Category: 2018

‘We are not them’: NSW Liberals distance themselves from Victorian loss

Ekmekjian Janet
The Guardian(London)
November 26, 2018 Monday 5:00 PM GMT
‘We are not them’: NSW Liberals distance themselves from Victorian loss
Berejiklian government has done a better job of avoiding ‘culture wars bullshit’, one MP says
 
by Michael McGowan
 
 
The New South Wales government has sought to distance itself from the rest of the Liberal party in the wake of the party’s disastrous result in the Victorian state election, with a senior minister declaring “we are not them” and another MP labelling the Victorian Liberals’ campaign “manifestly inadequate”.
 
After the Victorian Labor government’s comprehensive victory in the state election on the weekend attention has quickly turned to what the result could mean for NSW, where the Liberal state government will go to the polls seeking a third term next March.
 
In response, the NSW government has wasted no time differentiating itself from interstate and federal colleagues. On Sunday the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, pointedly suggested that the prime minister, Scott Morrison, would not be needed during the campaign, saying her government would stand “on its own two feet”.
 
But in interviews with half a dozen state government ministers, MPs and senior staff from both moderate and conservative camps on Monday, the general consensus was that the party in NSW had less to fear from the Victorian result than the federal government.
 
That’s because, as one MP put it to Guardian Australia, the government in NSW has done a better job of avoiding “the culture wars bullshit” than its counterparts elsewhere.
 
“We’re far more centrist than what the Victorians positioned themselves as,” the MP said. “There seemed to be an approach down there of engaging in the culture wars. We’re not immune from that but it’s not part of our day-to-day discourse.”
 
Another senior government figure censured the Victorian Liberals for “demonising” and “targeting” particular migrant groups.
 
“This concern about overpopulation, overdevelopment and migration is coming through all the polling everyone is doing, but the Victorians failed to take the lesson that the public is not targeting any particular type of people, the public is targeting governments.
 
“They’re saying governments are not working hard enough to address the problem. It isn’t about demonising one group, it’s looking at it from a macro policy level.”
 
The Victorian Liberals took a particularly hard-nosed conservative agenda to the election, promoting policies such as boot camps for young offenders, jail for breaching bail, the closure of safe injecting rooms, as well as stoking fears about “gangs”.
 
The platform turned out to be a failure, with voters in Victoria preferring the incumbent Labor government’s focus on transport infrastructure and popular health policies such as free dental care for public school students.
 
In NSW, the government has seized on concerns about population and migration. In October Berejiklian called for a return to “Howard-era immigration levels”, saying migrant levels had been allowed to “balloon out of control”.
 
And the government has its own problems: voter frustration because of congestion caused in part by infrastructure delays, and a feeling – borne out most visibly by its decision to allow an advertisement for a horse race on the sails of the Sydney Opera House – that its agenda is too easily led by radio shock jocks such as Ray Hadley and Alan Jones.
 
But, as one minister put it to Guardian Australia, Berejiklian – herself the daughter of Armenian migrants – has done a better job of talking about issues such as migration without stoking division. “Gladys can talk about migration without sounding like a racist or a xenophobe because she isn’t one,” the minister said.
 
On Monday the NSW transport minister, Andrew Constance, from the same moderate faction as Berejiklian, told reporters in Sydney that the “progressive” NSW government had similarities to the Labor government in Victoria.
 
“We’re not the commonwealth, we’re not Victoria, we’re very different,” he said. “We’re doing things differently. We’re a progressive, accountable, mojo state where we’ve got great outcomes happening for everyone.
 
“The Victorian government has been building infrastructure. Look at this state. We’re one of the best infrastructure jurisdictions in the world. We’ve got to stay the course.”
 
Others put the blame more explicitly on the Victorian Liberal party. The NSW upper house Liberal MP Peter Phelps told Guardian Australia the campaign in Victoria had been “manifestly inadequate”.
 
“What was their campaign message? I’m a political junkie and I have no idea what it was,” he said of the Victorian campaign. “In relation to what NSW can learn it is this: people don’t give a damn about ideology provided that you are meeting their needs.”
 
He said the Labor victory in Victoria “makes me feel more confident about a Coalition win in NSW”, because of the state’s low unemployment, new housing growth and improvements in transport infrastructure.
 
Like all the other government figures the Guardian Australia spoke to, Phelps was less concerned about the result in Victoria than the possibility of voters taking out their frustration with the federal government on the NSW government.
 
Phelps, a former staffer to seven federal Liberal MPs who lost his own preselection battle at the weekend, has been an outspoken member of the government.
 
In October, he tweeted that the prime minister, Scott Morrison, should call an early election and get “smashed” at the polls in order to save bigger losses at the state level.
 
On Monday he told Guardian Australia comment had been made out of “frustration” but that there was “no doubt” the federal party was “damaging the ‘Liberal’ brand”.
 
He said Morrison’s response after Wentworth – which he characterised as ‘we don’t need to change anything’ – was “the catalyst” for that damage.
 
“The feds being on the nose was only an incidental factor in Victoria, but it nevertheless exists,” he said.
 
“Of course they won’t go early – they’ll hang on till grim death hoping for an electoral miracle. In the meantime, it only needs two in 50 voters to mistakenly take our their frustration at the fed Libs on the state Libs and we are toast.”
 
 

Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Reveals How to Build a Tech Company Without an Engineering Degree

Manouk Vasilian
New York Observer
November 26, 2018 Monday
Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Reveals How to Build a Tech Company Without an Engineering Degree
 
by Sissi Cao
 
 
“Every business is going to be a software business in the future. Just full stop,” Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and venture capital firm Initialized Capital, recently said at a startup event in New York, expounding a pervasive view held by many Silicon Valley visionaries nowadays that “software is eating the world.”
 
But Ohanian was never a professional software engineer himself-by any standard. When he started Reddit in a dorm room at the University of Virginia with his college friend Steve Huffman in 2005, he was studying business and history. Thankfully, Huffman, an adept programmer majoring in computer science, was able to do most of the coding needed for the first version of Reddit, while Ohanian, by his own account, took care of everything else.
 
Subscribe to Observer’s Business Newsletter
 
In 2006, Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast (the publishing titan shelled out between $10 million and $20 million for the online community) and became an overnight millionaire at the age of 23. After a few more startup gigs during the ensuing years-including a nonprofit project in his grandfather’s home country of Armenia-Ohanian co-founded the venture capital firm Initialized Capital in 2010 with former Y Combinator partner Garry Tan to focus on early-stage startup investing. Initialized Capital was an early backer of a number of today’s billion-dollar companies, including Coinbase, Instacart and Opendoor, among others.
 
Ohanian was one of the clairvoyant (and lucky) few who reaped rewards from the early days of social media. Is his success replicable today-especially for people like Ohanian with non-technical backgrounds-in a world where having coding skills has increasingly become a prerequisite to start a company?
 
The answer is mixed. Ohanian admitted that, if given a second chance, he would have chosen to pursue a computer science major in college, but also said his degree in liberal arts has helped him in ways that would have been impossible with a purely STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
 
In a recent interview with Observer, the now 35-year-old Reddit co-founder revisited his “not so glamorous” days of being an early-stage entrepreneur, discussed what he looks for in founders from an investor’s perspective, and shared his thoughts on how a non-technical founder can still find a path in today’s cut-throat competitive startup world.
 
Observer: When we talk about starting a company from a college dorm room, most people automatically picture a programming wunderkind, someone like Mark Zuckerberg as depicted in The Social Network or your Reddit parter Steve Huffman. But you are a notable exception to this stereotype. What was it like for you to build a tech company when you had no formal training in programming?Ohanian: Most people think the CEO job is all about glamour. But when you are a co-founder in an early-stage company, you are doing a job that is very unglamorous. As a CEO, you have to negotiate cell phone fees, order takeout, run the day-to-day business operations and really do everything you can to support your technical co-founder so he can focus on writing code. In the early days of Reddit, Steve focused on writing codes, and I focused on everything else-from designing our website and the company logo to tending to actual business affairs, talking to customers, going to cafes and getting people to try out our software so we could get some basic user testing.
 
How do these two types of founders think differently? When you presented a product idea to Steve, how did you know if it was actually viable?The good news is that I had enough of a background in coding. I’ve been programming since high school. I was taking classes, even in college. I was just not a great programmer, and I wasn’t planning to be a computer science major in college because I was more interested in history. But I knew enough and was handy enough with Photoshop to create viable product mock-ups. I even did some front-end HTML and CSS. Very basic stuff.
 
It was when it came to the actual engineering of products that the discussion with Steve happened. I had a vision for how things should work, and, of course, we would debate. Design teams always have these debates. Eventually, we would settle on what we could build, and we would get to building it.
 
Actually, I think about this a lot now as an early-stage startup investor. We are often the first check companies [receive]. Today, Instacart and Coinbase are multi-billion-dollar companies that employ thousands of people. But when they started-when we invested-they were just a solo founder with a rough prototype. But that was enough to set the dream in motion and start building a team of experts who can create all the things in your vision.
 
Speaking of investing, your current partner at Initialized Capital, Garry Tan, is also a former engineer. It’s kind of a similar situation to Reddit. How does that difference play out on the VC side?I think our skills are very complimentary, because we both have product backgrounds. You are right, though. Garry is a much more impressive engineer. I’m really lucky this time around. I have a co-founder who is not only a super talented engineer, but also really good at understanding people and human relationships. That is something that makes this job a lot easier, because Garry just has this tremendous ability to quickly understand from a user’s point of view what their needs are and whether they are being satisfied. So, whether we are considering investing in a company or helping a company grow, he always has a very empathic designer mentality at approaching things.
 
What are some of the most important things you look for in a startup pitch?We want to see a founder who we know is not going to quit. We talk about [Initialized Capital’s] honey badger mascot as a symbol for what we are looking for in founders-they have to be really tenacious. In the early days of a company, very few people are going to believe in you. You have to not only have a vision for how the world is going to be, but also be able to take real steps in the short term to get there.
 
Great founders aren’t just bold; they are able to deliver and execute. That is something we really look for. We can see that based on their trajectory: What have they been doing in the years leading up to this meeting? Have they been working in the industry, dealing with real problems? Or have they been busy just shipping codes and launching products? Which is great, too. Whatever they have made of the past is a really good indicator of their goals, as well as their ability to actually act on them.
 
New @InitializedCap mascot: Honeybadger don’t care! Amazing work @alexisohanian pic.twitter.com/puwihZjNd4 – Garry BUIDL Tan (@garrytan) February 13, 2017
 
How important is the actual product proposal compared to the specific sector a startup does business in?We are pretty sector-agnostic. Actually, we want to be so early that a lot of trends don’t exist yet, because trends always happen afterwards. If we go to these pitch meetings with trends in mind, we are already too late. That said, we do want to know that the market opportunity is big enough to build a billion-dollar business. But beyond that, we are really leaving it to the founders to teach us something new-either show us something we had no idea could exist or should exist, or help us think differently about an industry we really thought we knew everything about. If your pitch does one of those two things, you’re probably tackling a good problem.
 
Currently, you are leading an entrepreneur contest in partnership with 1850 Brand Coffee to provide starter funding to promising business ideas. What have you observed in the startup pitches you’ve received so far? Has anything in particular grabbed your attention?What was really interesting to me was that we have seen such a wide range of pitches, from very philanthropic to very commercial to very “societal” projects, meaning that success is going to be measured by total social impact, not necessarily revenue. That was a really nice touch to the whole campaign.
 
I think founders are increasingly thinking about social impact, even if they are doing commercial endeavors. For example, more and more founders have started thinking about what legacy they are going to leave. I think there needs to be more opportunities like this, because we have great ideas and great potential founders everywhere. And I really want to help as many of them as possible spread their bold ideas.
 
What advice do you have for business founders who have liberal arts backgrounds just like you? Where do they start in today’s software-eats-everything world?As a founder with a business and a history degree, I can say that it has gotten easier than ever to test a business idea. Just simply put up a website, a landing page, and direct users to it. You can pretty quickly test a whole idea now faster and cheaper than ever before.
 
Also don’t feel overly protective about your idea. Some founders make the mistake of not wanting to share their bold ideas, because they are worried that someone is going to steal it. But the reality is that almost never happens. And if you want to be successful, you eventually are going to launch that bold idea and someone is going to copy it anyway. That is just a part of doing business, and you just have to keep getting better. So, don’t lock up your bold ideas. Get it in front of as many people as possible as soon as possible.
 
A practical question: In the end, every tech company needs to recruit great engineers. But, if a founder has no expertise in engineering or coding, how does he tell who the great engineers are from the average ones?Right. Game recognize game. It is very hard. The best advice I could give, especially if they are still in school, is to start learning how to code. You can literally get on Codecademy right now for free and start learning. That’s not required, but I highly, highly recommend it. It really is the most useful skill that you could learn right now.
 
And frankly, if you believe in your vision enough, and you are non-technical but want to build something in the world of software, you are going to have to either have someone in your friend network whom you can convince to join you or make the first version by yourself. You can have a development shop build the first prototype for you, but that’s very expensive.
 
What do you think is the biggest advantage for founders with a liberal arts background, if there is one?I think getting training in how to synthesize a broad range of ideas into a cohesive story and then communicate that story is something that my degree really helped me with. The humanities education really prepares you for that in a way other disciplines don’t. The value of critical thinking and communicating is something you use day in and day out. It’s just that that alone is not sufficient to build something.
 
But like I said, there are so many avenues to start picking up that skill and so many building blocks that have already been laid out for you. It really has never been easier to learn how to code. And it is only going to keep getting easier. For an entrepreneur starting up, that’s what I would recommend.
 
“Every business is going to be a software business in the future. Just full stop,? Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and venture capital firm Initialized Capital, recently said at a startup event in New York, expounding a pervasive view held by many Silicon Valley visionaries nowadays that “software is eating the world.”
 
But Ohanian was never a professional software engineer himself-by any standard. When he started Reddit in a dorm room at the University of Virginia with his college friend Steve Huffman in 2005, he was studying business and history. Thankfully, Huffman, an adept programmer majoring in computer science, was able to do most of the coding needed for the first version of Reddit, while Ohanian, by his own account, took care of everything else.
 
Subscribe to Observer’s Business Newsletter
 
In 2006, Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast (the publishing titan shelled out between $10 million and $20 million for the online community) and became an overnight millionaire at the age of 23. After a few more startup gigs during the ensuing years-including a nonprofit project in his grandfather’s home country of Armenia-Ohanian co-founded the venture capital firm Initialized Capital in 2010 with former Y Combinator partner Garry Tan to focus on early-stage startup investing. Initialized Capital was an early backer of a number of today’s billion-dollar companies, including Coinbase, Instacart and Opendoor, among others.
 
Ohanian was one of the clairvoyant (and lucky) few who reaped rewards from the early days of social media. Is his success replicable today-especially for people like Ohanian with non-technical backgrounds-in a world where having coding skills has increasingly become a prerequisite to start a company?
 
The answer is mixed. Ohanian admitted that, if given a second chance, he would have chosen to pursue a computer science major in college, but also said his degree in liberal arts has helped him in ways that would have been impossible with a purely STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
 
In a recent interview with Observer, the now 35-year-old Reddit co-founder revisited his “not so glamorous” days of being an early-stage entrepreneur, discussed what he looks for in founders from an investor’s perspective, and shared his thoughts on how a non-technical founder can still find a path in today’s cut-throat competitive startup world.
 
Observer: When we talk about starting a company from a college dorm room, most people automatically picture a programming wunderkind, someone like Mark Zuckerberg as depicted in The Social Network or your Reddit parter Steve Huffman. But you are a notable exception to this stereotype. What was it like for you to build a tech company when you had no formal training in programming?Ohanian: Most people think the CEO job is all about glamour. But when you are a co-founder in an early-stage company, you are doing a job that is very unglamorous. As a CEO, you have to negotiate cell phone fees, order takeout, run the day-to-day business operations and really do everything you can to support your technical co-founder so he can focus on writing code. In the early days of Reddit, Steve focused on writing codes, and I focused on everything else-from designing our website and the company logo to tending to actual business affairs, talking to customers, going to cafes and getting people to try out our software so we could get some basic user testing.
 
How do these two types of founders think differently? When you presented a product idea to Steve, how did you know if it was actually viable?The good news is that I had enough of a background in coding. I’ve been programming since high school. I was taking classes, even in college. I was just not a great programmer, and I wasn’t planning to be a computer science major in college because I was more interested in history. But I knew enough and was handy enough with Photoshop to create viable product mock-ups. I even did some front-end HTML and CSS. Very basic stuff.
 
It was when it came to the actual engineering of products that the discussion with Steve happened. I had a vision for how things should work, and, of course, we would debate. Design teams always have these debates. Eventually, we would settle on what we could build, and we would get to building it.
 
Actually, I think about this a lot now as an early-stage startup investor. We are often the first check companies [receive]. Today, Instacart and Coinbase are multi-billion-dollar companies that employ thousands of people. But when they started-when we invested-they were just a solo founder with a rough prototype. But that was enough to set the dream in motion and start building a team of experts who can create all the things in your vision.
 
Speaking of investing, your current partner at Initialized Capital, Garry Tan, is also a former engineer. It’s kind of a similar situation to Reddit. How does that difference play out on the VC side?I think our skills are very complimentary, because we both have product backgrounds. You are right, though. Garry is a much more impressive engineer. I’m really lucky this time around. I have a co-founder who is not only a super talented engineer, but also really good at understanding people and human relationships. That is something that makes this job a lot easier, because Garry just has this tremendous ability to quickly understand from a user’s point of view what their needs are and whether they are being satisfied. So, whether we are considering investing in a company or helping a company grow, he always has a very empathic designer mentality at approaching things.
 
What are some of the most important things you look for in a startup pitch?We want to see a founder who we know is not going to quit. We talk about [Initialized Capital’s] honey badger mascot as a symbol for what we are looking for in founders-they have to be really tenacious. In the early days of a company, very few people are going to believe in you. You have to not only have a vision for how the world is going to be, but also be able to take real steps in the short term to get there.
 
Great founders aren’t just bold; they are able to deliver and execute. That is something we really look for. We can see that based on their trajectory: What have they been doing in the years leading up to this meeting? Have they been working in the industry, dealing with real problems? Or have they been busy just shipping codes and launching products? Which is great, too. Whatever they have made of the past is a really good indicator of their goals, as well as their ability to actually act on them.
 
New @InitializedCap mascot: Honeybadger don’t care! Amazing work @alexisohanian pic.twitter.com/puwihZjNd4 – Garry BUIDL Tan (@garrytan) February 13, 2017
 
How important is the actual product proposal compared to the specific sector a startup does business in?We are pretty sector-agnostic. Actually, we want to be so early that a lot of trends don’t exist yet, because trends always happen afterwards. If we go to these pitch meetings with trends in mind, we are already too late. That said, we do want to know that the market opportunity is big enough to build a billion-dollar business. But beyond that, we are really leaving it to the founders to teach us something new-either show us something we had no idea could exist or should exist, or help us think differently about an industry we really thought we knew everything about. If your pitch does one of those two things, you’re probably tackling a good problem.
 
Currently, you are leading an entrepreneur contest in partnership with 1850 Brand Coffee to provide starter funding to promising business ideas. What have you observed in the startup pitches you’ve received so far? Has anything in particular grabbed your attention?What was really interesting to me was that we have seen such a wide range of pitches, from very philanthropic to very commercial to very “societal” projects, meaning that success is going to be measured by total social impact, not necessarily revenue. That was a really nice touch to the whole campaign.
 
I think founders are increasingly thinking about social impact, even if they are doing commercial endeavors. For example, more and more founders have started thinking about what legacy they are going to leave. I think there needs to be more opportunities like this, because we have great ideas and great potential founders everywhere. And I really want to help as many of them as possible spread their bold ideas.
 
What advice do you have for business founders who have liberal arts backgrounds just like you? Where do they start in today’s software-eats-everything world?As a founder with a business and a history degree, I can say that it has gotten easier than ever to test a business idea. Just simply put up a website, a landing page, and direct users to it. You can pretty quickly test a whole idea now faster and cheaper than ever before.
 
Also don’t feel overly protective about your idea. Some founders make the mistake of not wanting to share their bold ideas, because they are worried that someone is going to steal it. But the reality is that almost never happens. And if you want to be successful, you eventually are going to launch that bold idea and someone is going to copy it anyway. That is just a part of doing business, and you just have to keep getting better. So, don’t lock up your bold ideas. Get it in front of as many people as possible as soon as possible.
 
A practical question: In the end, every tech company needs to recruit great engineers. But, if a founder has no expertise in engineering or coding, how does he tell who the great engineers are from the average ones?Right. Game recognize game. It is very hard. The best advice I could give, especially if they are still in school, is to start learning how to code. You can literally get on Codecademy right now for free and start learning. That’s not required, but I highly, highly recommend it. It really is the most useful skill that you could learn right now.
 
And frankly, if you believe in your vision enough, and you are non-technical but want to build something in the world of software, you are going to have to either have someone in your friend network whom you can convince to join you or make the first version by yourself. You can have a development shop build the first prototype for you, but that’s very expensive.
 
What do you think is the biggest advantage for founders with a liberal arts background, if there is one?I think getting training in how to synthesize a broad range of ideas into a cohesive story and then communicate that story is something that my degree really helped me with. The humanities education really prepares you for that in a way other disciplines don’t. The value of critical thinking and communicating is something you use day in and day out. It’s just that that alone is not sufficient to build something.
 
But like I said, there are so many avenues to start picking up that skill and so many building blocks that have already been laid out for you. It really has never been easier to learn how to code. And it is only going to keep getting easier. For an entrepreneur starting up, that’s what I would recommend.

Azerbaijani Press: The OSCE Minsk Group to put Nagorno Karabakh as a side to negotiations – version of Saakyan’s visits

Eduard Nalbandian
Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition Press
November 26, 2018 Monday
The OSCE Minsk Group to put Nagorno Karabakh as a side to negotiations – version of Saakyan’s visits
 
 Contact.az
 
 
In response to the trip of the head of the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, Bako Sahakyan to the United States, France and Russia, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry handed a note to Washington and Paris, and sent an official protest to Moscow. He flew to Moscow on November 24th. What did Saakyan talk about in three capitals? Neither Yerevan nor Khankendi reports, it remains to be assumed, based on recent events in the region. For Baku, Saakyan”s meetings in Moscow are especially important, since it is believed that the keys to the Karabakh settlement are in the hands of V.Putin.
 
RIA “Novosti” puts forward a version of Saakyan”s fear against internal enemies intending to overthrow him before the end of the “presidential term”. Saakyan said that in 2020 he will not run for the post of head of the regime. “… since the presidential and national assembly elections will take place, I, as the current president, will take all the necessary measures within my mandate so that both presidential and parliamentary elections are free, fair and transparent,” said Bako Sahakyan. It was made against the background of the protests that took place in Khankendi since the beginning of June. The participants of the protest action demanded to punish all the perpetrators of the fight with the participation of employees of the Karabakh national security service, as well as to dismiss the head of the police and the National Security Service. The political radicalist Sefilyan, also threatened to come to Nagorno Karabakh (NK) and evict Bako.
 
Bako Sahakyan, who has been ruling the Armenian community of Karabakh for 11 years, got the right to run for a new term in 2020, when the local “presidential elections” are held, according to the new “constitution”.
 
The news agency Regnum interviewed Saakian, in which he did not explain the purpose of the trip to Moscow, but claimed about the danger of resuming the war with Azerbaijan, which had accumulated a lot of weapons. “An important factor is the position of the international community, especially the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries, which have a consolidated approach and constantly declare the unacceptability of any kind of military solution to the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict. Taking into account the strength of the military potential accumulated on both sides, launching a war in such a strategically important region as the South Caucasus, is indeed fraught with unpredictable consequences,” Saakyan said to the chief editor of Regnum M. Kolerov.
 
Therefore, Saakyan could ask Moscow for a double service: to protect against internal enemies and prevent a war with Azerbaijan.
 
Political scientist Elkhan Shainoglu is surprised that Sahakyan visited three countries that are co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group. If the co-chairmen need this to clarify the position of the NK in the negotiation process, then the co-chairs in Yerevan and Khankendi are sufficient for this clarification. Shainoglu warns that behind these trips lie more dangerous threats for Azerbaijan. “By inviting the separatist to Moscow, Washington and Paris, the co-chairmen are trying to put Saakian against Baku in order for Azerbaijan to recognize the separatist as a party to the conflict. Three countries are trying to implement the plan that Yerevan has been promoting for years.
 
“We need to find a way out of the current situation. In fact, the Center for Strategic Studies under the Presidential Administration should deal with this, prepare various scenarios and proposals. But what they have been doing lately, no one but them knows. If they cannot perform such tasks, let, at least they will invite specialists from the outside. But the doors of the Center for third-party experts are closed,” Shainoglu writes.
 
Political analyst Rasim Musabekov linked Sahakyan”s trip to Moscow with the intention of knocking out more money from the Russian-Armenian diaspora during the next All-Armenian Marathon. This year, the Armenians donated to Yerevan, a record lower amount of funds for projects in Nagorno-Karabakh – 11 million 109 thousand dollars.
 
“According to information spread by Armenian media, the “head” of the separatist regime created in the occupied territories of the Azerbaijan Republic arrived in the Russian Federation,” the press service of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said on Saturday evening.
 
The entry permit for a representative of the illegal separatist regime to the territory of the Russian Federation undermines efforts to advance the negotiation process and contradicts Russia’s mediation obligations as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.
 
This step of the Russian side does not correspond to the high level of current relations between Azerbaijan and Russia and contradicts the legal framework of bilateral relations, in particular the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Security between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan, the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan said in a statement.
 
According to this document, “the parties undertake not to support the separatist movements, and also prohibit and suppress the activities of individuals against the state sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the other Party.” “This kind of voyage by the “head” of the illegal regime in the OSCE MG co-chair countries can lead to an unpredictable development of the situation around the conflict. In this case, the entire responsibility will be on the Armenian side, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry”s press service said.
 

The 52nd meeting of PABSEC General Assembly in Yerevan kicks off with scandal: 4 delegations refused to accept organization`s medals

Vanyan Gary
Arminfo, Armenia
Nov 27 2018

ArmInfo. Beginning of the 52nd meeting General Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in Yerevan was marked by a small scandal.

After the welcoming speech of the Chairman of the National Assembly,  Ara Babloyan, the speaker announced that all national delegations  were awarded honorary medals in connection with the 25th anniversary  of the organization. However, immediately four delegations, including  Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia and Ukraine, declared that they were  refusing medals. The head of the Azerbaijani delegation, Eldar  Guliyev, said that he had recently taken this post and therefore he  could not accept this honorable award. “I want to note that this is  in no way connected with politics. On the contrary, we are very well  received in Yerevan, and I am sure that during the next PABSEC  summit, which is likely to be held in Azerbaijan, we will also be  able to welcome the Armenian delegation,” Guliyev said.

The representative of the Georgian delegation, as the head of the  delegation was absent, noted that the latter was refusing a medal,  while asking not to discuss this issue. The head of the delegation of  Turkey declared that he is currently only acting head  and does not  have the honor to accept this medal. Head of the Ukrainian delegation  Chubarov also did not arrive in Armenia, and asked to postpone the  medal award.

Speaker Babloyan noted that the award is given not only, and not so  much to the heads, but to the delegations themselves, who have worked  in the PABSEC for 25 years, to which Secretary General Asaf Hajiyev  stated that it is not worth making tragedy of the issue, stressing  that the head of the Turkish delegation has not yet been approved in  office, noting that those who did not receive the medals in Yerevan  will be able to receive them at meetings in Baku.

At the same time, in an interview with journalists, Babloyan urged  not to politicize this issue, since the PABSEC is not a political  organization. “I think that this issue should not be politicized.  When we discussed this issue with the Secretary General, he noted  that representatives of some delegations believe that we need to give  the medals to those heads of delegations who have long led them. Our  approach was somewhat different. We awarded medals not to the heads  of the delegations themselves, but to all the delegations as a whole,  on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the organization. And Asaf  Hajiyev and I agreed that those who did not receive the medal today  will be able to receive it during the next meetings in the  organization, ” Babloyan said. He also noted that these issues should  not be speculated due to the problems accumulated in the region.

To note, on November 27, the 52nd meeting of the PABSEC General  Assembly started in Yerevan.

Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Armenia Earthquake, December 6 at 7:30 pm in Merdinian

Kanayan Tamar

Friends,

Please attend the commemorative cultural event (Nune Avedisyan-recital and Jora Manoucherian-Piano) and presentation on A Tribute to Those Who Perished, Gyumri: 30 Years of Challenges and Recovery by Gegham Mughnetsyan. onThursday, December 6 at 7:30 pm, in Aram and Anahis D. Boolghoorjian Hall of the Merdinian School: 13330 Riverside Dr. Sherman Oaks, CA 91403 (Please see the announcement below for details).

Please view the video on How Armenia Can Cycle and Scoot Its Way To Prosperity By Terenig Topjian,  in the link: 

Please also view the video on “Armenian-Syriac cultural and literary relations in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia during 12th-14th centuries“, By Onnik Kiremitlian , in the following link: 
GO TO: to donate and/or get more information about ARPA activities.
Please also view the link below and see how you can help ARPA Institute raise more funds. See how you can add to the close to $2000 that have been raised thus far. 
Here is how it works: You can help us by doing some searches on Goodsearch yourself. Just make Goodsearch.com your default search engine and do a few searches a day for ARPA Institute (select ARPA Institute as your cause). If 1000 people do one search per day, we can earn close to $4000 per year. So, please help!

Azerbaijani press: Charge d’affaires: Spain supports peaceful solution of Karabakh conflict based on int’l law

Elizabeth Jabejian
27 November 2018 11:17 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 27

By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:

Spain supports peaceful solution of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the international law, Charge d’affaires ad interim of Spanish embassy in Baku Ignacio Sanchez Taboada told Trend.

“Spain supports the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group and its co-chairs for the solution of the conflict,” he said.

The diplomat noted that Madrid Principles represent the guidelines for solving the conflict and also the stance of Spain regarding to it: pacific solution of the conflict (non-use of force), respect of territorial integrity and international law and right to return for displaced persons.

He went on to add that Spain and Azerbaijan have important ties not only in the bilateral arena but also within the framework of multilateral relations. Spain is a party to the European Union and is very involved in the European Eastern Partnership in which Azerbaijan also participates.

“The Council of Europe and OSCE are of great relevance for Spain as they are also for Azerbaijan, and a great part of our international relations takes place in the framework of these European institutions,” said Taboada.

The diplomat pointed out that Spain and Azerbaijan share the values and principles of the United Nations and have traditionally cooperated within its institutional framework (General Assembly, Security Council, Human Rights Council, etc.).

“We have supported each other very recently to be present in different bodies of many international organizations, like the World Tourism Organizations or the International Telecommunications Union. Azerbaijan and Spain enjoy very healthy political relations. We do not have any contending topic in our bilateral agenda. Not bilateral disputes. We have provided each other mutual support in different international fora. We have a reasonable framework of international agreements which regulates our relations and cooperation, in a great variety of topics: education, sports, science, double taxation, etc.,” he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

—

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn


Azerbaijani press: MFA: Pashinyan’s statement raises doubts about Armenia’s sincerity

Eduard Nalbandian
27 November 2018 17:36 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 27

Trend:

The recent statement by Armenia’s acting prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, repeating the already expressed groundless idea of participation of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the negotiations, even though aimed for internal consumption in the pre-election period, undermines the already fragile settlement process and demonstrates the true intention of Armenia to consolidate the fait accompli situation created as a result of the use of force against Azerbaijan, said Leyla Abdullayeva, the acting spokeswoman of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

Abdullayeva said that if Pashinyan is interested in the settlement of the conflict he would not create obstacles to the negotiations ongoing under the aegis of OSCE Minsk Group, where the direct participants are Armenia and Azerbaijan, as it is clearly determined by the 1992 CSCE (OSCE) Helsinki Ministerial Council decision.

“The controversial and unfounded statements of Armenian acting prime minister are an indicator that he would not go far from his predecessor in “designing the better future” for people of Armenia, and this raises doubts on the sincerity of Armenia in the run-up to the bilateral meeting discussed during the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs’ visit to the region,” Abdullayeva added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.


Azerbaijani press: Armenia’s attempted provocation suppressed in UNESCO Interparliamentary Committee (PHOTO)

Markos Nalchajian
27 November 2018 20:11 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 27

Trend:

Armenia’s attempted provocation was suppressed in the UNESCO Interparliamentary Committee, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture said in a message on Nov. 27.

Azerbaijan’s five-year report “Chovgan – a traditional sporting team game with Karabakh horses” was adopted during the 13th session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in the city of Port Louis, Mauritius.

The report includes the activity carried out in Azerbaijan in connection with the development of the traditional chovgan game, as well as the impossibility of holding this traditional game as a result of occupation of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region by Armenia.

According to the report, the Azerbaijani population, forcibly expelled from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, despite the bitter consequences of the war and aggression, seeks to preserve the chovgan.

Remaining faithful to its unconstructive tradition, during the meeting, the Armenian delegation stood against Azerbaijan and demanded to return the submitted report to the Azerbaijani side.

Discussions were held in connection with this issue and Armenia’s another attempt as always failed again. No committee supported Armenia’s proposals on this issue.

Standing against Armenia’s claim, Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representative to UNESCO Anar Karimov stressed that this report was created by the Ministry of Culture in accordance with international law, the UN Charter and the corresponding UNESCO convention, and the document reflects the opinions and interviews of all the communities playing the chovgan game in Azerbaijan.

Karimov thanked the members of the committee for their constructive position and called on the representative of Armenia not to use his membership in the committee for political purposes.


Turkish press: Major 19th century fire a turning point for Ottoman-US relations

Arbi Tashjian
ERHAN AFYONCU
ISTANBUL
Published23 hours ago

American firefighters try to put out a forest fire out on the mountains.

Relations between the Ottoman Empire and the U.S. began in the late 18th century and eventually embassies and consulates were established in both countries as relations further developed in different areas. While the distance between the two countries was far, a major fire that broke out in the U.S. brought the two countries together. Fatma Ürekli, the head of the History Department at Mimar Sinan University, describes the aid between the two countries based on documents in her book titled “Belgelerle 1889/1894 Afetlerinde Osmanlı-Amerika Yardımlaşmaları” (“Ottoman-American Mutual Assistance, with the documents of 1889/1894 Disasters”).

In 1889, a flood occurred in Johnstown, a settlement in southwest Pennsylvania in the U.S. After heavy rains, a dam collapsed and the city was submerged. More than 1,600 homes were destroyed and more than 5,000 people died. A fire started after the flood which also increased the impact of the disaster. This event was known as the first major disaster the American Red Cross faced.

With the Treaty of Paris, signed on Sept. 3, 1783, Great Britain approved the independence of America.

As this disastrous event unfolded, Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II summoned Oscar Straus, the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and gave him $1,000 to be spent on flood victims. The Ottoman Empire helped the Americans before other states.

Then, a major earthquake occurred in Istanbul in 1894. Many countries sent aid to help with this disaster. France gave the highest amount of aid with $34,900; the second highest was the U.S. with $9,600.

Help for fire victims

The U.S. was struggling against forest fires while collecting aid for the earthquake in Istanbul. The summer of 1894 was quite dry in the U.S. In July 1894, large forest fires around the Pierce and Phillips settlements in the state of Wisconsin started. Some 100,000-decares of forest land and 400 houses were burned. Twenty people died. The town of Phillips, where 2,500 people lived, was completely razed in the fire. The town was later rebuilt and a monument in the memory of the disaster was erected along the Duroy Lake.

In September, a large forest fire broke out in the state of Minnesota. About 200,000 decares of Pine County forests burned along with the towns of Mission Creek, Brook Park, Sandstone, Miller, Partridge, Poke Gama and Hinckley. More than 400 people died. The Ottoman ambassador to Washington sent a telegraph to Istanbul and reported that it would be taken kindly by the American public if the Ottoman Empire sent a benefit of 100 liras to the American fire victims. Meanwhile, aid campaigns in the U.S. were continuing to collect money for the earthquake in the Ottoman Empire. This proposal of our ambassador to Washington was presented to Sultan Abdülhamid II. The sultan kindly accepted the offer and raised the amount of the aid to 300 liras. The aid was delivered to the American fire victims via our ambassador. This Ottoman aid was written about in the American newspaper with the title of “Turkish sultan sends 300 liras to Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

New world, new relationships

After the discovery of America in 1492, the Spanish and the Portuguese colonized South and Central America. The Spanish also dominated the territories of Mexico and the regions where some states of the U.S. are located today. They kept the English away from America for a long time.

However, during the time of Queen Elizabeth in the late 16th century, the English began to colonize America. When they defeated the Spanish Navy in 1588, a path opened for them in America. In England, groups that lost the power struggle went to the continent of America, the New World, and tried their luck. As England gained power, they also dominated the French and Spanish colonies in America. The colonies in America were governed autonomously as long as they paid their taxes and obeyed the king.

In the second half of the 18th century, taxes that the English levied successively and their pedantic perspective led to solidarity between the colonies. The colonies declared America’s independence on July 4, 1776. However, England did not accept this situation. The Americans defeated the English in Yorktown in 1781 and put an end to this, winning a certain victory. With the Treaty of Paris, signed on Sept. 3, 1783, the U.K. approved the independence of America. Relations between the Ottoman Empire and America began shortly after American independence. America started to trade with its own flag in the Mediterranean, paying tax to Algeria, which was an Ottoman state in North Africa at the time.

The American administration tried to sign a treaty with the Ottoman Empire but the Ottoman sultans abstained from such a treaty because they saw it as detrimental to the country. When the Ottoman navy was burned by the U.K., Russia and France in 1827, the Ottoman administration signed a trade and navigation treaty with America in 1830 to bring different alternatives to its foreign policy. However, the Americans did not fulfill their promises for the construction of a battleship and thus the Turks experienced their first disappointment at the beginning of their relationship.

The Ottoman-American relationship, which had been going well for a while, was tense during the period of Abdülhamid II because of American missionary activities and U.S. intervention in the Armenian issue. However, the natural disasters experienced by the two countries were a cause for solidarity between the peoples. When America entered World War I in 1917, the two countries became enemies in the world war.

Verelq: Senor Hasratyan removed his post about Sasun Mikayelyan’s statement

Emil Lazarian
  • 27.11.2018

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  • Armenia:

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  • arm

9
 107

Senor Hasratyan, spokesperson of Artsakh PB, deleted his critical Facebook post addressed to Sasun Mikayelyan.


Senor Hasratyan referred to “My step” yesterday during the campaign of the alliance Sasun Mikayelyan speech, where he stated that the victory of the revolution was more important than the Artsakh liberation war. “We won the Artsakh liberation war thanks to the brave Armenians, and the people should have seen the result of that victory, which the previous authorities did not allow. Our people did not understand the price of victory, the people did not imagine what people put their heads on the altar for. Today, the time has come to move towards a brilliant future with all that,” Mikayelyan said.



Referring to Mikayelyan’s statement, Hasratyan wrote the following on his Facebook page. “When is what a person says ambiguous? When he has nothing to say, but he wants to talk. The proof is the statement made by Sasun Mikayelyan today, or more precisely, the attempt to prioritize or subordinate national phenomena to one another. H. G. Try to give up that “habit”, especially when it comes to the Artsakh heroic struggle built with the blood of thousands of our heroic martyrs.”


The statement of Sasun Mikayelyan was also addressed by the representative of the President of Artsakh, Lieutenant General Arshavir Gharamya, calling on him to “delete “freedom fighter” Sasun Mikayelyan from consciousness.”


In his Facebook post, he wrote the name of Sasun Mikayelyan in alternate letters, calling them former freedom fighters.


“Today, the former freedom fighter, Sasun Mikayelyan made an important “historical” statement in his opinion, putting the victory achieved by the entire Armenian people in the Artsakh liberation war subordinate to the party’s successes in the internal political processes, and said that the blood shed by thousands of Armenians was dishonored.


I appeal to all my fighting and comrades-in-arms friends to erase “freedom fighter” Sasun Mikayelyan from your consciousness,” his post said.


Sasun Mikayelyan the acting prime minister also addressed the sensational statement and its critics Nikol Pashinyan։ 


Sasun Mikayelyan himself felt that he made a not so successful wording and corrected himself, stating that he meant that the popular movement was important in terms of the strength of Artsakh. And now all this noise is incomprehensible. RA Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced this live on his Facebook page, commenting on the opinion expressed by Sasun Mikayelyan in Gyumri today that the revolution that took place was more important than the Artsakh liberation war.


“Now I remember two similar statements, when I said that I will not let some people ensure their personal well-being on the soldier’s clothes, food, and accessories. I am surprised that people who have participated in the looting of the army for years, sat down with those who stole the soldiers’ share and got up, now they want to collect achoks for a wrong wording,” said Pashinyan.