Author: Maghakian Mike

Turkey defined sanctions against France
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
[ 20 Oct. 2006 17:47 ]
Turkey defined the preliminary sanctions against for the adoption of
law by France Parliament that makes it crime to deny false Armenian
genocide, APA reports.
Official Ankara decided to freeze all bilateral relations, mainly
political and military relations with Paris. France organizations
will be deprived of the rights to participate in the defense and
energy projects of Turkey. France companies will not be involved in
the projects on construction of Atomic Power Plant which costs US
$5bn. Besides it was decided to remove French firms from the tenders
announced by Turkey Armed Forces.
-Eurocopter Company of France submitted bids in the tender for
purchase of 12 helicopters for Gendarme Forces. The Offer will not
be considered.
-France companies will not be let to the tenders for purchase of 54
helicopters for Turkey Armed Forces on different goals.
-The bids for purchase of submarine for Navy will not be considered.
-France company GIAT’s bids for purchase of tank for Land Forces will
not be considered. /APA/

Turkish soldiers arrive in Beirut to join peacekeeping force
By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
October 20, 2006 Friday 4:02 PM GMT
Turkish soldiers arrived Friday in Beirut to join the U.N.
peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, making Turkey the first Muslim
country to contribute ground troops since the mission was expanded
after last summer’s war.
Two military ships docked at 9 a.m. in Beirut’s harbor. Turkish
officials said they carried some 95 soldiers and civilian engineers,
as well as 46 trucks, four armored personnel carriers and several
bulldozers and other machinery.
More soldiers were scheduled to arrive later in the day, bringing the
number of Turkish soldiers and civilian engineers in Lebanon to 261.
The troops were expected to deploy near the southern port city of Tyre
to help rebuild bridges and roads damaged in the summer’s 34-day war
between Hezbollah and Israel.
The conflict ended Aug. 14 after a U.N.-brokered cease-fire resolution
that calls for an expanded international peacekeeping force to create
a weapons-free zone in the south.
A Turkish government spokesman said earlier this month that the total
number of Turkish personnel in Lebanon would ultimately reach 681,
including sailors and engineers. A vanguard of seven Turkish military
officers arrived in Beirut earlier this week, and a Turkish frigate
is already helping patrol Lebanese waters.
Turkey is NATO’s only predominantly Muslim member, and the country
has close ties to both Israel and Arab states. Its contribution to the
peacekeeping force was met with opposition in the Turkish parliament,
where some lawmakers feared Turkish troops would be drawn into fighting
against fellow Muslims to protect Israel.
Armenians in Lebanon also protested Turkish participation in the
peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, because they blame Turkey’s
Ottoman rulers for the mass killing of Armenians in the early 20th
century.
Many of Lebanon’s Armenian residents fled Turkey.
Turkish peacekeeping troops have served in Bosnia and Kosovo and have
led operations in Somalia and Afghanistan.

VARTAN OSKANIAN: WE DO NOT ENDEAVOR TO ABASE OR DRIVE TURKEY INTO A CORNER
AZG Armenian Daily #201, 21/10/2006
Meeting
Armenian foreign minister Vartan Oskanian who is currently paying a
working visit to Canada met is Canadian counterpart Peter MacKay on
October 18.
According to a press release of the Armenian National Committee of
Canada, the sides emphasized the importance of Armenian-Canadian
relations and touched upon Armenian-Turkish relations.
Speaking about the recent bill adopted by the French Parliament
penalizing denial of the Armenian Genocide, Oskanian underscored that
Armenia always was for a dialogue and for establishment of diplomatic
relations between Armenia and Turkey without any precondition.
“We do not endeavor to abase or drive Turkey into a corner,” Vartan
Oskanian said.
Oskanian also met the members of Canada-Armenia parliamentary group
and spoke about issues of cooperation between the two countries.

REWRITING THE PAST
Agnes Poirier
The Guardian, UK
Oct 18 2006
Despite what the French left wants us to think, we cannot legislate
on how we should remember history.
Last Thursday, the French national assembly passed a bill that, if
approved by the French senate, would make the denial of the Armenian
genocide between 1915 and 1917 a criminal offence. Even if the senate
knows better and finally rejects this bill, the question remains:
how on earth have we even got to the point where such a bill could
be proposed, let alone adopted by a majority of MPs?
If this sad affair shows anything, it is the disrespect in which
the French prime minister is held by his own majority (Dominique de
Villepin is so badly considered within his own ranks that rightwing
MPs prefer to play a silly and dangerous game: passing a bill which
will make Villepin look even more of a fool to the French and the
world, and present Nicolas Sarkozy as the only adept runner to the
presidential elections). Secondly, the whole affair has proved how
inept and remote from the nation’s real concerns the French left is.
Not that it is news but it simply gets worse – and we naively thought
we had reached the bottom.
The international community reacted promptly to the news, condemning
the stupidity of the act and warning against its potential disastrous
effects. It would be fair to add that many international publications
also chose to mislead their readers by implying that the bill was,
in effect, passed as law. Some commentators shouted so loudly that
one couldn’t help but be perplexed by such venom.
The French socialist MPs who drafted the bill showed once more how
detached they are from the people they are supposed to represent.
They demonstrated once more their debilitating grasp of reality and
history. Is it the vote of the 450,000 French citizens of Armenian
origin they are after? The more problematic aspect of it all is not
the moral lesson the French MPs seem to be giving to Ankara – no,
that’s just childish; the real tragedy lies in what it says about
the way some of us now think. Instead of addressing issues, which
concern the whole nation (education, reforms, pensions, immigration,
security, globalisation), the French left prefers catering for groups
of clients, embracing cultural relativism. Truth and historical facts
now apparently change according to who speaks and from where.
When communities within a country start asking for laws to be amended
so that they include “their truths”, it is the whole nation that
suffers. Many today want to be seen as victims of colonialism, of
past injustices, of forgetfulness, of past disrespect. In fact, they
are victims by proxy, indulging in the suffering of their ancestors.
This is not to say that the Armenian genocide didn’t take place;
we all know it did. But we simply cannot legislate on how we should
remember history, and France should certainly not be doing it on a
Turkish issue.
History is being rewritten; as journalist Eric Conan points out,
“by focusing too much on the shadows of history, the shadows have
blackened and obtruded the whole picture. Crimes alone are kept in
the frame while acts of heroism exit the scene. Let’s concentrate on
Vichy and forget the Nazi occupation. Let’s consider colonisation as
the essence of the republic. And so forth.”
This unworthy trend in France is clearly here to divert our attention
from the real issues and the real debate. It offers a sickening
show played by some of the elite who find a narcissistic pleasure in
charging previous generations and asking to be whipped in public for
crimes they didn’t commit. They will tell you that the riots last
November were the heritage of colonisation, when they are actually
the direct result of 25 years of dire education and urban planning
policies, which have led to the rioters living in ghettoes of poverty.
They will tell you that the problem with Turkey is that they don’t
recognise the Armenian genocide at the precise moment when, in Turkey,
a national debate is opening up on the subject. What is the French
left trying to divert us from? Its own inanity? What an undignified
and pitiful spectacle.

ARMENIA WON’T SUFFER
A1+
[08:31 pm] 16 October, 2006
According to representative of Russian “Gasprom” Denis Ignatev,
Armenia will be supplied with gas regardless of the development of
the Russian-Georgian relations.
He informed radio station “Azatutyun” that “Gasprom” will keep all
the agreements with Georgia.
Ignatev also said that “Gasprom” and the RA Government continue
negotiations about different programs of gas supply.

HIS HOLINESS KAREKIN II RECEIVES JUSTICE MINISTERS OF THE MEMBER STATES OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE
Panorama.am
13:14 17/10/06
On October 13, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and
Catholicos of All Armenians, received 150 participants of the 27th
Conference of the Ministers of Justice of the Council of Europe, being
held in Yerevan. Among the participants were the Justice Ministers
of the 46 member states of the CE.
The delegation to Holy Etchmiadzin was led by Davit Harutyunian,
Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia.
The Catholicos of All Armenians welcomed the participants to Holy
Etchmiadzin and spoke of the theme of the conference – “Victims:
Status, Rights and Assistance”. His Holiness stated, “Today the
issue of assistance to and rights of victims is on the forefront of
your thoughts and actions. However, this issue has been troubling
mankind since biblical times and has accompanied the Church since its
inception, since the formation of the first Christian communities. Our
priests have dealt with such realities as they have brought their
consoling assistance and message of hope to individuals who have been
victimized, and as a result, we consider the work you are doing to be
highly beneficial to the healing process, as well as the reinforcement
of a healthy society.”
His Holiness further stressed the greater frequency of victimization
has become troubling, and that today, the Church considers her
social and spiritual mission to be of assistance to all who suffer,
especially with regards to the psychological and moral consequences
of this phenomenon.
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Information Services

PRESIDENT CHIRAC DID NOT APOLOGIZE TO TURKISH MP
By Hakob Chakrian
AZG Armenian Daily
18/10/2006
3 days ago after the French Parliament adopted a bill penalizing
denial of the Armenian Genocide and when anti-French hysteria was in
full swing in Turkey, president Jacques Chirac of France had a phone
conversation with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey’s state-run public TV reported that the French president had
expressed regret over the passage of the bill, considered it needless
and promised to do everything to prevent the draft bill from turning
into a law. According to Turkish public TV, PM Erdogan criticized
Jacques Chirac for the latter’s statement during his Yerevan visit and
said “it’s impossible to accept your approach” meaning recognition of
the Genocide as a precondition for EU membership. The French president
displayed comprehension.
Turkish TV’s reporting was entitled “Chirac Regrets”.
Yet, during the phone conversation president Chirac did not regret
neither apologized for the passage of the bill. He simply repeated
what he had said about the Genocide in Armenia.
This information comes from Turkish Milliet newspaper.
Correspondent Sabetay Varol of the paper writes in October 16 issue:
“The staff of the French president did not confirm the information
disseminated by PM Erdogan according to which president Chirac
expressed regret on the phone and promised to do everything to
block the passage of the bill by the Senate. According to Agence
France-Presse, Chirac has emphasized on the phone the need for Turkey
to restore historic memory and said that the French Parliament’s bill
is needless in this context.”
Quoting AFP, Milliet points out that Chirac has repeated his statements
made in Yerevan. Associated Press confirms this information.

ARMENIAN FM OSKANIAN ASSERTS: OUR AIM IS NOT TO HUMILIATE TURKEY
Hurriyet, Turkey
Oct 16 2006
Emboldened by last week’s decision by France to approve a bill
penalizing those who would publicly deny the so-called Armenian
genocide, Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian has come forward
with a new allegation against Turkey: “The fact that Turkey has
not recognized the events of 1915-1917 as it should means that the
genocide is still occuring.”
Oskanian, who asserts that despite this Yerevan is anxious to normalize
relations with Ankara, went on to say “It is difficult to say that
things are going well just because France and Switerzerland have
accepted bills recognizing the Armenian genocide. Our real aim is
not to have other countries recognize this genocide. Also, we gain
nothing from humiliating Turkey. For Turkey to ask for a special
research commission to be formed while its borders with us remain
closed is not a very honest or genuine action.”
Oskanian’s comments came in the “NZZ am Sonntag” newspaper on Sunday
in Switzerland. He also said “The fact that Turkey has not accepted
or recognized the Armenian genocide up until now means that it is
still continuing. But, as this country’s foreign minister, my duty is
to look towards the future and to find a way to normalize relations
with Turkey.”

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)–