Author: Vasilian Manouk

VTB OVERCOMES ALL OBSTACLES TO THE PURCHASE OF AZERI BANK

arminfo
2008-08-19 20:31:00

ArmInfo. VTB has overcome all obstacles to its entry into the Azeri
banking market, says the commercial representative of Russia in
Azerbaijan Yuri Schedrin.

He hopes that by the end of this year VTB will be permitted to buy
the shares of an Azeri bank.

Trend news agency reports that VTB is planning to buy a controlling
stake in AF Bank. A source from the National Bank of Azerbaijan says
that they are considering VTB’s offer. They in VTB expect the deal
to be made in the autumn.

Earlier, RosFinCom agency (Moscow) reported with reference to
the press service of VTB that the Supervisory Board of VTB Bank
Armenia had decided to close its branch in Stepanakert, the capital
of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. VTB has inherited the branch from
ArmSavingsBank.

RosFincom said that the existence of a branch in Stepanakert was
problemaic due to the though attitude of the Azeri authorities
towards companies having contacts with Nagorno-Karabakh. ArmInfo’s
correspondent has failed today to contact the press service and the
management of VTB Bank Armenia for verifying this information.

ARMENIA’S POLISHED DIAMOND PRODUCTION -21% IN 1H
By Avi Krawitz

Diamonds.net
Aug 19 2008
NY

RAPAPORT… Armenia’s polished diamond production fell 20.6 percent to
52,316 carats in the first of 2008, according to the Arka news service.

Armenia’s diamond polishing industry has been on a steady decline in
recent years as Russia rough supplies dwindled.

Reportedly, Russian diamond manufacturer Kristall of Smolensk has
agreed to send up to 7,000 carats of rough for polishing in Armenia
by year end.

Armenia’s jewelry production declined 42.6 percent to 509.4 kilograms
worth in the six month period, Arka reported citing RA Statistical
service.

Metal Underground, MD

System Of A Down To Reunite For Eurovision 2009?

posted Aug 16, 2008 at 11:32 AM by deathbringer.

World renowned Armenian-American rock band System Of A Down has
expressed interest in representing Armenia in next year’s Eurovision
song contest to be hosted in Russia.

Serj Tankian, the group’s lead singer, recently said that the group
would consider performing in Eurovision only if they would be allowed
to use Eurovision as a means to advance the recognition of the
Armenian Genocide.

"Eurovision would be an excellent way to make this theme known. We
must seriously think of this." Tankian said.

System Of A Down, which has been advocating for Armenian Genocide
recognition since its early garage band days is noted for the liberal
political views expressed in their songs. The band’s music tackles a
myriad subjects including War, corruption, religion, drug use,
censorship, human rights violations, and Genocide.

Source: Ultimate-Guitar.com

SYSTEM OF A DOWN FOR ARMENIA IN 2009?

esctoday.com
Aug 15, 2008
Netherlands

One of the the biggest metal bands in the world!

System of a Down, one of the biggest global bands in the field of
heavy metal have gone on record to announce that they are interested
in representing Armenia at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in
Moscow. The band, which recently split up, would reunite to represent
their ancestral home country if an offer comes.

The American band with Armenian roots has a reputation for political
themes in their music, and have written music to deal with issues such
as war, corruption, human rights violations, drug use and religion.

The band, comprising Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian,
and John Dolmayan, are known simly as system or SOAD by their army of
fans. They have a huge following on the other side of the Atlantic and
could be powerful enough to draw an American network into following
the competition if they were to compete. They have three Grammy Award
nominations and won their first Grammy Award before taking a sabatical
in 2006.

The four band members are working on several projects, but have been
alerted to the possibility or representing Armenia in Moscow.

This would be a huge boost to the Eurovision Song Contest reputation
in the States following Timbaland’s involvement and victory as a
composer in 2008. SOAD would also be able to bring an army of metal
fans to the competition in much the same way that Lordi did on the
road to winning the competition in 2006.

HOLIDAYMAKERS GET GEORGIA REFUNDS
Tom Chesshyre

The Times
August 16, 2008
UK

Tourists with trips booked to Georgia are being offered refunds or
trips to Armenia instead, after the conflict with Russia this week.

Explore Worldwide, the leading UK operator to Georgia, predicts that
the country will "be back on the tourist map within a year" after
the violence has ended. The company sends about 100 holidaymakers
to Georgia annually. A spokesman said: "The type of person who goes
there on holiday will not necessarily be put off by a war."

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against travel to the
country.

Several cruise lines that stop at Georgia’s Black Sea port of Butumi
are rethinking itineraries.

DAVID DAY ON ESSENTIAL BOOKS ABOUT HISTORICAL CONQUEST

Wall Street Journal
August 16, 2008

1. History of the Conquest of Mexico By William Prescott 1843

History can be understood in many ways, but one of the most compelling
is to track the movement of peoples and their later attempts to put
their stamp on newly conquered lands. Spain’s conquest of Mexico
in the 16th century is a dramatic example. A rousing narrative of
that conquest was written in the early 1840s by the partially blind
American historian William Prescott, who combined admiration for
the Spanish conqueror Cortes with a relatively sensitive portrayal
of the vanquished Aztecs. "It is but justice to the Conquerors
of Mexico," Prescott writes, "to say that the very brilliancy and
importance of their exploits have given a melancholy celebrity to
their misdeeds." This hugely influential book was based on research
in Spanish archives and was published as Americans were completing
a sweep across land that they had claimed as their own.

2. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World,
1492-1640 By Patricia Seed Cambridge, 1995

The assertion of control over newly conquered lands is usually marked
by an act that has symbolic meaning, at least for the conquerors. In
her landmark history, Patricia Seed describes the competing ways
in which European powers asserted their right to territory in the
Americas, with each country refusing to recognize the claims of the
others. Her book is peppered with fascinating vignettes of Portuguese
and Dutch who thought that mastering the navigation of distant seas
entitled explorers to seize the lands that their ships chanced upon. In
contrast, the British emphasized enclosing and farming as a means of
establishing their dominion, while the French preferred to enact a
ceremony that mimicked the forms of a coronation back home. As for
the Spanish, "it was the words that counted," Seed writes. "A highly
formalized and stylized speech known as the Requirement had to be made
when encountering indigenous peoples for the first time. The text of
the speech was not a request for consent, but a declaration of war."

3. Sacred Landscape By Meron Benvenisti University of California, 2000

Military superiority is not enough to ensure that an act of conquest
will prevail. The newly acquired land must be made to seem the
natural possession of the new rulers. In "Sacred Landscape," Meron
Benvenisti — who served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1971
to 1978 — recounts how, in the 1940s, he traveled across British
Palestine with his father, a Jewish mapmaker, on a mission to
"draw a Hebrew map of the land" that could act as "a renewed title
deed." Partly based on this personal experience, "Sacred Landscape"
is an anguished reflection on the terrible costs of two peoples’
asserting an inalienable right to the same land.

4. The Isles By Norman Davies Macmillan, 1999

Although the British are usually regarded as having been conquerors
across the world, the islands that they inhabit have themselves been
the scene of conquests over the centuries, by Romans, Celts, Vikings,
Saxons and others. In "The Isles," the British historian Norman Davies
— who has written extensively about Poland, another much-contested
country — applies his skills to describing his homeland. The result is
a rewarding tour from prehistory to the present day. Davies explores
the successive invasions of what we call the British Isles and the
struggles between the peoples who had come to conquer and then remained
to call different parts their own.

5. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe By Raphael Lemkin Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 1944

Any legitimacy that Hitler might have been able to claim for his
European conquests unraveled as soon as he revealed that he was intent
on doing more than redress the harsh peace of 1919. As readers of
"Mein Kampf" had already learned, his ambitions were continental in
scope and merciless in method. The monumental "Axis Rule in Occupied
Europe," written as World War II entered its final phase, is Polish
lawyer Raphael Lemkin’s description of how the Nazis executed with
cold precision their brutal plans for conquered peoples. In the
process of sounding the alarm, Lemkin coined what has become the
vexed term "genocide." It is clear from Lemkin’s other scholarly
work, on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians during World War I,
that he intended the term to have a wider application than just to
the Nazis; it was meant to cover all those laws and actions that are
used by conquerors to remove distinct populations from the landscape,
whether through direct killing, expulsion, compulsory assimilation
or other means. The book remains tragically relevant.

Mr. Day’s latest book, "Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others,"
was published in June by Oxford University Press.

Posted on Tue, Aug. 12, 2008

Del. woman flees Russian offensive

Peace Corps worker finds safety across Georgia’s border.

By Edward Colimore

Inquirer Staff Writer

When she and other Peace Corps volunteers traveled to the Republic of
Georgia in June, Lindsey Harris of Newark, Del., was planning to teach
English classes there. She never expected to find herself in a war,
with Russian troops invading, towns seized and her Peace Corps group
forced to flee to nearby mountains, then across the border.

Yesterday, in a quick cell phone call to her mother, Harris, 21,
shared news of her long, exhausting bus trip from Georgia to the
safety of Armenia.

"I think they’re glad to be out, and they’re also concerned for their
Georgian friends and their families," said Lindsey Harris’ mother,
Amy, 52, of Newark.

"It’s hard to imagine going back, but they’ve invested time and have
relationships with the people so I know, in their hearts, they want to
go back," Amy Harris said.

Lindsey Harris joined the Peace Corps and traveled with 46 other
volunteers to Georgia after graduating from Elon University in Elon,
N.C., this spring.

The music performance and English literature major already had helped
the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and
taught English to children in Guatemala in school-sponsored programs.

Lindsey Harris "is drawn to helping people and was nearly finished her
training in Georgia" when the fighting broke out, said her
mother. "She was teaching some local kids and was about to start her
two-year commitment there."

But late Thursday, after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the
province of South Ossetia, which had been under Moscow’s protection,
Russia began to flex its military muscle.

Shelling and air strikes forced Georgian troops to flee South
Ossetia’s provincial capital of Tskhinvali. And yesterday, Russian
troops invaded Georgia from the breakaway province of Abkhazia, to the
west.

"As the tensions were rising on Thursday night and Friday morning, the
Peace Corps gathered its members together – first the 47 trainees
[including Lindsey Harris], and then 38 other volunteers who were
already working in the country," said Amy Harris.

"They were far enough away from the fighting not to hear it, but the
Georgian people from the city of Gori who were training [the Peace
Corps volunteers] saw homes and apartment buildings lost."

The volunteers were taken from areas around the Georgian capital of
Tbilisi to a ski resort at a nearby mountain. Georgia, a U.S. ally,
borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by
Moscow for nearly 200 years before the breakup of the Soviet Union.

"When she got to the ski resort on Saturday, she said, ‘Mom, it was
like being on vacation. I got a hot shower,’ " said Amy Harris. "She
said she was sitting on a balcony at the resort, reading a book, and
found it hard to imagine that there was bombing just 20 miles away."

>From the resort, about 85 Peace Corps volunteers, including Lindsey
Harris, began an unexpectedly long journey to Armenia in two buses.

"They thought it would have taken five hours but after 10 hours, they
had only made it two-thirds of the way," said Amy Harris, who was
expecting to hear from her daughter via e-mail.

Lindsey Harris "was pretty cool when I talked to her [from the bus]. I
feel more comfortable now. But I know she’s saddened by what’s
happened. The Georgian people were excited about rebuilding their
country."

Contact staff writer Edward Colimore at 856-779-3833 or
[email protected].

TWO HUNDRED GERMANS HAVE LEFT GEORGIA: BERLIN

AFP
Khaleej Times
11 August 2008
United Arab Emirates

BERLIN – Around 200 Germans have left Georgia because of the current
conflict and 100 more are due to leave by bus later on Monday for
the Armenian capital Yerevan, the German foreign ministry said.

Some 300 German citizens were still in Georgia and the German embassy
was taking steps to contact them to give them a chance to leave
the country if they wished, ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner told a
news conference.

Ploetner stressed that the Germans were not being "evacuated" but were
leaving voluntarily. He added that the German embassy in Tbilisi was
also ready to help citizens from other European citizens.

"There is no reason for panic but we are calling on all German
citizens… to contact the embassy," he said.

Russian planes bombed radars at Tbilisi airport and hit civilian
targets in the city of Gori near the border with South Ossetia on
Monday, a Georgian interior ministry spokesman said.

The UN refugee agency said that up to 80 percent of Gori’s population
of 50,000 have fled the city — the main Georgian city near to South
Ossetia — because of Russian attacks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone with Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili on Monday morning and repeated her call for an
immediate end to all violence, her spokesman Thomas Steg said.

Merkel also fully supports the decision of French President Nicolas
Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, to go to
Moscow, Steg added.

Merkel said it was "essential that there is an immediate and
non-conditional ceasefire and for all armed forces to withdraw to
the positions held before the conflict" and that "the territorial
integrity of Georgia should be respected," Steg said.

He added that a meeting between Merkel and Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev in Sochi on the Black Sea would take place on Friday as
planned, but that contrary to the original agenda "practically the
only topic" of discussion would be the current conflict.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has also spoken
several times by phone with his Russian and Georgian counterparts,
and also took part in a conference call on Sunday with other EU
foreign ministers, Ploetner said.

SOUTH CAUCASUS RAILWAYS RESUMES SUBURBAN PASSENGER SERVICES IN ARMENIA

SKRIN Market & Corporate News
August 8, 2008 Friday 9:54 AM GMT

South Caucasus Railways, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, has resumed
suburban passenger services in Armenia.

On 2 August, the Company began suburban passenger services between
Gyumri – Yerevan, Gyumri – Pemzashen – Artik and Yerevan – Erash. Since
July 12, it has also been running commuter services between Yerevan
– Tsovagyuh.

Rolling stock for the services has been provided by Russian Railways
in the form of technical assistance.

In addition, South Caucasus Railways has signed a contract with
Georgian machine builders to carry out major repairs on 1,000 wagons
and 23 electric locomotives. Currently the company is working on
customs clearance documents for the export of cars and electric
locomotives to Georgia.

Freight wagons will be serviced at depots in Yerevan and Gyumri,
rzd.ru reports.

GOVERNMENT OF ARMENIA WILL EXEMPT SMALL ENTREPRENEURS OF VAT

arminfo
2008-08-08 12:41:00

ArmInfo. Government of Armenia made a decision to exempt the
enterprises whose annual turnover does not exceed 50 million of VAT,
Minister of Finance Tigran Davtyan said at a government sitting
Thursday.

He said it is one of the key provisions in the legislative initiative
approved by the government Thursday. Generally, the government
approved ten amendments to the effective legislation and 6 changes
in some government decisions. The minister said the package of
legislative initiatives aims to support small business and producers
of agricultural products. Moreover, the package of amendments will
facilitate the tax administration procedure, T. Davtyan explained.