant groups is yet another remarkable aspect of
this book. We learn, for example, that ”Jews and Armenians have long
histories of being involved in business in every area around the
world where they settle,” while Koreans have ”a somewhat hardy
resistance to acculturation.” Mexicans, despite being abundant in
the author’s adopted Southern California, are suspiciously absent
from the list of enterprising immigrant groups. Possibly they have
little of value to impart to Maglaya’s ”bright, bushy-tailed eager
beaver of a newcomer.” The world rightfully looks to America as the
nation most welcoming to immigrants — and yet what many highly
educated immigrants do not know, or do not care to know, about one
another’s struggles could fill a book. This one, for instance.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Harrison’s place in history assured
Stephen Halliday at Braehead Arena
The Scotsman – United Kingdom
Jun 21, 2004
THE superlatives flowed almost as fluently as the barrage of punches
which took Scott Harrison into the history books on Saturday night
but no matter the praise heaped upon him, actions speak so much louder
than words for Scotland’s WBO featherweight champion.
Even compared to the legendary Roberto Duran by understandably jubilant
manager Frank Maloney in the wake of his breathtaking third round
stoppage of mandatory challenger William Abelyan at the Braehead Arena,
Harrison’s performance issued a proclamation to the rest of the nine
stone division’s elite that he is more than ready to stake his claim
as the finest of them all.
Injin Chi, the explosive WBC champion from South Korea, is first on
the wish-list of Harrison’s promoters as the 26-year-old pursues his
dream of unifying the titles. Boxing politics may yet conspire to deny
Harrison the marquee fights he craves against IBF and WBA champion
Juan Manuel Marquez of Mexico or his Filipino rival Manny Pacquiao,
but there can be no doubt now that the Glaswegian belongs in such
elevated company.
Saturday’s defence of his title was widely predicted to be Harrison’s
most difficult yet against the Armenian-born Californian southpaw
with a reputation as the wild card of the division, a man capable of
seriously ruffling the smoothest of feathers.
While Harrison’s ruthless dismantling of an opponent ranked in the
top ten by three of the major sanctioning bodies will not receive as
much exposure in the Las Vegas Sun as it does in the Scottish one,
he can be sure this result will be duly noted on the influential
American boxing scene.
“I believe I am the best featherweight in the world,” said Harrison,
“and I just want the opportunity to prove it. I want to collect all the
belts I can, I want the unification fights. After that, my goal is to
move up to super-featherweight and become a two-weight world champion.
“I honestly don’t think about the money. What’s more important to me
is the chance to go down in history for a long, long time. Anyway,
if you keep winning world title fights, you don’t have to worry about
the money, it will come automatically.
“I think I’m just about getting to my peak now but at the same
time I feel I can jump up another level or two if I need to in the
big unification fights. I want to keep busy now and I want to keep
making history.”
His defeat of Abelyan was Harrison’s fifth victory in a world title
contest, drawing him level with Jim Watt’s record for a Scottish
boxer. It now seems inconceivable that he will not go on to become
his country’s most successful pugilist of all time.
Despite well-publicised personal difficulties Harrison encountered
in the build-up to the contest, cleared of an assault charge just
nine days earlier, there was a hugely impressive, almost serene focus
about the champion as he entered the ring.
Any fears that the anger he had expressed over both the court case
and Abelyan’s pre-fight taunts would result in a dangerous lack of
concentration were erased from the opening bell as Harrison settled
into a slick rhythm of controlled aggression.
The challenger paid for opting to share the centre of the ring in
the first round, Harrison catching him repeatedly with straight right
hands and clipping left hooks to take the session convincingly. The
second round saw Abelyan switch to the kind of tactics widely expected
of him, circling the ring defensively and landing several accurate
counter punches on the advancing champion.
It was enough to win Abelyan the round and suggested Harrison may be
in for as long and troubling an evening predicted. Instead, it was
simply the cue for the Scot to produce arguably the most impressive
round of his career to date.
Closing down the space Abelyan was attempting to create, Harrison
regained total control of the flow of the contest. Another jolting
right hand staggered and dropped Abelyan for the first time, the
stunned challenger continuing after an eight count from American
referee Samuel Viruet. There was no respite, Harrison sensing the
opportunity for an early night and refusing to let Abelyan off
the hook.
A blistering combination sent him to the canvas again, Abelyan this
time sprawling forward in disarray and looking unlikely to beat the
count. Bravely, he did, but when Harrison swarmed in again, Viruet
stepped in to call a halt at 1m 45sec of the round.
“Scott made a statement tonight, not just to British boxing where he
is now the country’s number one fighter ahead of Ricky Hatton and Joe
Calzaghe, but to the rest of the boxing world,” said manager Maloney.
“I don’t think anyone in the featherweight division can beat him. He
is a modern-day Roberto Duran, he will fight anyone and he does it
for the glory and for pride in his country.
“My only disappointment was that we didn’t have a sell-out for this
fight. I know it was on and off a few times, which made it difficult,
but Scott is the most successful sportsman in Scotland and I hope
the people will really get behind him.
“If we can bring Injin Chi here, a guy who loves to come forward and
fight, it would be a massive fight for Scott and for Scotland.”
Chi, the 30-year-old Korean who travelled to Manchester earlier this
year to stop Michael Brodie and claim the WBC title, is scheduled to
make the first defence of his belt against Eiichi Sugama of Japan
in Seoul on 24 July. With the WBC last week filing for bankruptcy
after losing a dollars 31 million lawsuit to German boxer Graciano
Rocchigiani, the organisation’s future is clearly in some doubt but a
fight with Chi would remain a major attraction for Harrison no matter
how many titles are on the line.
“It would be a great fight for Scott,” said his father and trainer
Peter Harrison, “and those are the kind of tests he wants now. He has
never shirked anyone and he will fight any featherweight out there.”
Glasgow super-featherweight Willie Limond convincingly won a gruelling
battle against crude French champion Youssef Djibaba, to lift the
vacant European Union title.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress