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ARMENIAN FIGURE SKATERS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP
[07:34 pm] 30 November, 2006
Armenian figure skaters Anastasia Grebenkina and
Vazgen Azroyan will participate in the European Figure
Skating Championship scheduled on January 18 – 28 in
Warsaw.
Over 30 skating pairs will participate in the contest.
Our skaters will also participate in the World Figure
Skating Championship, which will be held in Tokyo in
2007.
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ARMAN BABAJANYAN’S VERDICT TO BE BROUGHT ON DECEMBER
11
[06:16 pm] 30 November, 2006
`This is a mere criminal case and it mustn’t be given
political colouring’, announced Janna Kodikyan in her
speech in connection with the case of Arman
Babajanyan, editor of `Jamanak Yerevan’ newspaper in
the RA Cassation Court on Criminal and Marshal Issues.
She claims that Mr. Babajanyan is accused of
embezzlement rather than of malfunction of his
journalistic duties. The plaintiff claimed to send Mr.
Babajanyan to 4, 6-year imprisonment.
The defender submitted a few mediations but only one
of them was fully endorsed; others were either
rejected or endorsed partially. The mediation
comprised references on Arman Babajanyan’s
personality.
The defender asked the court for additional time. The
court supported the mediation and cancelled the court
sitting till December 11.
Reminder; Arman Babajanyan was arrested on June 26. He
is accused of avoiding obligatory military service,
document forgery and embezzlement. Arman Babajanyan
was sentenced to 4-year imprisonment under the
decision of the Court of First Instance.
By the way, the lawyers presented a packet sent from
Los Angeles. The packet includes an announcement
signed by 6000 U.S. citizens according to which Arman
Babajanyan is accused of malfunction of his
journalistic duties. `It sounds a bit clumsy and
strange. Why should 6000 citizens sign in protection
of Arman Babajanyan? Is he an important figure?’
wondered Mrs. Kodikyan.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Panorama.am
14:14 30/11/06
FAMOUS ARMENIAN OPERA SINGER DREAMS ABOUT A ROLE OF IZOLDA
`My great dream is to perform the role of Izolda from
the opera of Wagner,’ Hasmik Papyan, famous Armenian
opera singer, told a press conference today.
The singer is in Armenia for five days only to take
part in the events dedicated to 50-year anniversary of
Public TV of Armenia. `I could not stop coming,’ the
singer said also saying her reception was organized on
high level.
Papyan said she will stage a concert in Paris in March
within the days of Armenia in France. `I decided to
take the chance and present the Medieval Armenian
culture to the European audience,’ she said.
/Panorama.am/
ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTE-SCANDINAVIA
PRYLV. 7
12637 HÄGERSTEN
SWEDEN
CONTACT: SUZANNE K. HOLMQUIST
AGOP KHATCHERIAN
TEL. +46 708 809316
FAX: +46 8 645 65 92
E-MAIL. [email protected]
Swedish MP questions the FM Carl Bildt on the issue
of Mass grave recently discovered in Turkey
(Interpolation in Swedish Parliament on 12 December 2006)
Stockholm (anc-scandinavia):
Hans Linde, a Swedish member of the Swedish Parliament
belonging to the Vaenster Party /Left/ will be
addressing the Parliament on the 12 of December on
the issue of the mass grave discovered in Turkey
last October, which could contain the remains of
Armenian Genocide victims.
Hans Linde will specifically ask the Foreign Minister
to work for the creation of an expert commission that
would in a scientific manner identify the cause of
death and the identity of the remains discovered in
the mass grave.
Last October a mass grave was discovered when
villagers from Xirabebaba (Kuru) in Eastern Turkey,
were digging a grave for one of their relatives when
they came across to a cave full of skulls and bones of
reportedly 40 people. that according to historian
Davis Gaunt might contain remains of Armenian Genocide
victims.
According to a The Xirabebaba residents assumed they
had uncovered a mass grave of 300 Armenian villagers
massacred during the Genocide of 1915. They informed
Akarsu Gendarmerie headquarters, the local military
unit, about the discovered remains. Kurdish newspaper
published in Turkish Ulkede Ozgur Gundem, the Turkish
Gendarmerie then had has instructed local villagers to
keep silence about the discovery. Turkish army
officers, according to the Kurdish newspaper,
instructed the villagers to block the cave entrance
and make no mention of the remains buried in it. The
officers said an investigation would take place. The
newspaper reported on the developments and the Turkish
military’s attempt to hide the news. Journalists, who
had arrived to obtain more information, were denied
access to the cave.
As the mass burial made news, local Gendarmerie made
another visit to the villagers. The latter were
pressed to report the name of the person who leaked
the mass burial discovery to the press. The villagers
were warned not to show anyone directions to the cave.
The victims of the mass grave, according to Sodertorn
University History Professor David Gaunt, are most
likely the 150 Armenian and 120 Assyrian males from
the nearby town of Dara (now Oguz) killed on June 13,
1915. David Gaunt Believes that it could also be the
remains of Armenian women from Mardin who were driven
out and executed at that place. It could belong to
Assyrian children, men and women from the prison of
Nusaybin that were executed in the same place on the
28th of June 1915.
Professor Gaunt is an expert on the region’s history
and soon will his latest book entitled Massacres,
Resistance, Protectors, Muslim-Christian Relations in
Eastern Anatolia During World War I, (Gorgias Press,
New Jersey, 2006 ) describes 200 similar massacres
carried out in 1915, in Tur Abdin, a region in
today’s Eastern Turkey. These were massacres carried
out by the governor Reshit Bey, a representative of
the ottoman state apparatus.
The Turkish Human Rights Association since then has
been vocal about the issue and has addressed an open
letter to the Minister of Interior Affairs in Turkey
demanding the creation of an independent commission
that should look at the issue closer and identify the
cause of death and identify the ethnicity the
discovered human remains.
Hans Linde, the Swedish MP, will also demand answers
on such questions whether FM Carl Bildt is willing to
cooperate so that Sweden as an individual state and as
a member of the EU, can work to bring the Turkish
authorities to open the Ottoman archives for
international Research, and decriminalize all
research and debate on the Genocide of Armenians and
Assyrians under the Ottoman responsibility. He
justifies the importance of the issue by arguing that
‘reconciliation between the Armenian and Turkish
nations is not possible to achieve unless Turkey
opens its archives for research and free debate is
allowed. To talk and write about the Armenian
Genocide should be totally decriminalized’. Every
country’s history contains dark chapters he writes,
However, democratic states should be able to freely
study, map , debate and discuss these unpleasant pages
of history. Turkey cannot be an exception’.
ANC Scandinavia
Contact:
[email protected]
Below you can find more info on David Gaunt’s new
book:
Author: David Gaunt
Title: Massacres, Resistance, Protectors:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during
World War I
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Publication Date: 10/10/2006
ISBN: 1-59333-301-3
Format: Paperback xvii + 535 pages, 22 illustrations
This is a pioneering historical investigation of the
Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syrian Christian minorities
during World War I, who suffered the same fate as the
Armenians. Ethnic cleansing and large-scale massacres
occurred throughout northern Mesopotamia and parts of
Ottoman-occupied Iran. Based on primary sources from
official Russian, Turkish, and West European archives,
as well as hitherto unused manuscript sources and oral
histories published here for the first time, this book
attempts to give a full picture of the events of 1915.
Concentration is on the Assyrians of Urmia and Hakkari
and on the Syrians of Diyarbekir province,
particularly in Tur Abdin.
Russia speeds up withdrawal from Tbilisi military base
01.12.2006, 06.03
TBILISI, December 1 (Itar-Tass) — Russia sped up the withdrawal of
its troops from the military base in Vaziani near Tbilisi and the last
Russia-bound trainload of military equipment and hardware will leave
on Friday via Azerbaijan.
It would be the second trainload withdrawn to Russia. The first one
departed on November 23.
On November 16 a trainload of hardware and equipment left Vaziani for
the Russian military base in Gyumri in Armenia. The second and final
trainloadis to leave for Armenia in December.
The troops and armaments from the military base in Vaziani will be
withdrawn completely by December 25. They comprised 100 pieces of
hardware and 350 tons of equipment and munitions, as well as 387
men. The personnel will leave the base on trucks in December as well.
As far as Russian bases in Akhalkalaki and Batumi are concerned,
troops are to leave the former by October 1, 2007 and the latter – by
October 1, 2008.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
The Signal
Original source:
p;story_id=34757&format=html
Film Makes Weak Case Against Gun Control
Commentary by Willy E. Gutman
On Assignment
The images are gruesome. They elicit a visceral response – part
nausea, part fascination. The atrocities they capture make us retch as
they splash the retina with an acid so corrosive and mesmerizing that
they linger in our mind’s eye long after we’ve stopped looking.
Flaunted in mercifully pithy film clips, evil in all its fulsomeness
is replayed before us. After a while, the images meld into one
swarming mass of broken bodies, blood and gore. This is the idiom of
fear, hatred, insanity and, ultimately, a testament to indifference in
the face of man’s unspeakable inhumanity to man.
Armenia, 1915-17: Nearly 2 million Armenians are massacred by the
Turks. The world looks on with brutish apathy.
The Soviet Union, 1929-45: More than 20 million perish in Stalin’s
gulags, purges and pogroms.
Hitler’s Germany and occupied Europe, 1933-45: Another 20 million –
Jews, gypsies, the physically and mentally challenged, gays,
Freemasons and political dissidents – are slaughtered.
>From 1927-49, ten million Chinese perish at the hands of a
"nationalist" regime, while at least 30 million more are decimated
between 1949 and 1976 during the Maoist "cultural revolution."
In Guatemala, some 300,000 Maya are exterminated during a 20-year
conflict engineered, funded and orchestrated by the United States. The
conflict officially ends in 1981 with a "reconciliation pact" that
whitewashes torture, mass murders and disappearances by exonerating
the criminals and denying the victims’ families any compensation.
>From 1971-79, more than 300,000 civilians are assassinated in Idi
Amin’s Uganda. Guerrilla war and human rights abuses under Milton
Obote (1980-85) claim another 100,000 lives.
Three million people, mostly intellectuals and professionals, are
butchered by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge from 1975-79. The dead are buried
in mass graves, later to be remembered as the "killing fields." To
save ammunition, the executioners use hammers, axes, spades and bamboo
sticks.
In 1994, tribal discord based on economics rather than ethnicity fuels
the murder of nearly 1 million Tutsis by disgruntled Hutu tribesmen in
Rwanda.
One by one, the images, spasmodic and mindbending, unroll in a
paroxysm of mangled skeletal remains, bleached bones and vacant,
unblinking eyes stilled by incomprehension or death.
Indeed, "Innocents Betrayed," a 58-minute montage of history’s most
infernal moments, aptly articulates the banality of evil.
Produced by "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership Inc."
(JPFO) and marketed as a documentary, the film deftly intertwines
actual footage with an eloquent narration formulated to associate
firearm registration and confiscation with "death by government."
While chronicling indisputable events, "Innocents Betrayed," by
tenuous twists of logic, suggests that had the victims of the above
holocausts been armed, they might have survived.
Such inference, made post priori, is fallacious in that it assumes
that one event is caused by another merely because it follows it.
Failing to consider factors such as counter evidence – think Masada,
think the Warsaw Ghetto, think Waco, Texas – the film does not
convincingly explain how people would have resisted their tormentors
had they possessed firearms.
All it does is postulate that "disarmament is necessary to make
possible the mass murder of helpless citizens" – ergo, that citizens
should resist gun control and arm themselves.
In search of a rational connection between gun ownership and
protection against the overwhelming force of barbarians, renegade
states, totalitarian regimes and capricious governments, I also read
"Death by Gun Control," co-authored by JPFO executive director Aaron
Zelman and attorney Richard W. Stevens, producers and narrators of
"Innocents Betrayed." What I found, amid a plethora of facts and
sobering statistics, was a stream of illogicality and assumptions
contrived to link gun control with subjugation by an abusive
government, in this case, hypothetically, the U.S. government.
In 73 C.E., rather than face capture by the Romans, 1,000 Jewish
rebels – men, women and children – committed suicide on their
mountaintop stronghold in Masada. There is no empirical evidence that
they could have withstood the Roman onslaught, had they been armed.
Nor would the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, brave and indomitable in the
face of Nazi persecution, starvation, disease and deportations have
survived had they been equipped with more weapons. During the
uprising, 13,000 ghetto residents were killed, burned alive and gassed
in bunkers. The remaining 50,000 (from a total population estimated at
half a million), were exterminated at Treblinka and other death camps.
And during the 1993, fifty-one-day siege of the well-armed Branch
Davidian compound in Waco, after weeks of psych-war assaults, sleep
deprivation and all-night broadcasts of recordings of rabbits being
slaughtered, federal agents, backed by Army helicopters, tanks, tear
gas and flammable liquids slaughtered 74 people, among them 12
children. This colossal response to a very minimal threat suggests
that when governments are faced with small arms they will respond with
heavy artillery – perhaps even a nuclear bomb or two (think Hiroshima
and Nagasaki).
I don’t doubt the sincerity of the JPFO’s convictions. I am wary of
its conspicuously undeclared political agenda. Although Innocents
Betrayed is well worth viewing as a graphic reminder of the lunacy of
man, I found it simplistic and utopian at best, deceptive in the sham
implied altruism of its arguments and disturbing in its apocalyptic
romanticizing of gun ownership.
America has a violent and crime-ridden society, and I have yet to
determine whether the Second Amendment – as interpreted by the JPFO –
is part of the problem of part of the solution.
DVD and VHS copies of "Innocents Betrayed" and "Death by Gun Control"
can be purchased from the JFPO, P.O. Box 270143, Hartford, WI 53027,
1-800-869-1884.
Willy E. Gutman of Tehachapi is a veteran journalist on assignment in
Central America since 1991. His column reflects his own views, and not
necessarily those of The Signal.
Copyright: The Signal
PanARMENIAN.Net
Baku: Oskanian-Mammadyarov Meeting to Be Held in Brussels December 4
01.12.2006 12:39 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The recurrent meeting of the
Armenian and Azeri FMs within the process of the
Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement will take place
in Brussels December 4, Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov told reporters. Noting that the President
clarified a number of issues at the CIS summit in
Minsk, Mammadyarov informed that OSCE MG Co-chairs and
personal representative of the OSCE CiO Andrzej
Kasprzyk will be present at the meeting. Discussions
on the next presidential meeting will be also held in
Brussels, reports Azeri Press.
PanARMENIAN.Net
Armenian-French Relations at Unprecedented Level
01.12.2006 13:08 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Secretary of the Security Council at
the RA President, Defense Minister Serge Sargsyan met
yesterday with newly appointed French Ambassador to
Armenia Serge Smessov. As RA Defense Minister’s
Spokesman Seyran Shahsuvaryan told PanARMENIAN.Net,
congratulating the diplomat on the appointment Serge
Sargsyan said that the Armenian-French relations are
at unprecedented level and voiced assurance that the
potential of relations between the two states is
great. When touching upon the Nagorno Karabakh problem
the parties expressed assurance that the only way of
settlement is the peaceful one.
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AIDS/HIV DESTROYS FATES
[12:55 pm] 01 December, 2006
The HIV carriers are looking for mercy. They suffer
not only from the illness itself, but also from the
negative attitude of the society. The specialists
think that if the society changes the stereotypes, if
the people cease to look upon the illness as a stigma
and become more caring, they will contribute to the
improvement of the situation of the patients.
Statistics show that half of the HIV carriers catch
the virus before they are 25. Many of them die before
they are 35. Even if they manage to have children,
they are brought up by grandparents, sisters and
brothers. The children of the society’s rejects
usually have the same fate as their parents.
Investigations show that those children can be
discriminated against, including restrictions on
health, education, and social security services. Very
often these children run the risk of repeating the sad
fate of their parents.
Armenian specialists have made sad predictions that
HIV/AIDS will continue to influence the lives of
coming generations too.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Panorama.am
14:30 30/11/06
NATIONAL LIBRARY RECEIVES LITERATURE FROM NATO
The information center of NATO in Armenia donated
dozens of books to the national library of Armenia in
Armenian, English and Russian languages, which tell
about the history and activities of the Euro Atlantic
Alliance.
The information center of NATO has been functioning in
Armenia for 20 days and some 100 people attended it
during that time. The center also donates books to
individuals.
`Especially students are interested in literature on
NATO,’ Ara Tadevosyan, NATO information center head in
Armenia, said while donating the books to David
Sargsyan, director of the national library of Armenia.
Sargsyan said the books will be put under the
international sector and will be open to large public.
/Panorama.am/