GIVE US THE HOLY WISDOM OF FORGETTING
By Lubomyr Luciuk

Winnipeg Sun (Manitoba), Canada
December 10, 2006 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

As I looked on, he asked them: "Should your country join Europe?"

They all replied, emphatically, "Yes!"

I was not surprised. These young women and men, at Istanbul’s Bogazici
University, were some of the best students I have taught, and I have
been a professor for 20 years. Most were native-born Turks and almost
all were Muslims, but they think themselves modern and secular and,
as such, European. Certainly, they were pleased to hear me making
positive reference to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Republic
of Turkey, in 1923. Its proposed entry into the European Union was
our subject. They were all in favour.

Yet, I wondered, how widespread was their enthusiasm? I placed my
colleague’s question before men I first met in 1979, in Istanbul’s
Kapali Carsi, the Grand Bazaar. For years I have nurtured those
contacts, to the extent that Hasan and Metin and Ufuk have become
as old friends. So, over a fine fish supper on the shores of the
Bosporus, below the bridge cementing Asia to Europe, I asked —
"Should Turkey strive to enter Europe?"

These Turks are as hospitable as I have always found true followers
of Islam to be. Middle-aged, successful, and well travelled, they also
enjoy courageous conversation. Aware of the historic hostility toward
"the Turk in Europe," they voiced grudges of their own. One reminded
me that Turks were welcome when NATO needed their infantry divisions
to shore up its southern flank and when Turkish guest workers took
jobs most Europeans refused. Yet, as soon as Turkey expressed a desire
to join Europe, they were found wanting.

PEFIDIOUSNESS

Another grumbled over how Europeans pontificate about the Ottoman’s
wartime mistreatment of the Armenians, yet conveniently forget that
most of the Middle East’s problems were spawned by the perfidiousness
of England and France, dismembering "the sick man of Europe" after
the Great War, then betraying the very same Arabs they had goaded
into revolt. And who, they asked, injected Israel into their midst,
a state with weapons of mass destruction and, apparently, carte blanche
to do whatever it wants with Palestine’s indigenes, an enduring source
of geopolitical instability? Shocking perspectives for western ears,
perhaps, yet a shared text amongst students and shopkeepers alike.

My friends came to a rough consensus. If joining Europe meant being
told how they should live, or what they should believe, or atone for,
they aren’t much interested. And, as one of them pointed out, they
can visit Europe any time they want. No need to join.

So I asked my students the question again, changing it a little. If
Europeans require their society to make concessions to prove how truly
democratic and inclusive they are, would they agree? Could they, for
example, accept the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople recovering
one of Istanbul’s greatest sites, the Hagia Sophia? Once mother church
of all Eastern Christians of the Byzantine liturgical tradition, both
Orthodox and Greek Catholic, it became a mosque after the city fell
to Mehmet the Conqueror, in 1453. Since 1935, at Ataturk’s command,
it has been a museum. Why not return the Church of the Holy Wisdom
to its original owners, a gesture of reconciliation?

After all, anyone can visit Notre-Dame in Paris, or St. Stephen’s in
Vienna, or St. Peter’s in Rome, be they Hindu or Catholic, Muslim or
Jew. Those who wish to pray, can. Those who do not suffer no shaming.

The only condition upon admission is the same for all,
mutual respect. Yet, at designated times, each of these great
cathedral-museums becomes a place of Christian worship. Why not the
Hagia Sophia?

Some were puzzled that a Canadian professor, presumably a secularist,
would propose making a museum into a re-consecrated church. Others
were angry at the very thought. Why not just leave well enough alone?

Among these bright young Turks, I realized, there would be more than
a little dissent if Europe’s entry fee becomes too dear.

Not surprisingly, the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey
was protested. He deflected much of that resentment, adroitly, by
paying respects at Ataturk’s tomb, later joining the Grand Mufti of
Istanbul for silent prayer inside the Blue Mosque. The Pope also met
with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the honorary leader of the
world’s 300 million Orthodox, a step toward a restoration of full
communion between Catholic and Orthodox worlds separated since the
Great Schism of 1054. And His Holiness went, briefly, into the very
church my students and I discussed, the Hagia Sophia. While there I
hope he beseeched our Lord above to bestow upon us all — Catholic,
Orthodox and Muslim believers alike — the holy wisdom of forgetting.

For dwelling too much on the past may not be wise, for any of us.

AZERBAIJAN’S BREAKAWAY KARABAKH HOLDS REFERENDUM ON CONSTITUTION

RIA Novosti, Russia
December 10, 2006

YEREVAN, December 10 (RIA Novosti) – Azerbaijan’s breakaway province of
Nagorno-Karabakh is voting Sunday in a referendum on its constitution.

The conflict over Nagorny Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan with a
largely Armenian population, first erupted in 1988 when it declared
its independence from Azerbaijan, and moved to join Armenia.

Over 30,000 people were killed on both sides between 1988 and 1994,
and over 100 died following a 1994 ceasefire. Nagorno-Karabakh remained
in Armenian hands, but tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia have
persisted. Azerbaijan is determined to restore its control over the
separatist region.

More than 100 international observers and journalists from Russia,
France, the United States, Italy, Israel, Serbia and other countries
are monitoring the referendum.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM SET TO REAFFIRM INDEPENDENCE BID
By Avet Demourian, Associated Press Writer

Associated Press Worldstream
December 10, 2006 Sunday 5:33 PM GMT

The disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave on Sunday held a constitutional
referendum that was expected to reaffirm its independence bid.

The draft constitution describes Nagorno-Karabakh as a "sovereign,
democratic" state.

More than 74,500 people, or 83.7 percent of the region’s 89,000
eligible voters, cast ballots, said Mikael Adzhian, a spokesman for
the region’s Central Election Commission.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s leader Arkady Gukasian hailed the vote as a landmark
move that would "determine the Nagorno-Karabakh’s people destiny."

At least one third of the region’s eligible voters were needed to
make the vote valid, and a simple majority of those who cast ballots
is necessary for the constitution’s approval.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region in Azerbaijan that has been under the
control of Armenian and ethnic-Armenian Karabakh forces since a 1994
cease-fire ended a six-year separatist war that killed about 30,000
people and drove about 1 million from their homes.

The region’s final status remains unresolved, and years of talks
under the auspices of international mediators have brought few
visible results.

Gukasian insisted the vote would not jeopardize peace talks. "The
passage of the constitution will have a positive impact on talks,"
he told reporters.

Azerbaijan has rejected the referendum as having no legal meaning.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Azeri population fled the conflict more
than a decade ago, and large numbers of them have lived as internally
displaced people since then.

In December 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh held a referendum in which ethnic
Armenian residents voted overwhelmingly for independence.

Masis Mailian, deputy foreign minister in the Nagorno-Karabakh
administration, said the constitution was essential to codify the
structure of its administration and citizens’ rights.

"It’s necessary to formalize the already existing foundations of
state system and relations between the state and its citizens,"
Mailian told The Associated Press.

GEMAYEL’S DEATH MAY MEAN CIVIL WAR: WHAT ELSE FOR MIDEAST?
by Katherine Zoepf

New York Observer
December 4, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 28–Last Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting in
a cafe in Hamra, the traditionally Muslim neighborhood in West Beirut,
wondering why my cell phone had stopped working. There were plenty of
units left in my Lebanese pay-as-you-go account and I’d charged the
handset recently, yet each attempt to make a call or to send a text
produced an exclamation point and an angry-looking error message on
its greenish, pixelated screen.

I set the phone down and ordered a cup of tea. It was brought not by
my usual waitress, but by the cafe’s owner, who wore a grim expression,
introduced himself hurriedly as Raed, and–to my great surprise–pulled
a chair up next to mine and sat down.

"Excuse me for bothering you, but I can tell you’re not from Beirut,
and you may not know what has just happened."

I certainly didn’t know, but felt–as one always feels in Beirut–that
the news couldn’t possibly be good.

"Pierre Gemayel has been shot, in the middle of the day. Can you
imagine? I recommend that you go home and stay there. It will be
hours before your phone works again–the government turns off the
mobile-phone service on these occasions. The important thing is to
get straight home. This will mean war, you know."

I can be a bit slow on the uptake where political topics are concerned,
but discussing politics with a Beiruti always makes me feel especially
dull-witted. Politics in Lebanon is often a life-or-death matter,
and so naturally everyone takes a keen interest. Childhood nights
crouched in bomb shelters, gauging whether the rockets were incoming
or outgoing and decades spent following alliances and assassinations
in Lebanon’s prominent families have a way of honing native political
intelligence to a very fine edge.

I made a clumsy attempt to piece together the implications of this
news, as the Lebanese do so instinctively and immediately. Pierre
Gemayel was a government minister, I knew, but already that seemed
beside the point. Gemayel was from one of the country’s important
Maronite families, the grandson of the founder of the right-wing
Christian militia, the Phalange. This meant that he was a symbol of
Christian power in Lebanon, which meant that his enemies were many,
which meant that those wanting him dead could be … well, almost
anyone, really.

I turned to Raed. "Who do you think would have the most to gain from
Gemayel’s death?"

Raed shrugged. "Almost anyone, really. The point is that our
government is being destroyed. This is nearly on the level of the
Hariri assassination. This will almost certainly mean civil war. He
was shot, can you imagine?"

Pierre Gemayel was shot. It took me another hour and several more
conversations with Lebanese friends to grasp the import of this fact.

Here in Beirut, arranging a car bombing is seen as a relatively easy
way to murder an enemy. But shooting a man on a crowded street in
the middle of a sunny afternoon?

That takes daring. That telegraphs insouciance, power wielded in
complete confidence. The message to Lebanon’s frail, Western-backed
ruling coalition couldn’t have been clearer: You are no longer
in control.

Beirut is a diverse and profoundly class-ridden city; the newcomer
feels it immediately. But in peacetime, these things seem not to
matter. The people seem cheerful, almost supernaturally exuberant.

They enjoy watching each other and parsing the differences among them,
the small matters that divide neighborhoods and religious groups. The
things they mention usually sound to my ear like harmless snobberies,
but I wonder how the city would feel if battle lines were drawn as they
once were, during the long civil war, when individual neighborhoods
became strongholds.

Beirut in the fall smells precisely like Paris in a damp June–there’s
an ineffable, very French smell of motor oil and detergents, butchers’
shops and cigarettes. It smells European and yet looks unmistakably
Middle Eastern. For all its diversity, it is a very compact city,
and I walk almost everywhere. It takes me about 20 minutes to get
from my apartment in western Beirut to Martyr’s Square downtown,
where the big demonstrations are always held. It takes no more than
a half hour to walk over to friends’ apartments in Achrafieh, the
predominantly Christian eastern Beirut neighborhood.

It’s fun examining the differences between the neighborhoods, which
up till now have seemed matters of mere sociological interest, often
sweetly comical and occasionally sad.

Bourj Hammoud is an image of the striving, jovial Armenian jewelers
who fixed my watch. Hamra is the saj bread seller who always corrects
my accent in Arabic so that I "don’t have to sound like a Syrian."

Haret Hreik–or "Hezbollah Central," as my friend Andrew calls
it–brings to mind a certain very enthusiastic taxi driver who took
me on a tour of the piles of rubble that were the result of multiple
Israeli bombing raids; in the garbage that had collected on the site
of one destroyed building, I noticed a Pekingese looking aristocratic
and improbably clean as it trotted around among the boulders of
smashed concrete.

And then there’s Achrafieh, which in its self-regard and Francophilic
pretensions is Beirut’s greatest gift to the amateur sociologist
in search of amusement. The image of Achrafieh that sticks most in
my mind is of a young housewife I once saw, impeccably coiffed and
chatting gaily on her cell phone as she walked out of the Monoprix
grocery store. A tiny, elderly Filipina maid trudged a few paces
behind her with the goods; the maid’s dress–blue gingham with a
lace-trimmed white apron–looked weirdly girlish framed by those
stringy brown arms and wizened face. I had briefly mistaken the maid
for the woman’s child, the gingham for a summer-school uniform.

Whether the Gemayel assassination will turn out to have been the
opening salvo in a renewed civil war remains to be seen, of course.

But more than half of the Lebanese people I speak to in an average
day seem to think so, and since Lebanon is widely seen as the canary
in the mine of the greater Middle East–regional countries from Iran
to Syria to Saudi Arabia all have political interests in Lebanon, and
the collapse of the government in Lebanon will have implications far
beyond its borders–this is very bad news for the region as a whole.

Marwan, who runs the shop where I usually buy my lunchtime sandwiches,
asks me to correct his English.

"I don’t give a shit about this government we have now–there is a
nicer way to say that, isn’t there?"

"You could say ‘I don’t care about this government.’"

"Oh, yes–all my English is from the movies. I mean, I don’t care
about this government–but the problem is that if Lebanon falls now,
we maybe take all the rest of the Middle East down with us."

Katherine Zoepf is working on a book about young women in the Middle
East for the Penguin Press.

CHRISTMAS PARTY FOLLOWS ARMENIAN CHURCH SERVICE

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA.)
December 6, 2006, Wednesday

The Armenian Apostolic Church of Riverside will hold its monthly
service of the Holy Badarak, Divine Liturgy at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at
All Saints Episcopal Church, 3847 Terracina Drive, Riverside.

A Christmas party is scheduled after the service and will include
gifts for every child.

Reservations for the party are requested and may be made by calling
949-786-3906.

The congregation serves Armenians in Riverside and San Bernardino
counties.

-Bettye Wells Miller

ANOTHER VOICE FOR TRUTH

Fresno Bee (California)
December 4, 2006 Monday
FINAL EDITION

Pope mentions, during his visit to Turkey, the Armenian genocide.

Pope Benedict XVI raised the issue of the Armenian genocide committed
by the former Turkish regime in the latter years of World War I —
albeit indirectly — on Nov. 30, in the middle of his controversial
visit to Turkey.

The oblique reference came during a meeting with the Armenian Apostolic
Patriarch of Istanbul, Mesrob I, spiritual head of the 50,000 Orthodox
Armenians who remain in Turkey — out of a population of millions
who lived there before the massacres and expulsions of 1915-1917
took place.

The pope had already angered many in Turkey and the rest of the
Muslim world in September, when he quoted from an obscure medieval
text that recorded a debate between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian
visitor. Benedict recalled that the emperor had told his adversary:
"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will
find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by
the sword the faith he preached."

That caused a storm of outrage in the Muslim world, and threatened,
for a time, to derail the pope’s trip to Turkey.

In his conversation with the Orthodox prelate Mesrob, Benedict praised
the Armenian people for remaining faithful even under "truly tragic
conditions, like those experienced in the past century" — a clear
reference to the genocide.

Thus the pope adds his voice to the many seeking justice from Turkey
— or at least a recognition of an ancient injustice. The current
Turkish government, a successor to the Young Turks who replaced the
corrupt and decaying Ottoman Empire, does not bear responsibility
for the massacres, but it does have a duty to the truth.

The continued refusal of the Turkish government and most of the Turkish
people to even acknowledge that the genocide took place flies in the
face of incontrovertible historical fact.

Some 1.5 million Armenians — men, women and children — were savagely
torn from their homes, sent on long and deadly marches, or simply
killed out of hand.

Many of the survivors came to this country, and a few — along with
many thousands of their descendants — can still be found in Fresno
and the Valley. Here they have built good and prosperous lives, and
are thoroughly American. Yet they still remember the horrors of the
genocide, and still thirst for recognition and justice.

It’s a thirst we share, along with many others — including, it is
clear, the pope.

‘SCREAMERS’ FAILS ITS MAIN MISSION
By Guido Pellegrini, Daily Bruin; SOURCE: UCLA

Daily Bruin, UCLA, California
December 7, 2006 Thursday

FILM REVIEW

"Screamers" is an apt name for this documentary — an impassioned,
often incoherent, but always affecting look at genocide throughout
the past 90 years.

Director Carla Garapedian ("Beneath the Veil") alternates between
concert footage of Armenian-American rock band System of a Down,
interviews with scholars and grainy newsreels of massacres and
killings.

The juxtapositions don’t quite work as a narrative; Garapedian attempts
to segue from System of a Down’s lyrics about the Armenian Genocide
of 1915 to the problem of genocide as a whole, but sadly fails.

And every time the film starts flirting with worldwide issues, it
returns to the small story of the band. Alternatively, just when the
film seems destined to become an intimate portrait of four musicians
fighting for a cause, the focus abruptly expands, leaving the audience
with a jarring sense of whiplash.

There’s also little in the way of subtlety, what with the atrocities
of genocide being delineated with blunt precision. Yet this doesn’t
actually hurt "Screamers." In fact, it’s the whole point.

System of a Down’s loud instrumentals and searing voice work, likewise
unsubtle, combine with Garapedian’s forceful editing to give the
whole film an aura of burgeoning anger.

It becomes clear after a while that for Garapedian the film’s title
constitutes the only real response one can have toward genocide. We
must all scream in protest, and as loud as we can.

This screaming, however, should not be directed solely at the
perpetrators of genocides, but also at the international community
that does little to stop genocide when it happens.

Governments, argues Garapedian, care more for neutrality and economic
foreign relationships than they do about human rights. As a result,
nothing is done when one culture attempts to eradicate another;
until it’s too late, that is.

It’s a powerful indictment and one that calls for numerous examples
from different conflicts. Unfortunately, though the required examples
are indeed provided, the film’s fixation on the Armenian Genocide
hides the broadness of the themes under the shadow of specificity.

In another context this would not be a problem. The Armenian Genocide
is a fascinating subject for any artistic endeavor (see Atom Egoyan’s
"Ararat"). But in this case, it feels like Garapedian set out to make
a film exclusively about the Armenian Genocide, and then last-minute
decided she wanted her documentary to be a general overview of
history. Consequently, she succeeded at neither.

NO MORE EXCUSES
By Ed Fu, Daily Targum

Daily Targum , Rutgers Univ. NJ
December 5, 2006 Tuesday

When I was learning about the Holocaust in grade school, the underlying
subtext was always that we, as civilized human beings, could never
let such systematic violations of human rights happen again. We look
back and with that historical retrospective smugness ask, "How could
those people have let that happen? How could those people have been
so indifferent to the suffering?" We’ve watched "Schindler’s List,"
toured the Holocaust museum and took college seminars. We’ve learned
the lessons of this singular crime. Never again, we solemnly promise
– never again could such a crime against humanity happen. Not in our
world. We know better.

Or do we really?

It is strange the United States has never intervened to stop
genocide. It’s not as if the 20th century has had a lack of genocides
to intervene in – Armenia, Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, even Saddam Hussein
and his gassing of the Kurds. We were acutely aware of each of them
yet remained bystanders. At times, we even assisted. In 1988 Jesse
Helms sponsored a bill in the Senate that would have penalized Saddam
by cutting off the generous U.S. aid then being supplied (including
some of the chemical weapons being used). It failed, of course, thanks
to powerful lobbyists and the Ronald Reagan administration. So it is
too late now to save the Kurds, or the 2 million murdered Cambodians,
or the 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi or the 200,000 Bosnian civilians.

But it is not yet too late for another ongoing crime against humanity
– North Korea. In a world where certain basic freedoms are taken for
granted, North Korea is almost alone in its shocking oppression.

Though the country’s constitution contains clauses guaranteeing freedom
of speech and assembly, they are in practice nothing but a laughable
farce. The government dominates the media, to the point where citizens
are only allowed to own government-distributed radios and televisions,
which are hardwired to accept only the official propaganda broadcasts
(including tales of how General Kim’s military genius led to North
Korea defeating the Japanese to end World War II). Severe punishments
are meted out for even trying to open the sealed instruments in an
attempt to allow them to receive broadcasts from other sources. Each
party cell head in every neighborhood and village in the country has
been trained on how to verify that none of the seals has been broken.

Freedom of religion is likewise officially guaranteed and likewise
systematically trampled upon. Entire families (including children)
have been imprisoned in horrifying slave labor camps for a single
family member’s "crime" of practicing Christianity. Owning a Bible
is illegal – the only sanctioned houses of worship in the country
seems to be three Christian churches located in the capital that are
part of the official tour for foreigners, to demonstrate to the rest
of the world the ostensible religious freedoms that North Koreans
"enjoy." Independent reports indicate the sermons delivered, like all
other cultural works of the country, are almost entirely political or
devoted to Kim Jong Il, and most pastors seemed to have no interest
or training in religion at all.

It doesn’t even seem real any more. It doesn’t seem possible for a
country in today’s modern world to practice this kind of 1984-esque
wholesale deception and personality cult. The whole thing is almost
funny in a very dark sort of way.

But North Korea’s human rights record doesn’t end there. We have known
since 1998 that a government-induced famine, still ongoing throughout
the country, was killing at least 800,000 people every year. Escapees
tell heartrending stories of desperately trying to collect handfuls
of fertilizer leaking out of trains in order to sell on the black
market; when that fails, they have no choice but to turn to eating
tree bark to survive. The massive amounts of foreign aid supplied to
North Korea never seems to get to these people. One refugee reports
when UN ships arrive, the military dresses as civilians and comes to
claim everything.

Moreover, vicious prison gulags, similar to those constructed by
Stalin and Mao, routinely use torture, starvation, rape, murder and
forced labor and hold several hundred thousand inmates; many more
have perished over the years. Recent refugees have even told us the
government operates concentration camps, complete with suffocating
gas chambers and sadistic experimentation (including the effects of
poisoned food upon prisoners). And of course, North Korea is developing
nuclear weapons.

We blithely talk of the Holocaust as something that cannot happen in
today’s world because we know better. We smugly say to ourselves that
if something like it happened today, we would undoubtedly intervene
to prevent yet another humanitarian catastrophe. But something like
it does happen today. While it is no longer entirely clear what
differentiates Kim Jong Il’s rule from that of Adolf Hitler’s,
we continue to do little more than impose economic sanctions
and indifferently hold talks with their legendarily irrational
leadership. Do you think those sanctions would have been an adequate
response to the Holocaust? Would future generations think them an
adequate response to Kim Jong Il?

During World War II, Arthur Koestler described the frustrated few
who spoke up against Nazi atrocities as "Screamers." The Screamers
succeeded in reaching listeners for a moment, Koestler wrote, only to
watch them shake themselves "like puppies who have got their fur wet"
and return to the blissful place of ignorance and uninvolvement. "You
can convince them for an hour," Koestler noted, but then "their mental
half-defense begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity
has returned."

Surely we cannot give Kim as much reign as we did Hitler. Never once
have we shown that we have learned anything from the horrors of Nazi
Germany. And if we do not act soon, North Korea will become another
opportunity wasted, another crime against humanity left unaddressed,
another Rwanda or Cambodia or Armenia. The ongoing suffering of
millions will be reduced to just another historical statistic. What
will future generations think of this period in American history,
where we calmly stood by ignoring some of the most horrifying acts
against humanity? How many more victims we will allow Kim Jong Il to
claim before we cry out "never again!" – and mean it?

PARTITION IS NOT THE ANSWER
By Natalie Smolenski, Brown Daily Herald

Brown Daily Herald , Brown Univ., Rhode Island
December 4, 2006 Monday

PROVIDENCE, R.I.

The Nov. 28 column by Michal Zapendowski ’07, "An exit strategy for
Iraq," failed to address the historical and geographic connections
that bind Iraq’s Sunni, Shi’a and Kurd communities. These linkages
could not be destroyed except by way of violence on a heretofore
unprecedented scale.

First, Zapendowski did not take into account the irregular distribution
of the country’s natural resources — specifically oil, which in Iraq
is located predominately in majority-Kurd and Shi’a regions. Because
oil accounts for 95 percent of the Iraqi government’s revenues, a
Sunni state with negligible oil could not sustain itself except as
the humiliated client of a neighbor or a more powerful regional ally.

Second, though Zapendowski did speak to the demographic difficulties of
partition by invoking the Yugoslav precedent and proffering population
exchange as a solution, he overlooked an important Middle Eastern
instance of population exchange for the sake of state formation: in
1924, Western, Greek-speaking Muslims living in what is now Greece
were exchanged for Turkish-speaking Christians from Anatolia. Though
the process helped form Turkish and Greek states, it was based upon
a fever of cultural de-hybridization which had already resulted in
the genocide of Turkey’s Armenian population. A population swap is
never a peaceful maneuver in which residents simply exchange places
of residence; it is accompanied by an uprooting of the national and
sub-national soul.

Furthermore, Baghdad, the capital that has most often been suggested
for a "Sunni state" in Iraq is by no means a simple ethnic equation.

Its northeastern slum, Sadr City, houses some of the most fervent
Shi’a militias. Similarly, the mixed Sunni/Shi’a area directly south of
Baghdad has been termed the "Triangle of Death" by occupation forces
because of the population’s constant contestation over community
jurisdictions. No foreign overseer, no matter how well-intentioned,
could quash the indigenous violence springing from a nationwide
partition plan based on politically defined demarcations. Coalition
forces’ frustrations with containing current violence would seem
insignificant compared with the all out border warfare that would
accompany the establishment of three nebulous, neighboring states.

Though it may seem counterintuitive to some Western observers, many
Iraqis favor the borders drawn for them by British colonialists and do
not consider their communities politically incompatible. Despite the
shortcomings of coexistence, partition would culturally, economically
and militarily devastate Iraq’s population.

The closest viable alternative to what Zapendowski suggests may be
a federated Iraq, under one central government with three provinces.

Though the Kurds have functioned successfully under such a system for
the past 15 years, the fortunes of the Sunni and Shi’a communities
appear to be far more intertwined. The relevant question for Americans
is: to what extent can our continued military presence help bring
about federated or unified peaceful coexistence for Iraq’s major
cultural communities?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RESEARCHERS FROM UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA DETAIL FINDINGS IN REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Women’s Health Law Weekly
December 17, 2006

Fresh data on reproductive health are presented in the report
"Contraceptive practices in Armenia: Panel evaluation of an
Information-Education-Communication Campaign." According to recent
research published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, "Induced
abortion remains the major form of birth control among Armenian
women, contributing to their excess mortality and preventable
morbidity. Reliance on abortion is attributed to limited access
to information concerning modern methods of contraception and to
widely held misinformation among women regarding family planning and
reproductive health."

"Based on the Steps to Behavior Change model, the Green Path
Campaign for Family Health, an information-education-communication
(IEC) campaign, was launched in June 2000. This multimedia campaign
promoted greater awareness, knowledge, acceptance, and adoption of
modern contraception through increased utilization of counseling and
related services provided at underutilized family planning centers. A
representative panel of 1088 married women aged 18-35 were surveyed on
reproductive health/family planning knowledge, attitudes, and practices
immediately prior to and immediately following the 6-month national
campaign. Exposure to the campaign was associated with significant
increases in factors associated with contraceptive behavior change:
knowledge, favorable attitudes toward modern methods, favorable
attitudes toward family planning services, and information seeking
and utilization of family planning services.

Women who were more educated, more affluent, and slightly older
were more likely to use family planning services as well as modern
contraceptive methods. New visits to family planning centers increased
by 84%. Despite the usual 25% turnover among those using modern
methods at the start of the study, use of modern contraceptive methods
increased by 4.6%, significantly exceeding the projected 3% increase,"
wrote M.E. Thompson and colleagues, University of North Carolina.

The researchers concluded: "The results document changes in underlying
behavioral predictors consistent with the Steps to Behavior Change
model and highlight the relatively untapped potential of media-based
health promotion efforts in post-Soviet Republics."

Thompson and colleagues published their study in Social Science &
Medicine (Contraceptive practices in Armenia: Panel evaluation of
an Information-Education-Communication Campaign. Social Science &
Medicine, 2006;63(11):2770-83).

For additional information, contact M.E. Thompson, University of
North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC U.S.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Social Science &
Medicine is: Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd., the Boulevard, Langford
Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

Keywords: United States, Charlotte, Behavior, Obstetrics, Reproductive
Health, Social Science, Women’s Health.

This article was prepared by Women’s Health Law Week editors from
staff and other reports. Copyright 2006, Women’s Health Law Week
via NewsRx.com.