TAUX DE CHANGE ET PRIX A LA CONSOMMATION STABILISES
ECONOMIE
Les autorites armeniennes ont reussi a stabiliser le taux de la
monnaie nationale, le dram, et empecher ses fluctuations qui perturbent
l’activite economique dans le pays, a declare jeudi le vice-Premier
ministre Vache Gabrielian .
LE PARLEMENT DU KAZAKHSTAN RATIFIE LE TRAITE SUR L’ADHESION DE L’ARMENIE A L’UEE
ARMENIE
La chambre basse du parlement kazakh a ratifie jeudi le traite sur
l’adhesion de l’Armenie a l’Union economique eurasienne.
Le ministre kazakh de l’economie Erbolat Dosayev a ete cite comme
decrivant l’adhesion de l’Armenie a l’UEE comme “d’une grande
importance pour le Kazakhstan”.
Le Senat du Kazakhstan a acheve le processus de ratification vendredi.
vendredi 26 decembre 2014, Stephane (c)armenews.com
LE PRESIDENT SARKISSIAN : L’UE PARMI LES PARTENAIRES IMPORTANTS DE L’ARMENIE
ARMENIE
Le president armenien Serge Sarkissian a assiste a la reunion du
Parti populaire europeen a Bruxelles.
Selon le service de presse presidentiel, les participants du Sommet
du PPE ont debattu des travaux preparatoires a la reunion du Conseil
europeen, de la situation politique dans les Etats membres de l’UE
et des positions des partis membres du PPE sur les grandes questions
de cours.
Après le sommet, le President Sarkissian a eu l’occasion d’echanger
des vues sur les relations UE-Armenie et les defis actuels lors d’une
reunion bilaterale avec le President du PPE Joseph Daul.
Sarkissian a confirme la volonte et l’interet de l’Armenie a developper
davantage la cooperation avec le PPE. L’Union europeenne reste l’un
des partenaires les plus importants de l’Armenie, a-t-il souligne.
vendredi 26 decembre 2014, Stephane (c)armenews.com
NEW APARTMENT BUILDING CONSTRUCTED IN THE VILLAGE OF VARDADZOR, KARABAKH
15:16, 26 Dec 2014
On 26 December Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the
Martakert region and partook in a solemn ceremony of handing over keys
of a newly-constructed apartment building in the village of Vardadzor,
NKR President’s Press office reports.
The President also visited the Kashen mining complex of the “Base
Metals” CJSC located in Martakert region and got acquainted with the
work implemented there.
The President stressed the significance of the Kashen mining
complex deposit in developing the economy of Artsakh, pointing out
the necessity of improving the social and living conditions of the
employees parallel to the expansion of production capacity.
QATAR, GREECE’S AIR COMPANIES TO START OPERATING FLIGHTS TO ARMENIA IN 2015
YEREVAN, December 26. /ARKA/. Representatives of QATAR AIRWAYS (Qatar)
and AEGEAN AIRLINES (Greece) have expressed their intention to start
operating flights to Armenia in 2015, Armenian Economy Minister Karen
Chshmarityan said Friday at a news conference.
he said.
The minister stressed that Armenia has already liberalized air traffic
with Russia, Austria, Iran, Spain, Turkmenistan and Iraq. Negotiations
over air traffic liberalization with Italy. Bulgaria, Israel and
Thailand are under way now. Other 11 countries – Qatar, Kuwait,
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, China,
Singapore and Cuba – responded to Armenia’s proposal to talk over
air traffic liberalization.
On October 23, Armenia’s government approved the program
implying provision of competitive and long-term air
transportation services in the country. The program is
based on a joint study of McKinsey & Company and National
IT HAS BEGUN
Editorial, 24 December 2014
What will be Ankara’s response to the commemorations of the Genocide
of Armenians? Earlier this year several official Turkish spokesmen
announced that the government had allocated a multi-million dollar
budget in an orchestrated campaign to combat the Armenian assertions
re the Ottoman Turkey/Republic of Turkey planned annihilation of
Armenians from 1915 to 1923. The Turkish denialist campaign will
be probably monolithic, unlike the Armenian effort which will be
multi-pronged because of the Armenia and Armenian Diaspora duality,
in addition to the Diaspora’s far-flung status.
The Turkish government campaign has begun with soft lobs.
In the past month it has been announced in Turkey that…
A street in the Buykere district of Istanbul will be named after
Turkish-Armenian film actor Nubar Terziyan.
Armenian chef Grigori K. Antinyan was invited to Turkey in a “food for
diplomacy” project where he taught culinary students the mysteries of
Armenian cuisine. Never mind that this sounds like carrying coal to
Coventry since it’s universally recognized that every Armenian dish,
sauce, condiment and dessert is of echt Turkish origin.
Mayor Mehmed Sayit Dagoglu of Balu would restore an 800-year-old
Armenian church in that city. Apparently, the church has been finally
pensioned off after years of serving as target for stone-throwing boys.
Etyen Mahcupyan, former editor of “Agos” (2007-2010) and contributor
to “Taraf” daily and pro-government “AK” has been appointed senior
advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. He will work
in the “areas of democracy, government and public relations, and
minorities,” according to government sources. It’s the first time that
a non-Muslim has been hired for such a position. Mahcupyan promptly
and unsurprisingly denied that his sinecure had anything to do with
the Armenians. Right.
MP Mustafa Balbay announced that the 8-volume “Archival Documents on
the Armenian activities in 1914-1918”, which denies the Genocide,
were recently removed from the Turkish General Staff website. But
what’s to stop their reinstallation on January 1, 2016?
The Aghtamar Holy Cross Church in Lake Van has been identified as
Armenian by a government-posted sign. For years Turkey has insisted
that the island’s name derives from “Akdamar” and a Turkish folk tale.
“Tale” is right, as in fairy tale.
Lo and behold: a tourist billboard in Ani now says King Kakig was
Armenian. But who were the Armenians? A long-disappeared nomadic
Turkic Anatolian tribe?
Ankara returned some real estate to the Armenian Patriarchate in
Istanbul. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a photo-op with a senior
patriarchate official.
By no means is the above list comprehensive.
Some would argue that these developments have nothing to do with
the centennial of the Genocide and that they are positive signals
and an aspect of Turkish liberalization. Even more optimistic souls
would naively assume that Turkey is edging closer to admitting its
horrendous crime against the Armenian nation. However, the timing and
their volume, in such a short span of time, would indicate otherwise.
A recent statement from Erdogan also underlines that these “happy
news” blips are part of the incipient Turkish campaign. During his
speech at the French Institution of International Relations, Erdogan
chided that Turkey had manifested goodwill and extended its hand in
peace to Armenians, but the Armenians had rejected it. “Despite all
our constructive approach, Armenia and Armenians in Diaspora have
not manifested a reasonable demeanor,” Erdogan bleated.
Despite his predictable and ennui-inducing harangue in France,
it’s inconceivable that Erdogan would think the above feints would
persuade Armenians to give up their efforts this year, next year or
the year after. However, the fact is Armenians are irrelevant to
the Turkish government strategy. These PR volleys are largely for
the benefit of the mostly ignorant third-party media which would be
eager to consider them as genuine peace-making efforts on Ankara’s
part. The Ankara gestures are meant to portray Armenians are obdurate,
vengeful, unrealistic, etc. etc. They are also intended to provide an
“out” to governments which don’t recognize the Genocide.
Finally, the most telling proof that the above goodwill gestures are
feints to mislead Armenians is the Turkish government’s announcement
(according to the “Pusalhaber” website) that Ankara has established
5,000 overseas Turkish community organizations to strengthen its
lobbying efforts and to combat the Armenian Diaspora. In addition to
helping fund these civil society groups, Turkey has staffed some of
them with foreign ministry officials.
What should be the Diaspora Armenian reaction to Ankara’s continued
policy of mythinformation and denialism?
Anger, contempt, and jeering are lazy and don’t advance our cause.
Here are some of the steps the Armenian Diaspora must take:
Expose the foreign government’s intrusion into the domestic affairs
of the countries where Armenians are citizens.
Intensify and expand efforts to spread the word.
Concentrate on external communication and commemorations rather
than keep them inside Armenian community “walls”: Armenians know
what happened; it’s the non-Armenians who should be informed and
convinced of the justness of Hye Tadd. A good example of reaching
to the “outside” world is the Toronto Armenian community blood bank
campaign next April. Blood donated from Armenians, in memory of the
Genocide, will be distributed to the Canadian Red Cross.
Time is running out. The Armenian Diaspora should devise ASAP as many
as possible DRAMATIC, NOVEL, and GLOBAL events to draw the attention
of the media and the public to the ONE-HUNDRED YEARS OF LIES.
Unflinching steadfastness, especially when Ankara brings out its big
propaganda guns to promote its Genocide-denying enterprise, is key.
Ankara has the money. We have the truth. Let’s deploy the facts in
an effective manner to combat Ankara’s expensively-bought untruths.
SIX BOOKS OF THE YEAR FOR 2014
Huffington Post
Dec 24 2014
by Christopher Atamian, Writer, director, producer and translator
2014, not a bad year for books, all told. Below you will find
a completely arbitrary list of some of 2014’s most Interesting,
controversial books and a few that I simply found fascinating — as
well as a preview of two gifted new novelists. They make the perfect
gift-at Christmas or any time of the year!
Non-Fiction
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt
Taibbi (Spiegel and Grau)
A must-read, Taibbi’s latest journalistic grenade throw is a perfect
complement to Thomas Picketty’s 2013 blockbuster Capital in the 21st
Century. In this stirring, fast paced book, Taibbi describes black
men incarcerated for “obstructing pedestrian traffic” in an age where
crime in America has dropped while our prison population — mostly made
up of minority men and woman — has doubled. Prosecutors who believe
their clients are guilty before they even listen to what they have to
say and the poor jailed for minor and sometimes imaginary offensives,
while white collar criminals in our top financial institutions and
corporations are routinely exonerated: the examples narrated here by
Taibbi are so outrageous as to be barely believable.
The wealth gap in America described by Picketty also has its twin
in the justice gap so throroughly illustrated in this book. Taibbi
belongs to the best investigative reporters in recent history —
sadly what he uncovers here is a rather poor reflection on a society
which has criminalized poverty and institutionalized racism.
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit
(Random House)
A fast-paced, wonderfully-written book about the founding of Israel
up until contemporary days by one of that country’s so-called New
Historians. Shavit, whose British grandfather was one of the Jewish
state’s founding fathers, comes as close as anyone has of late to
presenting 20th century Israeli history in an objective manner,
one sensitive to both the parallel if often competing Jewish and
Palestinian narratives. Through it all, he remains in awe in the
achievements of this small country on the Mediterrannean, which
represented a breathtaking rebirth for a people who took their fates
into their own hands and built a modern, prosperous state.
Fiction
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
We waited something like a decade for the author of A Secret
History and The Little Friend to dazzle us again and Francine Prose
nonwithstanding, Tartt has delivered with her Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel. She is now a more mature novelist who nevertheless retains
her flair for the sometimes dark and hidden sides of her characters
and society, a Southern Gothic brought to the Northern climes, if
you will. This massive, sometimes rambling nearly 600-page novel
could easily have been cut — the entire middle section which takes
palce in Las Vegas seems dubious to me — but one remains interested
in its main character’s fate throughout — a young latter-day Oliver
Twist who loses his mother at the novel’s onset in a terrible museum
explosion. His relationship with a old furniture retorator who takes
him in and his dealings with a dangerous international art mafia
make this part Catcher in the Rye, part suspense thriller difficult
to put down. Technically a 2013 novel, it is worth picking up again.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khapour (Blomsbury)
Khakpour’s riveting second novel combines Iranian mythology with
recent American history into an utterly original and enjoyable read.
This 9-11 novel details the life of a latter-day birdman born in Iran
and repatriated to the neurotic jungle-like streets of New York City.
Khakpour based her novel on The Book of Zal from the Persian epic
The Shahnahmeh. It’s a fun novel as well, and one which should have
garnered more attention. And as Khakpour points out in a recent
interview, itmay also be one of the few novels in recent times — or
ever — to recount detailed episodes of entomophagy (you look it up!)-
Two Debuts Novels by Young Female Novelists
Orhan’s Inheritance, Algonquin Books by Aline Ohanesian
Ohanesian’s book is an enjoyable and slightly different take on the
legacy of the Armenian Genocide. 2015 marks the 100th commemoration
of this tragic event which claimed the lives of 3 million Christians
living in the Ottoman Empire. As a plethora of documentaries, articles
and other media begin to stream through on this topic, readers may
want to pick up Ohanessian’s tale of a young Istanbullu who returns
to his native Anatolia to find out that the past is not quite what
he thought it was — and that even the house that he grew up in may
in fact belong to former occupants of a different race and religion
long gone. Orhan’s Inheritance will be released to coincide with
April 24th remembrances around the world — the day when Armenian
intellectuals and businessmen were rounded up in Istanbul and sent
to concentration camps where they were summarily executed. (Advance
copies are currently available for review.)
This book should be combined with a re-reading of Franz Werfel’s 1933
classic The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which recounts the Masada-like
defense by a group of Hatay province Armenian civilians who flee to a
mountain and hold off the Turkish army for forty days and forty nights.
Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko (New Vessel Press, translated
from the German by Arabella Spencer)
Ukrianian-born Gaponenko’s ably translated tale of an aging
ornithologist who returns to a Viennese hotel that he frequented as a
child with his classical music-loving aunts is one of the strangest
debuts that I have read in a long time, which is what makes it so
interesting. It’s a wondrous tale about the passing of generations and
worlds; the taking stock of one’s life, as well as a parable of sorts
for a society set on its head last century, one where everything —
birds, scientists and maybe the human race itself may be on a fast
track to extinction. Gaponenko’s prose is clever yet fluid and
uncomplicated, laced with subtle and not-so-subtle irony and humor.
Who is Martha, you ask? I won’t reveal that here, but Gaponenko
implies that she may well be each one of us.
TURKEY’S PROVOCATIONS WILL CONTINUE INTO 2015: HAYK DEMOYAN
17:32, 25 Dec 2014
Aida Avetisyan
Public Radio of Armenia
Turkey will keep on with its provocative actions, especially ahead
of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Director of the
Armenian Genocide Museum Institute (AGMI) Hayk Demoyan told reporters
today. According to him, the processes aimed at frustrating the events
prepared by the Armenian side for 2015 are already apparent.
“There are attempts to neutralize the influence of events organized
by the Armenian agencies or the Diaspora. The second policy, which
we conditionally call ‘penetration attempt,’ is the organization of
parallel events in Armenia and Diaspora by Turkish historians and
people under Turkish influence,” Demoyan said. Among the examples he
noted the presentation of Hasan Cemal’s book in Yerevan and Paris.
He said the provocations will continue into 2015, and added that our
compatriots in the Diaspora have a serious work to do in this regard.
He urged to be cautious of Turkish traps ahead of the Genocide
centennial.
INFORMATION WAR CONTINUES IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Dec 25 2014
25 December 2014 – 5:46pm
The Armenian Defense Ministry has reported about a sabotage operation
organized by Azerbaijan on the contact line of forces. Azerbaijan
was reported using firearms and grenades, suffering losses from
counter-fire. Azerbaijan denied the information and called it an
information provocation.
Andrey Petrov, deputy director general of the M.V. Lomonosov MSU Center
for Information and Analysis, called the report a product for Armenian
consumers to create new tensions and drag out the peace process. He
noted that there were no reports about casualties. The OSCE mission
monitoring the situation has neither confirmed nor denied sabotage.
Petrov considers Karabakh the best topic to draw the attention of
the Armenian population from the pitiful economic situation in the
country. The population hears about crisis, unemployment, growing
migration, reductions of the dram rate and of cash transfers from
Russia. Reports about the heroism of the military serves to compensate
for the said setbacks, assumes the expert.
Arzu Nagiyev, a security expert, explained that such reports were
providing information support to attempts by the Armenian army
at breaking the contact line. Such attempts are made every day,
according to the analyst. In his words, attempts to breach the line
had recently intensified because of the weakness of the Armenian army,
as confirmed by Defense Minister Seyran Oganyan.
Nagiyev is certain that the latest report was a provocation hinting at
preparations for a real provocation in Armenia. The expert reminded
that it could also be a reaction to the CSTO meeting. He reminded
that attendees of the talks had reiterated the need for a peaceful
settlement of the conflict.
IN IRAQ, A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTMAS
The Detroit News, MI
Dec 25 2014
This Christmas, Iraqi Christians will not experience the joy of
listening to church bells, exchanging gifts or celebrating their
centuries-old traditions. Instead, they will be huddled in refugee
camps remembering the night of August 6, 2014, when Mosul, Iraq,
and its surrounding villages known as Nineveh — their home of over
2,000 years — were emptied of Christians and Christianity.
The world was silent for weeks and months as the Iraqi Christians faced
a wave of ethnic cleansing, religious intolerance, and civic and civil
rights violations. It was only until the tragedy struck the Yazidis
that the United States and others’ conscience arose. Since then,
the Iraqi Christians in particular and the Middle East Christians
in general have been bewildered by the United States government’s
inaction or lukewarm reaction to ISIS or its supporters.
The United States, the champion and guardian of human rights and
religious freedom, and signator of the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, seems to selectively pick and choose who
it wishes to safeguard militarily, politically and through other means.
It is strange that members of Congress in their sessions regarding the
plight of the Middle East Christians are almost oblivious or ignorant
to this calamity, where an area inhabited for over 2,000 years,
which people recognize as the cradle of civilization and which the
Bible refers to over and over again since even the days of Abraham,
was pillaged.
What is sadder is that the tragedy of the Middle East Christians is
not new. Over the centuries, the Middle East has been slowly emptying
its inhabitants of Christianity, either by slow systemic events or
by large-scale genocide, such as the Armenian and Assyrian genocides
of the last century.
The United States and its allies cannot wash their hands of what
is happening to the Iraqi Christians today and blame it on ethnic or
religious centuries-old strife. The fact is that since the American-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country has lost two-thirds of its
Christians.
This Christmas, the Iraqi Christians do not desire more political
speeches, resolutions or handouts. They seek the political will of
our government to do what it has done in past similar conflicts —
to use all its military, political and humanitarian aid so that
these people can celebrate Christmas as they have done for over 2,000
years. Only when church bells can ring again in Mosul and Christmas can
be celebrated in the land of its origin can we say that our government
is truly the standard for justice, freedom of religion and humanity.
Ramsay F. Dass, president, American Middle East Christians Congress
director, Iraq American Christians Endowment Center