Author: Maghakian Mike

BUTCHERS OF BUSHLAND: IS THE PRICE WORTH IT?
By Luciana Bohne

Online Journal, FL
Oct 16 2006

There is no longer any doubt that Bush’s policy in Iraq is facilitating
genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.

Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable
conspiracy to subvert the peace — a crime for which the Nazi
elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol,
and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the
supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived,
including genocide.

The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned,
the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times
over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme
law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses
the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the
Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated
the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier’s obligations 1)
by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services,
while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to
safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library,
museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks,
services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq’s tax laws without
representation (Bremer’s "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national
dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.

We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human
life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less
we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are
becoming one of "them" — the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping
that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize,
sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between
the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This
empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they

have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will
expend more funds; they will tell more lies.

Unless they start to fear us.

We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?

It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000
US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000
Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number
of others, and the projected partition of the country.

It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis
per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to
despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from
Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.

It means supporting George Bush, the humanoid predator in the White
House, who sneered at the Lancet’s study, referring to the results as
"whatever they guessed at" — and that was just before he added as an
afterthought that the "innocent" death of Iraqis concerned him greatly.

It means supporting the US bullets that directly killed about 150,000
Iraqi men, women, and children, or 31 percent of the Lancet’s total
estimated deaths. The Lancet study, based on cluster sampling, used
the standard methodology employed to estimate mortality in cases of
conflict and disasters.

Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has liberated Iraq of 2.5 percent
of its population in three years. Is the world better off without
Saddam? I wouldn’t ask an Iraqi that question!

France has just passed a bill in the lower chamber, proposing to
make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide of 1.5 million people
by the Turkish government in WWW I. The war in Iraq is half way to
that number, and the warmongers are saying they won’t pull out until
2010 or 2011 (though I wouldn’t hold my breath; the US has 60 nuclear
warheads in bases in South Korea, half a century after that war,
and a similar number on Italian bases; it never "leaves"). If one
adds 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US sanction regime (1990-2003)
and now over half a million killed as a result of the US occupation
regime we’re way over the number of people who died in the Armenian
holocaust — and the fat lady has not sung yet!

It means supporting more than 50 percent unemployment and 100 percent
anarchy in crucial parts of Iraq.

It means war crimes such as the destruction of cities such as Falluja,
Ramadi, Tel-afar and others.

It means one Iraqi child in four suffering from malnutrition.

It means a cost of $500 billion for the US wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq thus far while US citizens have scant defenses against natural
disasters and catastrophic illness.

It means no end in sight.

It is time we ask the butchers in the White House a question the poet
W.H. Auden asked in verse about another war: "To save your world
you asked this man to die:/Would this man, could he see you now,
ask why?" (Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier)

Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of
Pennsylvania. She can be reached at [email protected].

man/publish/article_1317.shtml

FINDING SOME PEACE ON THE FRONT LINE OF FAITH – BARONESS COX
by Nick Wyke

The Times (London)
October 14, 2006, Saturday

Baroness Cox talks to Nick Wyke about risking everything for the
Christian faith.

WHILE most lords and ladies of the Upper House were sunning themselves
somewhere safe during the August recess, Caroline Cox made her 61st
visit to Nagorno Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. She
went back again last month. In the past 15 years or so she has been to
war-torn Southern Sudan 28 times and at least 15 times to Burma, not
to mention countless visits to Nigeria, Indonesia and even North Korea.

A former deputy speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Cox has
been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison in Sudan and
has had a price on her head in Azerbaijan. There are not many
69-year-old grandmothers who would put their life on the line to
visit "forgotten people in forgotten lands". On her travels to
meet persecuted Christians, she has been shot down in a helicopter,
targeted by Jihad warriors and seen the sort of carnage most of us
will never see mediated through television let alone in the flesh.

For Lady Cox the media is an inadequate informer. She is one of those
rare people who likes to see things for herself, choosing to witness
not only the brutality of religiously motivated warfare but also its
"miracles of grace".

It is this suffering and joy that she has recorded in Cox’s Book of
Modern Saints and Martyrs. The book, building on the tradition of
John Foxe’s accounts of Christian martyrs first published in 1563,
catalogues the stories of Christians prepared to risk all for their
faith gathered during her many travels to remote conflict zones around
the world.

It is not an easy read. We hear of walking 12 miles of scorched earth
littered with corpses of women and children in Sudan; of beheaded
teenage girls in Indonesia; and religious persecution in the shape
of rape, torture and murder elsewhere.

But we also hear the story of 15,000 people fleeing violence in East
Timor, who are fed for a week from one bag of rice by Sister Maria
Lourdes; and remarkable instances of courage, such as when Lady Cox sat
beside the Rev Rinaldy Damanik in an Indonesian court and heard him
choose the scaffold over renouncing his faith (he was later released
after serving a prison sentence, during which time he handed out to
injured Muslim inmates plasters that contained verses from the Bible).

"When I meet people who could be martyrs, who are living at that
front line of faith, I’m just so humbled and inspired because of their
amazing resilience and their joy in spite of their horrific suffering,"
says Lady Cox.

Her book poses perhaps the key question of our age, or of any age:
where can we find a peace which the troubles of this world cannot
destroy? And the answer it seems, paradoxically, is very often in
the middle of those troubles.

"All around us the search is on to fill the spiritual vacuum. The
real heroes in my book somehow find peace caught up in trial and
tribulation. God is, as the Psalmist said, a very present help in
trouble. We who are not at that stage of suffering and deprivation
and horror seem to find it much harder to experience," says Lady Cox.

Does she not get scared amid such horrors? "I regularly have my fit
of faithless, fearful dread before a visit. In Nagorno Karabakh in
the early Nineties I was constantly under fire and told I was nearly
killed 22 times. It’s only natural to shrink from that prospect.

"But I’m not the sort of Christian who believes that if you pray
everything will be all right. You have to be prepared to pray the
Gethsemane prayer: ‘Lord I’d love to come home to my loved ones but
let not my will but your will be done’. You may not come back, but
the spiritual riches outweigh any risk that’s being taken."

As she confesses, her hands-on approach is a little unorthodox -as is
her definition of a saint as someone who is willing to die for his or
her faith but while she remains blessed with good health she feels
compelled to act. "Faith without deeds…" is one of her favourite
lines from the Bible.

A Third Order Franciscan Anglican who will take Communion wherever
she can, Lady Cox gets very frustrated with aspects of church life
in the West. " ‘Comfortable Christianity’ depresses and irritates
me immensely. Internal debates and distractions about sex and the
latest worship song are relatively trivial compared to someone on
the front line of faith who is going to make the ultimate sacrifice
and is looking for prayer and practical assistance."

Shrugging off the suggestion that she is viewed by many as a heroine
herself, perhaps even a saint by her own definition, she says:
"I feel immensely privileged to have the opportunity to visit the
real heroes living the life. The way I can respond to their heroism
makes my spiritual stature feel microscopic. At least I can be their
voice and tell their stories to inspire others."

She is keen, in particular, to influence young people and does a lot
of work with them through her own organisation, the Humanitarian Aid
Relief Trust. One of the book’s goals was to give them some role
models. "Many young people don’t find church in the West to be a
convincing, compelling witness. There’s nothing wrong with surfing
on Bondi Beach but if only they would find time to visit one or two
of these ‘saints’ and martyrs they would find it a life-changing
experience."

Martyrdom, of course, has a particular relevance in the light of the
current climate of terrorism and proliferation of the suicide bomber.

Did writing this book shed light on their motivation? Lady Cox
is clear to draw a distinction between the martyrs in her book and
suicide bombers. "Christian martyrdom is all premised on transforming
love, never on hate, revenge or bitterness. These people don’t seek
martyrdom -but they have bravely persisted in their faith knowing
they may be martyred. So much of the rhetoric that accompanies the
suicide bombers is associated with real expressions of hatred.

Whether it’s a justified resentment is another question."

So are Christians well placed to understand the ultimate sacrifice?

"Yes and no.

Christians can understand making the ultimate sacrifice for all they
believe in.

But there are two fundamental differences: the Christian martyr dies
in the hope that others may live, whereas the terrorist dies and
kills as many other people in the process as he or she can, at least
in recent cases."

Cox’s Book of Modern Saints and Martyrs by Caroline Cox (Continuum,
£ 9.99) For more information about the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust
visit:

Slavery: This Immoral Trade by Baroness Caroline Cox and Dr John Marks
(Monarch, £ 8.99) is published in October.

–Boundary_(ID_Ej/ciOD6wLfN4OxZYFhZnA)–

GEORGIAN ARMENIANS PROTEST AT ARREST OF ACTIVIST IN YEREVAN

Regnum, Russia
Oct 14 2006

The democratic alliance United Javakhk [Georgia’s Armenian-populated
Samtskhe-Javakheti region] reports that a member of the alliance’s
board, Vaagn Chakhalyan, who on 10 October was subjected to a brutal
attack when entering Yerevan and received serious body injuries, was
arrested the next day by employees of the Armenian National Security
Service (NSC).

A statement issued by the alliance says: "Introducing themselves
as members of the police department, they tricked Vaagn Chakhalyan
into coming to the police station as a victim, but then took him to a
National Security Service isolation cell and arrested him. Ridiculous
charges were levelled against him about illegally crossing the Armenian
state border. On 13 October, with the same ridiculous charge, the
court of the first instance of the Yerevan communities of Tsentr and
Nork-Marash gave permission to sentence Vaagn Chakhalyan to two-months’
preventive detention."

"It is especially outrageous that instead of investigating the violence
meted out against Vaagn Chakhalyan, members of his family and a member
of the alliance, Gurgen Shirinyan, fabricated accusations are being
made against the victim. This incident is clear testimony to a direct
link between the violence committed against Vaagn Chakhalyan and his
subsequent arrest, as well as the fact that certain forces issued an
order. The people of Javakhk are extremely angry about the news from
Yerevan. The United Javakhk is concerned that subsequent events could
lead to dangerous and unpredictable developments.

"Vaagn’s absence and further consistent attempts to disband the
alliance by brutal methods are a severe blow to the present system
which is ensuring stability in Javakhk, in which the United Javakhk,
thanks to the universal support of the population, is playing a
decisive role. Well-known forces and criminal channels are striving
to ensure a monopoly on demonstrations on behalf of the Armenians
of Javakhk, and by their irresponsible and provocative actions are
creating a serious threat to stability in the region.

"The alliance hopes that all interested forces, and the Armenian
authorities in particular, will adopt a more sensible decision
in relation to these forces who can lead to a destabilization
of the region and cause serious damage to Armenian-Georgian
interstate relations," a statement of the political force from the
Armenian-populated region of Georgia, Samtskhe-Javakheti, says.

NIZAMI BEHMANOV: I DO NOT BELIEVE OSCE EXPERTS’ MONITORING RESULTS

Azeri Press Agency
Oct 12 2006

"I do not believe that the OSCE experts’ monitoring of the arsons
in occupied Azerbaijan territories will have any result. All events
concerning Nagorno Garabagh happened under observation of OSCE
since 1992. I have not seen their decisive position yet," Nizami
Behmenov, the chief of Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno Garabagh told
journalists, APA reports.

He said OSCE will not give any explanation even if the reports on
the arson results will be prepared and send to UNO.

"It will be ineffective. Azerbaijan has video materials about
happenings in occupied regions. Material concerning arson has
been presented to Minsk group. I do not think separatist Nagorno
Garabagh Republic will let OSCE experts enter those areas, because
the territories are under their control. There are terror bases in
occupied Azerbaijan territories," he said.

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT DECREES ROUTINE MILITARY CALL-UP

Mediamax News Agency, Armenia
11 Oct 06

Yerevan, 10 October: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan has signed
a decree on the autumn call-up campaign.

Under the decree, young men who have reached the age of 18 will
be called up for military service in October-December 2006, the
presidential press service told Mediamax today. The call-up has also
worried people who have lost the right to the deferment of military
service.

Conscripts who have served two years in the Armenian armed forces
will be discharged in October-December in 2006.

2007 DRAFT BUDGET PROJECTS SIZEABLE GROWTH OF SUBSIDIES TO HEALTH SECTOR

Armenpress
Oct 11 2006

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 11, ARMENPRESS: The draft government budget for 2007
unveiled late last month would substantially raise subsidies to health
sector from 39.5 billion drams this year to almost 47.6 billion drams.

Some 844 million drams of this sum are projected for management of
state-run health institutions and establishments and around 3 billion
would be released to hygienic and anti-epidemic services. Hospitals
and clinics will get next year 2 billion drams more, 16.8 billion
and 16.7 billion drams respectively.

The budget, if approved by parliament, will also lead to a sizable
rise in the monthly salaries of doctors and hospital personnel in
general. Thus a clinic doctor ‘s salary is projected to grow from
current 58,499 drams to 83,400 drams, a clinic nurse will get 53,400
drams instead of current 38,000.

By the way, the draft budget also plans to raise salaries of civil
servants by 20 percent to 105,000 drams ($276) in 2007. Fulltime
schoolteachers would earn the average of 74,000 drams, or 27 percent
more than they do now.

FRENCH GOVERNMENT DISTANCES ITSELF FROM ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 10, 2006 Tuesday 1:56 PM EST

DPA POLITICS France Diplomacy Turkey French government distances
itself from Armenian genocide bill Paris The French government on
Tuesday distanced itself from a bill, drawn up by the opposition
Socialist Party, that would make it a crime to deny that Turkey had
committed genocide against

the Armenian people more than 90 years ago.

The bill, which is to be examined Thursday in the National Assembly,
"does not involve the government" and "is not necessary," foreign
ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told journalists in Paris.

The proposed law has provoked rage in Turkey, which has threatened
to carry out economic boycotts against French companies. In 2001,
bilateral relations suffered a similar setback when France passed a
law in which the murder of thousands of Armenians in the declining
days of the Ottoman Empire was characterized as "genocide."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said the
proposed law was a blow against freedom of speech and that a "populist
and cheap game" was being played by French politicians.

"This wrong move will change nothing for Turkey but it will change
a lot for France … When did it become France’s duty to get involved

in a problem between Turkey and Armenia? The world is not a campus
for colonizers any more. That era is over," Erdogan said.

It was not clear if the bill would receive enough votes to pass
through the National Assembly. On Thursday, the majority UMP party
said most of its deputies would not take part in the vote.

The dispute comes less than two weeks after French President Jacques
Chirac, on a visit to Armenia, said he wanted Turkey to admit

the Armenian genocide before it could join the European Union,
a condition no one else has ever set for Ankara.

BLOCKADE OF GEORGIA TO HAVE NO IMPACT ON ARMENIAN CARGO TRANSIT

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.10.2006 15:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The transport blockade imposed by Russia on Georgia
will have no impact in the transportation of Armenian cargo through
the Georgian territory, Vladimir Yakunin, the President of the Russian
Railways said at a briefing in Yerevan. In his words, the Armenian
cargo is being transported without any delay and problems. According
to Yakunin, Russia is interested in cargo volume increase and in
"delivering Armenia from extra difficulties in cargo transportation,"
reports Interfax. To note, the 44th sitting of the CIS and Baltic
Council of Railways under the presidency of Vladimir Yakunin started
in Yerevan today.

Armenian and Azeri FMs to Meet in Moscow Today

PanARMENIAN.Net
06.10.2006 13:19 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today Armenian and Azeri FMs V. Oskanian and
E. Mammadyarov will meet in Moscow. As Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE
MG for Nagorno Karabakh settlement Yuri Merzlyakov reported at a
news conference in Yerevan, later a meeting of Armenian and Azeri
Presidents is possible. "After the meeting of Armenian and Azeri FMs
speaking of a meeting of Armenian and Azeri Presidents is possible,"
OSCE MG French Co-Chair Bernard Fassier stated in his turn.

YOUTH TO PROVIDE FACTS ON ANTI-CRIMINAL

Panorama.am
17:52 05/10/06

Youth wings of several political parties discussed ways of combating
criminalism in Armenia. Narek Malyan, leader of youth wing of New Times
Party (Nor Jamanakner) said that education and military structures are
indirectly connected with criminalism and corruption. He suggested to
conduct a public opinion poll at the higher educational establishments
to decide the list of the most corrupt professors. Levon Lazarian,
minister of education and science, had said the ministry cannot ensure
the objectivity of the survey.

Naira Karapetyan, representative of People’s Party, suggested to take
actions. Another member of the same party suggested to establish a
youth analytical center that will unveil criminal cases and supply
information to Anti-criminal movement. /Panorama.am/