Author: Kajoyan Gevork

SIBEL EDMONDS OFFERS DETAILS OF TURKEY’S COVERT OPERATIONS IN U.S.

by Emil Sanamyan

8-10-sibel-edmonds-offers-details-of-turkey-s-cove rt-operations-in-u-s-
Monday August 10, 2009

Washington – Operatives allegedly acting at the behest of the Turkish
government used evidence of an extramarital affair to blackmail
a sitting Democratic member of Congress, while paying off others
in Congress and the executive branch to support Turkey’s agenda, a
former translator privy to federal investigations of the activities
said in a deposition for the Ohio Elections Commission.

The scandalous details were part of testimony by former FBI translator
Sibel Edmonds heard at the National Whistleblowers Association office
in Washington on August 8 by representatives of incumbent Rep. Jeanne
Schmidt (R.-Ohio) and David Krikorian, a candidate for the Democratic
Party ticket in that district, who requested Ms. Edmonds’ deposition.

With a full video of Ms. Edmonds’ deposition anticipated to be
released at a later time, Mr. Krikorian told journalists about some
of the charges presented.

One case concerned "a current female member of Congress who [is]
apparently bisexual and [Turkish operatives] bugged her apartment,"
Mr. Krikorian said. "She’s married with children, and they set
up a relationship with another female who went in and had sexual
relationships with her. And they had all the episodes bugged within
this current representative’s home and they blackmailed her."

While Ms. Edmonds did not name the member of Congress, she later told
Brad Friedman blog that the congresswoman in question is a Democrat.

Mr. Krikorian also confirmed that charges of taking bribes and engaging
in other illegal activity were heard against sitting Rep. Dan Burton
(R.-Ind.), ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.), and other current
and former members of Congress.

Other charges of collusion with Turkish officials were made against
Marc Grossman, a former undersecretary of state and ambassador to
Turkey, and other former U.S. officials.

Since leaving government both Mr. Hastert and Mr. Grossman, who have
in the past denied any wrongdoing, joined Washington lobby groups
with ties to Turkish government contracts; reaction from Rep. Burton,
one of the few members of Congress to engage in outright denial of
Armenian Genocide, was not available as of press time.

The deposition came as part of the Ohio Elections Commission’s
consideration of a complaint filed by Ms. Schmidt, who alleged that
Mr. Krikorian made "false statements" that she took "blood money"
from Turkish interests to oppose a congressional resolution on the
Armenian Genocide.

By summoning Ms. Edmonds, Mr. Krikorian sought to establish a pattern
of efforts on the part of the Turkish government and affiliated
entities to induce U.S. policy makers into opposing the genocide
resolution.

The Ohio Elections Commission is expected to rule on Rep. Schmidt’s
complaint on September 3.

Charges corroborated and ignored

The former FBI translator’s testimony is based on her past access to
wiretap recordings made as part of investigations of Turkish government
activities in the United States from 1996 to 2002. After being fired
from the FBI, Ms. Edmonds took evidence of federal mismanagement and
corruption to Congress and sought reinstatement through the courts.

Ms. Edmonds’ allegations – covered at the time by U.S. mass media
– took on added weight when the Justice Department’s internal
investigation issued in early 2005 confirmed many of them and did
not dispute others.

But no congressional investigation or prosecutions based on her
charges ever followed.

Her deposition last Saturday came despite warnings from the Department
of Justice that she "has not complied with the procedures for obtaining
authorization from the FBI, her former employer, prior to making any
disclosure relating to information that she acquired in the course
of her work for the FBI."

Lawyers for Ms. Edmonds argued that without renewing the state secrets
privilege first invoked by the Bush administration against the former
FBI translator to prevent her from testifying, the current Department
of Justice could not prevent Ms. Edmonds from offering her testimony.

Fuller Center for Housing Armenia
Contact: Haykuhi Khachatryan
Yerevan 0033, Baghramyan str. 3rd lane, house 10a
Tel: (+374 10) 271 499

Press Release
10, August, 2009

August 10, 2009, Haytagh village, Armavir region, Armenia

Armenia Marriott Hotel staff members joined Fuller Center for Housing
Armenia beneficiary family on the building site in the village of Haytagh,
Armavir region.

Armenia Marriott Hotel associates including Management and Hourly staff were
in the village of Haytagh to help build a house for a disadvantaged family.
A group consisting of 12 staff members did not waste an opportunity to help
Arshakyan family to get their first ever house and a possibility to raise
their children in safe and healthy conditions.

Sub-standard housing is all too common in Armenia. Many families live in
deteriorated housing, in cramped quarters with inadequate water and heat.
These families are unable to purchase their own homes, as they do not have
sufficient income to save to pay for the entire house cost up front.

Fuller Center for Housing Armenia provides these families long term interest
free loans and which is more important encourages volunteers to join the
beneficiary families build with them shoulder to shoulder.

"This joint effort once more demonstrated that core values and culture are
the ideals that serve as the foundation of all aspects of Marriott’s Spirit
to Serve" said Ami Miron, the General Manager of Armenia Marriott Hotel.
"The Spirit to Serve the community is demonstrated every day by associate
and corporate support of local, national, and international initiatives and
programs". Serving the community is an important part of doing business "the
Marriott Way." "We pledge that every Marriott community will be a better
place to live and work because we are there". JW Marriott Jr.

Fuller Center for Housing Armenia believes that the core values of Marriott
Inc. are related to those of the organization, as both of them are widely
involved in community developing activities.

"It is very encouraging to see that a corporation like Marriott INC is
joining FCH Armenia in the common goal to make life in our communities more
comfortable and decent for everyone. I believe that the Armenia Marriott
Hotel build day will become a wonderful example of serving our communities
and landing hand to the families, deprived of basic dwelling. It is also
very symbolic to see that hospitality -Business Company cares of those who
need a place to spend safe nights and to build safe future for their
children, said Ashot Yeghiazaryan, Fuller Center for Housing Armenia
president.

Marriott International, Inc., is a leading lodging company. Its heritage can
be traced to a root beer stand opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927 by J.
Willard and Alice S. Marriott. Today, Marriott International has more than
3,200 lodging properties located in the United States and 66 other countries
and territories. For more information, please visit

The Fuller Center for Housing Armenia is working to eliminate poverty
housing by providing long term, interest free loans and by assisting with
volunteers helping low-income families to build simple, sustainable,
affordable houses and renovate their houses. For more information, please
visit

FCHA address: Baghramyan 3rd lane, house 10/A, Yerevan 0033, Armenia,

email: [email protected], Phone: (374 10) 27 14 99.

ANY OPINIONS ON RA PRESIDENT’S VISIT TO TURKEY ARE VIABLE

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
07.08.2009 18:21 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Both positive and negative opinions on
RA President’s visit to Turkey in autumn 2009 are viable," YSU
Turkology Department Professor, turkologist Ruben Melkonyan told a
news conference in Yerevan.

According to him, regarded in the context of agreements unfulfilled
by Turkey, RA President’s visit to Turkey could be viewed as
inappropriate.

Melkonyan said there’s another opinion, speculated by Turkish
media, according to which Turkish President Abdullah Gul accepted RA
President’s invitation without any precondition, and RA President is
now setting ones. "In this connection, I’d like to note that Gul’s
visit to Armenia was unannounced and explained by external political
processes, including Russian -Georgian conflict," Melkonyan emphasized.

THE OATH OF TURKISH PUPILS FOR ASSIMILATION POLICY

Aysor.am
Aug 7 2009
Armenia

"The usual school day in Turkish schools starts with the oath which is
called the pupil’s oath. There are a lot of deep ideological elements,
quotings from Ataturk: The oath starts with the follwing words:
"I am a Turk, I am right, I am laborious",- and ends with the famous
words of Ataturk "How happy I am that I am a Turk", – informed the
journalists the Turkologist Ruben Melqonyan.

The speaker examining this issue through the official records of
Turkey according which there are 40 ethnic groups living in the country
thinks that this process has an obvious "assimilation, chauvinistic"
nature as the new generation of the ethnic groups everyday is changing
its originality, repeating how happy he is that he is Turk.

But according the Turkologist not everything is that much fluent. A
movement melting the ice has started in Diarbeqir; an organization
of lawyers has appeared with an appeal and has appeared in
the Constitutional Court with a request to recognize this oath
anti-constitutional.

"Even in Diarbeqir streets one can see posters which call for
abrogating that oath. It is a way which will take Turkey to erosion and
breaking of taboos and to destroying of them", said Ruben Melqonyan.

"There is one more expression on the posters of Diarbeqir, which
says "not I am not a Turk, but I am Armenian, I am Qurd", that is
to say the representatives of those ethnic groups are rising", –
noted R. Melkonyan.

HATRED FOR THE ARMENIANS WILL LEAD BAKU TO NOTHING GOOD

PanARMENIAN.Net
04.08.2009 GMT+04:00

It is no longer a secret that the highest echelons of Azerbaijan
"lack understanding" of what exactly the President wants.

What Ilham Aliyev has been able to do during the six years of his
presidency is the instillation of zoological hatred for the Armenians
in the Azeri population. It is done purposefully so that no one would
ever doubt who is the real enemy of the Caucasian Tatars, who call
themselves Azerbaijanis and copy the history of the whole region in
favor of the ambitions of the Aliyev clan.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ One cannot say that this campaign has begun only
recently: Ilham Aliyev simply continues the work of his father,
who devoted all his life and activity to the extermination of the
Armenian cultural and physical presence in the Soviet Socialist
Republic of Azerbaijan.

Reading over the Azeri press, you arrive at the conclusion that this
country is in no way interested in anything else but Armenia. Any
information from any part of the world is brought into connection
with "insidious" Armenians. All this would be ridiculous, but for one
circumstance: population of the neighbouring republic is intensely
prepared for a war, which, in the words of Ilham Aliyev, can break out
at any moment, since "the patience of the Azerbaijani people is not
limitless". It’s true that Aliyev has been repeating this sentence
for three years already, but now the matter seems to take a serious
turn. It is no longer a secret that the highest echelons of Azerbaijan
"lack understanding" of what exactly the President wants. On the one
hand he makes declarative statements on the return of Karabakh at any
price, on the other hand expresses desire to, even so, continue the
negotiations. But in order the Aliyev clan would continue to reign in
the form of its sultanate, it is necessary that people be kept in the
state of constant hysteria. And the best object for this purpose are
the Armenians. The clan knows well that as soon as the anti-Armenian
hysteria ceases, the population of Azerbaijan will see in what a
beggarly state it lives. In fact, all praises about the beauty of Baku
and its dynamic development are nothing else but empty words. Here
they can reproach us on the fact that we have not been to Baku and
it’s not us who can judge it. We, certainly, have not been there,
but based on some ‘unpaid’ commentaries we can see in what need our
neighbours live, in spite of having hydrocarbons reserves.

And if we comment on the possible war, we must admit that the thirst
for revenge may bring some success to the Azerbaijani army, but only
in the first stage. And the success, in our view, will consist in the
fact that the valiant Azeri army will not immediately run away from the
battlefield. The blitzkrieg, so much dreamt in Baku, will fail, and the
matter is not only the Armenian army, which, irrespective of the number
and armor of the Azeri armed forces, will not return a single inch of
earth. Aliyev will at best suffer the same fate as Mikhail Saakashvili,
who so poorly began and lost the "reestablishment of constitutional
order" in the territory of Tbilisi. But there exists also the worst
version for the clan: renunciation of the West from all gas projects
connected with Azerbaijan. And it is appropriate here to speak of the
first alarming bell that has already rang for Baku: the position of
Turkmenistan on the status of the Caspian Region. Ashgabat accuses
Azerbaijan of misappropriation of oil-gas fields in the central part
of the Caspian Sea. President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov
ordered to address the international experts and high-degree lawyers to
learn the Azerbaijan’s claims over the disputed fields in the Caspian
Sea and legality of the foreign oil-gas companies’ operation in those
fields and then to send the documents to the International Court of
Arbitration. "Such unilateral actions in the Caspian, particularly
exploration of the fields without the agreement of the interested
parts are unacceptable for Turkmenistan. Based on the principles
of the international cooperation, Turkmenistan brought the disputed
territories on the agenda of the Turkmen-Azerbaijani negotiations,
but there was no agreement. The existent situation is delaying the
exploitation of the natural resources of the Turkmen shelf of the
Caspian, implementation of the important programs for the economic
development of the region and protection of the environmental welfare
of the sea and coastal areas," declared!

the Pres No matter how hard Baku propaganda and agitation section
tries to disavow the statement of Ashgabat and its intention to turn
to the International Court of Justice, it is possible to definitely
say that Aliyev has run into serious difficulties. Let us also add
that the initiators of Nabucco are more interested in the Turkmen gas,
than in the Azerbaijani. And if it is actually so, chances of Baku
for normal cooperation in natural gas projects and an acceptable for
it settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is put off into a very
distant future, or, even, into eternity. This is how matters stand,
and Baku knows it better than Yerevan….

INTERNAL POLITICAL TENSION TO GAIN MOMENTUM IN ARMENIA

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
06.08.2009 18:42 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Today, Armenian authorities and opposition are in
a state of expectation. The main internal political development are
due in autumn," Ruben Hakobyan, Head of Armenian Center for Analytical
Studies told a PanARMENIAN.Net correspondent.

Internal political processes, he stressed, will mainly focus on NKR
conflict settlement and Armenian-Turkish ties normalization. According
to the speaker, those problems will become a breeding ground rather
than a reason for political developments.

Both authorities and opposition will speculate the two issues; as a
result, internal political tension in the country will gain momentum,
the speaker noted.

DEPUTY MINISTER OF DIASPORA MEETS DIASPORAN ARMENIAN TEACHERS

NOYAN TAPAN-ARMENIANS TODAY
AUGUST 6 2009
YEREVAN

RA Deputy Minister of Diaspora Stepan Petrosian had a meeting on
August 4 with a group of Diasporan Armenian teachers arrived in
Armenia for re-training.

Presenting the programs on strengthening ties with communities of
Diaspora in programs of the RA Ministry of Diaspora and in the affair
of their implementation and development of the cooperation in the
educational-cultural sphere, the Deputy Minister especially attached
importance to the role of local representatives in the affair of
their implementation.

It was mentioned that studies on confronting Diasporan Armenians’
language and cultural estranging, problems of education and bringing up
in the Armenian national traditions, revealing of the methods, means,
ways of their solution are of pivotal importance in the Ministry’s
programs on preservation of the Armenian identity.

The teachers, appreciating the efforts of the Homeland in the issue
of working out and implementation of the programs on preservation of
the Armenian identity in Diaspora, first of all attached importance
to the importance of arising interest towards the Armenian language
among Diasporan Armenian children, they mentioned that the teachers’
training will serve its goal in this case. It would be desirable,
according to them, that the retraining courses were held in the Western
Armenian and Eastern Armenian languages in parallel and were given
to corresponding age groups: for primary, middle and high classes.

Deputy Minister Stepan Petrosian attached importance in the affair
of implementation of scientific-educational programs in Diaspora
to the role of high technologies, especially to organization of TV
conferences with participation of local and Diasporan specialists. He
also represeted the activity of the all-Armenian virtual university
created by the AGBU which is available for all parts of Diaspora
through internet, adding that owing to the translation program
initiated by the RA Ministry of Diaspora, it will be possible
immediately to translate from Eastern Armenian to Western and the
opposite. The Deputy Minister advised the Diasporan Armenian teachers
to use the sister schools’ experience in the issue of efficient
implementation of exchange of experience what will give possibility
to secure a closer cooperation among schools of Armenia and Diaspora.

SCALES TO BE CHECKED IN SHOPS

NOYAN TAPAN
AUGUST 6 2009
YEREVAN

The scales in all shops must be checked once a year, which, however,
is not done in Armenia, Chairman of the Association of Consumers Armen
Poghosian said at the August 6 press conference. Besides, according
to him, there must be weight checkers in each shop. A fine of only
50-100 thousand drams (about 135-270 USD) is imposed in this case.

A. Poghosian noted that RA Minister of Economy Nerses Yeritsian
has been informed about the problem and steps to be taken for its
solution. It was decided to conduct checks in shops in Armenia until
late August.

"We aim to raise the awareness and diginity of consumers. They
should know their rights so as to be protected and not be cheated,"
he underlined.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

MEMBERS OF THE GREEK CATHOLIC LEAGUE
MEET WITH HIS HOLINESS ARAM I

On Monday 3 August a delegation from the Greek Catholic League headed by
Auxiliary Bishop of the Patriarchate Michel Abrasss met with His Holiness
Aram I at his summer residence in Bikfaya. The League is the lay
organization of the Church. The delegation included experts from difference
disciplines. They discussed issues touching the everyday life of the
Lebanese such as: relations between churches and their impact on the
faithful, understanding the mission and vision of the church in responding
responsibly to the current political, economic and social challenges.

Catholicos Aram I appreciated the visit and the concerns expressed by the
members. While agreeing with them, he noted that "the role of the churches
in society has been usually ambiguous. Sometimes it has been viewed
positively and other times negatively". He then continued: "In responding to
the challenges of our societies we should describe and communicate the
meaning of the mission of the church to our faithful. The church is mission
in its being. It embodies spiritual, moral, ethical values for justice and
peace. The only credible way for churches to express their mission is to
review their relationships as well as the changing realities of their
environment."

In the end of the meeting Bishop Michel Abrasss thanked His Holiness, and
proposed that as a concrete outcome of this meeting the two churches
strengthen their working relationships.

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View photo here:
c/Photos/Photos391.htm#4
*****
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician
Catholicosate, the administrative center of the church is located in
Antelias, Lebanon.

MOLDAVIAN AND ARMENIAN ELECTIONS ESSENTIALLY DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER

armradio.am
06.08.2009 11:09

Different political parties have different foresights for the
approaching political autumn. According to the member of "Heritage"
parliamentary group Zarouhi Postanjyan we have strained political
life now, and there won’t be serious changes in autumn.

"We are working in very tensed conditions today," Zarouhi Postanjyan
announced in "Haeli" press club.

To remind the meeting with journalists took place on the occasion
of pre-term parliamentary elections in Moldova, in which Armenian
deputy participated as the observer of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe (PACE).

Sharing with her impressions Zaruhi Postanjyan announced that the
elections were passed successfully and they essentially differ from
the Armenian elections. In particular, there were no gatherings in
electoral precincts, there were no entire incidents and everything
was quiet.