HEAVY SNOWFALLS BLOCK HIGHWAYS IN ARMENIA
Tert.am
12.11.11
Heavy snowfalls in several regions of Armenia have blocked highways
across the country.
According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Selim mountain
pass has been closed as a road cleaning company is now working there
to make it trafficable.
A highway in Sisian region (Syunik province) is also said to be
blocked.
HRAPARAK: HOVIK ABRAHAMYAN’S RESIGNATION IS BENEFICIAL FOR PRIME MINISTER
Tert.am
12.11.11
The paper claims that the resignation of Chairperson of Armenia’s
National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan is somehow beneficial for Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan as they were in an obvious conflict with
each other.
However, that success will be complete, if Abrahamyan is replaced by
his deputy Samvel Nikoyan who is a representative of prime minister’s
team and used to always oppose Hovik Abrahamyan, the paper adds.
In some articles critical of Hovik Abrahamyan, the paper reminds,
it was Samvel Nikoyan who was quoted as a source.
Further, the paper says it should also be taken into account that
Samvel Nikoyan’s son, Vardan Nikoyan, is an assistant to the prime
minister.
LA JAF MARSEILLE S’ENGAGE AUX CETES DES ENFANTS
Aurelie Ohanian
armenews.com
samedi 12 novembre 2011
Convention des droits de l’enfant
C’est a l’occasion du 22ème anniversaire de la Convention des Droits
de l’Enfant et dans le cadre de la manifestation ” BOUGE POUR TES
DROITS ” que l’association Parole d’Enfants presentait le mercredi
9 novembre 2011 son spectacle ” Au pays du lever du soleil ” a la
salle Vallier de Marseille.
Ce conte musical pour enfants et familles relate l’histoire d’une
amitie entre deux jeunes filles, Anouch et Sheherazade, l’une
Armenienne l’autre Turque. Le conte demarre en 1905, en Anatolie, sur
les bords du lac de Van et se termine a Marseille de nos jours. Les
deux enfants y traversent la guerre de 1914, le genocide armenien
de 1915, l’exil, les camps de refugies et la separation. Cependant,
leur amitie reste la plus forte et les conduit sur le chemin de la
Paix et du Bonheur sur les bords de la Mediterranee, a Marseille.
Sous le parrainage du danseur et choregraphe Julien Lestel (ex
danseur du Ballet National de Marseille) et de sa Compagnie, et
en presence du chanteur Thierry de Cara, ce spectacle accueillait
egalement la troupe de danse Aragatz de la Jeunesse Armenienne de
France, partenaire de longue date de Parole d’Enfants . Les jeunes
filles d’Aragatz ont offert au public, venu en nombre, une magnifique
prestation demontrant toute la grâce et la finesse que l’on retrouve
dans la danse traditionnelle armenienne.
L’après-midi s’est achevee sur une chanson de Thierry de Cara
reunissant sur scène tous les enfants ayant participe au spectacle,
et il ne fait aucun doute que de telles initiatives seront renouvelees
a l’avenir afin de continuer ce beau combat que sont les Droits de
l’Enfant !
STEVE WOZNIAK MEETS WITH ARMENIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS (PHOTOS)
news.am
Nov 11 2011
Armenia
YEREVAN. – The Apple Computer Corporation’s co-founder Steve Wozniak
on Friday got together with Armenia’s university students. The
standing-room-only event brought together students from virtually
all universities in the capital, Yerevan.
During the two-hour meeting, Wozniak presented the story of his life,
specifically the creation of Apple. “To reach success, first of all
you yourselves must believe in your powers. Trust in yourselves and
don’t be disappointed from the difficulties,” Wozniak advised to the
Armenian students.
To note, Steve Wozniak has received the Armenian President’s 2011
Global Award for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity Through IT. He
is in Armenia with his wife, Janet Wozniak.
ARMENIAN WOMEN TEAM IS 6TH
Panorama
Nov 11 2011
Armenia
In the 8th round of European team championships Armenian women team
managed to defeat the Serbian team in 2,5:1,5. Maria Kursova and Lilit
Mkrtchian defeated Drljevic Ljilja and Chelushkina Irina resp. Elina
Danielian ended in draw with Bojkovic; but Lilit Galoyan lost to
Stojanovic Andjelija.
During the reporting round Armenia’s team scored 10 and occupies the
6th place. The leader of the championship is the Russian team.
Today the Armenian team will meet with the Polish team.
WHAT’S NEW IN BAKU? – ALAS, NOT MUCH
by David Pryce-Jones
National Review
November 28, 2011
Out of the blue, I found myself invited to Baku. Azerbaijan has immense
deposits of oil and natural gas, and in a blithe nouveau riche spirit
chooses to put itself on the map by spending fortunes having anyone
and everyone come on a visit. The World Amateur Boxing Championships
had just been staged in Baku, and a conference on humanitarianism was
to follow. On arrival I was taken in charge by a posse of minders,
put up in a five-star hotel, and fed at a succession of banquets,
meals, and receptions. The Soviet experience in old days had taught
me that guests with a full stomach are expected to have an empty
head. They’re then supposed to go home and to spin the illusion that
everything they’ve seen on the trip is for the best in the best of
all possible worlds.
Azerbaijan is one of half a dozen Muslim republics that were colonies
of the Soviet Union until that empire’s collapse 20 short years ago.
All of them have adjusted from the rule of Communist strongmen to
the rule of Muslim strongmen. Independence has created laboratory
conditions in which to observe how the historic legacy of Muslim
absolutism is incompatible with today’s demands for government of
the people by the people.
Nine million strong, the Azeris of Azerbaijan are mostly Shia Muslims
who have never gone in for jihad or extremism (18 million more Azeris
are a minority on the far side of the border with Iran). Baku, the
capital, had the reputation in the 19th century of being the most
progressive city anywhere in Islam. In the aftermath of the First
World War, the Musavat party won elections and set up the very first
Muslim democracy anywhere. Lenin and the Bolsheviks soon put a stop
to that. The neighborhood has always been a roughhouse of Russians,
Iranians, Turks, Georgians, and Armenians, all of them poised to
start fisticuffs again at any opportunity. As a result of the long
Soviet occupation, Azeris tend to speak Russian, and the bookshops
have many more publications in Russian than in Azeri.
One Soviet crime inflicting long-term damage was the transfer of
territory for divide-and-rule purposes from one ethnic group to
another, creating claims and uncertainties bound to lead to violence.
Geographically, Nagorno-Karabakh is a sizable enclave that falls
entirely within Azerbaijan but whose sovereignty was allocated to
Armenia. In the final years before the end of the Soviet Union, Mikhail
Gorbachev made such a botch of the issue that both sides resorted to
massacre and ethnic cleansing. A million Azeris are still refugees,
and since 1993 Armenia has been occupying a Nagorno-Karabakh inhabited
only by Armenians. This national disaster preoccupies Azeris much as
the French used to concentrate on recovering Alsace-Lorraine.
Handsome stone houses, even palaces, line the broad avenues in the
center of Baku and testify to long-lost Russian imperial grandeur.
Gigantically disproportionate towers, hulks of glass and concrete and
all manner of postmodern architectural follies, are monuments to the
new oil wealth. An attractive promenade with gardens and children’s
playgrounds runs for a mile or two along the Caspian Sea front. Among
the crowds on their evening stroll are young men holding hands with
their girlfriends and even cuddling on a bench — a sight I have
not seen in any other Arab or Muslim city. Few women are wearing
headscarves. A recent study by Suha Bolukbasi, a Turkish professor in
Ankara, has the information that under the Soviets the whole country
had only 16 working mosques, hence the widespread indifference to
Islam and even the atheism. On the boulevards — phonetically spelled
“bulvar” in the Azeri language — are shops displaying the brand
names of famous Western designers and providers of luxury goods.
Mysteriously, they have no customers.
Huge posters everywhere show a man trying to look youthful, smiling
slightly, sometimes wearing a black-tie dinner jacket. The posters
have no words or slogans on them. Though dead for almost ten years,
Heydar Aliyev needs no identification. He’s the strongman who made
the transition from Communism to personal rule. Although a creature of
Stalinism, he was driven by ambition and greed rather than blood-lust.
In 1945, aged 22, he joined both the Communist party and the KGB. In
a career typical of the times, he knew exactly how to perform what
was demanded of him, rising to be first secretary of the Azerbaijani
Communist party, head of the Azerbaijani KGB with the rank of major
general, and finally the first Muslim to be appointed to the Soviet
Politburo, the body of about a dozen personalities who used to decide
everything down to trivial details in the Soviet Union.
His self-enrichment by means of bribery and corruption was common
knowledge. In a notorious example of sycophancy, he commissioned
an expensive diamond ring and presented it to his master, Leonid
Brezhnev. He timed his exit from the Soviet hierarchy perfectly. Far
the most powerful man in an independent Azerbaijan, he mounted a
successful coup and then rigged his election as president with a vote
of 98.8 percent. After ten years in power, he fell seriously ill and
in 2003 passed a decree appointing his son Ilham Aliyev to succeed him.
The Muslim order has a disposition towards forming dynasties; witness
the schemes of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qaddafi, and Hosni Mubarak to
have their sons inherit their role as supreme leader. In Syria, the
late president Hafez Assad successfully manipulated his son Bashar to
succeed him. Two of a kind, Bashar Assad and Ilham Aliyev are obliged
to maintain the central illusion that their fathers’ efforts to hand on
the presidency are legitimacy enough. Hence the posters and personality
cult in evidence in Baku and subjected to attack in Syrian towns.
Guidebooks describe an ecological disaster at Ramana, a site 40 minutes
from Baku, where the Soviets abandoned the machinery of oil extraction
on a scale so horrible that it becomes fascinating. Day after day,
the minders said the road was closed. Such open supervision made me
fear that my contacts with Azeris were being recorded. In the real
Azerbaijan, people took no precautions to hide their names or their
helpfulness to me. Ilham Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan Party, YAP in its
Azeri acronym, I heard, is a clone of the old Communist party. Its
ideologist, Ramiz Mehdiyev, was once head of the Communist-party
school. Isa Gambar, head of Musavat, the party that initiated democracy
a century ago, has been in prison.
The Writers’ Union is also exactly as it was under the Soviets. The
first lady’s grandfather has been built up as a great writer. Freedom
of speech is controlled. A few years ago Elmar Huseynov, a critical
journalist, was murdered, and nobody has been arrested. On trumped-up
charges of causing public disorder or evading military service,
about 16 other journalists (some say more, some say fewer) have just
received prison sentences between one and three years. Here’s someone
who was warned that he would have to mend his ways or else his son
would pay for it. “In Soviet times, at least they kept to the rules,”
he says. “Now we have no rules. They’re a criminal gang. You have to
protect yourself.”
The oil wealth is in the hands of the president, the first lady,
his two daughters and one son, and five or six ministers who receive
rewards for unquestioning loyalty to the family. One of them owns 250
companies. Everyone has stories of corruption involving construction,
land, transport, licensing, communications, and much else. Bribery is
the regular way of doing business. Those glittering bulvar shops are
empty because their function is to launder money. The ruling elite
may not want all the money for its own sake, but they have to make
sure that it doesn’t get into the hands of anyone who might use it
to topple them. Instead of liberating, then, oil wealth is serving
to block reform and stabilize injustice and corruption. The few
are eating up the many, and this can’t last. Sooner or later, the
Arab Spring or its equivalent will reach the Caspian, so I hear. The
mistakes, contradictions, and selfishness of Ilham Aliyev are quite
enough to bring down the curtain on his dynasty and the antiquated
rule of the strongman.
IRAN, ARMENIA KEEN TO BOLSTER TIES, COOPERATION
FARS News Agency
November 10, 2011 Thursday
Iran
TEHRAN (FNA)- Senior Iranian and Armenian officials underlined their
enthusiasm for the further boosting of ties and cooperation.
The issues was raised at a joint press conference of Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and his Armenian counterpart Edward
Nalbandian in Yerevan.
Salehi told reporters that the flow of tourists from Iran to Armenia
at the moment has reached about 100,000, and expressed the hope that
the figure would increase to one million.
He also hope that one day visa regime will be abolished between
the states.
As regards economic relations, he stressed that Iran and Armenia have
great potential, but do not use it fully. Among the economic projects,
the Iranian foreign minister pointed to water use (the boundary river
Aras) and intensification of cooperation in private sector.
Salehi added that two countries have similar positions on many
regional and international issues. In this context, Salehi pointed
to the special position of Armenia in the international arena.
According to Salehi, geographically small Armenia has influence due
to its Diaspora spread worldwide.
Wherever Armenians live, they are known as good, honest employees,
this contributes to further improvement of Armenia’s image.
The minister also stressed that all efforts should be aimed at
establishing peace and stability in the region for the benefit of
its people.
FLORA AGHABABYAN – TOP WINNER OF GRAND NATIONAL WEDDING CAKE COMPETITION
AZG DAILY
12-11-2011
Las Vegas cake artist Flora Aghababyan was the top winner of this
year’s Grand National Wedding Cake competition at the Tulsa State Fair.
In person, Flora Aghababyan was one of the most humble contestants
at the competition.
Her cake, depicting artwork and architectural elements of the Ettal
Abbey monastery in Germany, wasn’t humble at all.
The intricate painting of angels adorning a fondant dome – white
cherubs that look ceramic instead of gum paste, and the hundreds of
painstaking details that cover the cake – are the reasons Aghababyan
won the grand prize in the wedding cake competition this year.
Ten years ago, Aghababyan had just arrived in the United States from
Armenia, not speaking a word of English, trying to support herself and
her daughter. Her career in her homeland was as a dancer, not a baker,
but even then she made cakes for friends and family from her home.
She worked in an Armenian bakery in the United States, and someone
gave her a cake-decorating book by Kerry Vincent, who is also director
of the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show. Not being able to read English,
all Aghababyan could do was study the pictures.
“I took Kerry’s book and just looked at it and started copying it,”
she said.
Aghababyan was working at the Bellagio Hotel bakery in Las Vegas when
Vincent visited the hotel and saw her cakes in the window and asked
to see the baker. Since then the two have been friends, and three
years ago Aghababyan entered the wedding cake competition held in
Tulsa for the first time.
Last year she took home the second runner-up prize and this year the
grand prize.
“I never thought I would go to the U.S. and enter these shows,” said
Aghababyan, who is now a cake artist at Wynn Las Vegas. “I like this
challenge and to be surrounded by all these artists. Just to be here
to talk to the people.”
Henrik Mkhitaryan: I’ll think about rest at vacation time
November 12, 2011 – 11:50 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – With a 3-day break announced in Ukraine Championship
matches, Shaktar Donetsk FC midfielder Henrik Mkhitaryan confessed to
having spent the time training in a gym.
`Now’s not the most suitable moment for having a rest. We will think
about it after December 10, when vacations start,’ the player said.
On November 19, Ukraine Championship round 17, Shakhtar will clash
Metallurg Donetsk FC with Armenia’s Karlen Lazarian, Gevorg Ghazaryan
and Marcos Pizzelli as part of the team.
At the championship, Shaktar is 2nd with 39 points, Metallurg is
placed 7th with 23 points.
160 instances of Azeri ceasefire violation reported over last week
November 12, 2011 – 14:55 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – Increased incidents of ceasefire violation were
reported over the last week, with 160 instances of ceasefire violation
by the Azerbaijani armed forces reported. Azerbaijan fired about 850
shots using machineguns and sniper rifles.
Despite Azeri army’s aggressive actions, NKR forces refrained from
retaliatory measures, continuing with their military duty, NKR defence
army press service reported.