Author: Vardanian Garo

FROM "IDIOT" TO NOTHING
JAMES HAKOBYAN

LRAGIR.AM
11:50:14 – 21/04/2009

On April 20, the Chairman of the Public Council Vazgen Manukyan
was the guest at the "Urvagits" (outline) TV program. Answering the
questions of the announcer, Vazgen Manukyan, in the end of the program,
answered the questions of the TV viewers too. One of the questions was:
"How would you react if your wife and your daughter would stroll in
the North Avenue and the police officials would pull them". Vazgen
Manukyan did not answer this question. And the other question, the
author of which wondered for how much Vazgen Manukyan was sold to the
government, the Chairman of the National Democratic Union party and
the Public Council answered that the author of the question may be
one who would be sold which may be the reason for the question. The
answer was more or less this. At least, its meaning was this. Then,
Vazgen Sargsyan told the announcer that he thinks that the journalists
should not voice the questions of such ill people.

Vazgen Manukyan turns out to be a doctor and a very skilful doctor and
may determine by the question of a spectator whether the latter is ill
or not. In addition, it is the announcer to read the question. However,
trusting the doctor Manukyan, let us understand why those questions
could be called ill. The author of the first question tries to learn
what Vazgen Manukyan would do if his wife and daughter stroll in the
North Avenue and the police officials use force against them. Where
is the illness of this question? Was not Vazgen Manukyan expressing
his dissatisfaction with the government in the same way? Was Vazgen
Manukyan ill at that time? Not likely. In this case, which is
the reason such a question seems ill to him when the police uses
force against the people who show their political dissatisfaction
by strolling in the North Avenue. Vazgen Manukyan may have fallen
"ill" now.

The author of the next question tried to learn for how much Vazgen
Manukyan has been sold to the government.

The question is not correct of course. But, it is different to be
incorrect and ill. Vazgen Manukyan was not correct either when he was
stating before the 2007 parliamentary elections that who thinks the
elections will be fair and legal is an idiot. Vazgen Manukyan was
stating this. And the authorities, headed by the current president
Serge Sargsyan, were speaking about fair and legal elections. In other
words, Vazgen Manukyan was calling an idiot Serge Sargsyan. Was Vazgen
Manukyan ill at that time? Or was Serge Sargsyan ill when he stated
on the Armenia TV that who "says it are idiot themselves". In other
words, Serge Sargsyan called an idiot Vazgen Manukyan. This entire
is known to everybody, but now, a lot of people may wonder who is
ill after all – Manukyan, Sargsyan who were calling idiots each other
or they were very healthy at that time, they just fell "ill" now and
began to cooperate for the sake of the government-public relations.

It is comprehensible that Vazgen Manukyan does not answer to the
last 2 questions of the spectators of the "Urvagits" TV program
because considers the authors of the questions Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s
supporters, but why Vazgen Manukyan has not answered the question if
he considers fair Serge Sargsyan’s hints on his being an idiot, or
he thinks that he was right at that time and Serge Sargsyan changed
now. Interestingly, Serge Sargsyan did not answer the same question
in connection with Vazgen Manukyan’s hints either.

The government wants to call for responsibility the "yellow" journalism
for slander. What the "multicolor" figures are to be done who call
each other idiots one day and begin to form a state and reform a
country on the next day. What will be the country reformed by them?

In answer to this they say "What state will be the one reformed by
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, what you think?" But our problem is not this
one. All right, let us assume that Levon Ter-Petrosyan deceives and
makes people come crazy, let us assume that he is not going to build
but to destroy this country. But, what are you doing; you considered
Serge Sargsyan a criminal and now you consider him a reformer,
builder of a state. Let us assume that the society turns its back to
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, you think people will love you? Maximum, Levon
Ter-Petrosyan may be treated like you. But it is a "vampire" and not
a state thinking. Then, no one who will be left with a democratic
rating, everyone will become of 1 percent, and Serge Sargsyan will
not need them any more and will get rid of them. And you will start
to call Serge Sargsyan an idiot again, because you will give up being
even an idiot for him, you will be nothing.

RACIST PROCESSION STARTS IN KAYSERI, MOTHERLAND OF ABDULLAH GUL

ArmInfo
2009-04-21 17:36:00

In the town of Kayseri, motherland of Abdullah Gul, Turkish
nationalists have started collecting signatures against opening the
border with Armenia and holding the football match between Armenia
and Turkey scheduled for October in Kayseri.

As Turkish media report, the nationalists organized an event in
Hitler’s honor and condemned the Turkish Government and President Gul
for the attempts to normalize the relations with Armenia. In this
connection, head of Kayseri nationalists Ali Ozturk said: "Let the
border with Armenia be opened, all those from Turkey wishing cross
the border, and the border be closed again". The Turkish nationalists
also said that they are going to submit all the collected signatures
to the Turkish Parliament within the next 15 days.

THOUSANDS IN CALIFORNIA TO DEMAND END TO CYCLE OF GENOCIDE AT TURKISH CONSULATE

armradio.am
21.04.2009 10:45

The United States has the best chance in a generation to help end the
cycle of genocide and recommit the world to the noble and necessary
cause of a future without genocide. Inspired by this fierce urgency
of now, thousands across the state of California will rally at the
Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles (6300 Wilshire Boulevard) on Friday
April 24 to call for an end to over a century of race murder, fueled
by Turkey’s ongoing denial of its genocide against the Armenian people.

Last year, nearly 15,000 activists converged on the Turkish Consulate
amid intensified activity by the Turkish government to prevent the
US House of Representatives from recognizing the Genocide.

"We as Armenian-Americans know that our nation should properly
recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide, and all subsequent
genocides," said Vache Thomassian, the Chairman of the AYF. "Now,
more than ever, we have to rise above political expedience and take
a moral stance against genocide – and I firmly believe Barack Obama
has the integrity to be the leader that does so."

This year’s demonstration converges with global expectations
pertaining to President Obama’s numerous campaign pledges to
reaffirm the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide. Earlier this
month, President Obama traveled to Turkey and stated, "My vie ws are
on the record and I have not changed views," when asked in a press
conference about his promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The
President also referenced the Armenian Genocide in his speech to the
Turkish Parliament where he stated, "History, unresolved, can be a
heavy weight.

Each country must work through its past. And reckoning with the past
can help us seize a better future."

Two weeks ahead of the annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide
on April 24, President Obama commemorated the 15th anniversary of
the genocide in Rwanda by urging the United States and its world
partners to deepen their commitment to ending the cycle of genocide
begun in 1915.

Activists will draw attention to Turkey’s expanding multimillion dollar
campaign to erase all memory and culpability of its crime against the
Armenian people and how it has spawned a string of genocides, from
the Nazi Holocaust to the worsening humanitarian situation in Darfur.

Investments in Armenian railroads to total 2bln 666mln rubles into
basic assets in 2009

YEREVAN, April 18. /ARKA/. Investments in Armenian railroads are to
total 2bln 666mln rubles through introduction of basic assets. The
respective decision was adopted at the meeting of Directors Board of
South Caucasus Railroad closed joint stock company where the company’s
activities for 2009 were discussed, the press service of South Caucasus
Railroad cjsc reported.

The Directors Board also adopted a tariff policy and the company’s
budget for 2009, says the report.

The Board discussed methods of formation of the company’s
organizational structure, anti-crisis measures and efficient work with
non-core assets.

South Caucasus Railroad fully owned by the Russian Railways is the
concession management operator of the Armenian Railways under a 30-year
concession agreement signed on February 13 2008. `0′

ARMENIAN WATER SEWERAGE COMPANY CUTS SALARIES 20% AS FINANCIAL CRISIS BITES

/ARKA/
April 16, 2009
YEREVAN

Armenian Water Sewerage Company (AWSC) had to cut salaries 20% due
to the global financial crisis, said General Director and Management
Contractor of AWSC Patrick Lorin.

He stressed that the company started the financial year with a number
of difficulties with slowing profits and fewer state subsidies.

Alongside with wage cuts, AWSC has started to make structural changes
to raise labor efficiency.

According to Lorin, non-payers aggravate the financial situation of
the company, with 100,000 regular defaulters being recorded last year.

The AWSC director general said the company would keep publishing the
names of incorrigible defaulters.

In 2004, the French SAUR S.A. signed a contract with the Government of
Armenia, becoming the manager of Armenian Water and Sewerage Company
(AWSC).

AWSC has four branches in Armenia with centers in Sevan, Abovyan,
Sisyan and Artashat cities. Last year’s profit of the company totaled
$2.7bln drams, compared to 1.1bln drams in 2005. For the past four
years, AWSC attracted $15mln investments, with its own resources
totaling 700mln drams.

AWSC currently has 270,000 subscribers in Armenia (around 1mln
residents in 286 villages and 37 cities).

Last year, the government granted 1.366bln drams worth state subsidies
to the company. This year, AWSC will get only 863mln drams from the
go vernment.

>From April 1, Armenia’s drinking water tariffs rose from 140 drams
to 179.78 drams (VAT inclusive) per cubic meter.

STUDY EXPLORES ROOTS OF ETHNIC VIOLENCE

PhysOrg.com
59109717.html
April 16 2009

A new UCLA-led study challenges the popular perception that ethnic
diversity is to blame for sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Northern
Ireland, recent tensions in Tibet, and ethnic violence in post-election
Kenya.

"Countries that are ethnically diverse do not experience more conflict
than their more homogenous counterparts," said Andreas Wimmer,
the study’s lead author and a UCLA professor of sociology. "Rather,
conflict breaks out when large segments of the population are excluded
from access to government because of their ethnicity."

In fact, a country that excludes 80 percent or more of its population
on the basis of ethnicity is more than three times as likely to have a
civil war as a wholly inclusive country, Wimmer and his team calculate.

The effects of ethnic exclusion proved to be as important as
substantial differences in a country’s per capita income, a
well-recognized risk factor for civil war.

"If you want peace in countries with ethnic conflict, you have to
rearrange government to include real power-sharing with all ethnic
groups," said Lars-Erik Cederman, study co-author and a former
assistant professor of political science at UCLA who now serves as
a professor of international conflict research at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. "Eliminating barriers to
political participation may sound like common sense, but this research
for the first time pinpoints the dramatic risk of failing to do so."

The findings appear in the April issue of the American Sociological
Review.

Wimmer and Cederman led a team of social scientists, including UCLA
political science graduate student Brian Min, that spent close to three
years building a dataset of ethnic power relations in 155 countries
from 1946 to 2005, based on the expert advice of nearly 100 country
specialists from universities across the world.

Area specialists were asked to identify the politically relevant
ethnic groups within a country for each year since 1945 and then
estimate the extent of each group’s access to political power on
a six-point scale, ranging from a total monopoly on power to being
powerless and discriminated against. An ethnic group was considered
to be excluded if its members were absent from the highest levels of
regional and national government.

For a handful of countries — both very homogenous ones, such as Korea,
and very heterogeneous ones, such as Tanzania — ethnicity was not
politically relevant at all. In the rest of the countries, the risk
of armed conflict rose in proportion to the degree of ethnic exclusion.

"The odds of having a war — rather than peace — increase by a factor
of 1.12 for every additional 10 percent of the population excluded
from central government power," Wimmer said.

Particularly at risk, according to the researchers, are so-called
ethnocracies — countries in which an ethnic minority representing 20
percent or less of the population monopolizes power. Examples include
Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rwanda under the Tutsi-dominated government,
Sudan since 1954, Syria in recent history, Liberia until the outbreak
of civil war in 1980 and Rhodesia before the white minority government
was overthrown.

In addition to various ethnic power configurations derived from
this dataset, the study tested 10 other potential risk factors for
political violence, including economic development, ethnic diversity,
population size, geography, degree of democratization and even the
presence of oil reserves — the last on the theory that rebels might
be inspired to take up arms against the government when control of
lucrative natural resources is at stake.

Per capita gross domestic product proved to be as important a risk
factor as ethnic exclusion. In line with previous research, the study
found that lowering national per capita annual income from $13,000
to $6,000 more than doubles the risk of armed conflict.

Other important risks include a large population size and a political
system somewhere between dictatorship and democracy, sometimes called
"anocracy." Examples of anocracies include present-day Pakistan,
Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Armenia.

Of the 10 additional risk factors explored, the least significant
proved to be political instability (as measured by whether a country
had changed its level of democratization in the previous three years),
a country’s geography and its degree of ethnic diversity.

"It’s not that people of different ethnic backgrounds can’t get along
because they have different cultures or creeds," Min said. "It’s that
political exclusion along ethnic lines stirs up trouble."

With a 98-percent exclusion rate, Liberia between 1946 and 1980
had the highest rate of ethnic exclusion, followed by Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe), with 97 percent between 1965 and 1979, and Nepal,
with 95 percent between 1946 and 1950.

"All but one of these countries did, in fact, see serious armed
conflict during these periods, and they are part of a pattern
that holds across cases, continents and time periods," Wimmer
said. "They are good examples of the causal forces that operate in
many less extreme cases of exclusion as well. You need to have a good
understanding of these general mechanisms if you want to design policy
that can be adapted to specific cases."

With a current exclusion rate of about 85 percent, Syria, Sudan and
Rwanda tied as the study’s most exclusionary countries today.

Since Sudan’s and Rwanda’s ethnic conflicts have been in the news for
years, their vulnerability did not surprise researchers, but Syria’s
situation defied their expectations.

"Syria hasn’t had a conflict since 1982, so it looks very stable
today, especially compared to its neighbors Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq,
but our general findings suggest that there are tensions that could
rise to the surface in the future," Wimmer said.

On the other hand, the researchers cautioned that their model did not
capture all the risk factors equally well. Pakistan’s relatively low
exclusion rate of 11 percent would bode well for the country’s future
prospects for peace.

"You might see civil war in that country for other reasons, but they
would be unrelated to ethnic exclusion," Cederman said.

As much as the findings point toward the benefits of eliminating
political marginalization of ethnic groups, they show that inclusion
alone is no panacea for peace. This became clear when the researchers
looked at the number of ethnic groups with representation in a
government. Increasing the number of ethnic elites that share power
also increased the risk of violence, the study found.

"Overall, more inclusion still lowers the risk of conflict, despite
the potential for violent infighting among power-sharing partners,"
Wimmer said.

Similarly, democratization is not necessarily a guarantee of
peace. Moving from autocracy to anocracy, the study found, might
well increase the likelihood of violent escalation of conflict,
because protest movements are no longer as effectively and ruthlessly
repressed as in a dictatorship.

"Once a democracy has become routinized, you can expect stability,
but that can take years, if not decades," Wimmer said. "The process
of democratization can stir up ethnic conflict."

RA GOVERNMENT DENIES RUMORS ON ARMEN SARGSYAN’S APPOINTMENT AS PRIME MINSTER

PanArmenian
April 16 2009
Armenia

Armenian Government denies rumors on the possibility of Armen
Sargsyan’s being appointed as Prime Minister. When questioned by
PanAREMENIAN.Net reporter about the reliability of such information,
Petros Demirchyan, RA Government PR and Information Department Head,
said that they encounter such rumors almost every day. "I find it
unnecessary to comment on these rumors. Such information apparently
serves the interests of certain political forces."

The Mass Media have today released information that ex-premier
Armen Sargsyan, currently residing in Great Britain, intends to be
re-appointed to the same post. The assumption is based on the fact that
ex-Premier assisted RA President Serzh Sargsyan in the realization
of most of his election programs, as well as maintained a balance in
the country’s political life by setting up MIAK political party.

Meanwhile, MIAK Press Secretary Nayira Karapetyan announced that
the party is often mistakenly associated with Armen Sargsyan. "I
announce in all seriousness that MIAK party is not in any way related
to ex-premier Armen Sargsyan," she said.

HOVIK ABRAHAMYAN: "THE OSCE YEREVAN OFFICE AND OTHER EXECUTIVE STRUCTURES SHOULD CONTINUE TO FOLLOW CLOSELY AND RESPOND TO THE NEEDS OF THE ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES AND CIVIL SOCIETY"

National Assembly of RA
April 15 2009
Armenia

On April 15, 2009 the Speaker of the National Assembly Mr. Hovik
Abrahamyan received Head of OSCE Office in Yerevan Ambassador Sergey
Kapinos, .

During the discussion the President of the National Assembly reiterated
their adherence to all commitments in all dimensions that have been
undertaken in the OSCE framework. He highly assessed the support
of the OSCE Office in Yerevan and other executive structures in the
implementation of those commitments. They should continue to follow
closely and respond to the needs of the Armenian authorities and
civil society.

The Speaker of the Armenian parliament touched upon the Memorandum of
Cooperation to be signed between the National Assembly of the Republic
of Armenia and OSCE Office in Yerevan and assessed it as another
example of successful cooperation, which will allow to contributing
to the capacity of the Armenian parliament.

After the discussion in the presence of the Speaker of the National
Assembly Mr. Hovik Abrahamyan the Chief of the Staff of the National
Assembly and Head of OSCE Office in Yerevan Ambassador Sergey Kapinos
signed Memorandum of Cooperation in the Gilded Hall.

ARMENIAN-CAPTURED AZERBAIJANI SOLDIER’S LETTER TO HIS FAMILY PUBLICIZED

APA
April 15 2009
Azerbaijan

Aghdam. Teymour Zahidoglu -APA. The contents of the Armenian-captured
Azerbaijani soldier Rafig Rahman Hasanov’s letter to his family was
publicized, soldier’s father Rahman Hasanov told APA Karabakh bureau.

The letter was written in Russian. "Hello. I am greeting my father,
all relatives, my uncles and my countrymen. I am congratulating all
of you on Novruz Holiday. I am missing you. I am in good condition",
said in the letter.

Hasanov said representatives of the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), who delivered the letter to them, said that it was
written by the ICRC official in Russian and dictated by Rafig Hasanov.

The captive’s father said they hoped that Azerbaijan and Armenia
would achieve agreement on releasing of his son soon.

The representatives ICRC Office in Armenia visited Hasanov on Tuesday
and monitored his detention condition. On Wednesday the captive’s
family was informed about the meeting and the letter written on behalf
of Hasanov was delivered to his family. It was eighth meeting of ICRC
representatives with the captive.

The Hasanov’s family received last letter from him on January 21,
2009. His father sent him a letter and wished Happy Novruz on March
10 and said they hoped to meet him soon.

The answering letter was brought on April 15, a month later.

Soldier of the Azerbaijan Defense Ministry N military unit Rafig Rahman
Hasanov, 20 was captured by the Armenian military units on October 8,
2008 in the contact line between the troops in Gazakh Region.

TURKISH JOURNALISTS WERE DETAINED AT ARMENIAN-TURKISH BORDER

PanArmenian
April 15 2009
Armenia

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On Apr 13, 5 persons who were preparing to video
film Armenian-Turkish border were detained, RF FSS in Armenia Press
Service told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

As RA legislation forbids video shooting the frontier, the detained
were asked to show identity documents. National Security Service
group was summoned from Armenia to see them off to Turkish side of
the border. The detained filed no complaints, they even thanked the
frontier guard for refreshments, RF FSS in Armenia Press Service
reported As reported by Zaman, Five Turkish journalists were briefly
detained on Monday by Armenian forces after they attempted to film the
Turkish-Armenian border without permission from Armenian authorities.

The journalists were taken to a police station on the border,
where they were offered tea, coffee and cookies. The journalists
were released after two hours, reporting cordial treatment by the
Armenian forces.