Author: Kalashian Nyrie

JOE CALZAGHE: CARL FROCH MUST TIGHTEN DEFENCE OR FALL TO MIKKEL KESSLER
By Gareth A Davies

Daily Telegraph
7:06PM BST 19 Oct 2009
UK

Carl Froch, the World Boxing Council super-middleweight champion, has
been warned to tighten his defence or face defeat in his next fight,
against Mikkel Kessler in Copenhagen.

Fist defence: Carl Froch (above) has been told by Joe Calzaghe that
he must tighten up his defence or endure defeat Photo: PA Froch faces
Kessler next spring, after retaining the WBC gong against American
Andre Dirrell in Nottingham on Sunday, but his execution was less
than perfect.

Dirrell made life awkward for 12 rounds, with the British fighter,
clearly the heavier puncher, seemingly unable to trap him on the
ropes. That said, Froch did find a way to win. Yet it was by a
frustrating, wafer-thin margin.

Klitschko set for Johnson bout Joe Calzaghe, the retired former
two-weight world champion, beat Denmark’s Kessler in Cardiff just
under two years ago. Kessler had the Welshman in trouble for the
opening five rounds of their world unification battle.

Calzaghe complimented Froch on his recent successes, but insisted he
must make technical changes in his defence to defeat Kessler.

"Carl has done well. He’s got a lot of heart, he has power and credit
to him for what he’s done. But he’s very vulnerable and doesn’t really
defend too much. If inactivity for a year hasn’t affected Kessler too
badly, he is head and shoulders the best fighter in the tournament."

In Berlin, Jermain Taylor, who suffered concussion after being knocked
out by Germany-based Armenian Arthur Abraham in the closing seconds
of their Super Sixes contest, left hospital on Monday following tests.

The opening Super Six clash drew large television ratings in Germany,
with public free-to-air station ARD recording a peak market share of
almost 40 per cent on late Saturday evening. "That is phenomenal,"
promoter Kalle Sauerland said. "It shows how great the fan interest
is in the Super Six World Boxing Classic."

In Denmark, the fight drew a peak commercial market share of 37.4
percent on TV2. A sell-out crowd of 14,200 witnessed the fight at
the O2 Arena in Berlin.

In the UK, Froch versus Dirrell was shown on a one-off, pay per view
channel, Primetime, on the Sky platform. Discussions were continuing
on Monday for the fight to be replayed this weekend on terrestrial
television.

Elsewhere, WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, after his victory
in California last month against Chris Arreola, will defend the title
again this year against American Kevin Johnson on Dec 12 in Bern.

WAHIDI: ISRAELI SOLDIERS BURIED PALESTINIANS ALIVE DURING THE WAR ON GAZA

PIC
19/10/2009 – 04:00 PM

GAZA, (PIC)– Palestinian human rights activist Nashaat Al-Wahidi,
revealed Monday that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) deliberately
killed Palestinians after detaining them and buried others alive
during Israel’s military aggression on the Gaza Strip at the end of
December last year.

Wahidi said in his report that the Israeli soldiers liquidated many
Palestinian civilians after they were held as prisoners in the invaded
areas in Gaza during the war.

He added that during the invasion of Al-Zeitoun neighborhood, east of
Gaza, in the same month, Israeli troops buried many civilians who got
wounded alive as happened with Ihab Malaka, Waleed Azzam and others,
noting that this crime was committed against the wounded civilians
who were present west of Dawla apartment building.

The activist also unveiled that many Palestinian civilians disappeared
during the Israeli war and their fate is still unknown so far, which
entails activating the file of missing Palestinians and Israel’s
secret prisons.

TIGRAN BALAYAN RESPONDS TO STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE OF AZERBAIJANI FOREIGN MINISTRY

ARMENPRESS
Oct 19, 2009

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 19, ARMENPRESS: Representative of Azerbaijani
Foreign Ministry Elkhan Polukhov stated today that in negotiations
over Karabakh conflict regulation Azerbaijan has always coming forth
from constructive positions and accused Armenia of stepping back
from achieved arrangements. Commenting on this statement, head of
the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s media and information department
Tigran Balayan noted that "more probably Mr. Polukhov meant the
"constructiveness" with which Azerbaijan started an extended war
against Karabakh people, the "constructiveness" with which it
rejected 2001 Paris principles which were put on paper in Key-West
or the "constructiveness" with which Azerbaijan for one year was
denying the existence of 2007 Madrid principles. I think Polukhov’s
constructiveness may understand only Polukhov," Balayan said.

EVEN POSITIVE GESTURES CAN CAUSE TROUBLE IN CAUCASUS
By Scott Taylor

The Chronicle Herald. Nova Scotia
Oct 19 2009
Canada

IT WAS LAST YEAR around this time that I made an extensive reporting
trip to the volatile Caucasus region. This strategically vital
territory between the Black and Caspian seas is a veritable hornet’s
nest of mutually hostile former Soviet republics and breakaway ethnic
enclaves. Although the distances are not vast, my travels were made
extremely problematic due to the number of closed borders, frozen
conflicts and not so frozen conflicts.

In August 2008, the world’s attention had been briefly diverted
away from the Beijing Olympics to news reports of conflict in South
Ossetia. Very few pundits really understood the underlying cause
of the clash, namely that ethnic Georgian forces had attempted to
forcibly reclaim the tiny, self-declared independent territory back
into its own sovereign authority.

When Russian troops subsequently intervened on behalf of the South
Ossetians, western military analysts reverted to their well-worn Cold
War playbooks to denounce Russia’s "aggression." It mattered not
that Georgian troops had initiated the attack, and had been guilty
of widespread slaughter of civilians and ethnic cleansing prior to
the Russian intervention. The sight of columns of T-72 Russian tanks
rolling through the North Ossetian mountain pass caused U.S. Senator
John McCain to make the bizarre declaration that "today we are all
Georgians."

As events unfolded, World War Three did not erupt, Russia did not annex
Georgia, as many had feared, and after France successfully negotiated
a ceasefire, the Caucasus returned to the status of being a wobbly
stack of short-fused powder kegs. With the crisis thus averted,
the western media coverage quickly returned to the Olympic Games.

Never fully examined was the devastating domino effect that could
have plunged the entire region into yet another round of vicious
bloodletting. For centuries, there have been eruptions of violence
between the three major Caucasus occupants — Georgians, Armenians and
Azeris — as well as the smaller minorities such as the Abkhazians,
Ossetians and Circassians.

Forcibly united under the Bolshevik umbrella of the Soviet Union
following the First World War, the old hatreds continued to simmer.

When the Soviet Union took the first stumbling steps towards
collapse in the late 1980s, the nationalist factions were already
arming themselves and battling each other in preparation for the
conflagration they all sensed would soon erupt.

By 1991, the defunct Soviet Union had formally granted the republics
of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan their independence. What had
been sporadic local fighting between ethnic factions developed
into a full-scale albeit undeclared series of wars. Abkhazians and
Ossetians fought to wrest independent homelands from Georgia and,
in the most savage fighting, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
established their own republic, independent from the recognized
sovereign authority of Azerbaijan.

Backed by volunteers from Armenia and funded by their wealthy
international diaspora, the Armenian forces not only secured
Nagorno-Karabakh but, by the time a ceasefire was declared in 1994,
they had captured seven additional Azeri provinces and completely
ethnically cleansed this region of its 800,000 ethnic Azeri
inhabitants. Turkey had supported the Turkic Azeris in this conflict,
and closed their border with Armenia at the onset of hostilities.

For the past 15 years, with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict frozen
but unresolved, this border has remained closed, leaving landlocked
Armenia dependant on just two supply lines through Georgia and Iran.

As Russia is Armenia’s biggest regional supporter economically
and militarily, the summer 2008 conflict with Georgia served to
illustrate just how vulnerable and isolated Armenia is under the
current restrictions.

In 2006, the Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Ceyhan (Turkey)
BTC oil pipeline was completed, and it now pumps nearly one million
barrels of crude daily from Azerbaijan’s oil-rich offshore rigs in
the Caspian Sea to European markets via the port of Ceyhan. If anyone
glances at a map, that pipeline could have been shortened by hundreds
of kilometres had it been built on a more direct route through Armenia
rather than through Georgia.

Last year, when I interviewed senior Armenian officials in Yerevan,
the pragmatic among them recognized that a rapprochement with Turkey
was the only way for their tiny nation to move forward economically.

The hardliners, particularly those of the Armenian diaspora and those
residing in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, demanded that
Turkey must first officially admit that the Ottoman Empire committed
genocide against the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia in 1915. The
Turks — with good reason — dispute that claim and maintain that
the undenied tragedy that killed hundreds of thousands of Armenians
was due in no small part to the devastating wartime conditions.

Azerbaijan and the Turkish hardliners have insisted that no peace
overtures should be made until the Armenians have withdrawn from
the seven occupied Azeri provinces around Nagorno-Karabakh — in
accordance with the four UN Resolutions passed to that effect —
and the 800,000 displaced Azeris are resettled.

Last week, at a secret meeting in Zurich, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped coerce the foreign ministers of Armenia and
Turkey into signing two protocols that will put these two states
on the path toward opening their border without either of those
preconditions having been met.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry immediately denounced the protocols,
and Armenian President Serge Sarkisian required police protection in
Paris where angry Armenian expatriates decried him as a traitor.

The Caucasus situation has been described as a multiple person Mexican
standoff, with every stakeholder holding cocked guns to each other’s
heads. As such, even the seemingly positive gesture of Turkey and
Armenia easing their fingers off their triggers may only serve to
upset the fragile balance.

WPS Agency, Russia
October 13, 2009 Tuesday

COST OF MATTER

by: Victor Mizin, Assistant Director of the Institute of International
Studies (Moscow State Institute of International Relations)

HIGHLIGHT: ANALYSIS OF THE REGIONAL AND GEOPOLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE
ARMENIAN FACTOR FOR MOSCOW; Armenia remains Russia’s closest ally in
the South Caucasus.

Viewed against the background of countless failures and errors within
the framework of the processes of post-Soviet integration, visit of
Armenian President Serj Sargsjan to Moscow attains additional
importance. It is clear that Moscow has much more riding on it than
its relations with Yerevan as such. Support of Armenia at this time is
of paramount importance for the Russian strategy in all of the
post-Soviet zone. First and foremost, it concerns the Commonwealth, an
organization tottering on the brink of disintegration and becoming "a
civilized form of divorce" indeed.

Relations with Armenia, Russia’s closest strategic ally in the South
Caucasus, are one of the few spheres where the rumors on the premature
demise of post-Soviet integration might be refuted yet.

No need to say that security and stability of the South Caucasus is in
Russia’s own interests – first and foremost so as to quench terrorism
on the territory of its own republics of the Caucasus. Neutralization
of the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia in August 2008
displayed Russian leadership’s resolve to act in a firm and determined
manner to protect its citizens and national interests.

Vying for clout with the region in question, Russia is compelled to
compromise with the United States, Turkey, and united Europe.

Additional importance to the Armenian factor is attached by the fact
that an emphasis in Russian policy these days is made on development
of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Eurasian Economic Community,
and CIS Collective Security Treaty or CSTO. This latter is unlikely to
become a local clone of or political counterweight to NATO. As for
being a structure displaying benefits of integration for all to see
and recognized by the UN, Council of Europe, and OCSE, it has at least
a fighting chance.

Armenia stands for activization of the military component of the CSTO.
It did a lot for establishment of the CSTO Collective Rapid Deployment
Forces. It goes without saying that the Russian diplomacy knows that
it can count on Armenian support in Eurasian affairs.

Source: Kommersant, No 190, October 13, 2009, p. 8

GOVERNMENT DISCUSS POSSIBLE SCENARIOS OF ARMENIA-TURKEY RELATIONS DEVELOPMENT

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.10.2009 16:49 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia, of course, must be prepared for different
scenarios in the process of normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations,
RA prime minister of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan said.

"Naturally, we must be prepared to different developments. According
to the Prime Minister Armenia must be ready for the scenario when
the border with Turkey may not open. "For this case, the government
has already developed a strategy," the Prime Minister said.

Tigran Sargsyan added that the Armenian-Turkish relations are
conditioned only by the opening of the border. "First and foremost,
these relations are moral, psychological, and cultural. In this
respect, we and the Turks have the feeling of inferiority originating
primarily from the Armenian Genocide, " the Armenian prime minister
stressed. He emphasized, that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
by Turkey first of all is on the agenda.

THE HURRIYET DISSEMINATES MISINFORMATION QUOTING CNNTURK

ArmInfo
2009-10-15 18:26:00

ArmInfo. The Hurriyet has disseminated misinformation quoting CNNTurk.

"Sarkisian talked about the tour he took to meet the Armenian diaspora
to inform them about the recent developments," according to CNNTurk. "I
did not go on this tour to get their permission," he said. "I went
to inform them about the Armenian government’s decision," he said,
CNNTurk reported.

In response, Press Secretary of Armenian President Samvel Farmanyan
said President Sargsyan did not speak at any briefing and made no
statement during his visit to Turkey. "The chronology shows that the
decision to sign the initialed protocols was adopted only after the
6-week public debates, the Pan Armenian Tour of the president and the
session of the National Security Council on the given topic. Hence,
the report by the Turkish media is an evident misinformation," he said.

ARS HONORS VETERAN MEMBERS
By Rita Dilanian

0/ars-honors-veteran-members/
October 10, 2009

DETROIT, Mich.-On Sun., Sept. 27, the ARS Mid-Council celebrated
the Society’s veteran Detroit-area ARS members with an after-church
luncheon at Lillian Arakelian Fellowship Hall. Over 70 friends and
family members and ARS supporters attended the event.

This year marks the ARS’s 99th anniversary. At least four generations
of women have made it possible for the organization to commemorate its
100th anniversary in 2010. Therefore, in the spirit of honoring the
organization, the ARS paid tribute to those members in the Detroit
area who have served the Society for 50 or more years. These ARS
members represent the best of our past when we remember those who
came before us and built our communities. They give our younger ARS
members a sense of pride and give us confidence that the ARS’s goals
and service to the Armenian people continues.

The blessing was offered by Rev. Fr. Daron Stepanian, the pastor of
St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church.

ARS members Sona Derovakimian and Sona Mishigian performed the ARS
anthem. Alice Pilibosian welcomed the gathering, noting the great work
of the ARS and emphasizing the achievements of the honored members.

Cellist Suren Petrosyan, a PhD. candidate from Michigan State
University, played a musical interlude of lovely Armenian
selections. Several students-including Arev Van de Velde, Cecile
Koceyan, and Alex Hrant Koceyan-from the ARS Zavarian Armenian One-Day
School delighted the audience by showcasing their talent in recitations
and song.

Ani Attar announced each of the 14 honorees and invited them to
the podium to accept their special recognition. The members were
escorted by the chairwoman of their ARS chapter and presented with an
engraved certificate, denoting their years of service. The following
outstanding women were recognized: Arpie Brajkovich, "Shakeh" Chapter;
Mary Davidian, "Shakeh" Chapter; Kegouhe Derhovakimian, "Zabel"
Chapter; Anna Koloian, "Sybille" Chapter; Rose Keghanoush Mooradian,
"Sybille" Chapter; Meline Morukian, "Maro" Chapter; Mary Nranian,
"Sybille" Chapter; Lusia Palanjian, "Shakeh" Chapter; Haigoohy Perkins,
"Sybille" Chapter; Zarry Sarkisian, "Sybille" Chapter; Mannig Minnie
Shoushanian, "Sybille" Chapter; Yn. Arpine Shrikian, "Maro" Chapter;
Azaduhe Vartanian, "Sybille" Chapter; and Marie Yessaian, "Zabel"
Chapter.

Congratulations are extended to this group of dedicated ARS
members. We, who have many more years to serve the ARS, admire them
and hope our years of service will be as fruitful and successful as
theirs. We look forward to the ARS’s centennial year and hope other
ARS members will join this illustrious honor roll.

MEDVEDEV AND SARGSYAN REVIEWED OCTOBER 9’S CIS SUMMIT RESULTS

PanARMENIAN.Net
12.10.2009 19:01 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today, RF and RA Presidents, Dmitry Medvedev and
Serzh Sargsyan, discussed trade and economic development, interregional
cooperation strengthening, military and technical collaboration and
implementation perspectives for major joint energetic projects at
their Moscow meeting.

According to RF presidential press service, the meeting focused on
CSTO activities, including functioning of CSTO rapid-reaction force.

Medvedev and Sargsyan also reviewed results of October 9’s CIS
summit in Kishinev and exchanged views on the dialogue within EurAsEc
frameworks.

ROBERT FISK: OBAMA, MAN OF PEACE? NO, JUST A NOBEL PRIZE OF A MISTAKE

Independent/uk
Sunday, 11 October 2009

The US president received an award in the faint hope that he will
succeed in the future. That’s how desperate the Middle East situation
has become

Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinians in Qalandyia, south of
Ramallah, on the West Bank

His Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted
him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by
continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is
bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many
years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without
conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the
opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone’s damning
indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary
of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After
breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres
by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign
a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is
still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his"
war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.

And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace
Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder h e said
he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated.

But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres
won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won
it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history,
the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who
has achieved nothing – in the faint hope that he will do something
good in the future. That’s how bad things are. That’s how explosive
the Middle East has become.

Isn’t there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the
Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the
building of colonies for Jews – and Jews only – on Arab land? Bill
Clinton demanded this – it was written into the Oslo accords –
and the Israelis ignored him. George W Bush demanded an end to the
fighting in Jenin nine years ago. The Israelis ignored him. Mr Obama
demands a total end to all settlement construction. "They just don’t
get it, do they?" an Israeli minister – apparently Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu – was reported to have said when the US Secretary
of State, Hillary Clinton, reiterated her president’s words. That’s
what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s crackpot foreign minister – he’s not
as much a crackpot as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he’s getting close –
said again on Thursday. "Whoever says it’s possible to reach in the
coming years a comprehensive agreement," he announced before meeting
Mr Obama’s benighted and elderly envoy George Mitchell, "… simply
doesn’t understand the reality."

Across Arabia, needless to say, the Arab potentates continue to shake
with fear in their golden minarets. That great Lebanese journalist
Samir Kassir – murdered in 2005, quite possibly by Mr Obama’s new-found
Syrian chums – put it well in one of his last essays. "Undeterred by
Egypt since Sadat’s peace," he wrote, "convinced of America’s unfailing
support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe’s bad conscience, and
backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western
powers, and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the
international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants,
or is prompted to do by its leaders’ fantasies of domination."

So Israel is getting away with it as usual, abusing the distinguished
(and Jewish) head of the UN inquiry into Gaza war crimes – which also
blamed Hamas – while joining the Americans in further disgracing
the craven Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas, who is
more interested in maintaining his relations with Washington than
with his own Palestinian people. He’s even gone back on his word
to refuse peace talks until Israel’s colonial expansion comes to an
end. In a single devastating sentence, that usually mild Jordanian
comme ntator Rami Khouri noted last week that Mr Abbas is "a tragic
shell of a man, hollow, politically impotent, backed and respected
by nobody". I put "President" Abbas into quotation marks since he
now has Mr Ahmadinejad’s status in the eyes of his people. Hamas is
delighted. Thanks to President Obama.

Oddly, Mr Obama is also humiliating the Armenian president, Serg
Sarkisian, by insisting that he talks to his Turkish adversaries
without conditions. In the West Bank, you have to forget the Jewish
colonies. In Armenia, you have to forget the Turkish murder of one
and a half million Armenians in 1915. Mr Obama refused to honour his
pre-election promise to recognise the 20th century’s first holocaust
as a genocide. But if he can’t handle the First World War, how can
he handle World War Three?

Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America
had to fight – not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush
rashly invaded.

He’d forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even
announced that Pakistan was now America’s war, too. The White House
produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over
the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent
civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa’ida? Or yield to
General Stanley McChrystal’s Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more
troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite
each other, Mr20Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his
battledress. The rabbit and the hare.

No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard
of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it’s also true. The Afghan
government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords – paid by Karzai
and the Americans – ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan
civilians. But it’s much bigger than this.

The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any
idea why?

Does he realise that Washington’s decision to support India against
Pakistan over Kashmir – symbolised by his appointment of Richard
Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit
to discuss divided Kashmir – enraged Pakistan. He may want India
to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan’s military
intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act
fairly over Kashmir – recognising Pakistan’s claims as well as India’s
– is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir,
no security for US troops – or the Indian embassy – in Afghanistan.

Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks,
the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again
at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser
to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart"
of Israel=2 0if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I
doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians –
who understand the West much better than we understand them – have
another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack,
they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I’m told, to target
instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in
the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave
Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before
their Israeli masters.

For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the
Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick
and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not
to strike at Iran. And why Israel’s leaders – including Mr Netanyahu –
were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international
negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is
Mr Obama more frightened of Iran’s retaliation? Or of its nuclear
capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel’s possible aggression
against Iran?

But, please, no attacks on 10 December. That’s when Barack Obama
turns up in Oslo to pocket his peace prize – for achievements he has
not yet achieved and for dreams that will turn into nightmares.