Armenia Fund, Inc.
111 North Jackson St. Ste. 205
Glendale, CA 91206
Tel: 818-243-6222
Fax: 818-243-7222
Url:

PRESS RELEASE
Contact ~ Sarkis Kotanjian
[email protected]

UCLA vs. USC: Collegiate Rivalry Boosts Telethon Fundraising

Los Angeles, CA – During Armenia Fund’s 9th international Telethon 2006,
the rivalry between UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans, ironically helped fuel
fundraising efforts during the last hours of the program. Celebrity
attorney Mark Geragos challenged Bruins and Trojans during the program,
ahead of this Saturday’s game, to beat each other in the total amount
pledged for Armenia Fund. Immediately following the on air live
challenge, the studio was flooded with phone calls from students
pledging anywhere from $20 to $500.

The rivalry between the two campuses was even evident at the studio.
Hundreds of volunteers answering phone calls also happened to be UCLA
and USC students. Even phone bankers were pledging amounts on their
behalf and paying on the spot. UCLA Bruins had high hopes of surpassing
their Trojan brothers and sisters, except when one USC alumnus called in
and paid $10,000 with a confirmed credit card and challenged UCLA
students to beat the amount.

Although the telethon is over, the challenge continues ahead of this
Saturday’s football game. Armenia Fund would like to express its sincere
gratitude to the students of UCLA, USC and other local campuses for not
only bringing their sharp collegiate differences during the telethon,
but also volunteering their time for a worthy cause.

Armenia Fund continues to accept donations via its online secure portal
at The challenge continues ahead of this Saturday’s
game. Armenia Fund will announce final results on Monday.

Armenia Fund, Inc., is a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation
established in 1994 to facilitate large-scale humanitarian and
infrastructure development assistance to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.
Since 1991, Armenia Fund has rendered more than $160 million in
development aid to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Armenia Fund, Inc. is
the U.S. Western Region affiliate of "Hayastan" All-Armenian Fund. Tax
ID# 95-4485698

BBC names global talent finalists

A Liberian refugee and a six-piece Brazilian rock
group are among the finalists in the BBC World
Service’s search for the world’s best young band.

More than 1,000 artists, all aged 18 or under, entered
the Next Big Thing competition in September.

The seven finalists are expected to fly into the UK
next week to perform at the BBC’s famous Maida Vale
studios.

A winner will be chosen by a panel of music industry
experts, including Cathy Dennis and William Orbit.

The competition was open to groups and solo artists in
any genre of music, as long as they were under 18 and
performed their own songs.

High standards

Producer Simon Pitts said the entries came from 36
countries, "from Armenia to Azerbaijan and from
Uruguay to Ukraine".

"People have been very surprised at the quality of the
entries," he said, "but we weren’t, because we had
faith in the idea from the beginning".

THE FINALISTS
Silva (Armenia)
Sweet Cherry Fury (Brazil)
MLK and The Dreamers (USA)
The Skagz (UK)
NiC (Malawi)
Mishkini (Ghana)
Stefan Abingdon (UK)

The standard of the submitted tracks was so high that
the panel who drew up the shortlist could not decide
on the required six finalists – and chose seven
instead.

They include 17-year-old Armenian pop singer Silva
Hakobyan, and Malawian rapper NiC, who performs in
Greek and English.

Londoner Stefan Abingdon, whose hip-hop track My Dunks
has also made the shortlist, said he was "really
excited" to have been chosen.

"I’ve been trying to set up my music for the past four
years and it’s starting to get somewhere now," he
said.

The 17-year-old will be travelling to Maida Vale for
the final of the competition, but producers say some
of his competitors may not be able to complete the
journey.

"We have an act in Ghana, Mishkini, who is a Liberian
refugee," said Pitts.

"He didn’t have a birth certificate or a passport this
time last week. He’s now trying to get hold of them,
as well as a visa."

The BBC is working with British embassies to help
artists arrange travel to the UK in time for next
week’s recording.

Celebrity judges

The Maida Vale session takes place on 6 December, and
the judges will announce the winner when the programme
is broadcast on 9 December.

The panel includes William Orbit, who has produced hit
singles for Madonna and All Saints, and Cathy Dennis,
who wrote Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My
Head.

Other members of the jury are Geoff Travis, who set up
the influential Rough Trade record label, and
Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Angelique Kidjo,
from Benin.

Peter Gabriel will also appear as a special guest,
giving his verdict on the final seven acts.

The winner receives a trophy proclaiming them the
world’s best young band.

"It’s a massive opportunity for international
exposure," said Pitts. "The chances are great that 163
million people will hear the track and know the
artist’s name."

The Next Big Thing is part of the BBC World Service’s
Generation Next season, which focuses on young people
and how they approach relationships, education and
work.

It is hoped that the competition will become a regular
event.
Story from BBC NEWS:
ainment/6191276.stm

Published: 2006/11/29 10:02:05 GMT

© BBC MMVI

LA Times Valley Edition | Glendale News Press | November 18, 2006

FROM THE MARGINS

Borat for City Council… Not!

By PATRICK AZADIAN

I had promised myself not to see the movie "Borat!" but I’d had a hard
day, and there’s no better cure for life’s complications than a
mindless movie.

Secretly, I was also curious to see how the Armenian male population of
Glendale would react to the movie. Would they laugh out loud with Borat
(Sasha Baron Cohen), or would they be laughing at him? Would they think
the joke was really on them? What kind of reception would Borat’s
sidekick, the Armenian-speaking Azamat (Kenneth Davitian), receive from
the audience? I was intrigued.

"Borat!" didn’t turn out to be so mindless. The movie actually had a
quasi-noble message, delivered in an unconventional manner.

The formula for the delivery of the message was somewhat twisted,
however. Reverse psychology is probably a good way to describe it.

The movie’s initial objective was to build up Borat as a despicable
character. Once that was achieved, then follow-up with the attribution
of evil ideas to the same character. Hopefully, by the end of the
movie, the audience would be ready to reject evil.

The first step in making Borat undesirable was to pick him an
undesirable birthplace. In today’s political climate, it does not take
a social scientist to know where that location would be.

The destination is the Middle East, of course. Borat is supposed to be
from Kazakhstan. Never mind that this post-Soviet state is not in the
Middle East (it is in Central Asia); the movie relies on the ignorance
of the audience. Any country name ending with "stan" (signifying
territory or state in Persian) is perceived to be in the Middle East.
Kazakhstan turns out to be the perfect choice, considering it is one of
the most secular states in the region, with a relatively tame
population. Borat probably saves his neck from a religious death
sentence by picking on Kazakhstan (as opposed to Pakistan or
Afghanistan). Details don’t matter in "Borat!" the character is from
‘Middle-Eastan.’

Once the birthplace is set, the movie quickly reveals Borat’s other
enviable qualities. In addition to his lack of hygiene, heavy accent,
ridiculous outfits and homosexual tendencies, Borat treats his wife
like an ox. He also has a very unique relationship with his degenerate
sister. In its completed form, Borat is a despicable caricature that
loves big-bosomed blond American woman (he is a more menacing version
of the ‘Czechoslovakian Brothers’ from the show Saturday Night Live
back in the days of Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin). Last but not least,
Borat possesses dark hair and a thick mustache. As a Southern rodeo
cowboy observes in the movie: "Borat, shave that mustache, you look
like a terrorist."

So the stage is set for noble messages, delivered in a twisted fashion.
This particular loser is anti-Semitic, thinks women are inferior to
men, hates homosexuals and gypsies and believes physically and mentally
challenged individuals have no place in society.

By hating Borat, the audience is supposed to embrace the fight against
these evil ideas.

Nevertheless, Borat can be from anywhere. =46rom the western tip of
Portugal to the highlands of Afghanistan, and from the southern shores
of Sicily to the suburbs of Paris, the world is full of men with
Borat’s physical characteristics. In the process of making a cool
bundle and pretending to advance noble ideas, "Borat" manages to
insult, oh… about 300 million people (I am just counting the sum of
the population of countries whose names ends with ‘stan.’ I left out
Hindustan, otherwise the fatality count would go up by another
billion).

In a questionable attempt to fight evil, "Borat!" successfully manages
to demonize people by bestowing symbolic horns and tails upon them.
Dehumanizing a whole group of people is not a new concept; it clears
the conscience when someone decides to bomb them into oblivion.

And here in the streets of Glendale, dark-haired men in dark mustaches
and grey suits can be thankful to "Borat" for his contribution to
stereotyping them as Neanderthals. My guess is many of them will never
know the joke was really on them. And that’s good; ignorance can be
bliss.

A decade or two from now, when and if there is peace in the Middle East
and our troops have already come home, we’ll view this movie in a
different light.

Meanwhile, I invite Borat to marry a blond American woman, get his
American citizenship and run for City Council. And maybe Azamat can run
for the School Board… Not!

Refusal to acknowledge Armenian genocide
For the Turkish state, and many Turks, to admit their forebears committed
genocide is something they will not even consider
BY MATTHEW MCALLESTER
Newsday Staff Correspondent

November 29, 2006, 3:13 PM EST

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Mesrob II, the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul and all
Turkey, was silent for a second.

He had just been asked by a reporter if he acknowledged that the Armenian
genocide happened.

"Uhhhh," he said, "I acknowledge that people were killed." He was silent
again. "Many people lost their lives."

More uneasy silence followed.

This from a man whose paternal grandfather was the only one of six ethnic
Armenian brothers to make it back to Istanbul after being, as he put it,
"deported to the Syrian desert" in 1915. They were among more than a million
ethnic Armenians who suffered a similar fate at the hands of Ottoman Turks:
They were rounded up, deported to concentration camps and, for the most
part, killed.

"So severe has been the treatment that careful estimates place the number of
survivors at only 15 percent of those originally deported," the U.S. consul
in Aleppo wrote to the State Department in 1915 in a dispatch quoted in a
recent article in The New Yorker magazine. "On this basis the number
surviving even this far being less than 150,000 . there seems to have been
about 1,000,000 persons lost up to this date."

What Mesrob II, who will meet the visiting Pope Benedict XVI today in
Istanbul, could not or would not say was that the Turks of the then-Ottoman
Empire committed genocide against the Armenians who lived in modern-day
Turkey. For the Turkish state, and many Turks, to admit their forebears
committed genocide is something they will not even consider, and it makes
many Turks extremely angry even to suggest the genocide happened.

Authors and journalists, including Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk,
have been prosecuted for suggesting it took place. But for the 65,000 ethnic
Armenians — mostly Orthodox Christians — who live in this country of 70
million Muslims, to speak publicly of genocide would not be just brave, but
potentially suicidal.

"Probably the state wouldn’t do anything directly except make some
statement" if Mesrob was to say there had been a genocide, said Murat Belge,
one of Pamuk’s publishers and an organizer of an unprecedented conference
last year in Istanbul about the genocide.

"Very likely he would be assassinated by some fascists," continued Belge,
who was himself prosecuted under a controversial law last year for writing
critical articles about a court’s ban on the conference. "The Patriarchate
would be burned down. A lot of Armenians would be shot in their daily
lives."

Mesrob, in an interview at the well-guarded Armenian Patriarchate in
Istanbul, said many different peoples, governments, political parties and
even his own Armenian Patriarchate should share the blame for what happened
in 1915. He said he believed the best way for Turks and Armenians to
reconcile is for Turkey to open its border with Armenia and for the two
countries to encourage exchange visits and other ways of generating mutual
sympathy.

"It’s not a matter of being silent about the issue," he said. "It’s a matter
of how can you make friends with someone. Do you from the first moment
simply confront the person?"

If it’s not silence, then it’s a pragmatic sort of self-censorship. Growing
up, Mesrob’s father never talked to him about what happened to the previous
generation, he said. "I think they didn’t want us to be at odds with our
Muslim neighbors."

That parenting method continues today among the ethnic Armenians in Turkey,
Mesrob said. "We don’t tell our children about historical problems so they
won’t face problems."

The Turkish government’s position on the events of 1915 is that the people
who died in the region at the time died as a result of inter-ethnic
fighting, disease and hardships caused by war.

More than 20 countries have officially recognized the genocide, as have a
majority of the 50 states in the United States, including New York. It is
long-standing State Department policy not to refer to the events of 1915 as
genocide; many critics of this policy see it as a politically expedient way
of avoiding alienating a crucial American ally.

Most Western historians agree the genocide happened. Last year, the
International Association of Genocide Scholars wrote to Turkey’s prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, about it, concluding: "We believe that it is
clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud
and equal participant in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge
the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian
people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of
the Holocaust."

Such an acknowledgement will not come easily or quickly — if at all.

"Until the 1980s there was a total loss of memory," said a Turkish political
powerbroker who requested anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity.
"Nobody talked about this. It was the policy of the omnipotent state not to
talk about anything negative."

Last year’s conference in Istanbul and a growing concern about the issue
within Europe — a recent French law makes it a crime to deny the genocide
happened — have moved Turkey slightly closer to coming to terms with its
past.

"The skeletons are there and they have not vanished," the Turkish
powerbroker said. "Now we are going to open the cupboard."

If Turkey is to gain entry to the European Union, it likely will have to
acknowledge its actions in 1915 — although Turkey accepting the word
"genocide" could forever remain a sticking point.

Egemen Bagis, foreign policy adviser to Erdogan, said in an interview that
last year Erdogan made an offer to the Armenian president: Both countries
would establish an independent investigative commission and open up all
countries’ archives in order to establish what happened.

"No other politician in Turkey’s history has ever said he is ready to face
his own history," Bagis said.

But when asked if he recognized that a genocide took place, Bagis responded
quickly: "I don’t."

nd-genocide_b_35126.html

The Huffington Post
RJ ESKOW

‘Screamers’ and Genocide: A Talk With Serj Tankian From System of a Down
11.29.2006

‘Screamers,’ a documentary by Carla Garapedian, just won the Audience
Award at the AFI Film Festival. It uses archival footage, interviews,
and live music to reflect on the Armenian genocide, its aftermath, and
the effect that later denials of the atrocity had on history.

‘Screamers’ examines efforts to have the Armenian genocide
internationally recognized, and ties it to other genocides, past and
present – particularly Darfur. It’s a powerful document, both
politically and artistically.

The film centers around the highly popular Armenian-American rock band
System of a Down and its lead singer, Serj Tankian, as they tour
Europe and discuss the issues of Armenia, genocide, and human rights.

Last week I spoke with Serj about the film and his own political work.
Serj cofounded Axis of Justice with Rage Against the
Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, to mobilize musicians and
music fans around progressive issues.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

What politicized you? As an Armenian-American, was it your family’s
memories of the Armenian genocide?

It was the denial of genocide, more than the genocide itself, that
politicized me. I was troubled by the idea that this kind of violence
could occur, only to be ignored or covered up. It made me feel I had
to act and react. There are so many things going on in the world today
that are receiving the same treatment – including, but not limited to
Darfur and Rwanda.

In a way, the hypocrisy of the denial is more politicizing than the
act itself. I think that the memory of Armenia’s genocide opened my
eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

What’s your definition of "genocide"? The diplomatic community has
one, but does the word have a more personal meaning for you?

My thing is figuring out how to put things in a simple way, so here’s
my definition: If someone gets attacked because they look different,
act different, or pray differently, that’s genocide. And if the mass
execution of a people is organized and perpetrated by a government,
that’s definitely genocide.

But anytime people are made to suffer as a group because they’re
different from others – to me, that’s genocide too.

____________

A lot of political leaders, even well-meaning ones, might say that
forcing Turkey to acnowledge the Armenian genocide would limit our
ability to fight terror or do other good things in the world. What
would you say to someone who argues that the genocide took place
almost a century ago, and that they’d rather concentrate on what we
can do today?

Look: Correct recognition of the past affects the present. It’s as
simple as that. If we’re at the point where we’re going to use
genocide as currency to get something we want from another nation
… well, we’re really fucked, aren’t we?

Let me put it another way: You can’t do the wrong thing for the right
reason. It won’t work. It never has.

____________

The movie shows your efforts to get Denny Hastert to advance a
resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. The film’s equally rough
on the first Bush administration and Clinton’s over this issue. Do you
think the resolution will do any better now that the Democrats control
Congress?;

You mean, are they real reformers or just "corporate Democrats"? We’ll
see. So far everybody’s enjoying the general feeling of optimism, but
Congress hasn’t even convened yet. Nobody’s really "in" over there
right now.

____________

What do you say when people complain about musicians and other
celebrities who speak out about politics?

I agree with them, in a way. What do musicians know that other people
don’t? Nothing. Plumbers can speak. Electricians can speak. Everyone
can speak. They should speak.

Lech Walesa was an electrician, and he became the leader of Poland.

Exactly. Good for him. I don’t want to spend all my time working as an
activist. I don’t get satisfaction out of it. I’d rather be doing
something else. I’m a musician.

I’ve noticed something about people who say they don’t like actors and
musicians having political opinions, if you ask them who they think
was the greatest President eve,r they always answer "Reagan." And what
was Reagan before he went into politics?

(laughs) Exactly. If anybody wants to speak up, they should speak
up. I don’t want to be a politician …

____________

Serj discusses other topics, including the balancing act between music
& politics and how it felt to become the target of jingoistic attacks
after 9/11, here. "Screamers" opens in Los Angeles on December 8.

LINKS:

http://w ww.axisofjustice.org
http://axisfeature.sparkart.n et/radio.html

Weekend Edition
October 14-15, 2006
"Suddenly, Those Armenian Graves Opened Up Before My Own Eyes"
Confronting Turkey’s Armenian Genocide

By ROBERT FISK

This has been a bad week for Holocaust deniers. I’m talking about
those who wilfully lie about the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million Armenian
Christians by the Ottoman Turks. On Thursday, France’s lower house of
parliament approved a Bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians
suffered genocide. And, within an hour, Turkey’s most celebrated
writer, Orhan Pamuk–only recently cleared by a Turkish court for
insulting "Turkishness" (sic) by telling a Swiss newspaper that nobody
in Turkey dared mention the Arm! enian massacres–won the Nobel Prize
for Literature. In the mass graves below the deserts of Syria and
beneath the soil of southern Turkey, a few souls may have been
comforted.

While Turkey continues to blather on about its innocence–the
systematic killing of hundreds of thousands of male Armenians and of
their gang-raped women is supposed to be the sad result of "civil
war"–Armenian historians such as Vahakn Dadrian continue to unearth
new evidence of the premeditated Holocaust (and, yes, it will deserve
its capital H since it was the direct precursor of the Jewish
Holocaust, some of whose Nazi architects were in Turkey in 1915) with
all the energy of a gravedigger.

Armenian victims were killed with daggers, swords, hammers and axes to
save ammunition. Massive drowning operations were carried out in the
Black Sea and the Euphrates rivers–mostly of women and children, so
many that the Euphrates became clogged with corpses and changed its
course for up ! to half a mile. But Dadrian, who speaks and reads
Turkish fluently, ha s now discovered that tens of thousands of
Armenians were also burned alive in haylofts.

He has produced an affidavit to the Turkish court martial that briefly
pursued the Turkish mass murderers after the First World War, a
document written by General Mehmet Vehip Pasha, commander of the
Turkish Third Army. He testified that, when he visited the Armenian
village of Chourig (it means "little water" in Armenian), he found all
the houses packed with burned human skeletons, so tightly packed that
all were standing upright. "In all the history of Islam," General
Vehip wrote, "it is not possible to find any parallel to such
savagery."

The Armenian Holocaust, now so "unmentionable" in Turkey, was no
secret to the country’s population in 1918. Millions of Muslim Turks
had witnessed the mass deportation of Armenians three years earlier–a
few, with infinite courage, protected Armenian neighbours and friends
at the risk of the lives of their own Muslim families–and, o! n 19
October 1918, Ahmed Riza, the elected president of the Turkish senate
and a former supporter of the Young Turk leaders who committed the
genocide, stated in his inaugural speech: "Let’s face it, we Turks
savagely (vahshiane in Turkish) killed off the Armenians."

Dadrian has detailed how two parallel sets of orders were issued,
Nazi-style, by Turkish interior minister Talat Pasha. One set
solicitously ordered the provision of bread, olives and protection for
Armenian deportees but a parallel set instructed Turkish officials to
"proceed with your mission" as soon as the deportee convoys were far
enough away from population centres for there to be few witnesses to
murder. As Turkish senator Reshid Akif Pasha testified on 19 November
1918: "The ‘mission’ in the circular was: to attack the convoys and
massacre the population… I am ashamed as a Muslim, I am ashamed as
an Ottoman statesman. What a stain on the reputation of the Ottoman
Empire, these criminal people..! ."

How extraordinary that Turkish dignitaries could speak such truths in
1918, could fully admit in their own parliament to the genocide of the
Armenians and could read editorials in Turkish newspapers of the great
crimes committed against this Christian people. Yet how much more
extraordinary that their successors today maintain that all of this is
a myth, that anyone who says in present-day Istanbul what the men of
1918 admitted can find themselves facing prosecution under the
notorious Law 301 for "defaming" Turkey.

I’m not sure that Holocaust deniers–of the anti-Armenian or
anti-Semitic variety–should be taken to court for their
rantings. David Irving is a particularly unpleasant "martyr" for
freedom of speech and I am not at all certain that Bernard Lewis’s
one-franc fine by a French court for denying the Armenian genocide in
a November 1993 Le Monde article did anything more than give publicity
to an elderly historian whose work deteriorates with the years.

But it’s gratifying to find French President Jacques Chi! rac and his
interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy have both announced that Turkey will
have to recognise the Armenian death as genocide before it is allowed
to join the European Union. True, France has a powerful
half-million-strong Armenian community.

But, typically, no such courage has been demonstrated by Lord Blair of
Kut al-Amara, nor by the EU itself, which gutlessly and childishly
commented that the new French Bill, if passed by the senate in Paris,
will "prohibit dialogue" which is necessary for reconciliation between
Turkey and modern-day Armenia. What is the subtext of this, I
wonder. No more talk of the Jewish Holocaust lest we hinder
"reconciliation" between Germany and the Jews of Europe?

But, suddenly, last week, those Armenian mass graves opened up before
my own eyes. Next month, my Turkish publishers are producing my book,
The Great War for Civilisation, in the Turkish language, complete with
its long chapter on the Armenian genocide entitled "The ! First
Holocaust". On Thursday, I received a fax from Agora Books in Is
tanbul. Their lawyers, it said, believed it "very likely that they
will be sued under Law 301"–which forbids the defaming of Turkey and
which right-wing lawyers tried to use against Pamuk–but that, as a
foreigner, I would be "out of reach". However, if I wished, I could
apply to the court to be included in any Turkish trial.

Personally, I doubt if the Holocaust deniers of Turkey will dare to
touch us. But, if they try, it will be an honour to stand in the dock
with my Turkish publishers, to denounce a genocide which even Mustafa
Kamel Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, condemned.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s collection, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk’s new book is The Conquest of the
Middle East.

RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
_________________________________________ ____________________
RFE/RL Iran Report
Vol. 9, No. 44, 29 November 2006

A Review of Developments in Iran Prepared by the Regional Specialists
of RFE/RL’s Newsline Team

******************************************** ****************
HEADLINES
* IRAN WILL PROCEED WITH HEAVY-WATER REACTOR
* ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT VISITS IRAN
* IRAQI’S VISIT TO TEHRAN POSTPONED
* TEHRAN DECRIES REFUGEE PRESENCE
* LABOR LEADER DETAINED IN TEHRAN
* KURDS IN TEHRAN BARRED FROM CONGREGATIONAL PRAYERS
* STUDENT KILLED IN FRONT OF FIANCEE
* COMMEMORATION FOR SLAIN DISSIDENTS BANNED
* SENIOR CLERIC DIES
* JOURNALISTS DETAINED AT MEHRABAD AIRPORT
* PORNOGRAPHERS FACE DEATH IN IRAN
* DEBATE SHARPENS OVER GENDER SEGREGATION
* IRAN SOCCER SUSPENDED FOR ‘GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE’
************************************ ************************

IRAN WILL PROCEED WITH HEAVY-WATER REACTOR. U.S. Ambassador Gregory
Schulte said in Vienna on November 23 that Iran’s request for
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assistance in completing
its heavy water reactor in Arak, a city south of Tehran, was waived,
RFE/RL reported. "The removal of Arak — an action taken by consensus
— reflects the [IAEA] board’s continued concern about the nature
of Iran’s nuclear program and the intentions of its leadership.
Heavy water reactors are well suited to producing significant
quantities of plutonium, a key ingredient in building nuclear
weapons."
Adding that the 40 megawatt reactor could produce enough
plutonium annually to make two nuclear bombs, Schulte called for
United Nations sanctions against Iran. "The time has now come to back
international diplomacy with international sanctions. Meaningful
measures are needed to convince Iran’s leaders to make the right
choice — a choice for constructive engagement over continued
confrontation, a choice for serious negotiation over repeated
noncompliance."
IAEA Director-General Muhammad el-Baradei, furthermore,
encouraged Iran to be more cooperative with the nuclear watchdog.
The U.S. and many other countries suspect that Iran is trying
to develop nuclear weapons, a charge that Iran rejects. The Iranian
government claims its nuclear program has only peaceful applications,
such as medicine and energy production.
Developing countries feared that rejection of the Iranian
request would set a precedent that would retard their nuclear
programs, "The Washington Post" reported on November 20. According to
"The Washington Post," the IAEA does not have a legal basis for
denying Tehran’s request.
The IAEA governing board will not consider assisting the Arak
project for two more years. Ali Asqar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to
the IAEA, tried to portray the IAEA governing board’s decision as
a victory, saying on November 23 that the U.S. failed to prevent
Iran’s submission of a request for assistance, Iranian state
television reported. Soltanieh said Iran’s request was backed by
the non-aligned countries, the Group of 77, China, and Russia.
Soltanieh continued, "this is a proof that the Islamic Republic is
right and that the Islamic Republic’s programs are peaceful and
there is no legal logic in preventing the Islamic Republic from going
ahead with its nuclear activities."
Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki had a different take on
events, telling reporters in Tehran on November 23, "Tehran did not
ask the IAEA for any assistance in the Arak Project," the Islamic
Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. Mottaki said Iran would
"appreciate" IAEA help, but if it is not forthcoming, "we will do it
on our own."
Soltanieh effectively said the same thing on November 21. He
said Iran intends to build a heavy-water reactor at Arak regardless
of the level of assistance from the nuclear watchdog, state radio
reported. "Even if the IAEA rejects Iran’s request for
technological assistance, the project to complete the reactor will
not stop," Soltanieh said.
President Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is continuing his defiant
stand and promoting the country’s nuclear pursuits. He said on
November 20 in Tehran that the Islamic republic intends to build
60,000 uranium centrifuges by March 21, the Iranian Students News
Agency (ISNA) reported. This step is necessary to meet the
country’s nuclear-fuel requirements, he said. (Bill Samii)

ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT VISITS IRAN. Robert Mugabe, the president of
Zimbabwe, arrived in Tehran on November 20 for a four-day visit,
Radio Farda reported.
Zimbabwe is currently experiencing hyperinflation and has
massive food shortages in some parts of the country. The 82-year-old
Mugabe — whom South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called a
"caricature of an African dictator" — has ruled since 1980. The
African Union’s Executive Council has criticized Mugabe’s
government for the arrest and torture of opposition members of
parliament and human rights lawyers, arresting journalists, the
preventing freedom of expression while stifling other civil
liberties. Mugabe and many members of his government are banned from
traveling to the European Union.
Mugabe and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad discussed political
and economic cooperation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used a meeting with
Mugabe on November 21 to denounce alleged Western efforts to dominate
other countries, IRNA reported. "However, it is witnessed that the
resistance of world nations and independent countries can lead to
constant failure of the world arrogance — particularly the U.S. —
in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and other regions,"
Khamenei said. He also praised the confiscation of white farmers’
land in Zimbabwe.
Iranian Energy Minister Parviz Fattah said in the November 23
edition of Harare’s "The Financial Gazette" that, in a meeting
with his counterpart, Mike Nyambuya, the Islamic Republic was asked
to build a 1,600 megawatt power station on the Zambezi River. There
also are plans to build a 600 megawatt thermal power plant, to
conduct a feasibility study for an oil refinery, and to erect a
hospital. Iran will accept minerals as payment, the newspaper
reported.
Mugabe, his wife Grace, and Zimbabwean officials returned to
Harare on November 23, ZBC Radio Zimbabwe reported. (Pete
Baumgartner, Bill Samii)

IRAQI’S VISIT TO TEHRAN POSTPONED. Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani, who was scheduled to arrive in Iran on November 26, has
postponed his visit because of a curfew in Baghdad and the
airport’s closure, Reuters reported. Tehran had invited Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad to join Talabani and President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad for a trilateral summit, Reuters reported on November 21.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said on November 20
that such an event would be welcome because Iraq should have good
relations with all its neighbors, RFE/RL reported. "While there have
been positive statements from the Iranian government about wishing to
a play a positive role in Iraq, those statements haven’t been
backed up by actions," Casey said. "And so very much what we’d
like to see the Iranian government do is desist, first and foremost,
from negative actions it’s taken in Iraq." (Bill Samii)

TEHRAN DECRIES REFUGEE PRESENCE. Deputy Interior Minister and Bureau
for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs chief Ahmad Husseini said
in the West Azerbaijan Province city of Urumiyeh on November 20 that
more than 1 million Afghans reside in Iran illegally, IRNA reported.
Husseini said 950,000 Afghans and 60,000 Iraqis are documented
residents. Some 250,000 Afghans were arrested this year as they tried
to enter the country illegally, he added, while 10,000 Afghans,
Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis were arrested as they tried to leave
Iran and illegally enter Turkey. Afghans resist leaving, he said,
because of violence, poverty, and unemployment in their home country.
On October 31, a labor organization official said in Isfahan
Province that 238,000 people are unemployed there, provincial
television reported. He said the problem could be resolved by getting
rid of foreign workers who do not have permits. A law enforcement
official in the governor-general’s office urged employers to
reconsider hiring Afghans over Iranians.
In Geneva in October, Iranian Interior Minister Hojatoleslam
Mustafa Pur-Mohammadi expressed concern that Afghans are not
returning home as rapidly as desired (see "RFE/RL Iran Report,"
October 17, 2006). (Bill Samii)

LABOR LEADER DETAINED IN TEHRAN. Mansur Osanlu, head of the Tehran
bus drivers syndicate, was detained by plainclothes security
personnel on November 19, ISNA and the Iranian Labor News Agency
(ILNA) reported. Ebrahim Madadi, deputy head of the syndicate, told
Radio Farda that he was with Osanlu when they stopped to buy a
newspaper at around 9 a.m. Intelligence and Security Ministry
personnel detained Osanlu, according to Madadi, and one of them
pulled out a handgun when Osanlu’s companions objected. Madadi
said the security officer fired his weapon into the air to get the
crowd to disperse. Madadi added that Osanlu had received a summons
the previous day to appear in court on November 20. Osanlu was
arrested in December 2005 and held for approximately eight months
(see "RFE/RL Iran Report," January 9, 2006). (Bill Samii)

KURDS IN TEHRAN BARRED FROM CONGREGATIONAL PRAYERS. Jalal
Jalalizadeh, who represented the predominantly Kurdish city of
Sanandaj in the Iranian parliament from 2000 to 2004, said on
November 19 that Sunni Muslims in Tehran have not been allowed to
hold congregational prayers for two weeks, ILNA reported. Jalalizadeh
noted the absence of a Sunni mosque in Tehran and explained that
Sunnis therefore gathered at the Pakistani Embassy’s school.
"But, as of two weeks ago, as a result of the pressures exerted on
the embassy, they closed the school and moved it elsewhere, where it
is not possible to hold the prayers," Jalalizadeh said. Given the
lack of options, Sunnis gathered in Mellat Park to pray on November
17. Police and plainclothes agents broke up the crowd. Some 9 percent
of Iran’s population is Sunni, while 89 percent is Shi’a.
Shi’a Islam is the state religion. (Bill Samii)

STUDENT KILLED IN FRONT OF FIANCEE. Students gathered outside the
Teachers Training College in the city of Sabzevar on November 19 to
protest the reported killing of a student the previous day, ILNA
reported. Tohid Ghafarzadeh, a student at the city’s Islamic Azad
University, was stabbed to death by a member of the student Basij at
the Teachers Training College on November 18, Radio Farda reported.
Mustafa Sedaqatju, a former member of the student union, told
Radio Farda that this was not a political incident. Ghafarzadeh was
standing in front of the Teachers Training College talking to his
fiancee when the Basij member inquired about their relationship. The
two argued and Ghafarzadeh was killed.
Sedaqatju noted that the authorities have done nothing about
this incident and have remained silent, but they have been very
critical about an event at the University of California-Los Angeles
earlier in the week. In that incident, 23-year-old Iranian-American
Mustafa Tabatabainejad was tasered by police when he refused to
provide his identification or leave the library, the "Daily Bruin"
reported on November 15. A bystander videotaped Tabatabainejad
accusing the police of abusing their authority while he resisted
them. (Bill Samii)

COMMEMORATION FOR SLAIN DISSIDENTS BANNED. The children of two
Iranian dissidents who were murdered eight years ago invited their
compatriots to commemorate the anniversary of the killings, Radio
Farda reported on November 20, citing ISNA and ILNA. Parastu and Arsh
Foruhar, the daughter and son, respectively, of Hezb-i Mellat-i Iran
leaders Dariush and Parvaneh Foruhar, said the event will take place
on November 22.
The Foruhars — as well as poet Mohammad Mokhtari and
writer-translator Mohammad Jafar Puyandeh — were allegedly killed by
so-called "rogue elements" in the Ministry of Intelligence and
Security. The reputed ringleader of the crimes reportedly committed
suicide before his trial, and the killers were sentenced in January
2001 after a trial that failed to establish who actually ordered the
murders.
In August 2001, the Supreme Court reduced the original death
sentences to served time, and in January 2003 those sentences were
reduced again (see "RFE/RL Iran Report," January 29 and August 27,
2001, and February 3, 2003). Parastu Foruhar said the authorities
have yet to respond to their request for a permit to hold a public
gathering, so the event will take place at their home.
On the day the commemoration was scheduled to take place, the
authorities prevented any sort of gathering. Parastu Foruhar said,
"Since this morning, law enforcement personnel have closed off the
two ends of the street on which the Foruhar house is located and they
are even preventing the entry of close relatives," ISNA reported.
(Bill Samii)

SENIOR CLERIC DIES. Grand Ayatollah Mirza Javad Tabrizi has died in
Qom, Fars News Agency reported on November 21. The funeral procession
took place in Qom on November 22. The Iranian government declared a
day of national mourning for Tabrizi, who was in his early 80s. (Bill
Samii)

JOURNALISTS DETAINED AT MEHRABAD AIRPORT. The Iranian
journalists’ guild on November 21 denounced the detention of
correspondents who had just arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport
after undergoing training in Holland, Radio Farda reported. The
journalists were interrogated for several hours. A hard-line
newspaper, "Siyasat-i Ruz," earlier denounced the journalists, and
the Aftab website argued that the timing of the arrests signals a new
wave of media repression. (Bill Samii)

PORNOGRAPHERS FACE DEATH IN IRAN. Tehran prosecutor and press-court
Judge Said Mortazavi warned on November 21 that producers of
pornographic videos will be put to death and their distributors will
be punished severely, state radio reported. An uproar followed news
that a video purporting to show intimate scenes of an Iranian
television star and her boyfriend is currently available on the
Internet (see "RFE/RL Iran Report," November 21, 2006). (Bill Samii)

DEBATE SHARPENS OVER GENDER SEGREGATION. Conservative elements in
Iran are pushing to increase the segregation of men and women in
public.A new park for women is due to open in the capital, Tehran,
and reports say plans are under way for single-sex hospitals and
women-only public transport. Supporters claim the effect will be a
more moral and Islamic society, but activists warn that the moves are
aimed at curbing women’s participation in public life.
The separation of men and women has arguably been part of
Iranian culture for longer than its Islamic-based government. But
gender-based segregation in public life was institutionalized
following the establishment of the Islamic republic in 1979.
Some fundamentalists consider it a solution to prevent social
interaction that they regard as a potential source of evil.
Iran’s schools are already segregated to some extent.
Young men and women sit in separate rows in university classes. All
metro trains in the capital have distinct compartments for women, and
women and men must sit in separate sections on public buses.
In the past 27 years, there have been attempts to introduce
segregation in other pubic places — including health institutions
and parks. So far, those attempts have failed in part due to
impracticality, but also because of efforts by vociferous opponents.
Since former hard-line Tehran Mayor Mahmud Ahmadinejad
assumed the presidency, the segregation efforts appear to have gained
momentum. As mayor, Ahmadinejad reportedly imposed a system of
segregated elevators.
The recent moves to further separate the sexes are backed by
some senior clerics and legislators.
Former reformist legislator Fatemeh Rakei tells RFE/RL that
she thinks the new push for segregation is unlikely to succeed.
"In the early years of the revolution, some people wanted to
do the same in the universities and, as far as I know, the late Imam
[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] opposed it," Rakei says. "But currently
there are some strange radical views, which also exist in the Islamic
world — unfortunately — but I don’t think they can implement
these views."
Despite such criticism, advocates of segregation appear
determined to enforce gender segregation in public arenas.
In one of the latest initiatives, a senior official within
Iran’s Social Welfare Organization, Abbas Maleki, ordered that
gender segregation be implemented in that organization’s offices
as soon as possible.
In mid-November, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s
representative to universities, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Mohamadian,
called for segregated classes and said boys and girls can currently
mingle more easily in universities than in parks.
Conservatives say such measures would lead to a healthy
Islamic society. But critics reject it and say gender segregation has
neither a religious basis nor scientific support.
Ex-lawmaker Rakei says clerics and open-minded Islamic
scholars should speak out against the push.
"I speak as someone who is deeply religious — the
segregation of men and women is not essential to a moral life," Rakei
says. "Instead of such physical measures, they should explain
teachings by different religions on issues such as morality and
spirituality."
Azadeh Kian, a lecturer in political science and an Iran
researcher at France’s National Center for Scientific Research
(CNRS), says she thinks it is difficult to enforce segregation laws
beyond some government offices.
"How do they want to apply segregation, for example, on all
public transportation?" Kian asks. "How do they want to segregate
parks, hospitals, and streets? Women would have to walk on this side
of the street and men on the other side. Currently women who are
close to the government are on the city councils — what do they want
to do about that? For example, how would they have meetings of
Tehran’s city council? They would have to put women in one room
and men in another."
Some backers of segregation have conceded that it is
impossible to implement such a policy in all public places. But they
have said men and women should be separated where possible if it does
not hinder the workflow.
A member of the parliament’s education committee,
Mussalreza Servati, recently told the semi-official ILNA news agency
that it would be good — if possible — to implement segregation in
universities like that in schools.
Servati also expressed support for segregation in workplaces
and said it would liberate workers from certain obligations. He cited
as an example the danger of women in mixed workplaces falling in love
with colleagues and leaving their husbands.
One female legislator, Efat Shariati, was quoted as saying
recently that segregation in the office would lead to increased
efficiency and commitment.
Former legislator Rakei warns that the new push for gender
segregation could prompt a backlash.
"Those who have such views and do such things should know
that by stepping up such measures, they will have negative results,"
Rakei says. "People will escape from the religion [that those people]
advocate."
There have been conspicuous public calls for women to return
to their traditional roles as housewives in recent months.
Kian tells RFE/RL that support for gender segregation is the
result of a patriarchal view in which women should be confined to the
home, housework, and satisfying the desires of their husbands.
"Instead of bringing up the issue of gender segregation, I
think the current government should express the depth of its view —
and that is that women should not be active in public spheres, with
the exception of those who hold the same view as the government,"
Kian says.
Ahmadinejad said in October that women should devote more
time to their main mission of raising children. He suggested that
women can work part-time on full-time salaries. The comments were
denounced by activists as an attempt to isolate women.
One senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani, recently
described mountain hiking by women as shameful, and said there is no
honor in women being elected to city councils. He instead praised
housekeeping as a "holy" job.
Kian says the new measures will meet resistance from women
who now compose about two-thirds of new university students.
"These attempts will fail, because today women in Iran have a
very high level of knowledge," Kian says. "They are very active in
public spheres, and they can’t — through public segregation —
force women to return and stay in their homes." (Golnaz Esfandiari)

IRAN SOCCER SUSPENDED FOR ‘GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE.’ FIFA, world
soccer’s governing body, has suspended Iran from all
international competition.
In an interview with RFE/RL, FIFA spokesman Pekka Odriozola
said the decision was made on November 22 and that it was due to
Iranian government interference in soccer matters.
"The FIFA Emergency Committee took this decision after
determining that the Iran Football Federation was not adhering to the
principles of the FIFA statutes regarding the independence of member
associations, the independence of the decision-making process of the
football governing body in each country, and the way in which changes
in the leadership of associations are brought about," Odriozola said.
Earlier this year, Mohammad Dadgan, the Iranian
federation’s elected president, and his board were forced out of
office by Iranian authorities.
Odriozola said the Iranian federation then failed to meet a
FIFA deadline of November 15 to reinstate Dadgan and his board and to
comply with FIFA rules.
"In this respect, FIFA and the AFC [Asian Football
Confederation] adopted the clear position that Dr. Dadgan and the
members of his board remained the recognized and legitimate president
and leadership of the Iran football federation," Odriozola said.
"This deadline was not met by the Iran Football Federation."
Iran took part in the 2006 World Cup in Germany and last week
beat South Korea 2-0 to qualify for next year’s Asian Cup.
To play in that cup and other events, FIFA said in a
statement that the Iranian federation must meet a "road map" of
conditions, including drafting new statutes based on FIFA rules and
holding elections to appoint a new president and board under the
supervision of FIFA and the AFC.
The Zurich-based FIFA also called on the Iranian federation
to set up a "normalization committee." Its members would be appointed
by FIFA and the AFC to oversee Iran’s full compliance and
implementation of the road map.
Iran is the second country to face recent FIFA sanctions.
Last month, Kenya was also suspended for failing to respect signed
agreements and for recurrent problems in its federation. (Jeffrey
Donovan)

******************************* **************************
Copyright (c) 2006. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.

The "RFE/RL Iran Report" is a weekly prepared by A. William Samii on
the basis of materials from RFE/RL broadcast services, RFE/RL
Newsline, and other news services. It is distributed every Monday.

Direct comments to A. William Samii at [email protected].
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Sunday, November 26, 2006
*********************************************
ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE
****************************************
Of the many forms of ignorance the worst is ignorance of the self. If you don’t know yourself you don’t know where you are going, and once you get there you may even discover it was a big mistake getting there. If you don’t know yourself, what else can you possibly know and understand?
*
My troubles begun on the day I decided I was smart. That’s when life went into action and devised a thousand ways to prove that I was a damn fool.
*
On the day you close your mind, life will start opening it, and the longer you resist and keep it shut, the harder and more painful the operation will be.
*
For a long time I didn’t see any practical benefit in using my imagination until I realize that reality has so many layers that the only way to penetrate them is by using my imagination.
*
Memo to readers who find me depressing:
Read our great writers instead and if you find them even more depressing, have the courage and honesty to admit you are what the pigswill of our propaganda has made you, “a compulsive liar drunk with the folly of deceptive wine” (Gregory of Narek).
#
Monday, November 27, 2006
*******************************************
CRIME STORIES
*********************************
My kind of writing is not my favorite kind of reading. May I confess that I have never been able to read Montaigne’s ESSAYS from beginning to end. I prefer crime stories. I love Ed McBain, Richard Stark, Simenon. THE KILLERS is the only Hemingway story I have read three times. Chandler’s FAREWELL, MY LOVELY I have read four times with undiminished excitement for its poetic use of slang. No other story has given me as much pleasure as Hammett’s DEAD YELLOW WOMEN. I love these writers not so much for the suspense they provide as for their wit, humor, and dialogue. If I could, I would write crime stories. But my experience with cops and killers is next to nil. I have been inside a police station only once, many years ago, when I reported a roaming German shepherd attacking pedestrians. The burly cop at the desk didn’t even bother to look at me, he simply grabbed the phone on his desk and I didn’t wait long enough to hear what he said.
*
My fascination with crime stories began with Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, and Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. And my fascination with Simenon (the most prolific of them all, over 600 titles) began with Andre Gide’s JOURNALS, where he describes at considerable length his own fascination with Simenon.
*
There are some crimes stories in which the guilty party is neither the butler nor any of the usual suspects, but the narrator himself. On second thought, perhaps I too write crime stories when I focus on the origins of our complexes and contradictions, and instead of naming the obvious suspects (bloodthirsty neighbors and cynical West) I cross-examine myself.
*
A headline in this morning’s paper reads: ISTANBUL: ALMOST 25,000 PROTESTERS DENOUNCE POPE BENEDICT. Nothing astonishes me more than the self-righteousness of the guilty. Instead of denouncing Muslim extremists, terrorists, insurgents, and jihadists, they protest against a remark made by a Christian emperor a thousand years ago. Figure that one out if you can.
*
Speaking of self-righteousness: One of Simenon’s favorite themes is the guilt of the victim. In many of his stories, Simenon explains and to some extent justifies the criminal by exposing his victim’s insensitivity and unawareness of the consequences of his actions. And that’s what I am after too – our past and present unawareness, which at times assumes criminal dimensions.
#
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
****************************************
WRITERS AND CRITICS
***********************************
The Catholic novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize (1952) Francois Mauriac (b. 1885) gave up writing fiction after Sartre, (b. 1905), a relative newcomer on the French literary scene and an atheist to boot, published an essay critical of his work. This may suggest that a competent critic has the power to deconstruct, demolish, and reduce to silence even a universally admired great writer.
*
I look forward to the day when someone with average or even below average intelligence will give me a similar treatment and I will quit writing this stuff and go back to writing fiction. But so far I haven’t had much luck in my critics. If they are not brainwashed partisans or brown-nosing self-appointed Turcocentric pundits, they are intellectually challenged skinheads whose insults I find stimulating rather than wounding.
*
Are we heading in the direction of a new renaissance or are we on our way to the devil? If you answer this question by resorting to chauvinist clichés and platitudes, then we have nothing to look forward to.
*
I grew up with the notion that there was more truth in an Armenian lie than in an odar truth. It took me many years to realize that a lie is a lie and it makes no difference whether it is spoken in Zulu, Turkish, or Armenian. The same could be said of propaganda.
#
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
*********************************************
LET’S TALK TURKEY
**********************************
Common sense tells us, when two witnesses contradict each other, both can’t be right.
*
Experience tells us, to say all politicians lie except ours, is to declare oneself to be a certifiable dupe of nationalist propaganda.
*
Warning: If you question the validity of these two assertions, no need to read any further.
*
Since some of my Armenian readers are convinced I am a pro-Turkish denialist, and some of my Turkish readers take it upon themselves to correct my occasional pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish lapses, I must conclude I am on the right path. It is not part of my agenda to please, mislead, or accuse anyone. There are already more than enough hirelings who make a comfortable living (thank you very much) by doing these things.
*
“The Armenians were punished because they sided with the enemy,” a gentle Turkish reader reminds me. By “punished” he probably means deported and not massacred. Which is it? Since both of my grandmothers survived and both my grandfathers perished, I must conclude some were deported, others “terminated.” As for siding with the enemy, this may indeed be true of Armenians on the Russo-Turkish border, but definitely not of Armenians on the mainland, except for the very few agitators and revolutionaries who may have acted in the name of the people but who represented no one but themselves, very much like the Talaat, Jemal, Enver troika. The overwhelming majority of Armenians in the ghetto of refugees where I grew up were both illiterate and devoid of political awareness. To accuse them of harboring secret territorial ambitions and betraying the Empire is not just wrong but absurd. I don’t remember my father saying anything remotely kind about our political parties or remotely unkind about Turks. I write these lines not as an Armenian but as a human being, and my intention is not to assert moral superiority but to understand why two people who lived side by side for six centuries prefer to believe their political leaders and to ignore the testimony of witnesses who value honesty and objectivity above prejudice and nationalist propaganda.
*
How can any tribe, nation, or race assert moral superiority and believe in it? Even worse: How can it also believe that in doing so it will not arouse the contempt and hatred of all men? The ancient Greeks knew better. They believed that pride or arrogance (hubris) is punished by the gods (Nemesis). And yet, in their eyes, all non-Greeks were barbarians. What happened next we know. They were defeated and colonized by Macedonians, Romans, and last but far from least, Turks. And unbelievable as this may see, even after centuries of enslavement, even in their present bastardized condition, they continue to cling to the notion that they are the real Chosen People. Figure that one out if you can.
#

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT LAUNCHES DEMONSTRATION IN FRONT OF CC

Panorama.am
14:24 27/11/06

Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) has launched a demonstration in front
of the Constitutional Court (CC) calling the judges and CC chairman to
express their disobedience to authorities-in-power. Arkady Karapetyan,
commander of Yerkrapah detachment and a member of initiative group,
said they want to mobilize all public and political forces as well
as the individuals, "The whole Armenian nation," Karapetyan said.

"We celebrate one year of referendum on constitution with a protest
action. An exceptional event happened on November 27, last year. More
than one million fraud was drawn and the referendum passed," Michael
Apresyan, commander of Arstakh detachment, said. The initiators
connect little hope with CC administration to join the group. Apresyan
claims only 180,000 people participated in the referendum. "Where
are the remaining 1 million 200 thousand? People have boycotted the
referendum. They have written it was held," he said. The commander of
Artsakh detachment said the verdict of CC on incompliance of alienation
of property with the constitution was in vain. "The decisions of the
CC have no power in this country," he said.

One of the initiators of the movement, ex-minister of foreign
affairs, Alexander Arzumaynay, demanded resignation of the president,
pre-term presidential elections and formation of free, fair and lawful
authorities in power.

INITIATIVE AIMS TO CHANGE POWER

Panorama.am
16:08 27/11/06

Initiators of Alternative, Nikol Pashinyan and Vahagn Khachatryan,
told reporters today Alternative is organization which is above a
political party and any citizen, despite of party affiliation, may join
it in case of supporting its ideology. The ideology is connected with
the principles of the Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh) in 88s.

The initiative aims to change the authorities-in-power with clearly
defined mechanisms. They intend to mobilize the masses and invite
them to gatherings at Azatutiun Square.

The initiators say the do not want to put an aim of participation in
upcoming elections because they do not want anyone to think it is
an issue of seats in the parliament. "We want to be free citizens
and the choice of freedom must be at Freedom Square," Pashinyan
said.