Author: Kajoyan Gevork

Teachers in Armenia’s secondary schools forced to accept tour
operators’ packages

11:56 * 22.07.14

In the frameworks of a social package that offers summer rest services
to teachers of secondary schools, several principals force their
staffs to collaborate with specified tour operators.

Tert.am has received complaints in this connection from different
school teachers who preferred to remain unidentified to avoid possible
conflicts with their leadership.

Companies very often turned out unable to offer services for a
specified period, notwithstanding the fact that teachers had already
transferred the required sum to the corresponding bank accounts (based
on an agreement between the teacher and the bank).

Tert.am contacted the Ministry of Education and Science for further
clarification. Gevorg Yeghinyan, Head of the Financial-Economic and
Auditing Department, denied any connections with the project, noting
that all financial issues are resolved only through banks. “We do not,
in any way, interfere in those affairs,” he said.

The government body responsible for coordinating the social package
service in Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is the Ministry
of Economy. Speaking to our correspondent, the head of the agency’s
Tourism Department, Mekhak Apresyan, said they have a list of
registered tour operators which the beneficiaries can select,

“The procedures of ensuring rest and registering tour operators are
established by a ministerial decree which lays out the criteria,” he
explained.

Asked whether there is a procedure or condition obliging a school to
collaborate with a specific company, Apresyan gave a negative answer.
“Everybody has the right to independently select any of the companies
published on our website. They can be redirected to those companies’
sites to explore [the opportunities] and make their choice based on
the offers,” he said, noting that the offers never restrict
beneficiaries’ rights but oblige operators to clearly mention the
price when preparing the package (including the hotel service costs
whuch should not exceed the retail prices declared).

Apresyan further warned against any forced collaboration with a
tourist company. “It isn’t allowed to force anything; they may just
give advice. Neither is it bad for companies to conduct marketing to
introduce their services. We can definitely say that no one has any
right to force a beneficiary to select this or that operator,” he
added.

Apresyan called upon beneficiaries to be better aware of their rights
to properly benefit from the opportunities offered. He further
promised liability measures against any side that would violate the
procedures.

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
July 21 2014

Yerevan power plant connected to the electric grid ahead of time

21 July 2014 – 6:51pm

One of the largest generating stations in Armenia, the Yerevan power
plant, has been reconnected to the grid after suspension for the
planned overhaul of June 3. The station was connected to the grid on
July 20 instead of the scheduled date of July 29. Planned work
included cleaning the rotor, but it turned out that the rotor does not
need to be cleaned, so the work was completed before the deadline,
said the general director of the plant, Hovakim Hovhannisyan.

The cost of the overhaul was 9.5 billion drams, and 90% of these funds
were used to purchase spare parts of the turbine. He noted that during
this repair it was possible to increase the efficiency by 1-1.5%,
which will reduce fuel consumption for electricity production.

Hyperallergic
July 21 2014

Resisting the Russian Pull: Armenian Artists Speak Out

by Nevdon Jamgochian

YEREVAN, Armenia — The Russians are not just trying to exert
themselves in Ukraine; they are actively staking claims to their
irredenta throughout their former territories. The opposition in
Armenia has lacked the drama and intensity of the resistance in
Ukraine and Georgia, but there is a small artistic challenge to what
many are calling the Russian recolonization of the area.

A few days ago the Russian version of the Blue Angels performed over
Yerevan. It was terrifying. Armenian news agency Tert.am’s single line
of reporting about this event summed it up perfectly:

As to the MIG-29 and TU-25 jets flying too low, he [the spokesperson
for the Ministry of Defense] said: “It is normal for show flights.
They fly so low for people to admire.”

An Armenian man whom I had just met offered me a pill as we watched
(and heard and felt) the Russians pretending to dive-bomb the city.
“To calm nerves during terrible noise,” he said. It was hard to see
this as anything but a Russian effort to impress a tiny country of its
ability to roll over said country anytime.

Unironic memorial built by the Soviets for their textile factories in
Gyrumri, Armenia, five years before the earthquake that left
substantial portions of the town in ruins. (click to enlarge)

Most former Soviet territories want as little to do with Russia as
possible. Putin is up front about what his goals for the proposed
Eurasian Customs Union; he says he wants breakaway states to be linked
again to Russia, via the awesome parts of Soviet culture. Yikes.

Armenia is an exception to most Western-leaning, former Soviet areas.
The country seems, unlike its one fellow non-Muslim neighbor, Georgia,
to be slightly in favor of Russia. This is a devoutly Christian nation
that borders Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, with two of those countries
actively blockading Armenia. As such, there is a belief that the
Russians are protecting Armenia with their military base there — that
Armenia needs Russia.

Art-Laboratory (Artlab), a Yerevan-based political art group, is
trying to fight this perception of Russia as protector. On June 26
they created an art action in the Russian base town of Gyrumri. a city
still partially in rubble from the earthquake of 1989. Artlab held a
press conference and bravely — considering the possible repercussions
of fines, jail (unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility), or
whatever Russia might feel like responding with — graffitied a ruined
building near the 102nd Russian Military Base.

The ruined building in Gyumri, Armenia, where Artlab held its action

The Artlab press conference

The action unfolded in similar ways to other art projects I have seen
in other parts of the world. Artlab’s members started in high spirits
in Yerevan, excited about the transgression. What was different was
the formality the action gained once we arrived in Gyumri and how
seriously it was taken by local media. As soon as we arrived (I rode
along with Artlab), we were ushered onto a movie-set cliché of a
rundown newspaper office — books and papers stacked all over, dingy
carpeting, fascinating framed photographs with water stains, and so
on. The only real difference between this newspaper building and the
ones I knew in the West was that instead of a Coke machine and coffee
percolator, there was a traditional jazzve, a long-handled copper
coffee boiler that makes demitasses of sweet Armenian coffee. This is
where Artlab’s spokesperson (I was asked to list them as a collective
only, eschewing individual names) launched into an hourlong speech to
the six local reporters about the group’s intended act.

The speech was a stem-winder about the history of Russia as a
colonizer — an assertion that’s refuted by Russia. The speaker claimed
that Edward Said’s 1976 book Orientalism has only recently and
reluctantly been translated into Russian, and printed with dismissive
Russian commentary that’s as thick as the book itself. The tone of
Artlab’s conference was professorial and seemed to just underline the
basic fact that Russia is a bad guy making a regional power play. It
was strange to the point of surreal that these 12 artists (and a few
friends) were being given so much attention and respect for something
that seems so obvious. But then again, I guess this type of art is new
to the region, and the idea of poking Russia in the eye is something
will always give Armenians pause.

Artlab’s tank stencil (click to enlarge)

>From there the art action lapsed back into the familiar. We left the
conference, and the group applied a giant stencil representing an
advancing T-90 tank to the side of a collapsed factory. An
accompanying stencil painted next to the tank featured Russian text,
which proclaimed that 80% of Azerbaijan’s military hardware is bought
from Russia, with a listing of the various weapons bought by the
Azeris. This served as a direct refutation of the claim that Russia is
protecting Armenia from Azerbaijan.

We didn’t get caught, and afterwards the members of Artlab razzed the
thankfully indifferent guards at Military Base 102 from the safety of
our bus. We then ate trout with bread cooked in underground pits as
approximately 1,000 homemade vodka toasts were made. This part of the
action felt familiar too.

Political art is notoriously turgid, but Artlab is doing some of the
more interesting contemporary work in this field. It may feel overly
familiar to Westerners, but this is not the West. This is a country
that’s being actively blockaded and has Russian troops on full
display. When I asked a member how effective he thought Artlab’s
action would be, he responded with the group’s slogan: “The definition
of ‘idiot’ is one who does not get engaged in politics.”

View photos at

Russia Today
July 21 2014

Turkey and Russia discuss Customs Union collaboration

Stalled progress towards EU membership has shifted Turkey’s economic
interest, and it is now looking for closer cooperation with Russia’s
Customs Union, Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukayev said.

Ulyukayev discussed the plan with Turkish Economy Minister Nihat
Zeybekci at the G20 trade ministers meeting in Sydney, Australia, over
the weekend.

The talks focused on how the two countries can transition to using
national currencies, instead of the dollar and euro, in trade.

“We have discussed the possible forms of cooperation, including the
formation of a free trade zone between the Customs Union and Turkey.
We have agreed to create a working group and to begin a more detailed
discussion of these possibilities and prospects in September,”
Ulyukayev said on the sidelines of G20, RIA Novosti reported.

The free trade zone so far consists of Russia, Belarus, and
Kazakhstan, and is meant to rival the European Union. At present,
Turkey has a free trade zone agreement with the European Union.

Turkey, with a population of 76 million, has a $1.1 trillion economy
driven by strong industry and service sectors with automotive,
construction, and electronics on the rise.

Another developing industry is the transport of Central Asian gas to
European markets through its territory, which borders eight countries,
including oil-rich Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan.

Total trade between Russia and Turkey was $32.7 billion in 2013,
making Russia Turkey’s second-largest trade partner, after the
European Union. Turkey is Russia’s eighth biggest trade partner.

Turkey first applied for EU membership in 1987, and signed a free
trade agreement with the EU in 1995. It fell into recession in 2001
and as a result unpegged the Turkish Lira from the dollar-euro basket.
The lira, along with the ruble, has fallen tremendously in the past
year as a result of the strengthening dollar and euro. Russia plans to
protect its economy from Western sanctions by increasing non
dollar-based trade.

India and China will also be prioritized as partners.

“We need to increase trade volume conducted in national currencies.
Why, in relation to China, India, Turkey and other countries, should
we be negotiating in dollars? Why should we do that? We should sign
deals in national currencies- this applies to energy, oil, gas, and
everything else,” Ulyukayev said in a March interview with Russian TV
channel Vesti 24.

On May 29 Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed the Eurasian Economic
Union document, which will come into effect in January 2015.

The Customs Union began on January 1, 2010, and started operating
under a comprehensive customs code in July 2011.

Commonwealth Independent States (CIS) like Armenia, Tajikistan, and
Kyrgyzstan may be brought into the free trade zone later.

If Turkey joins, it would be the first member that is not an ex-Soviet
state to join the free-trade zone.

Tonic Radio, France
21 juillet 2014

Charles Aznavour présent au Consulat d’Arménie

Lundi, 21 Juillet 2014 08:25

L’inauguration du Consulat arménien est prévue pour ce lundi à Lyon,
même s’il a été ouvert en décembre dernier. La délégation lyonnaise,
qui dessert les régions Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne, Limousin,
Poitou-Charentes et Aquitaine, va être mise en avant et pour
l’occasion le chanteur Charles Aznavour, d’origine arménienne, sera
sur place, c’est à dire au Passage Feuillat dans le 3ème
arrondissement. Seront également présents le ministre des Affaires
étrangères arménien et l’ambassadeur d’Arménie. Le but, rapprocher
encore les deux pays et promouvoir les relations et liens culturels.

H.B.

LES VILLAGES FRONTALIERS DE MOVSES ET TCHINARI SOUS LE FEU DES AZERIS

ARMENIE-AZERBAÏDJAN

Les forces azeries continuent de maintenir sous le feu quelques
villages armeniens frontaliers, dans la region de Davoush (nord-est
de l’Armenie). Ararat Avalian, le maire du village de Movses a
indique a notre confrère Panoram.am qu’hier les soldats Azeris
tiraient en direction des agriculteurs Armeniens qui travaillaient
dans les champs. Les ouvriers agricoles qui etaient a bord d’une
moissonneuse-batteuse etaient la cible des tirs. a cause justement de ce relief peu favorable aux Armeniens.

Krikor Amirzayan

lundi 21 juillet 2014, Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

VIVACELL-MTS GENERAL MANAGER RALPH YIRIKIAN MEETS PARTICIPANTS OF WIKI YOUTH CAMPS

16:39 19/07/2014 >> SOCIETY

At the invitation of the organizers of the Wiki Youth Camps,
VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian met with the participants
of the camp, the company’s press service reported.

Wiki Youth Camps are organized in Vanadzor, one of the beautiful sites
of Armenia, on 6-20 July and 12-26 August, 2014 by the Wikimedia
Foundation and Wikimedia Armenia Scientific-Educational NGO. The
participants of the first phase of the Wiki camp are high school
students of Yerevan AYB School and schools with specialization in
Physics and Mathematics, Gyumri Photon Gymnasium, Vanadzor Evrika
School, students from Yeghvard, Aparan, Kotayk and Artsakh, as well
as Syrian-Armenian young people.

“Our Company has always had the preservation of Armenian national
identity and its precious historical-cultural heritage in the focus
of its attention. We welcome this initiative and appreciate the work
you do for adding Armenian content into the Internet because it will
not only ensure awareness on our National treasures worldwide, but
will also serve as an excellent source of information for Armenians
living outside Armenia. Besides, this initiative is a good platform of
communication between young Armenians from both Armenia and Diaspora
sharing the same ideas and concerns,” VivaCell-MTS General Manager
Ralph Yirikian commented. “We have to acknowledge that as a rule of
law of today’s digital world, the real presence of a nation assumes
its strong virtual presence. Increasing the volume of Armenian content
is an effective instrument leading to stronger Armenian factor.”

The goal of the Wikimedia Armenia is to enhance and enrich the amount
and content of materials devoted to Armenia, Armenian history and
culture, the Armenian Genocide and Armenian issues in Armenian and
foreign languages through the Internet, particularly in Wikimedia,
Wikilibrary, Wikibooks and Wikitraveler.

The camp will bring together 100 active Wiki editors aged 14 to 20,
who will be selected on the basis of volume and quantity in their
Armenian Wikipedia, will receive free passes to participate in the
camping event, and another 100 young people will be able to participate
by paying for the pass AMD 120,000. All the participants will spend
4 hours a day posting articles devoted to Armenia and Armenians in
Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian as well as other languages for 14
consecutive days.

During their two-week stay, the participants of the camping event
will master the tools of Wiki editing and will write articles with
the help of active Wikipedia editors. To facilitate the activities
of the campers and make them more effective, digitized versions of
literature in Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian will be posted
in the Wikilibrary. There will also be print versions of literature,
which may serve as a source for the articles to be written. The
daily activities include Armenian song and dance lessons, screenings
of Armenian films and meetings with renowned academics, writers and
cultural figures. The campers will also have the chance to choose their
Wiki travel, as well as visit the museums and historic monuments in
Lori and Shirak provinces. There are also volleyball and soccer fields,
as well as table tennis facilities at the camp.

One of the major and urgent issues of the Wikimedia Armenia for the
Wiki Camp Vanadzor 2014 program is the creation, enlargement and
enhancement of a separate “Western Armenian Wikimedia.” One of the
major objectives of the camp is to engage Western Armenian-speaking
schoolchildren of high schools abroad and university students in the
Wikipedia content development. By using their potential, it will be
possible to create a separate division in Western Armenian, which
has been proclaimed a language at risk by UNESCO, and create and post
articles and information about Armenian cultural heritage in Western
Armenian in Wikilibrary.

Source: Panorama.am

AZERBAIJAN INCITES BORDER TENSIONS TO RESTRAIN WEST – ARMENIAN MP

14:44 * 19.07.14

By provoking border incidents from time to time, Azerbaijan is
seeking to exert pressure on the West, a lawmaker of Armenia’s ruling
political force has said, commenting on the country’s repeated acts
of sabotage across the border with Armenia and the Line of Contact
with Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The threat of war has always existed, and it still exists, but
Azerbaijan doesn’t want a war, because it knows it will suffer
big losses,” Lernik Aleksanyan of the ruling Republican faction in
parliament told a news conference on Saturday.

He described Azerbaijan’s conduct as a mere attempt to let the West
know that the country doesn’t trigger a war only because it would thus
violate international laws. “It just exertd pressures, but a war in
the region is not in the West’s interests either,” Aleksanyan noted.

David Sanasaryan, a spokesperson of the opposition Heritage party,
attributed the border tensions to wrong foreign policies which he
said often stem from failures on the domestic political arena.

He expressed concerns over Russia’s arms sales to Azerbaijan, noting
that the country is a political ally of Armenia, a member of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization.

“They say it has to do with business interests, but even [President]
Serzh Sargsyan now says that the people are concerned. And the
concerns have to do first of all with the Republic of Armenia. So we
have nothing left than to launch a campaign in autumn to achieve a
regime change,” Sanasaryan said.

According to him, Azerbaijan is just seeking to provoke a panic in
the Armenian society without any real intention to launch a war.

“The Azerbaijanis manage to stir up a panic, also thanks to the
media, so they celebrate a victory in the information warfare,”
Sanasaryan added.

Armenian News – Tert.am

RC LENS : GERVAIS MARTEL BLUFFE T’IL SON MONDE ?

REVUE DE PRESSE

Le 5 et le 18 juin 2014, le RC Lens etait recu par la DNCG.

Malheureusement, des documents manquants etaient a fournir > publiait le RC Lens via un communique.

Gervais Martel prenait alors la direction de l’Azebaïdjan pour
recuperer ces documents auprès de l’actionnaire majoritaire, Hafiz
Mammadov.

Le 27 juin, la DNCG refusait la validite des comptes et l’accession
du RC Lens en Ligue 1. Gervais Martel expliquait : >.

Le president du RC Lens apparaissait toujours serein en conference
de presse. C’etait loin d’etre le cas pour l’entraîneur Antoine
Kombouare, qui lui, refusait de prendre part aux entraînements tant
que les sangs et or n’etaient pas assures d’evoluer en Ligue 1.

Kombouare etait t’il informe d’anomalies financières pour prendre
une decision si importante pour son groupe alors que Martel assurait
qu’il s’agissait juste… d’un simple contretemps !

La DNCG reclamait selon Gervais Martel l’integralite des garanties
budgetaires du RC Lens pour la saison 2014-2015 – En tablant sur un
budget de 45 millions d’euros, Mammadov aurait verse les deux tiers de
la somme. Le 4 juillet, Martel se voyait très optimiste >

Tout devait etre regle sauf que le 9 juillet, nouveau rebondissement !

Lens ne peut toujours pas integrer la Ligue 1 a cause cette fois d’un
code IBAN, et oui, le club a dû changer de banque, le Credit Agricole
ne pouvant pas accueillir le capital. Ce problème de banque etait a
l’origine d’un trou de 10 millions d’euros dans la tresorerie, d’où
le refus de la DNCG d’accueillir Lens en L1 et prevoyait un dernier
passage, en appel pour le 15 juillet, en esperant que ce virement de
10 millions d’euros soit recu.

Martel prevoyait alors un plan A consistant a presenter le budget
avec les 10 millions d’euros manquants qui etait censes arriver pour
le 15 juillet. Ainsi qu’un plan B, dans lequel etait presente a la
DNCG un budget avec une enveloppe transfert pour la saison prochaine
moins importante que celle prevue, où ces fameux 10 millions d’euros
n’apparaissaient plus donc n’etaient plus >. > annoncait t’il, sûre de lui.

Hier, mardi 15 juillet, aux alentours de 18h10, la DNCG rendait son
verdict : elle confirmait le refus de la montee du RC Lens en Ligue 1.

Par rapport aux comptes presentes par le club sang et or, la somme
de 10 millions d’euros etait manquante, une nouvelle fois !

Martel annoncait avoir presente uniquement un plan A a la DNCG avec
18 millions de garantie bancaire de la part de la Banque d’Azerbaïdjan.

Il etait pour lui impensable que le virement de 10 millions d’euros en
cash ne soit toujours pas recu. Mais c’etait pourtant le cas ! Cette
fois, le president lensois expliquait que la France a tourne au
ralenti avec la fete du 14 juillet ! Plus c’est gros, plus ca passe !

Mais pas pour la DNCG…

Le RC Lens a decide d’utiliser son dernier recours possible : saisir
le CNOSF, le comite national olympique et sportif francais.

samedi 19 juillet 2014, Stephane (c)armenews.com

DIARY OFFERS GLIMPSE OF 1974 CYPRUS WAR THROUGH TEENAGE EYES

Reuters
July 17 2014

By Michele Kambas

(Reuters) – On a balmy July morning in 1974, Victoria Harwood
Butler-Sloss was awoken by the sound of gunfire outside her childhood
home in Cyprus’s capital Nicosia.

Aged 13, she started to document a defining moment in one of the
world’s most intractable conflicts – a coup against a democratically
elected government, engineered by Greece’s military junta, triggering
a Turkish invasion five days later.

“Machinegun fire, bombs, mortars, guns … fighting all round house.

Only me, mam and Robert,” she wrote in neat script.

Her mother tried to go outside, a bullet whizzed past, and then she,
her mother and her brother spent the next few hours huddled in the
kitchen. The telephone went dead.

Butler-Sloss started her diary the day Greek Cypriot army tanks rolled
into the streets of Nicosia.

Forty years on, and defying the best efforts of many mediators, this
east Mediterranean island remains partitioned among its Greek and
Turkish Cypriot populations, with Nicosia remaining the last divided
capital in Europe.

“I’m still mystified as to why I started writing it,” Butler-Sloss,
born on the island of Armenian and British parents, told Reuters.

“I think it was my way of keeping calm,” said Butler-Sloss, who lives
in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons, but frequently returns
to Cyprus to visit her mother.

After years at the bottom of a drawer, the 45 pages of exercise book
are now on display in Nicosia. Fittingly, the exhibit is just a few
meters (yards) away from a de facto border hewn during those days
of turmoil.

FACTS AND FIGURES

For all the emotional upheaval of those events in the summer of 1974,
Butler-Sloss’s narrative remains purely factual.

Covering just over a month of conflict, it starts at 8:30 a.m. on
Monday, July 15 when she was awoken by the sound of bullets from
the presidential palace – just a few hundred meters up the road –
and ends on Aug. 19, the day Rodger Davies, the American ambassador
to Cyprus, was killed during riots.

Writing under curfew on the evening of July 20, the day Turkey
launched its invasion, Butler-Sloss’s handwriting slopes across the
page as she writes in darkness, “Very heavy bombs and fights around
the house .. ack ack guns quite near us.”

She documents the heaviest fighting from 4:59 a.m. on Aug. 14, 1974.

“There are hundreds of Turkish planes in the sky,” she writes. “A
rocket from a plane almost burst my eardrums. It was so loud that
little bits of plaster fell from the house.”

With hindsight, she acknowledges her diary could have been a defensive
mechanism to buffer herself from fear.

“Reading the diary now, I feel the emotions that I didn’t at the time.

At the time it felt very disembodied: ‘this is happening out there,
it’s not going to hurt us’,” she said.

AIRLIFTED

Less than an hour after she started her Aug. 14 entry, British forces
radio relayed a message for British citizens to evacuate to its bases –
military compounds Britain has retained on Cyprus since granting it
independence in 1960.

Her family was split up; not all of them had British passports. She,
her brother and a cousin were airlifted to Britain, where she spent
about a year before returning when her school reopened.

Tens of thousands of people were displaced in the conflict. War dead
are still being buried after a decades-old stalemate allowed the sides
to eventually locate and open unmarked mass graves for identification
in an effort which started in 2007.

Today, the gentle hum of cicadas under a carob tree in her mother’s
back garden is interrupted by the buzz of a massive construction site
a block away. It’s the new headquarters of a Russian online gaming
firm, an indication of how much at least some parts of Cyprus have
changed over the past four decades.

But for one 13-year-old, life was never the same again.

Some of her peers carried the trauma, turning to drink and drugs and
dying prematurely.

“People sometimes don’t make the link, but it did have an effect.

There was an innocence and freedom that we lost,” she says.