Author: nina hovnanian

Rudaw, Kurdistan Iraq
March 9 2014

London Kurdish Society Bridges Gaps Among Kurds, With non-Kurds

By Sharmila Devi –

LONDON – Organizing a party to celebrate Nowruz was a lesson in
diplomacy for Rosa Burc, head of the Kurdish Society at the School of
Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London.

“The selection of songs proved to be political so we made sure there
were both Northern and Southern Kurdish (Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish)
ones,” she says. “It became an issue during the planning and we tried
to include all Kurds.”

The party is one of many activities organized by the Kurdish Society,
which “aims to bridge students with Kurdistan’s culture, language and
political discourse,” as stated on its Facebook page.

The society’s 90 members are a mixture of Kurds and students of other
ethnicities who simply want to learn about Kurdish issues. They are
able to attend seminars, conferences, presentations by PhD students of
their research, cultural events as well as the annual Nowruz party.

Burc was bought up in Germany, where she completed her undergraduate
degree that included a year at SOAS, where she decided to return for
her master’s degree in international politics, focusing on the Middle
East.

“I was unsatisfied with the Eurocentric approach in Germany where they
focus a lot on America and Europe. I personally wanted to focus on the
Middle East and Kurdish issues,” she says.

SOAS is a world-renowned institution, with students from across the
globe, and Burc loves the internationalism of London, where she found
the Kurdish community to be young and dynamic.

“In Germany, I never felt it was that dynamic, but maybe because
Britain’s an island, people feel protected and independent,” she says.

She was born to secular, leftist parents, as she describes them. Her
Kurdish father met her Armenian mother when they were both students at
Ankara University and they left Turkey in 1989. Her mother lives in
Cologne and her father is currently working as an editor and
coordinator for IMC TV in Istanbul.

“I do have a lot of feelings for the Armenian issue, but my Kurdish
identity is dominant,” says Burc. “My mother and I care about
protecting all identities, Armenian, Kurdish, Yezidi and so on.”

The Kurdish Society is one of many societies at SOAS that cater to all
regional, cultural and religious interests. The Islamic Finance and
Ethics Society recently made headlines in the British press when it
invited an outspoken preacher to speak.

Haitham al-Haddad spoke about why lending money with interest is
forbidden in Islam, but he also spoke in support of female genital
mutilation and argued that authorities should not become involved in
domestic disputes.

The organizers said his views did not necessarily reflect those of the
Islamic Finance and Ethics Society, and other students said his
Illiberal views had no place on a university campus.

The Kurdish Society has generated no similar media attention, although
it also grapples with thorny political issues reflected from the
Middle East, including the conflict in Syria and the Gezi Park
protests in Istanbul last summer.

In particular, Burc is keen to promote the academic discipline of
Kurdish studies, which rarely exists as a stand-alone subject. It is
usually included in regional courses or those dealing with countries
with large Kurdish populations, such as Iraq and Turkey. She says
Kurdish courses also often concentrate only on culture and language at
the expense of politics.

“We hope to put some pressure to include Kurdish studies in, for
example, courses on the politics of the Middle East. Courses on Iraq
might have something on Southern Kurds but we want to see something
with a total perspective of the Kurds,” she says.

She pointed to Exeter University in the west of England that has a
Center for Kurdish Studies, one of the few that exist in the West. The
center was established in 2006 with funding from the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) and the Ibrahim Ahmad Foundation, a charity
established by the family of the Kurdish Iraqi politician and poet.

Exeter’s center has around 30 PhD students and will restart a masters
program within a couple of years, says Clemence Scalbert-Yucel,
director and senior lecturer in ethnopolitics.

“I’m aware that there is growing interest in this topic but there
aren’t necessarily more courses yet around the world,” she says. “The
role of Kurdish young people is important, either those living in the
West or others who come to study.”

Groups such as the Kurdish Studies Network and the Kurdish Studies
Journal were also helping to generate interest in the field.

Burc is hoping to pursue an academic career and could well prove to be
at the forefront of expanding Kurdish studies.

In the meantime, she has to complete her master’s, continue helping to
organize the Kurdish Society’s events and look forward to this
spring’s Nowruz party. “We hope to reach out to anyone with an
interest in Kurdish issues,” she says.

NKR President’s congratulatory address on March 8

13:52 08.03.2014

Dear women,

On behalf of the republic’s authorities and myself personally I
cordially congratulate you on the International Women’s Day.

On this day we are filled with exceptional warmth towards the women
who surround us – our mothers, grandmothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, trying to express our love and respect, be more attentive
and caring. We assess your role in the family and in our state’s life
and express our deepest gratitude.

Dear women, no kind undertaking can be a success without you. You
charm makes our lives richer and more meaningful. We shall do
everything possible for you to be always cheerful and happy.

I congratulate all of you once again on this wonderful spring holiday.
I wish great successes and all the best to you, your kids and parents,
relatives and friends. Be healthy and beautiful. Let peace and
prosperity always reign in your families and in our homeland.

Georgian expert: Efficiency of Ukraine’s CIS chairmanship depends on
whether Russia will recognize the new leadership of Ukraine legitimate
or not

by David Stepanyan

ARMINFO
Friday, March 7, 14:41

Efficiency of Ukraine’s CIS chairmanship depends on whether Russia
will recognize the new leadership of Ukraine legitimate or not, says
George Tarkhan- Mouravi, Director of Institute for Policy Studies in
Tbilisi, told ArmInfo. Ukraine assumed chairmanship of the
Commonwealth of Independent States on Jan 1 2014.

“The uncertain situation in Crimea may affect the chairmanship of
Ukraine and the prospects of the CIS, generally. Furthermore, the
future of the CIS depends on development of the Ukrainian-Russian
relations. I do not rule out that the CIS will fade away. Even if
officially everything looks good, the CIS is now an inertial symbol
and a certain talkfest rather than an effective integration
organization,” the expert said.

To recall, the CIS Ministerial Council was to be held in Kyev on 7
March. Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has proposed that the Executive
Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States schedule an
extraordinary meeting of the CIS foreign ministers in Kyiv on March
12, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis reported.
“On March 5, Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Olefirov had a
conversation with CIS Executive Secretary-Chairman of Executive
Committee Sergey Lebedev, where they discussed a Ukraine’s initiative
to conduct an extraordinary meeting of the CIS foreign ministers in
Kyiv on March 7, 2014 in the light of the situation in certain regions
of Ukraine,” he reported. However, Lebedev reported that according to
the timetable of visits of the majority of CIS foreign chiefs, this
meeting can’t be held on March 7. “In terms of this, Ukraine’s party
offered to conduct a meeting on March 12, the executive secretary said
that he will do his best to organize it,” Perebyinis said.

From Armenia to Devonshire

Filed under: Geography, History, Literature — 1 Comment
March 8, 2014

Striking similarities between prehistoric monuments in Devon England,
and Armenia

I came across an interesting book today, titled “Historical views of
Devonshire” by Richard Polwhele (1793).

In his book Polwhele argues that the first inhabitants of Britain came
from Armenia. And specifically settled in the South Britain’s Devon or
Devonshire as it’s also called. Let’s examine some of the arguments
mentioned in the book.

Polwhele introduces his theory by saying: “That the original
inhabitants of Danmonium were of eastern origin, and, in particular,
were Armeni

>From Armenia to Devonshire

ans, is a position which may, doubtless, be supported by some show of
authority.” Danmonium being the Latin name for Davon. He goes on to
explain:

“Let us consider the testimony of one of our chronicles, which speaks
to the point of the Armenian emigration. The Saxon Chronicle
positively asserts, that “the original inhabitants of Britain came
from Armenia, and that they seated themselves in the south-west part
of the island:”

The Saxon Chronicle is said to have been written by a monk, at
Lincoln: And similar chronicles were kept by the most learned monks in
several monasteries throughout the kingdom. The monk of Lincoln seems
to have been well informed: And there is no more reason to dispute the
authority of the passage before us, than that of any other part of the
book. For it is not a conjecture: It is not hazarded as an opinion: It
is a positive assertion and relation of an event, as a thing generally
known and understood to be true.”

Polwhele also discusses similarities between early Armenian and Briton
living habits including caverns which are found in abundance in Devon.
He says:

“That these caverns were places of temporary residence in the time of
war, wither the Danmonii retired, for the security of their persons,
their domestic furniture, and their warlike stores, I should judge not
only from the disposition of the Aborigines so congenial with the
oriental turn of mind, but from the resemblance, also of our Danmonian
excavations to those in Scotland and Ireland, which are allowed to be
military retreats. But, whatever was their use, they were very similar
to the caves of the eastern nations, and especially of Armenia.”

“That the Asiatics, from whose country the Danmonians are supposed to
have emigrated, ” made them the dens which are in the mountains, and
caves, and strongholds,” is evident, both from sacred and profane
history. There is a remarkable passage in Xenophon, describing the
caves of the Armenians. Xenophon informs us, “that the houses of the
Armenians were under-ground — that the mouth or entrance to these
subterraneous habitations was like that of a well, but that
underneath, they werewide and spreading — that there were ways for the
cattle to enter, but that the men went down by stairs.” In Armenia, at
this day, the people dwell in caverns. “In a narrow valley (says
Leonhaut Rauwolf ) lying at the bottom of an ascent, we found a great
stable, wherein we went. This was quite cut into the hill : And so was
that wherein we lodged the night before. So that you could see nothing
of it, but only the entrance. For they are commonly so in these hilly
countries, under-ground, that the caravans may safely rest there, and
defend themselves from the cold in the winter. This stable,
twenty-five paces long, and twenty broad, was cut out of a rock.”
These descriptions of the Armenian caves agree, in several points,
with that of the cave near Plymouth, as well as the Cornish caverns.
Xenophon’s cave is fub-terraneous : So is that near Plymouth : The
apertures of both are narrow : And both caverns are, afterwards,
sufficiently capacious.”

He goes on to describe place names: “I observe that the caves in Devon
(so like the under-ground habitations of Armenia) are mostly in the
Southams, at no great distance from the river Arme, or the town of
Armenton, on the banks of the Arme, where the emigrators from Armenia
are supposed to have first settled.”

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads: “The first inhabitants were the Britons,
who came from Armenia, and first peopled Britain southward.”

The book further describes many common characteristics of Britons and
Armenians. From the warlike spirit, clothing, social structures, names
and living habits. Vallancy, on the authority of Sir George Yonge adds
that “in S.W. of Dovenshire, there is still a river, called Armine ;
and the town and hundred are called Armine-ton to this day.”

Polwhele finally concludes as follows:

“That the settlers in this island, were not a colony from Gaul, has
been proved, on every view of the subject. And the vulgar theory of
the original European plantations, would be abandoned, I think, on all
hands, after a candid and liberal investigation of it. To such an
investigation I should be happy to excite the learned. From the
dubiousness of the common theory, I had a right to form a new
hypothesis. And I have imagined a rapid emigration to these islands,
for the most part by sea, from Armenia… I have not grounded my
supposition on the sole authority of the Saxon Chronicle. The
evidence of Caesar himself, is strong in my favor : And the voice of
the Greek historians and geographers is still more decisive. But the
character of the orientals, so strikingly contrasted with that of the
Europeans, and yet according with that of the aboriginal Danmonii,
seems almost to determine the controversy. The orientals, at the time
of their first emigration into different countries, were imprest with
various traits of character ; such as we have discovered in their
modes of settlement, their civil government, their religion, their
commercial communications, their language and learning, their genius
and their customs. The wandering spirit and patriarchal policy of
Armenia.”

CELEBRITE
Le sculpteur Ara Chiraz, fils du poète Hovhannés Chiraz, dans un état critique

Le sculpteur Ara Chiraz, fils du très célèbre poète arménien Hovhannés
Chiraz se trouve depuis plusieurs jours dans le coma. Selon Aantoly
Knouni, un haut responsable du ministère arménien de la Santé, l’état
d’Ara Chiraz est jugé critique. Ara Chiraz serait qui n’a pas repris
connaissance est sous respiration artificielle. Il se trouve depuis
une douzaine de jours au centre hospitalier > à Erévan.
D’après les éléments communiqués Ara Chiraz aurait fait l’objet d’une
hémorragie cérébrale avec complications.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 9 mars 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

The Patriot-News, PA
March 8 2014

Russia’s Putin is no Hitler, but here’s some food for thought

by Michael Moran

At 4:45 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1939, a German warship opened fire on the
city of Danzig, a Polish-administered enclave — overwhelmingly
populated by ethnic Germans — that had been separated from Germany
since World War I.

Throughout the previous decade, Adolf Hitler had intimidated
neighboring states into relinquishing regions where German speakers
made their homes: France in the Rhineland in 1936, the Anschluss
absorption of Austria in 1938, followed by the most famous such
capitulation, the Franco-British appeasement that forced
Czechoslovakia to hand Germany the Sudetenland region — again,
largely populated by ethnic Germans.

But it was in Danzig where bullying failed and true violence began.
Among the city’s residents was Gunter Grass, a German boy whose
description of the opening salvos of World War II would later win him
a Nobel Prize for his novel The Tin Drum:

It’s so easily written: machine guns, twin turrets. Might it not have
been a cloudburst, a hailstorm, the deployment of a late-summer
thunderstorm like the one that accompanied my birth? I was too sleepy,
such speculations were beyond me, and so, the sounds still fresh in my
ear, like all sleepyheads I simply and aptly called a spade a spade:
Now they are shooting!

In Crimea and in Donetsk, they are not yet shooting. But efforts to
enforce the rights of ethnic groups across international borders often
lead to war, especially when those groups are the remnants of a
collapsed empire.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s stridently nationalistic president, should
consider the parallels as he plots his next move. Putin talks a lot
about precedent these days as he seeks to justify his infiltration of
Russian special forces and intelligence agents to seize government
centers in the Ukrainian region of Crimea.

“I believe that only residents of a given country who have freedom of
will and are in complete safety can and should determine their
future,” Putin said Tuesday. “If this right was granted to the
Albanians in Kosovo, if this was made possible in many different parts
of the world, then nobody has ruled out the right of nations to
self-determination.”

No one, of course, is fooled by this. Indeed, when compared with the
1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, the Russians today are playing the
Serbian card. At issue in Kosovo, then an autonomous province of
Serbia, was the protection of an ethnic Albanian majority from a
larger power using violence. That is, a larger power using a “lost
tribe” — in that case, ethnic Serbs — as an excuse to occupy and
repress another ethnic group. And this is precisely what Russia has in
mind in Ukraine.

If Putin wants to consider the potential consequences of his current
actions, he should first remember his stint as a KGB agent — in
Dresden — a city obliterated by firebombing at the end of a world war
started in the name of reuniting the lost tribes of Germany.

Putin is no Hitler. This goes without saying, but must be said
nonetheless. But Putin’s own frequent evocations of Nazis and fascists
in his descriptions of the Ukrainians who overthrew and impeached
pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych has invited Hitler into the
conversation.

So — when considering ethnic ties as a pretext for bold diplomatic
bullying and outright military adventures — are there actual
similarities between Hitler and Putin?

The dispersion of ethnic groups across multiple states in diasporas is
not new or confined to Germany and Russia. Nor, of course, is it
peculiar to Europe. Often, the lost-tribe argument proves a useful
pretext for diplomatic snubs, and sometimes war.

For example, Thailand and Malaysia dispute ownership of southern
Thailand, where Muslim insurgents have been battling security forces
since the 1970s. India and Pakistan have gone to war repeatedly — in
1947, 1965, and 1999 — over their rival claims to rule the people of
Kashmir. Indonesia invaded the island of East Timor in 1976 allegedly
to free it from colonial Portuguese rule — but truly to prevent
Timorese independence (which it granted only reluctantly in 1999).

Non-Russian former Soviet states have also experienced this plight. In
the early 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bitter conflict over
the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians were resisting
Azerbaijani rule.

When Georgia’s ethnic Russians in South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared
separatist states in 1991, Georgia pushed back and tried to squash
these attempts. But Tbilisi was unsuccessful: Russia rolled in with
tanks and troops in 2008.

Even in the Americas, the ghosts of plantation policies and imperial
collapse are present. In 1836, the Republic of Texas cited protection
of the rights of ethnic Americans — Anglos — as part of its reason
for declaring independence from Mexico.

More recently, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went to war in
1982 over the “ethnic Britons” of the Falkland Islands.

The Soviet empire’s collapse is only the most recent example of
ancient ethnic diasporas — or colonial remnants — sparking modern
wars.

Ever since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union (which we are
constantly reminded ranks as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe”
of the 20th century in Putin’s eyes), Russia has played this card,
arguing that when sizable Russian communities remain in former Soviet
states, there is justification for treating these countries as
less-than-sovereign entities.

This hardly began with Putin. In 1990, Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor,
ordered a Russian army led by Gen. Alexander Lebed to Moldova to
support a separatist bid by ethnic Russians in that newly independent
— and largely ethnic Romanian — country.

This would become a harbinger of things to come in Georgia in 2008 and
possibly now in Ukraine. At the time, the ethnic Russian (and some
ethnic Ukrainian) citizens of Moldova declared themselves the republic
of Trans-Dniester — named for the river that formed the border of a
region called Bessarabia, which, history buffs may recall, Joseph
Stalin stole from Romania in the 1939 deal that also split Poland
between Stalin and Hitler.

There he is again. Nary a bad word about Stalin from the current
Russian government, of course — a man who, some scholars argue,
killed even more people than the Austrian corporal, if not in such a
spectacularly racist, efficient, and megalomaniacal way. But Hitler
stalks the current narrative in multiple ways.

Here, European history offers a template for reassembling an imploded
empire, as well as tradecraft for stoking up public support in Russia
for actions that might otherwise be seen as reckless.

While Putin’s motives may only pay lip service to the alleged peril
ethnic Russians face outside the federation’s borders, he has rich
ground for sowing doubt about the motives of Ukrainian nationalists.

In the months before Hitler turned on his Soviet ally in 1940, German
agents expertly fomented anger and intrigue in many non-Russian
communities within the Soviet Union, from the Baltic lands to the
Tatars of Crimea to Ukraine.

Few remember now the many divisions of Hitler’s armies that were drawn
from ethnic groups in conquered territories and even neutral states,
including Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine contributed some 80,000 troops in
three divisions to the German Wehrmacht, including one division of the
Waffen SS.

Ukrainians were hardly alone. Germany fielded divisions manned by
Georgians, Armenians, Finns, the Vichy French and even the neutral
Swedes during the war. And Russia itself was not immune: Ten full
divisions of anti-communist White Russians joined Hitler’s army —
some 250,000 officers and Russian elite styling themselves as the
“Russian Liberation Army” under the czarist general Andrey Andreyevich
Vlasov.

Ukrainians and others also fought Russian partisans alongside German
units and served as guards in Hitler’s death camps — John Demjanjuk,
the former U.S. autoworker from Cleveland whose prosecution on war
crimes made headlines in 1993, was one of them.

But Ukrainian nationalists — and their cohorts in Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, Georgia, and countless other places duped by Hitler into
siding with the western “liberators” — had been murdered and starved
to death in the millions by Stalin’s communist tyranny in the 1930s.

What might have seemed as a lesser of two evils may, in retrospect,
have been a greater evil — or at least a commensurate one.

Nonetheless, for Russians, the word “fascist” has very real and
profoundly divisive emotional consequences. The shame of non-Russian
nationalists at the sins of their grandparents remains fertile today.

The sins of Stalin, however, have been downplayed repeatedly,
particularly since Yeltsin’s brand of romantic Slavic nationalism gave
way to Putin’s Soviet nostalgia and all its big-power trappings.

For all his citations of Western-led interventions in Libya and Kosovo
as precedents for Russia’s actions, Putin must understand that he is
stirring a very dangerous pot. Russia has land borders with 14
countries — more states than any other nation on Earth other than
China (which also borders 14, including Russia).

Many of those neighboring states contain large populations of people
who self-identify as Russians. But Russia itself also contains
millions of ethnic Koreans, Mongols, Uighurs and others whose crowded,
resource-starved motherlands may someday have their own designs on
reincorporating their lost tribes.

In the Russian Far East, this dynamic is palpable, and it is common to
hear Russians in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk complain about the influx
of Korean and Chinese money, along with immigrant workers. Some 80
million Chinese and 45 million Koreans live in the provinces that
border Russia. The population of Russia’s own Far Eastern territory,
Primorsky krai, is below 2 million.

All that land, all that oil — and lost tribes, to boot. Putin should
be worried less about the precedents he cites and more about those he
sets.

Michael Moran is author of “The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy and the
Future of American Power.” He was an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty in Munich from 1990 to 1993. This piece originally appeared in
Foreign Policy.

Canada Free Press
March 8 2014

The Return of “The Horror of History”

By Alexander Maistrovoy

While condemning the actions of Russia in Crimea, John Kerry said that
the time of Empires is long gone; we live in the “21st century, and
not in the 19th century”. After speaking with Putin, Angela Merkel
said that he lost touch with reality and that he lives “in another
dimension”.

In my opinion the time of Empires has not passed yet and Putin is in
full harmony with reality.

The United States, and with their assistance a significant part of
Europe have created an isolated civilization: extremely successful and
advanced, but isolated. Geography played a great role in it, because
the U.S. and Britain are island states and mainland Europe is a
peninsula. From a cultural stand point, this civilization has been
based on ancient models of Greek democracy and Roman law; ethnically –
on a relatively homogeneous population in a very limited space.

For millennia giant Eurasia had existed in a completely different
position that has never changed. Mircea Eliade wrote with bitterness
that his people, Romanians, like other Balkan peoples consistently
lived in fear of the “The Horror of History”. It’s difficult to create
and develop sustainable forms of democracy when you live in perpetual
state of hordes, intrusions and tyrannies. Meanwhile, leading Eurasian
powers – Russia, China, Turkey and Iran – were formed exactly in such
an ominous environment: endless open borders, limitless vastness,
mixed, diverse and often hostile to each other and its governments
population dispersed over an infinite space.

Only through harsh centralized power it was possible to maintain such
population, these areas and these boundaries. This was a natural
prerequisite for creation of the Empires. Every Eurasian state – from
Persian’s Achaemenids and ancient China (Tianxia) to Ottomans and
Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, Communist China and Islamic
republic of Iran – desired to expand its boundaries to resist its
rivals and hostile, spontaneously emerging entities (such the Mongols,
The Mughal Empire, the state of Tamerlane), to keep rebellious
population and augment the resources. In the 19th-20th centuries these
common threats were supplemented by the expansion of the West: The
British Empire and the United States. No one, not even modern powers,
had forgotten the “surprises”, in the face of nomads or Islamist
gangs, by constantly bustling steppe spreading from the Caspian Sea to
Mongolia.

The ruling power could not afford itself to discuss issues of law and
justice in a state of permanent external hazards, especially when a
significant part of population looked forward to enemy invasion. Any
resistance must be crushed by an iron fist, troops ought to be
mobilized as promptly and as quickly as possible to launch an attack
on the enemy on his own territory. Such tactic, with different degrees
of success, was used equally by Sassanids and Sultans after Ottoman
defeat at the Battle of Ankara; Empire of the Great Ming in China and
Shahanshah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after the invasion of Iran during
World War II by Soviet and British forces; Stalin, Chinese Communists
and Putin now.

Democracy in such circumstances was not just impossible – it was fatal.

It was perfectly clear to Montesquieu when he wrote that democratic
societies are possible only in relatively small isolate ethnic
homogeneous communities that existed in Europe, and utterly impossible
and implausible in vast spaces of the continent with restless masses
and heterogeneous populations.

Modern passionate supporters of democracy have completely forgotten
about it although the situation has not changed a bit. Russia, China,
Turkey and Iran are huge conglomerates with diverse populations,
bordering with other aggressive and powerful nations. As it occurred
many times before – lightly loosened reins would cause a state to
collapse: during the unrests in Iran in the late 18th century; in
Turkey in the early 20th century; in China in the era of the Three
Kingdoms (AD 220-280), during the Boxer Uprising and unrests in the
late 19th – early 20th century; in course of Russian Provisional
Government in 1917 and after the dismantle of the USSR.

Rigid ruling demanded clear game rules. In order to survive, a full
submission of peoples of empires to the regime was required –
otherwise, a catastrophe would incur upon them similar to the one
happened to the Armenians and Assyrians in Turkey, Chechens,
Circassians and Tatars in Russia.

Small independent entities immediately become the object of
confrontation: obviously, not being a part of one Empire, they
automatically become part of other and subsequently a place of arms
for further offenses. This happened with the Kurds, occupied by the
Turks, Iran and Iraq; with Tibet, which lies on the border of India
and China; with Caucasus, which divide the Ottoman and Russian
empires; with South Azerbaijan, which occupied by Russians, Turks,
Soviet Union and eventually by Iran in 1946, and with Armenia.

This is exactly what’s happening now with Ukraine and especially
Crimea peninsula with massive Russian population and strategically
important base for Russia’s naval fleet in Sevastopol which Russia
wouldn’t give up to anyone – neither NATO, nor Turkey. A land without
an owner is doomed to become an enemy outpost and threat to the
Empire.

Ayatollahs, Communists in China and Islamists in Turkey are carefully
following the developments around Ukraine

These principles were, are, and will always be eternal for mainland
Eurasia. This is why, first of all, there will never be strong liberal
democracy, similar to the island civilizations, and secondly, fighting
for territory will never stop. It is the very essence of survival, and
not a whim of Putin, the Chinese Communists, the actual Turkish rulers
(no matter, army or Islamist) or the Iranian regime, either Shah or
Ayatollahs.

The natural aspiration of Eurasian Empires for expansion can only be
restrained vigorously. West fears any serious interference; eternal
mechanisms are at work, as in nature, with full force, and any
moralizing by Obama, Kerry, Merkel and Cameron becomes a reason for
mockery in Kremlin, Beijing and Tehran.

Ayatollahs, Communists in China and Islamists in Turkey are carefully
following the developments around Ukraine. They want to see what
actions the West will take next, in order to make their own
conclusions. They have all the reasons to believe that the West would
limit itself by verbal reprimand.

The West has voluntarily left the stage of History. So it is not
surprising that History returns bringing horror to world.

Alexander Maistrovoy, a journalist with the Russian-language Israeli
newspaper Novosty nedely.

The world celebrates International Women’s Day today

11:49 * 08.03.14

The International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since in the
early 1900’s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the
industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise
of radical ideologies.

1908

Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women’s
oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and
active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched
through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting
rights.

1909

In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America,
the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United
States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last
Sunday of February until 1913.

1910

In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in
Copenhagen. A woman named a Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s
Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of
an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every
country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day
– to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17
countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s
clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish
parliament, greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and
thus International Women’s Day was the result.

1911

Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International
Women’s Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark,
Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and
men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote,
be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less
than a week later on 25 March, the tragic ‘Triangle Fire’ in New York
City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them
Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant
attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United
States that became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day
events. 1911 also saw women’s ‘Bread and Roses’ campaign.

1913-1914

On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women
observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in
February 1913. In 1913 following discussions, International Women’s
Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global
date for International Women’s Day ever since. In 1914 further women
across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express
women’s solidarity.

1917

On the last Sunday of February, Russian women began a strike for
“bread and peace” in response to the death over 2 million Russian
soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to
strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the
provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the
women’s strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar
then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use
elsewhere was 8 March.

1918 – 1999

Since its birth in the socialist movement, International Women’s Day
has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across
developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown
from strength to strength annually. For many years the United Nations
has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts
for women’s rights and participation in social, political and economic
processes. 1975 was designated as ‘International Women’s Year’ by the
United Nations. Women’s organisations and governments around the world
have also observed IWD annually on 8 March by holding large-scale
events that honour women’s advancement and while diligently reminding
of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women’s
equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

2000 and beyond

IWD is now an official holiday in many world countries, including
Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia,
China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova,
Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal (for women only), Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia. The
tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends,
colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD
has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small
presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

See more here

Armenian News – Tert.am

Armenia ex-president to meet with Russia’s Putin? – newspaper

March 08, 2014 | 07:54

YEREVAN. – Second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan will travel to
Moscow in the coming days, Hraparak daily reports.

“The visit is interesting in the sense that whether the
[ex-president’s] long-awaited meeting with [Russian President]
Vladimir Putin will take place.

“In response to our query, Kocharyan’s office manager Victor
Soghomonyan said that in Moscow Kocharyan will participate in the
regular session of the shareholders’ assembly of Sistema [Company].

“According to some information, those who are ‘offended’ by the rule
of [incumbent Armenia President] Serzh Sargsyan are actively engaging
with the second president.

‘”What plans does Mr. Kocharyan have in the near future?’ we asked
Soghomonyan, who did not deny the possibility of the latter’s becoming
active in a foreseeable future, and again replied that the public
definitely will be notified in case of any action,” Hraparak writes.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

INTERVIEW DE L’HISTORIENNE ELKE HARTMAN
Génocide arménien :