Author: Kanayan Tamar

FAMOUS AMERICAN PIANIST IS IMPRESSED BY THE WORK WITH ARMENIAN YOUTH ORCHESTRA

ARMENPRESS
2 May, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, MAY 2, ARMENPRESS: The joint concert of Armenian State
youth orchestra and soloist, member of IMG Artists and Sony Classical
Artists pianist Simone Dinnerstein (USA) will take place on May 2 in
the music hall Aram Khachaturyan.

“I am in Yerevan for the first time and I am proud for the musical
traditions of Armenia” said Dinnerstein during the briefing in the
Armenian youth foundation on May 2 as Armenpress reports. She stressed
that she is impressed by Armenia and especially by the work with ASYO.

“There was a wish for a long time to perform together with this bright
musician and I am glad that now Simone is in Armenia” mentioned the
chief conductor of ASYO Sergey Smbatyan. He informed that one of the
future greatest programs of orchestra is the international tournament
of violinists after Aram Khachaturyan in June.

Dinnerstein who has performed concerts with the most authoritative
orchestras in the world, is sure that classical music is for
everybody. After Yerevan she will have concerts in Vienna, Istanbul
and USA.

During the concert will be played the prologue of “Don Juan” of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concert of piano, creation “To the martyrs…”

of Michael Kokjaev dedicated to the victims of Armenian genocide and
the symphony of Edvard Mirzoyan.

UNBURNING BOOKS IN BERLIN
By Avner Shapira

19.04.12

AN EXHIBIT IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL LOOKS AT THE LIVES AND WORKS OF
WRITERS WHOSE BOOKS WERE BURNED AND BANNED DURING THE THIRD REICH.

Alexander Moritz Frey is remembered today less for his literary works
and more for Adolf Hitler’s moustache. Frey, a German writer who was
born in 1881, served in the same Bavarian army reserve regiment as
Hitler in World War I. He reported that his fellow fighter in the
trenches did not voluntarily choose the narrow moustache that would
eventually be associated with him. He says that at the time Hitler
had a long moustache and was required by his commanders to trim it
so the gas mask worn by soldiers during the mustard gas attacks of
the British would fit.

In an article Frey wrote later on, “The Unknown Private – Personal
Memories of Hitler,” he described his first encounter with the future
dictator: “One evening a pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar
after the first shells of the daily evening attack had begun to fall,
fear and rage glowing in his eyes. At that time he looked tall,
because he was so thin. A full moustache, later trimmed because of
the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth.” In Frey’s
accounting, Hitler was an enthusiastic soldier eager to fight who took
the military maneuvers of the enemy personally, as if they wanted to
take his life in particular.

Nazi book burning – Getty – 19.4.12

May 10, 1933, Berlin. Goebbels told Nazi activists at the book
burning that it marked the “end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism.”

Photo by: Getty Images

The essay was discovered many years after Frey’s death in 1957
and was included in a biography of him published five years ago in
Switzerland. However, Frey, who early in his career was a prominent
writer known mainly for his fantasy books, is today unknown to the
general public in Germany or elsewhere.

An attempt to restore his place in the collective consciousness is now
underway in Berlin in the form of an exhibition. Called “Burned Books:
Ostracized Authors in Nazi Germany,” the exhibition at the pavilion
opposite the Holocaust Memorial focuses on the lives of writers whose
books were burned and banned during the Third Reich and who were
themselves suppressed and persecuted by the regime. Many retained
their position and were not forced into oblivion as the Nazis hoped
they would be. But in the case of Frey and several others featured
in the exhibit, it is hard to say that the German effort to erase
their works from German culture failed entirely.

The exhibition relates that Frey, who lived in Munich, saw Hitler
on the city’s streets several times after World War I, but never
spoke to him again. He firmly refused requests from Hitler’s aides to
join the Nazi party in its early days. Unlike Hitler, Frey became a
pacifist after the war and opposed nationalist and racist ideologies,
views which are also reflected in his writing. That did not stop Hitler
from offering Frey the post of culture editor of the Nazi party organ,
Volkischer Beobachter, and he did not forgive Frey for turning down
the offer.

Frey’s books were popular during the time of the Weimar Republic and
he was also known for his satirical columns in the press. In 1929,
his antiwar novel, “The Cross Bearers” was published. It was is based
in large part on his World War I military service and featured harsh
descriptions of the battle routine with no attempt to spare the reader.

“The useless flesh which only a day earlier had been useful for
transporting arms, bayonet stabbings or shooting, fell into the pits.

If there was anything dignified or meaningful in this, it was this:
the flesh fertilized the earth,” Frey wrote in the book, which sparked
the Nazis’ anger.

In March 1933, shortly after Hitler’s rise to power, an arrest
warrant for Frey was issued and Nazi storm troopers broke into his
apartment while he was away, and destroyed it. He fled to Austria and
after Germany annexed it, relocated to Switzerland, where he had to
constantly fight with the authorities to be allowed to remain there
and became impoverished due to the difficulty he had publishing his
books. Frey did not return to Germany after the Nazis’ defeat. Only
on his deathbed, did Switzerland grant him citizenship.

Restocking burned books

Only one kilometer separates the “Empty Library” memorial at Bebelplatz
from a library that is not empty, and is in fact one of the main
displays at the Berlin exhibit. The memorial by Israeli artist Micha
Ullman depicts the books burned in that same square by Nazi supporters
on May 10, 1933 with empty shelves. The symbolic representation in the
exhibition fills the void with actual content: placed together are
the books of the 20 writers to whom it is dedicated, Jews alongside
Christians, Communists next to liberals and opponents of the regime,
Germans together with citizens of other European countries. The common
denominator among them (and some 100 other writers not mentioned in
the display ) is the Nazis’ efforts to ostracize them based on the
claim that their books “threaten the German spirit.”

Berlin memorial – Sirila – 19.4.12

The “Empty Library” memorial in Berlin, with its vacant bookshelves,
depicts the books burned here in 1933.

Photo by: Aharon Sirila

This is a historical exhibit of modest proportions, as well as modest
pretensions. Using photos, archival documents and voice recordings,
it returns to the book burnings on that spring night in 1933 not only
in Berlin, but also in other cities across Germany; and it seeks
to create a monument not just to noted intellectuals and writers
whose works were confiscated, but also to those whose persecution
and ostracism is sometimes forgotten.

The curator of the exhibition, Jan Pronczak, stresses that the book
burning was a key step in the Nazi effort to dominate civil society
and cultural discourse in Germany. In the exhibition catalog, Pronczak
notes that the book burnings were not a government initiative but
were organized voluntarily by the German Students Union. The effort
did not spark any criticism from other students or lecturers in the
universities, except for a few professors who were permitted to hold
onto copies of the banned books for “research purposes.”

The books burnings were welcomed by the Nazi propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels, who was invited to speak at the central event in
Berlin. Goebbels told the students and Nazi activists who gathered
there that the event marks the “end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism” and is “a breakthrough in the German revolution.”

According to him, just three months earlier, when Hitler was appointed
chancellor of Germany, “we could not imagine that it would be possible
to cleanse Germany so quickly.”

Still, from a historical perspective, Goebbels and the others
working on purifying “the German spirit” did not accomplish their
mission in its entirety. Alfred Doblin, Stefan Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky,
Joseph Roth, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Anna Seghers and Erich Maria
Remarque are some of the prominent writers whose lives are reviewed
in the exhibition and who are still considered part of the German
cultural canon.

Remarque, the author of the 1929 antiwar book “All Quiet on the Western
Front,” one of the most successful 20th century German writers,
fled from Germany to Switzerland immediately after the Nazis’ rise
to power. On the night of the book burnings, he was hosted by his
neighbor, the writer Emil Ludwig, and together they listened to the
radio broadcast from Berlin. In his description, he said “we opened
the oldest bottle of Rhine wine we had, listened on the radio to the
flames flickering and the Nazis’ speeches and we drank to the future.”

A conscientious objector

Unlike Remarque, the writer and journalist Armin T. Wegner, another
hero featured in the exhibition, was imprisoned at the time in a German
concentration camp. Only a few weeks earlier, after “the boycott day”
the Nazis imposed on Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, he mustered
the courage to send Hitler a sharp letter criticizing the persecution
of the Jews. As a result, he was imprisoned and tortured, and after
three years he was released and managed to escape to Italy.

This was not the first time that Wegner voiced conscientious
objection. Wegner was born in 1886 and began his creative career as
an expressionist poet, and refused to serve in the army as a soldier
for pacifist reasons. Nevertheless, in World War II, he volunteered
to serve as a medic and afterward as a medical officer.

He served in the Middle East and witnessed the Ottoman Empire’s
genocide against the Armenian people. He visited refugee camps and mass
graves and circulated reports and photos documenting the destruction,
despite the personal risk that entailed. In 1919, he published an
open letter to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in which he called on
him to grant the Armenian people independence in the name of “the
voice of humanity.”

After the war, Wegner became known as a prolific journalist, the
author of travel books and novels as well as a human rights activist.

He traveled the world with his wife, the Jewish poet Lula Landau. In
the late 1920s they visited Palestine and Wegner described this
visit in essays and a book that voiced his support for the creation
of a Jewish national state in Palestine. After the couple’s divorce
in 1939, Landau immigrated to Palestine and lived there until he died.

In a letter Wegner sent to Hitler after “boycott day” under the heading
“To Germany,” he tried to dissuade him from activities intended to
suppress the Jews. “Sir Reichskanzler, we are not talking here solely
about the fate of our Jewish brethren. This is a matter of the fate of
Germany!” he wrote. “As a German, who received the gift of speech not
for the sake of remaining silent, I appeal to you: stop this madness!”

He surveyed what the Jews had endured throughout history and estimated
that “with the same perseverance that helped them survive as an ancient
people, the Jews will also overcome this danger but the shame and
tragedy that will be caused to the German people will not soon be
forgotten.” Moreover, he proposed to Hitler: “Preserve Germany by
granting protection to the Jews.”

A Hebrew translation of his letter appears in the book by Israeli
researcher, Prof. Yair Auron, “Genocide: Can it be Prevented” (Open
University Press, 2010). Auron maintains that “Wegner is one of the
loftiest voices produced by the German-Jewish symbiosis against the
Nazi German effort that sought to annihilate it.”

Auron adds that in 1968, Wegner was recognized as a Righteous Gentile
by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Even though he
did not actually save Jews, the committee that grants the title
decided to honor his courage and the risks he took in an attempt
to defend the Jews in Nazi Germany. In addition, he received Medals
of Honor from the governments of West Germany and Armenia. Wegner,
who remained in Italy until the end of his life and did not manage
to recreate his success as a writer, died in 1978.

Similar to Frey and Wegner, Irmgard Keun was among the writers whose
books were forgotten during the Nazi era and after it as well. But
unlike them, in her later years she received renewed recognition. She
is recalled today as a writer who was miraculously able to provide
sharp and light-hearted depictions of modern lifestyles, the consumer
society and the flashy society of the Weimar era.

A daring portrait of Berlin women

The exhibition notes that Keu, who was born in 1905, worked first
as a stenographer and as a model and studied acting. After being
unsuccessful in the theater, she switched to literary writing. Her
first novel, “Gilgi – One of Us” sparked a storm after its publication,
in 1931, because of its direct depictions of the life of the young,
independent, free-spirited heroine, portrayed as the embodiment of
modern femininity. Among other things, the book covers such issues
as adoption, gaps among social classes, women working in office jobs,
sexual harassment, single-parent families and abortion.

Keun earned praise from important writers, such as Doblin and
Tucholsky, for her humorous and sharp writing and after a year
released another novel, “The Artificial Silk Girl,” which became
a bestseller. It presents an entertaining monologue by Doris, a
light-headed Berlin young woman, with great fondness for men, lies,
trendy clothes and brand names.

Doris tries to make her way into the world of glamour and is
indifferent to the political dangers in the twilight period of the
Weimar Republic. “I want to write like in a film that my life is like
that and will be even more so,” Doris says. “And I look like Colleen
Moore (an American film star ), if only she had a permanent curl in
her hair and a nose with more chic, pointed upward a bit more.”

The Nazis banned Keun’s books and did not allow them to be distributed
after having identified “anti-German tendencies” in them and in 1936
she left for Belgium. That same year, she began a romance with Joseph
Roth, which lasted until 1938, and later on she moved to Holland. When
that country was occupied by Germany, she returned to her native
land and lived there under a false identity until the end of World
War II. She felt protected because she knew the regime had received
false reports of her suicide.

In West Germany after the war Keun continued writing books but they
did not gain a following. She suffered emotional crises and became
addicted to alcohol and in the 1960s was hospitalized for a time in a
psychiatric institution. Only in the mid-1970s was she rediscovered
following a newspaper article about her. Her books were issued in
new editions and received enthusiastically by young readers and she
frequently attended literary events until her death in 1982. Her books
were also adapted for theater and film and merited academic analyses.

Six years ago, Israeli director Tom Levy created an adaptation of
“The Artificial Silk Girl” which was staged at Tel Aviv’s Tzavta
Theater. The novel is mentioned several times in Israeli historian
Dr. Boaz Neumann’s book, “Being in the Weimar Republic” (Am Oved
Publishers, 2007 ).

Neumann say the novel’s heroine faithfully represents several
prevailing trends in Germany at that time, such as the centrality of
ads and shopping in people’s lives, the importance of fashion and a
glamorous appearance in defining humanity, and the tendency to use
lies and deceit to climb the social ladder; or in the words of Doris:
“I know that people who ‘must always speak the truth’ always lie.”

It seems that some of Doris’ perceptions regarding the consumer
society are relevant today as well. It is possible that this is one
reason why Achuzat Bayit Books chose to release the book in Hebrew,
translated by Hanan Elstein. The translation is to be released around
Rosh Hashana and its title will be taken from contemporary language,
“Naara Homranit” (Material Girl ).

Keun’s works were the focus of an evening of readings recently held in
Berlin as part of a monthly series devoted to one of the writers whose
lives are reviewed in the exhibition. The events feature contemporary
German writers such as Herta Muller, the 2009 recipient of the Nobel
Prize for Literature, Daniel Kehlmann, the author of “Measuring
the World,” and actress Iris Berben reading from the works of Armin
T. Wegner.

The exhibition closes on December 31.

OBITUARIES DIANA PARIKIAN: NOTED ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLER
Nicholas Poole-Wilson

Tuesday 01 May 2012

When she realised the mark-up on an array of Erasmus first editions
she knew she had to become a dealer

Oxford, Sunday. Diana Parikian showed me Italian books, mostly obscure
ones with illustrations, including a tiny emblem book honoring the
ninetieth birthday of Pope Clement XI in 1702. The emblems are tucked
into little floral pockets…” Thus Roger Stoddard, curator of rare
books at Harvard, in a memorandum of 1985 on his first European
acquisitions trip.

These and other such books were the stock-in-trade of Diana Parikian
who has died aged 85, one of the first female antiquarian booksellers
in a male dominated trade. She made her name if not a fortune (“I’m
not a good businesswoman”) by dint of book-hunting in the byways of
continental renaissance and baroque literature. She never sought
to compete for spoils with the established grandees of the trade,
Georges Heilbrun and Andre Jammes in Paris, or Carlo Alberto Chiesa
in Milan, but her expertise and scholarly approach enabled her to
take her place at their table on equal terms. More than that, she
had a joie de vivre that made her excellent company. Italy was her
happiest hunting ground; she was as familiar with the backstreets of
Perugia as the arcades of Turin. The art galleries and restaurants too.

She became an authority on emblem books and iconography before they
achieved cult status, at a time when the bibliographical reference
tools were limited or out of date. Her Latin was a premier dog-Latin,
sufficient to buy and sell neo-Latin poetry to John Sparrow (his
collection now at All Souls), the British Library, Harvard, Princeton
and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. Art historical
texts, the theatre and opera libretti were further specialities,
to which more recently she added conjuring books. Bill Kalush in New
York became a client: “He knows far more about his subject – which is
not conjuring per se, but the art of deception in the largest sense –
than any bookseller does. So you can always learn from him… Also
he buys every edition of every book, a bookseller’s dream”. In all
she issued 82 catalogues in 50 years. She knew she had arrived when a
distinguished old-timer in the trade put his arm around her shoulder
to say “Diana, your latest catalogue, I’ve read it from beginning to
end and there isn’t a single author I recognise.”

Diana Margaret Parikian was born in London in 1926, the eldest daughter
of George Carbutt, chartered accountant. She grew up in Chelsea and
was educated at Francis Holland School for Girls and later at North
Foreland Lodge where she first encountered Amaryllis Fleming, who
was later to play cello in the Parikian-Milne-Fleming Trio. In 1944
she joined the WRNS, serving at Stanmore and Bletchley Park.

After the war she attended the Royal College of Music, studying cello
and piano; it was here that she met Neville Marriner, her first
husband, by whom she had a son, the clarinettist Andrew Marriner,
and a daughter, Susie Harries, author of the recent biography of
Nikolaus Pevsner.

In 1957 she married the violinist Manoug Parikian, Professor of Violin
at the Royal Academy of Music. Not one to kick her heels in a hotel
bedroom as he performed in the concert halls of Europe, she took to
the bookshops. At first she operated as a “runner”, trafficking books
from one dealer to another, in particular to Jacques Vellekoop of EP
Goldschmidt in Bond Street, who taught her much. “Yes, duckey, that’s
simply lovely, but now bring me the second edition because…” And
when she discovered the scale of mark-up on an array of Erasmus first
editions she had sold him (the friendship unimpaired), she recognised
that it was time to turn dealer proper, working first from London
and then for 22 years from a comfortable old rectory at Waterstock,
the family home where she brought up her two sons, Stepan and Levon.

In 1981 she was inspired by Colnaghi’s exhibition “Objects for a
Wunderkammer” to explore the history of the Wunderkammer, or private
museum, and to document its circuitous progress from haphazard cabinet
of antiquities and objects of wonder to the more extravagant cabinet
of objets de virtu to meet the appetite of a baroque prince, and its
transformation into a public museum. She assembled a core collection of
16th and 17th century source books in conjunction with myself, and Paul
Grinke catalogued them with learning and wit (“Clearly everyone wanted
an Egyptian mummy, a Mexican idol and a Greenland kayak, the blue
chips of the curieux, but most collectors had to settle for a piece of
bitumenised criminal, a late Roman inscription or an Egyptian scarab”).

It was a pioneer catalogue in a field now much studied, and originally
issued in very small numbers, it was reprinted in 2006 with additions
and further illustrations. A second reprint will appear later this
year. The books themselves were purchased en bloc by the Getty Museum
in California.

Diana never succumbed to collecting herself but she enjoyed aiding and
abetting Manoug in a 30-year pursuit of Armenian printed books from
the 16th to the 19th century. On his death in 1987 he bequeathed the
collection to Eton College Library. Diana always used the Armenian
alphabet for the cost-coding of her books, something that may baffle
the provenance detectives of the future but will stand as a hallmark of
books of distinction in libraries the world over. Her living legacy is
the band of present-day booksellers and librarians whom she fostered
by friendship, hospitality and example.

Diana Margaret Carbutt, antiquarian bookseller: born London 20 October
1926; married firstly Neville Marriner (one son, one daughter),
1957 Manoug Parikian (died 1987; two sons); died 3 April 2012.

COLD WAR II: FROM THE BALKANS TO CENTRAL ASIA: U.S.-NATO PREPARE FOR NEW COLD WAR
by Rick Rozoff

Global Research
May 1, 2012
Stop NATO

Though infrequently acknowledged if even given consideration, the
current historical period remains what it has been for a quarter
century, the post-Cold War era.

Beginning in earnest in 1991 with the near simultaneous disintegration
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia – instantaneous in the first case, comparatively
slower in the second, only complete with the independence of Montenegro
in 2008 – the bipolar world ended with the demise of the Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact and the nonaligned one with the fragmentation of
Yugoslavia, a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The dissolution of the two nations, the only both multi-ethnic and
multi-confessional countries in Europe, was accompanied by violent
ethnic conflicts often reinforced by religious differences. In Croatia,
Bosnia, Kosovo, the South Caucasus, the Russian North Caucasus and
on the east bank of the Dniester River.

In many instances, in Serbian-majority areas of Croatia and Bosnia and
in Transdniester, memories of World War II gave rise to legitimate
fears of revanchism among populations that recalled the death camps
and pogroms of Adolf Hitler’s allies in the early 1940s and witnessed
the recrudescence of the ideologies, the irredentism and the political
trappings that gave rise to them.

Transdniester refused to become part of post-Soviet Moldova as
it foresaw both states being reabsorbed into Romania. Abkhazia,
South Ossetia and Adjara, parts of the Georgian Soviet Socialist
Republic, didn’t desire to be included in the Republic of Georgia
and majority-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a similar approach to
post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The above are collectively known in certain
circles as the frozen conflicts in former Soviet space.

The centrifugal dynamic reached more dangerous proportions when armed
secessionist movements went beyond federal republics – the Leninist
constitutions of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia formally allowed
for their independence under the proper conditions – and arose in
autonomous and former autonomous republics: Chechnya and Dagestan
in Russia and Kosovo and the Presevo Valley in Serbia. Northwestern
Macedonia was the site of the same destabilization in 2001, the direct
– and inevitable – result of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’
s air war against Yugoslavia two years earlier on behalf of Kosovo
separatists.

The area collectively assailed by the above violence and national
vivisection stretches from the Adriatic Sea to the Caspian Sea,
north of the Broader (or Greater or New) Middle East which in turn
begins in Mauritania and ends in Kazakhstan, from Africa’s Atlantic
coast to China’s western border.

The ever more extensive breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and
the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, correlated with – and
more than correlated with – the development of NATO as an expansionist,
aggressive and bellicose regional and global military force.

Twenty-one nations and five smaller breakaway states (including
Kosovo) where earlier there had been only two created that many more
opportunities for the West to expand southward and eastward from Cold
War-era NATO territory. Every one of the 21 former Soviet and Yugoslav
federal republics is now either a full member of NATO or engaged in a
partnership program. Thirteen of them have troops serving under NATO
command in Afghanistan.

Two recent announcements demonstrate the constantly increasing
penetration and domination of the area that begins in Slovenia and
ends in Azerbaijan, a swathe of land that on its eastern extreme
borders Russia to its north and Iran to its south.

Recently NATO’s Allied Command Operations website announced the
resumption of what had been annual military exercises employed to
integrate partners in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the
Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.

The dual exercise, Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer,
respectively a command and a field exercise, will occur this year
in Macedonia from May 21-29 with the participation of several NATO
members – if the preceding versions are an indication, the U.S.

Britain, Canada, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Turkey and others – and
perhaps twice as many partnership adjuncts from the Partnership for
Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative
programs. The exercise, like its predecessors, is based on a “crisis
response” scenario and a United Nations mandate. Like Libya last year,
for instance.

In the last Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer exercises, in
Georgia in 2009, NATO members the U.S., Britain, Canada, Spain,
Greece, Hungary, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Albania
participated. Longbow/Lancer 2009 was held less than eight months
after the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 and
was also to have included NATO members Estonia and Latvia and twelve
partnership nations.

This year’s version is slated to involve the largest number of
Partnership for Peace states in any Longbow/Lancer exercises,
thirteen: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Switzerland and
Ukraine. NATO hasn’t yet disclosed which Mediterranean Dialogue and
Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners will participate this year.

The first Longbow/Lancer exercises were held in Moldova in 2006 with
seven NATO members, twelve Partnership for Peace nations (all of the
above-mentioned except for Serbia, which joined the Partnership for
Peace in that year) and Mediterranean Dialogue partner Israel.

Mediterranean Dialogue member Morocco and Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative members Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sent observers.

Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2007 was conducted in Albania and the
following year’s exercise in Armenia. All five nations – Moldova,
Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Macedonia – are deeply involved, either
on their own territory or in neighboring nations, in one or more of
the conflicts discussed above. In 2009 Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova
and Serbia withdrew beforehand because of the Georgia-Russian war of
a few months earlier and Estonia and Latvia did also because of an
anti-government mutiny staged the day before the almost month-long
exercise began.

What role the NATO and partnership troops may have played had the
military uprising progressed further than it did can be easily
imagined.

The U.S. Marine Corps’ Black Sea Rotational Force posted on its
Facebook account (and to date nowhere else) that its six-month
rotation for this year will “build enduring partnerships with 19
nations throughout Eastern Europe.” More accurately, as the Marine
program formed two years ago identifies as its mission, in “the Black
Sea, Balkan and Caucasus regions.”

Two years ago twelve nations were involved, by last year there were
thirteen – Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia,
Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine
– and this year nineteen. The six new participating nations were
not named.

Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 began its half-year-long deployment in
Georgia by joining Agile Spirit 2012 in March at the Vaziani Training
Area where the last Cooperative Longbow/Lancer exercises took place.

Serbia may host its first military exercises with the force as well.

The U.S. Marine Corps is not only building bilateral and multilateral
ties with nineteen countries in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and
the Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union, it is also
consolidating NATO’s expansion into those areas with the ultimate aim
of full Alliance membership for those not already among the bloc’s
28 member states.

It can be argued that the Cold War didn’t end, that the U.S. and NATO
continue to wage it with wars and preparations for wars.

VOTE IS BOUGHT BY AMD 10 IN ARMENIA – PARTY LEADER

NEWS.AM
May 01, 2012 | 19:56

Bying votes is incompatible with the honor of labor rights, Vahan
Hovhanisyan, Armenian Revolutionary Federation MP announced at a
pre-election meeting in Hrazdan city on Tuesday. As the correspondent
of Armenian News-NEWS.am reports from Hrazdan, Vahan Hovhanisyan
announced that in order for Armenian citizens to return home, the
right of self-determination and making decisions must be returned
to the nation. “The MP candidate buys your votes in order to make
decisions instead of you during the following 5 years without asking
your opinion. And for what price? For each day of his MP mandate he
pays you AMD 10. Does that correspond to the honor of the working
man?” Hovhannisyan said. “Hrazdan used to be one of the industrial
centers of our country, Hrazdanmash – one of the most important
enterprises. Armenia used to be called the country of the Sun, a
country of wonders. Then the authorities broke the backbone of the
interlayer in Hrazdan, and other traditional industrial cities. Today
it is said that our country is poor and because of that the nation
is not able to live well. However, the metallic mineral wealth of
Armenia alone totals to $ 175 billion, not to mention the non-metallic
minerals.” He called to vote for ARF in order for Armenia to become
its former self again. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)
Dashnaktsutyun is one of the oldest Armenian political parties. It
was founded in the end of 19th century. Following the Sovietization of
Armenia in 1920, the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun was banned by the Communists
and its leadership exiled. The ARF-Dashnaktsutyun officially re-emerged
in Armenia after the collapse of the USSR, in 1990. In June 2003,
the party signed a coalition memorandum with the Republican Party
of Armenia and Orinats Yerkir (Rule of Law). However, in 2009 ARFD
left the coalition in protest against signing the protocols with
Turkey. Party’s proportional list includes 85 candidates. Eight
candidates will run for an MP seat with majority system. The party’s
motto is ‘Freedom, Justice, Dashnaktsutyun.’

OSCE REPRESENTATIVE HOPES THAT ARMENIAN ELECTIONS WILL BECOME A MODEL FOR THE WHOLE REGION

OSCE PA observing mission in Armenia will include more than 70 people.

The group will observe the Parliamentarian elections in Armenia on
May 6, 2012 and the group will be chaired by Francois Qsaive de Donnea
from Belgium. As the press service of OSCE office in Yerevan informs
the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Eamon
Gilmore nominated Mr. Donnea as the special coordinator who will lead
the OSCE diplomatic mission in Armenia.

De Donnea is Belgian Parliament deputy and the former Mayor of
Brussels. He has participated in a range of diplomatic observations
and Ukrainian Presidential elections 2012 are among them.

“Armenian geopolitical settlement between the East and the West
gives bigger strategic meaning to it from the context of democracy
development in the region. The innovation technologies of these
electoral process are important developments”, Mr. Donnea noted. “I
hope that the our mission will use the whole potential to fulfill
the responsibilities which it has and these elections will become a
model for the regional elections in future as well”.

The OSCE will evaluate Armenian elections according to the
Copenhagen document which was signed by Armenia. De Donnea will give a
press-conference on May 7 and during the meeting with the journalists
he will deliver an announcement.

AZERBAIJANI DIVERSION ATTACK PRECEDED BY DRONE FLIGHTS – ARMENIA’S MOD

news.am
May 01, 2012 | 15:32

The Azerbaijani diversion group’s penetration into Armenia’s territory
was presumably preceded by the flights of unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAV). This was stated during the meeting between Armenian MOD and
OSCE Chairman-in-Office field assistants Hristo Hristov and Irji
Aberle. To note, the OSCE conducted a monitoring on Monday at the
line of contact between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

On April 26, the aforesaid diversion group had fired shots at a VAZ
2107, at the Movses-Aygepar road section. There were four Armenian
military servicemen in the vehicle, and three of them had died as
a result.

The OSCE representatives were also informed that a UAV was hovering
above one day before the attack and at 2:45 pm. It was on a
reconnaissance mission.

“The consistency of the UAV’s usage and the diversion operations in the
same location are interlinked,” MOD representatives noted. The Armenian
side is prepared to submit to the OSCE the drone’s flight video.

Hristo Hristov and Irji Aberle visited the scene of the incident
where the Azerbaijani diversion group had attacked. The traces of
blood and the location of the grenade explosion were visible on the
road. First, the Azerbaijanis had fired at the car and subsequently
thrown grenades at it.

“One of the wounded had fallen from the automobile and died on the
road. They killed the other two after throwing grenades at the car,”
the local command unit representative noted.

Also, the OSCE representatives inspected the pelted vehicle, which
is kept at a Military Police garrison.

To note, Azerbaijan has violated the ceasefire close to 4,600 times
since the beginning of this year. Armenian settlements likewise are
intensively fired at. Thirteen such cases are recorded in Tavush
Region alone.

DEAD CONSCIOUSNESS AND LIGHT OF MASHTOTS
HAKOB BADALYAN

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 15:57:44 – 01/05/2012

New Armenian Alphabet

After Serzh Sargsyan had visited Mashtots Park and announced that
the boutiques must be removed from the park, interestingly a campaign
started against the citizens fighting for saving the park on Mashtots
Avenue. Amazingly, the campaign was begun by other citizens and most
of them had even attended the actions in Mashtots Park. It was not
the government.

The red line running through criticism in social networks is that
activists of Mashtots Park had stated reluctant to politicize their
struggle while Serzh Sargsyan came to earn some political dividends
before the election.

Let’s leave Serzh Sargsyan and his dividends alone. What dividends do
the citizens win the goal of whose social network and other activities
is to detect a “pro-government project” in Mashtots Park?

Obviously, struggle in the park is a serious challenge for all
the form and content of political struggle that has ever existed in
Armenia. Earlier, political struggle has never achieved any significant
milestone. So far the political struggle has been able to eliminate
the consequence of its failures, presenting them as results.

The “old” political movements of Armenia have not achieved any other
major goal so far and will not achieve in future either, evidence
to which is their efforts to justify their futile initiatives rather
than to find a way out of the deadlock together with their sheer army
of supporters.

This logic will certainly view Mashots Park as a “pro-government
project” because the park was effective even from the point of view
of refusal to dismantle the boutiques. A new style of civic struggle
was born and developed in the park, the style of the self-determined
citizen which personally solves its problems instead of seeking for
political “politburos” to address them.

After all, it is obvious that the efficiency of this young style is
not less than the efficiency of the so-called traditional political
stylistics.

The targets are not so big. They are only boutiques, and the history
of battles against the police is not long. The statistics of other
styles is bigger and richer. So what? What about the efficiency of
other styles?

As to the theory of “pro-government project”, there is almost no
difference from the theory of “global conspiracy” the followers of
which are the Armenian government and the so-called political class.

And it should be noted that the government is not alone with this
mindset and has inspired a great part of the society that there
cannot be small or big success outside the “conspiracy theories”
and the world goes round the “universal conspiracy”.

The government explains any alternative by the theory of “global
conspiracy” and considers the issue closed and has inspired a greater
part of the society with the theory of “government conspiracy” which
states: “If you are not with us, and you defy our leadership and our
truth but you are something without us, something is definitely wrong.”

This is the consciousness. It is not accidental that in the struggle
with a shared pole of consciousness and mind the government always won
the struggle against it carried out in the style of the traditional
Armenian political movement because of two similarly thinking subjects
the one will win who has more material and violent resource.

Mashtots Park is a litmus paper for everyone. As to the destiny of
the boutiques, now it is a secondary issue whether Serzh Sargsyan
will have the boutiques dismantled or Serzh Sargsyan will vow but will
not change anything. Everything is secondary for this piece of litmus
paper. The important thing for this litmus paper is the cleanness which
enables writing on it a new page of the struggle for reform in Armenia.

Armenia is suffering a crisis of old pages, and perhaps even old
language and old alphabet. And perhaps it is not accidental that this
litmus paper is in Mashtots Park where the new alphabet of struggle is
being created which must go through time and space, undergo phonetic
changes, grammatical corrections until it becomes a new language of
practical united struggle that will be easily understood by citizens.

It is important that this new alphabet belongs to everyone, independent
from the constitution of struggle, space and time, and does not become
the property or monopoly of any “politburo”.

HAS PAP WAKEN UP OR IT’S A GAME?
Naira Hayrumyan

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 12:32:09 – 01/05/2012

The Constitutional Court accepted for processing the request
of the Prosperous Armenia and ARFD MPs demanding to declare
anti-constitutional the provision of the Election Code banning the
release of the voters’ list after the elections.

The Court is going to consider the case on May 5, one day before the
elections, on Saturday. This shows how unserious the CC treats the
request of the MPs and the request will hardly be met.

The court is possible to consider the case for the whole day and
then postpone it till May 7, Monday. The court is also possible to
declare the request of the MPs legal stating at the same time that
the parliament needs to amend the Election Code. After May 6, the
elections will not be released for sure.

What is this – a Western initiative or a game by the Prosperous
Armenia? If the ARFD and Heritage, during the consideration of the
Election Code last year demanded to release the voters’ lists, the
PAP would not vote against Election Code, stating that the greater
part of its demands was accepted.

The party gave the same answer to the demand by Heritage, ARFD and
the Armenian National Congress to pass to the full proportional system.

PAP pharisaism failed the formation of e unique front against the
RPA and forcing it to adopt the amendments.

Now, the PAP has become the advocate of the publication of lists and
fair elections. Why? Did the PAP hope for a deal with the Republican
Party before the election, and therefore it didn’t want to burn
the bridges? In the end, election ploy as the uncertainty of lists,
and maintaining a majority “reserve” played in favor of the PAP.

But apparently, the parties failed to agree and when real competition
came, the PAP suddenly remembered about frauds. True, it is too late
because it reminds a game with the perspective to win points to be
ready for the next deal.

It is noteworthy that the Republican Party doesn’t consider it
necessary to justify itself for not wanting to release the lists. They
only refer to the Venice Commission, which supports the secrecy of the
vote. The RPA is like a child who is suspected of stealing something
and who is asked to open the fist, but he stubbornly and arrogantly
refuses. Everyone knows that the RPA relies on the votes of absent
people and this is its only weapon, illegal one, and the party looks
right into your eyes and keeps refusing to open the fist.

How is it possible to dwell on legitimacy after all this? Does the
RPA hope that everything will be like in 2007? When everyone had to
reconcile with the absolute majority of the Republican Party even
despite the huge number of frauds and breaches. There was heard a
sacred statement – there have been frauds which didn’t influence the
outcome of elections.

Perhaps, RPA hopes are grounded taking into account the behavior
of the Prosperous Armenia: it say nothing about being opposition,
it just wants as many parliamentary seats as the RPA to become on
equal terms in the coalition, as Vartan Oskanian says.

What will change in the state system of Armenia If the percentage
ratio of the RPA-PAP changes from 80-20 to 60-40, or even 50-50? Will
the Prosperous Armenia insist on amendments to the Election Code then
too, or it will go back to its course?

ARMENIAN YOUTH MIX ACTIVISM, REMEMBERANCE DURING COMMEMORATIONS OF 1915 GENOCIDE

89.3 KPCC

April 30 2012

In a recent evening inside Glendale High School’s auditorium high
school student Angela Pachanian rehearsed a poem of suffering and
sadness by Paruyr Sevak, Armenia’s best-known poet of the genocide.

Below her, in the auditorium’s first few rows, a group of nine and
ten year old Armenian American children run through a melodious song.

Their choirmaster said it’s a nationalistic Armenian song about going
to war, defending and saving the mother country.

The Armenian clubs at four Glendale high schools organized the
remembrance, with help from school district officials. The event’s
title, “Our Traditions Keep Us Alive,” hints at how tightly the
genocide is interwoven with Armenian identity.

“I clearly remember how when my parents would try to teach me about
what exactly happened,” Crescenta Valley High junior Sevag Alexanian,
as for most of these students, the genocide is among his earliest
memories, “how my great grandparents were affected by this, how
we’re lucky that we’re still here today because my great grandfather
survived and just pretty much how we’re the youth and we’re going to
be the ones getting the word out when we grow older, as a kid that
was always embedded in us.”

The Armenian Genocide has been part of the California public education
curriculum for 25 years. But Alexanian said his high school history
teacher glossed over it.

He, like many other young Armenian Americans, learned outside of
school to fervently argue for the recognition of the 1915 series
of events as “genocide.” There’s a consensus among historians that
the Ottomans targeted Armenians for extermination, but the current
Turkish government denies it. The U.S. government has not formally
recognized the Armenian Genocide.

Glendale Unified school board member Greg Krikorian said recognition
is one reason to hold this cultural event.

“We’re sending a message that we want, not only recognition of the
Armenian genocide, we want our homeland back, our territory back. The
Turkish government today is destroying our churches, destroying
our history. The Armenians for the past 97 years have given back to
America and this is one way our students are expressing their views
and values of the Armenian Genocide,” he said.

The zealous activism learned by young Armenian Americans from their
elders is justified, says Glendale Community College professor Levon
Marshalian.

“It’s more painful when someone’s history is not acknowledged and
denied. It’s as if, how would Americans feel if someone would be
saying, no there was no attack on Pearl Harbor, in fact America
surprised, dropped a surprise bomb on Tokyo first,” Marshalian said.

Many high school and college students exercised their activism last
week by taking part in Armenian Genocide protests and marches.

They’re not the only ones remembering genocides. In the last few weeks,
thousands of people in Southern California have held events to remember
the Holocaust during World War II and the Cambodian genocide in the
1970s. These genocides scattered refugees in diasporas far and wide.

In a darkened auditorium at Glendale Community College, the remembrance
of the Armenian Genocide took a somber tone. The campus Armenian club
screened Suzanne Khardalian’s film “Grandma’s Tattoos.”

The film focuses on the trauma of the genocide survivors and how that
trickled down to the filmmaker’s generation.

After the film, student Chantalle Parsakhian said its portrayal of
the genocide’s destruction is very different from what she learned
at home and at Armenian private school. She’s worried young Armenian
Americans are losing touch with this side of the genocide.

“I feel it’s just another day for them to not go to school because,
and the passion for justice has kind of dwindled, that’s what really
is upsetting,” she said.

Parsakhian left along a walkway where the campus Armenian club had
set up documents and photos detailing the extent of the deaths. On
the other side, on an easel, was a wreath in the shape of the Armenian
flag with “Never Again” printed on a ribbon.