Author: Vanyan Gary

Civil Georgia, Georgia
April 28 2006

Russian Senator Offers to Resume Meetings of `Four Speakers’

Chairman of the Council of Federation of Russia Sergey Mironov
called on April 28 for resumption of regular sessions in frames of
four parliamentary speakers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Russia.

`I have discussed this issue with my Azerbaijani and Armenian
colleagues and they have welcomed [this initiative]. I hope Nino
Burjanadze [the Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson] will not be
against,’ Sergey Mironov told reporters on the sideline of ceremonies
marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian State Duma.

A session of the four parliamentary speakers was last held in
September, 2005 in Moscow.

Meanwhile, unofficial reports say that Chairman of the Russian State
Duma Grizlov has canceled a meeting with visiting Georgian
Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze, which was scheduled to
take place on April 28 on the sidelines the ceremony marking the
Duma’s anniversary.

Today, Azerbaijan
April 28 2006

Ilham Aliyev: “Azerbaijan won’t be place for US-Russian
confrontation”

28 April 2006 [15:30] – Today.Az

“If the United States of America and Russia want a place for
confrontation let them choose not Azerbaijan, but other place,”
visiting the Unites States of America Ilham Aliyev, President of
Azerbaijan told at Business and Investment Meeting of the
US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC).

Later the President, Ministers of Economic Development, Finance,
Information Technologies, Culture and Tourism reported to the
audience. A special video roller devoted to the Azerbaijan was
broadcast as well. The most interesting was the interrogation at the
conference. But the American community was more interested in Nagorno
Karabakh conflict and happenings around Iran.

President expressed in his speech that Azerbaijan would participate
in the anti-terror coalition operations under the command of the USA
aiming to create peace in Iraq. As response to the question of the
audience the Head of the state said that Azerbaijan sends to Iraq
military forces, but not “drivers” as Armenia.

Later President met with Robert Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State.
This meeting lasted more the half an hour than planned. Energy
security, transportation of oil and gas to the international market
was the topics of the discussion. The Head of the state noted in
meeting with the representatives of Azerbaijan Diaspora the Armenian
lobby spreads negative opinions about Azerbaijan. Because their main
purpose is spot Azerbaijan and introduce it as an anti-democratic
country so that Armenians cannot live as minorities. As if they can’t
live in security here.

Ilham Aliyev called Azerbaijan Diaspora to be more active and for
close cooperation with one another. President Ilham Aliyev will meet
with the US president George Bush, Dick Cheney, vice-president and
Donald Rumsfeld, the chief of the Pentagon, ANS reports.

URL:

THE NETHERLANDS WILL GIVE MONEY TO NGOs

A1+
[07:36 pm] 27 April, 2006

The Armenian NGOs which will be involved in the program “Consolidation
of Human Rights” don’t contemplate over their financing. The Armenian
branch of the Open Society Institute Assistance Fund (OSIAF) and the
Netherlands Embassy in Tbilisi announced about the new grant 3 – month
program on the “consolidation of human rights through development of
abilities of the chosen NGOs.”

The Netherlands Embassy will allocate 513,810 USD within three and
a half years. The investment of the OSIAF Armenian branch in the
program will be about 373,050 USD. The NGOs will be chosen through
competition and each of them will get 25000 – 35000 USD.

According to the director of the OSIAF Armenian branch Larissa Minasyan
5 – 7 NGOs will be chosen which will initiate their activity in the
following fields; closed establishments of human rights protection,
speech freedom, availability of independent mass media and justice and
the security of people emphasizing the economic right of the vulnerable
stratum. The Armenian side will provide financial control. After
signing the grant agreement, Ambassador Onno Elderenboskh voiced hope
that the program will greatly contribute to the country.

The official implementation of the program will be on May 11.

RIVERS FLOOD IN ARMENIA

Yerevan, April 26. ArmInfo. Heavy showers of the recent few days have
exceeded the monthly average sediment in Armenia. In fact, several
rivers flooded, Armenian Rescue Service press-center told ArmInfo.

The Rivers of Tsits Kar and Galou, Aragatsotn region, flooded on
April 25 damaging the riverside agricultural lands. The bridges
linking the town of Aparan to the villages of Lusagyugh and Saralanj
were flooded as well. Representatives of the Town Planning and Road
Building Department of Aragatsotn Regional Administration and rescuers
arrived at the place of the flood. The River Arpa flooded the riverside
territories. Heavy hail damaged the gardens and other plants in the
village of Chiva. The damage caused is currently estimated.

KURDS AND IRANIAN MONARCHISTS
By Hozan Kapri

Kurdish Media, UK
April 25 2006

Most of the Iranian Television stations that broadcast from California,
U.S.A, are either funded by the Pahlavi family or their supporters.

The hope that one day the former royal family will come back to power
has sustained this people since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This
people refuse to learn their lesson that the Iranian people kicked
out their beloved regime in a popular national uprising. One of the
presenters on this television is Reza Fazeli, a former actor. In a
February 2003 show Mr. Fazeli was screaming at the top of his lungs
” What do these Kurds want to do in their mountains?”

What Mr. Fazeli meant was very clear. As all of other Persian
chauvinists he believes the Kurds are a primitive people and they
must assimilate. Mr. Repeatedly says that the Kurds are just like
the Mullahs of Iran, because they are fighting everyone in the region.

Mr. Fazeli does not understand that the Kurdish struggle was against
oppressors and Tyrants like his beloved Shah. When Raza Khan became
the new Shah of Iran in 1925, all sorts of Kurdish culture was banned
and people were even forbidden to wear traditional Kurdish clothing.

Many people were tortured and imprisoned and their only offence was
that they were wearing Kurdish clothing. Although these are only a
few examples, Raza Shah was a tyrant and a Persian chauvinist. His
followers today have inherited his Ideology.

Another Journalist from the shah’s time that have a show on one of
this television is a man by the name of sirus or Cyrus Sharafshahi.

Some time ago the Islamic government executed a few Kurdish
decedents. Mr. Sharafshahi was having a discussion regarding separatist
groups of Iran. Mr. Sharafshahi with a smile on his face turned
to the panelist and said, ” The regime just executed a few of this
people.” I was heartbroken upon hearing such words. For this people
were resisting oppression and inequality. But the monarchists do not
refrain in expressing their hatred Mr. Fazeli proudly proclaims that
his mother is of Kurdish descend.

But I wonder why is he than associating himself with anti-Kurdish
groups? Or is that a scheme to attract Kurds towards himself? The
monarchists passionately talk about the brutality of the clerical
regime in Iran, but when one points out to the atrocities and the
crimes of the Pahlavi dynasty, the scream and yell ” Forget the past,
forget the past.” The monarchist denounces the Islamic Republic for
sending money to Palestinians and other Muslim countries while its
own people live in poverty. But when in my own city of Sardahst,
in western Iran, long after the so-called ” White revolution” there
was not a single hospital, not even a simple clinic. Yet when a
caller called and said he was calling from Dubai, Mr. Fazeli said,
” Did you know that when this Arabs were roaming the desert the Shah
came and built a hospital there?” This actions of the Shah, are they
any different than that of the clerics?

Mr. Fazeli repeatedly says that the Iranian Azeri people are not Turks
and that they were turkified. First, if one claims to be a Turk, such
as The Azeri people in Iran, nobody has the right to tell him or her
that she is not a Turk. It is very likely that these monarchists in the
future will make a similar charge against the Kurds and claim that the
Kurds are not really Kurds but they are Persians who have forgotten
their culture. These monarchists say that the Iranian Kurds were the
first Iranian people to live in the country long before the arrival
of the Persians. But when the Kurds talk about self-determination
and press for rights and freedoms they erupt in fury.

In one of their programs, Rafi Khachaturian a comedian of Armenian
origin asked Raza Pahlavi about self-determination for the Azeri
and the Kurdish people. I had almost changed the channel but I did
not. I have always wanted to ask this question myself. I was convinced
that he would give a satisfying answer and somehow ease the tension
between the Kurds and the monarchists. But I was taken completely
by surprise. Mr. Pahlavi said “if any region of the country wants to
spend their taxes they are free to spend it in anyway possible.” Good
for him. At lease “his majesty” is willing to give Kurds as much
rights as a village chief. What does this answer have to do with
Kurdish self-determination? I thank “his majesty” for being honest
enough and reveal his real position on the Kurdish issue. We Kurds
now know what to expect from monarchist.

In the spring of 2004 few Kurds from the Washington DC area were
hosting a show called ” Juanî Kurdistan” on one of the Persian T.V.
station, RANGARANG TV. The monarchists and other racist Persians
would be calling in and swearing and being disrespectful to the host
of the show. They would be calling and say ” be ashamed of yourself.

Shame on you for speaking a language other than Persian.” The
monarchists brought so much pressure on the T.V. station until the
Kurds were forced to close down the show. I would like to ask the
Kurds one question. If this people are treating us like this and can’t
even stand our language, and us what will this people do in tomorrows
“Free Iran.”

I call on all Kurds to unite. We must unite and establish Independent
T.V. stations to counter the attacks of racist and the chauvinists.

These monarchists know very well that Kurds will never accept
monarchy. The Kurds have not forgotten the killings that were carried
out by the Shah of Iran. The monarchist knows that it will be very
difficult to bring resilient Kurds under control in the future. The
Kurds will be a building block against their dream of a future
monarchy. The Kurds will not rest until they get what they are after.

Currently major political parties are asking for a federalist
entity within Iran. But unfortunately after seeing how terribly this
monarchist treat the Kurds, many Kurds are thinking of an independent
state. If Iran does crumble in the future, these monarchists will
probably be the main cause of it. They bring division and sectarian
tension. If the monarchist wants the support of the Kurds, they as
well as the Pahlavi family must apologize to the Kurdish people.

–Boundary_(ID_Vyqe2pZG8dpTYbuhDBkVFQ)–

IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
By Gwynne Dyer

AZG Armenian Daily
27/04/2006

Two things about American immigration are different.

One is that the United States is the only large First World country
that has a long land border with a Third World country. The other
is that only the United States among developed countries possesses
a politically powerful domestic lobby that actively wants a large,
steady flow of unskilled immigrants, preferably illegal ones. Taken
together, these two oddities explain why immigration in America is
such an explosive topic, and why Congress is unable to pass any new
law regulating the flow.

The collapse last Friday of bipartisan negotiations in the Senate on a
new immigration bill probably marks an end for this year of the attempt
to impose some order on what many Americans see as out-of-control
illegal immigration. What split both parties and ultimately doomed the
law were President Bush’s proposals for an amnesty for nine million
of the estimated eleven million illegal immigrants already in the
United States, and a new programme to admit an extra 400,000 temporary
“guest workers” every year.

The House of Representatives recently passed a much tougher law
involving serious penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants
and the construction of a 700-mile (1100-km.) fence along much of
the Mexican border, but with Congress now in recess for two weeks,
that is probably dead too. There is probably neither the time nor the
political will for the Senate to have another go at the issue before
the elections that are due this November.

What this is all about is Mexicans. The United States, contrary to
local belief, does not have a particularly high proportion of recent
immigrants compared to other industrialised countries. No more than
one person in eight is foreign-born in the US, considerably less
than in neighbouring Canada (where the ratio is one in five) and not
much more than in large European countries like Germany, France or
Britain. But nowhere else has so many illegal immigrants, nor so many
who are unskilled workers, nor such a high share from a single country.

Mexican nationals make up the great majority of the “undocumented
workers” (illegal immigrants) in the US economy. Their large numbers
and high visibility give rise to paranoid fears among some longer
established Americans that the United States is becoming a de facto
bilingual country. They also stir a wider concern that this large and
vulnerable work-force of illegal immigrants is deliberately maintained
by employers as a way of keeping the wages of unskilled workers down.

The language issue is largely a red herring: most newly arrived
Hispanic families have become fluent in English by the second
generation, just as previous waves of immigrants did before them. But
the argument that illegal immigrants take jobs away from many equally
unskilled native-born Americans, and drive wages down for the rest,
has never been convincingly refuted, even though it remains politically
incorrect.

It’s not that native-born American high-school drop-outs “won’t do
those jobs.” They just won’t do them for five or eight dollars an hour
— or at least, a lot of them won’t. Many poor Americans simply have
no choice, however, and end up working long hours in miserable jobs
for half the money that an unskilled French or German worker would
earn for doing the same work.

Illegal immigrants are not a majority of the workers in most of
the fields where they find jobs; unskilled Americans are. (The only
job in which there are almost no native-born Americans is seasonal
agricultural stoop labour.) Professors George Borjas and Lawrence
Katz of the National Bureau of Economic Research recently calculated
that the real wages of US high-school dropouts would have ended up
eight percent higher in 1980-2000 if unskilled (and mostly illegal)
Mexican workers had been kept out, even if higher-skilled immigration
had continued at the existing rate.

One of the most ridiculous myths of American political discourse
is the argument that the US-Mexican frontier is too long to police
effectively and humanely. Here is a country that has landed people on
the Moon, and that currently maintains an army of 140,000 soldiers in
a hostile country halfway around the planet, claiming that it cannot
build and maintain a decent fence along the Mexican border. Instead,
we have been treated to a thirty-year political charade in which little
bits of fence are built in the traditional urban crossing places,
thus forcing illegal Mexican immigrants out into the desert where
many of them die — but enough still get through to keep America’s
low-wage industries fully manned.

Living right next to Mexico, a country where a large proportion
of the population lives in Third-World conditions, does create a
special immigration problem for the United States, but it is far
from insoluble.

It has only remained unsolved for decades because powerful economic
interests in the United States, with great influence over Congress,
do not want it solved.

All the other business that has been so earnestly debated in recent
week in the United States Senate — quotas for guest-workers,
amnesties for long-resident illegal immigrants, and so on — is just
the political cover that is needed to keep illegal immigrant labour
plentiful and unskilled wages low.

LE PS INSISTE POUR LA RECONNAISSANCE DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN PAR LA TURQUIE

Agence France Presse
24 avril 2006 lundi

Le PS attend du gouvernement turc “une reconnaissance officielle du
genocide armenien”, a declare le porte-parole du PS Julien Dray lundi,
jour de la commemoration du 91e anniversaire de cette tragedie.

M. Dray a exprime lors d’un point de presse “la profonde solidarite”
du PS avec “le peuple armenien”. “Nous attendons du gouvernement
turc une reconnaissance officielle de ce genocide”, a-t-il dit, en
rappelant que les socialistes en faisaient une condition a l’entree
de la Turquie dans l’Union europeenne.

Il a rappele qu’allait avoir lieu “dans les jours a venir un debat au
parlement sur la necessite que la reconnaissance du genocide armenien
s’accompagne de sanctions a l’egard de ceux qui seraient amenes a ne
pas respecter cette reconnaissance”.

ARMENIAN PATRIARCH ADDRESSES SYMPOSIUM

Milliyet
Turkish Press
April 24 2006

Press Review

Mesrob II, the patriarch of Armenians in Turkey, yesterday addressed
a symposium held by Erciyes University, saying that it wasn’t morally
appropriate to put responsibility on just one side concerning the
so-called Armenian genocide. Mesrob stated that reflecting the truth
wasn’t always easy, adding that the new generation must learn the
facts about the issue.

Nouvelles St-Laurent, Canada
April 22 2006

Candle lighting ceremony

The Member Organizations of the Congress of Canadian Armenians invite

the public to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide by lighting a candle, laying flowers and joining in prayers
for the souls of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. This event
will take place on April 23 at 1:30 pm at the Genocide Monument in
Ahuntsic’s Marcelin Wilson Park (corner of Henri-Bourassa and Acadie
Blvd.) in Montreal.

UNKNOWN PERSONS IN MASKS ATTACK MEMBERS OF GUARD OF NOR ZHAMANAKNER
PARTY’S CHAIRMAN AND KIDNAP THEM

YEREVAN, APRIL 21, NOYAN TAPAN. At about 12:55 of April 21, near the
Erebuni region’s police station, 12 unknown persons in masks attacked
two official cars of Nor Zhamanakner (New Times) party chairman. Those
attacking were armed with pistols and sub-machine-guns. As Noyan Tapan
correspondent was informed from the party’s Press Service, they
rudely, with shouts and threats laid down the members of the party
chairman’s guard and inflicted a corporal injury to the driver. Then,
leaving Aram Karapetian in the street, the armed persons took away the
members of the guard and the drivers by the official cars of the party
in an unknown direction. The unknown persons in masks took the attack
by several cameras. According to preliminary data revealed by the Nor
Zhamanakner party’s Press Service, the armed persons were from the
subdivisions of RA National Security Service. The party qualified the
incident as “purely an Armenian manifestation of the political
brigandage”.