FRANCE DOWNPLAYS DISPUTE WITH TURKEY
By Jenny Barchfield Associated Press Writer
CBS News, NY
Nov 16 2006
France downplays Turkish suspension of military ties in riff over
mass killing of Armenians
(AP) France’s Defense Ministry said Thursday there was no immediate
impact from Turkey’s announced suspension of military ties in a
dispute over the mass killing of Armenians in the early 20th century.
Turkey’s land forces commander, Gen. Ilker Basbug, announced the
cut Wednesday amid a debate over whether 1915 killings of Armenians
constitutes genocide. France’s lower house of parliament has passed
a bill outlawing denials that genocide occurred, angering Turkey.
Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau noted that the
suspension came from a military commander, not from Turkey’s civilian
government, and that French authorities had not received official word
from Turkey on delays or cancelations in joint military operations.
France believes that existing cooperation with Turkey will continue.
Specifically, Bureau mentioned operations in the Balkans and in
Afghanistan.
“There is a relationship of work and cooperation in these operational
commitments with Turkey that are extremely important and which,
in our eyes, will continue,” he said.
Bureau said Turkey could retract permission for French military
ships to dock in its waters and make it more difficult for France to
obtain permission to fly through Turkish airspace, but that had not
yet happened.
“Until now, the announcement has not had any practical and concrete
effects,” he said, although he added that they could come in the
future.
He described military cooperation between both countries, which include
joint exercises and training as well as peacekeeping operations, as
“constant” and “continuous.”
Turkey is scheduled to take over command of a NATO peacekeeping
operation in Kabul, Afghanistan, from France in April 2007, Bureau
said. He added that any Turkish decision to pull out of its engagements
in Afghanistan would hurt NATO more than France.
Turkey vehemently denies it committed genocide against Armenians,
although many nations have classified the killings as such and say
some 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died in mass
expulsions and fighting, but says the number is exaggerated and
that most were killed in interethnic battles as the Ottoman Empire
collapsed.
In France, which has a large Armenian community, the lower house
of parliament infuriated Turkey in October by approving a bill that
would make it a crime to deny that Turks committed genocide against
Armenians. But the bill is not expected to become law because President
Jacques Chirac does not approve of it.
The Armenian issue is one of the most divisive and emotional in
Turkey. Those who classify the killings as genocide are often accused
of treason.
The European Union has criticized the French bill, saying it does
not respect the principle of free expression and does not promote
dialogue with Turkey, a hopeful EU candidate.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei highlighted
the extent of cooperation between the two counties, saying their
armed forces work together “very closely in several theaters.”
“In Afghanistan, our troops, like those from Turkey and Italy, are
stationed at the same base in Kabul,” said Mattei.
“Our troops are also engaged side by side in Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo
and in Congo,” he said, “so there is close cooperation and great
mutual respect between the French and Turkish armed forces.”
/11/16/ap/world/mainD8LEA3F80.shtml

ESF TO BESTOW GRADUATE OF DISTINCTION AWARDS
Curtis H. Bauer, Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, Steven Anlian
SUNY-ESF Headlines, NY
Nov 16 2006
SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
(ESF) and its Alumni Association will bestow Graduate of Distinction
honors on three of its alumni during convocation ceremonies Dec. 8.
Being honored for contributions to their communities and ESF are
Curtis H. Bauer, Col. Richard P. Wagenaar and Steven Anlian.
A 1950 graduate of the forestry program at ESF, Curtis H. Bauer founded
a consulting forestry business and built it into the largest in New
York state.
Three years after graduating from ESF, Bauer founded his consulting
forestry firm. By the time he sold the Jamestown-based business in
1991, Forecon, Inc, counted among its clients some of the largest
industrial forest products firms in the country. Over the decades
he employed numerous ESF alumni, giving them a start in their own
natural resource careers.
Bauer’s list of professional honors and affiliations reflect his
long-standing passion for, and commitment to, his field. He was
elected a Fellow of the Society of American Foresters (SAF) in 1985,
due to his prominence in his profession. The New York Chapter of the
SAF recognized him with its prestigious Heiberg and “Forester of the
Year” awards.
Bauer has served on the college’s board of trustees for 30 years,
including several years as its chairman. He has also served on the
ESF College Foundation and chaired or served on advisory committees
for the Faculty of Forestry and Natural Resource Management.
Bauer will be presented with ESF’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, a 1982 forest and natural resource management
graduate, has served his country in many capacities through the
U.S. Army and its Corps of Engineers. In his latest position his
work is influencing the lives of countless residents as leader of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for New Orleans.
Wagenaar was only six weeks into his new job when Hurricane Katrina
hit southeastern Louisiana. Now working with a massive $3 billion
budget, he is responsible for a jurisdiction that includes 2,800
miles of navigable waterways, 1,300 miles of levees and floodwalls,
six major flood control structures and other projects to protect
coastal wetlands and the city of New Orleans.
Wagenaar uses his ESF background to bring an environmental scientist’s
point of view to the job thereby looking not only at obvious safety
concerns, but also ensuring the protection of marshes and the
availability of fresh water.
A decorated military officer, he has eight meritorious service
medals and three Army commendation medals among many other honors. He
graduated from several elite military education programs such as the
Industrial College of the Armed Forces and holds two master’s degrees.
Wagenaar will be presented with the Alumni of Distinction Award.
A 1975/76 graduate of the landscape architecture program Steven Anlian
has dedicated himself to helping rebuild homes, cities, and lives as
an expert in disaster relief.
Anlian took a leave of absence from his position at HOH Associates,
a nationally recognized urban planning and landscape architecture
firm, to volunteer with Armenia’s national planning agency after
the devastating earthquake there in 1989. He did this as a Fulbright
scholar. For his work, he was appointed an honorary member of President
Gorbachev’s Commission on Armenian Recovery.
In 1991, recruited by the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), he served as resident advisor to the newly independent
Government of Armenia to assist with its rebuilding.
In 1998, returning to Armenia, Anlian developed the “New Strategy
for Armenia’s Earthquake Zone,” which presented innovative solutions
to providing permanent shelter for the displaced families in the
earthquake region and jump-started stalled recovery efforts. This
guided USAID in programming $34.2 million for the recovery program.
In July 2006, Anlian returned to Washington, D.C. as the director
of infrastructure in the department of operations for the Millennium
Challenge Corporation, the new federal corporation redefining American
foreign assistance. Thus he will assist with future natural disasters.
Anlian will be honored with the Graduate of Distinction Award.
6.distinction.htm

FRANCE HAS NO CONFIRMATION OF MILITARY RIFT WITH TURKEY – OFFICIAL
Kuwait News Agency, Kuwait
Nov 16 2006
France has no confirmation of military rift with Turkey – official
PARIS, Nov 16 (KUNA) — France has not received any official
confirmation that Turkey intends to halt military cooperation with
the French army because of ongoing tensions due to France’s position
on the alleged Armenian genocide in 1915.
Several years ago, the French parliament officially recognized the
Armenian genocide which is said to have claimed around one million
lives.
Turkey disputes the Armenian version and the figures put forward
by Armenia.
The situation further deteriorated when the French Parliament last
month made it a crime to call into question or dispute the Armenian
genocide, a similar move to that made by the Parliament on the Jewish
holocaust several years ago.
The latest French move incensed Turkish authorities and resulted in
the reports from the Military High Command in Ankara that cooperation
with France will be halted.
“To my knowledge, we have not received any official communication on
this subject from Turkish authorities,” Foreign Ministry spokesman
Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.
“Concerning our relations with Turkey in military matters, our armed
forces cooperate closely in several operational theatres (and) in
the framework of multinational operations,” the French official noted.
He cited, in particular, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo and
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“There is, thus, a close cooperation and a great mutual respect
between the French and Turkish armed forces,” he indicated.
There have been calls in Turkey for boycotts of French goods and other
retaliatory measures in addition to ending cooperation in a number of
areas because of the French Parliaments move on the Armenian genocide
issue.
.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=922838

RUSSIA WITHDRAWS MILITARY EQUIPMENT FROM GEORGIAN CAPITAL
International Herald Tribune, France
The Associated Press
Nov 16 2006
TBILISI, Georgia: A convoy of Russian military hardware and other
equipment left the Georgian capital Thursday en route to a base in
Armenia, a Russian official said Thursday, in the latest pullout of
materiel from the Caucasus Mountains nation.
The convoy – the first from the Russian forces’ central military
garrison in Tbilisi – was pulled ahead of schedule, said a deputy
commander overseeing Russian forces in the country, who asked that
his name not be used since he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Nearly 390 personnel, more than 100 pieces of military vehicles and
some 350 tons of weapons and other equipment will be withdrawn by
year’s end, the official said.
After months of contentious negotiations, Georgia and Russia reached
agreement last year on pulling Russian forces out of two bases, which
both are scheduled to be fully closed by October 2008. Much of the
equipment was to be shipped to the Russian base at Gyumri, Armenia.
The closure affected some 3,000-4,000 Russian troops at the bases.
Relations between the two countries have plummeted in recent months
as Georgia accuses Russia of supporting separatists, and Russia fears
Georgia is moving further out of its shadow toward the West.
Interfax said the equipment was pulled out of the Tbilisi garrison
ahead of schedule due to the tense state of relations.

TO D.C. ON FOOT
Georgetown University The Georgetown Voice, DC
Nov 16 2006
Georgetown’s STAND and Armenian Student organization joined George
Washington University students Nov. 5 to welcome six Armenian-American
students who walked from Los Angeles to D.C. to call attention to
the genocide in Darfur.
The students’ march began on June 27 and ended Nov. 1. After their
arrival at GW, the University hosted a discussion forum on genocide
with Journey for Humanity, the genocide-awareness organization that
sponsored the students.
“Walking is symbolic of genocide,” Edward Majian, one of the marchers,
told the GW Hatchet. “We are walking in an attempt to be in solidarity
with those people,” he said, referring to Darfur victims as well as
those of past genocides.
On its web site, Journey for Humanity kept an online report and
diary of the six students, in which they reflected not only on Darfur
genocide but on the more obscure Armenian genocide of 1915-1923.
-16/news/news-hits

RUSSIA STEPS UP ECONOMIC PRESENCE IN ARMENIA
Emil Danielyan
EurasiaNet, NY
Nov 16 2006
Russia is boosting its economic presence in Armenia, and recent
acquisitions are raising new questions about the nature of Yerevan’s
close relationship with Moscow. Armenian President Robert Kocharian’s
administration is downplaying domestic opposition claims that Russia’s
growing economic presence poses a threat to Yerevan’s sovereignty.
“I don’t consider [these developments] dangerous,” Defense
Minister Serzh Sarkisian, who also co-chairs a Russian-Armenian
intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, told reporters
on November 6. “Because I have still not seen the Russian side use
its economic levers in Armenia [for political aims.]”
Reports that Russia’s state-run Gazprom monopoly will raise its stake
in ArmRosGazprom (ARG), a Russian-Armenian joint venture running
Armenia’s gas infrastructure, from 45 percent to 58 percent were
confirmed by Kocharian during his latest visit to Moscow. The ARG
chief executive, Karen Karapetian, explained in late October that the
deal involves the circulation of $118 million worth of new ARG shares,
all of which will be bought by Gazprom.
The Armenian government has until now also possessed 45 percent stake
in ARG, with the remaining 10 percent controlled by the private Russian
energy firm, ITERA. The increase in the Armenian gas distributor’s
charter capital will dilute the government’s share to just over 30
percent. Karapetian confirmed that it is part of a complex April 2006
agreement that allowed Armenia to avoid a doubling of the price of
Russian gas to $110 million until January 2009. In return, authorities
in Yerevan controversially agreed to hand over more energy assets
to Gazprom. Those included the incomplete fifth unit of Armenia’s
largest thermal power plant located in the central town of Hrazdan.
Armenian officials have indicated in recent weeks that the April deal
also allows the Russian conglomerate to gain control of a gas pipeline
from neighboring Iran, currently under construction. Prime Minister
Andranik Markarian told reporters in late October that the pipeline,
whose first Armenian section is slated for completion this winter,
will likely be incorporated into ARG, arguing that “it would be
illogical to have two gas distribution networks in Armenia.”
All this will give the Russians a near total control over the Armenian
energy sector. Gazprom is currently Armenia’s sole gas supplier,
and already owns the four other operating units of the Hrazdan
plant. Another state-run Russian company, the RAO Unified Energy
Systems (UES) utility, owns a cascade of hydro-electric plants north
of Yerevan and manages the finances of the nuclear power plant at
Metsamor. As recently as September 26, UES formalized its $73 million
takeover of Armenia’s electricity distribution network. [For background
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Receiving Kocharian in the Kremlin on October 30, Russian President
Vladimir Putin bluntly described as “shameful” the fact that his
country is only the third largest investor in the Armenian economy.
Three days later, a leading Russian mobile phone operator,
Vimpel-Communications, announced the purchase of a 90 percent share
in Armenia’s national telecommunications company, ArmenTel, from
the Greek firm OTE. Armenian state regulators gave the green light
to the deal on November 14. “Putin has no reason to be unhappy,”
commented the Yerevan newspaper 168 Zham. “His country has received
80 percent of the energy sector, the backbone of the Armenian economy,
and many other facilities as gifts from its strategic partner.”
Interestingly, the latest Russian takeovers come amid Yerevan’s
continuing efforts to forge closer political and security links with
the West. Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian was in Brussels
on November 14 to sign a detailed plan of actions stemming from the
European Union’s European Neighborhood Policy program that entitle
Armenia to a privileged relationship with the economic bloc. A day
earlier, Sarkisian flew to Iraq on a visit aimed at showing support
for a small contingent of Armenian troops stationed there. Analysts
believe the influential defense chief, widely seen as a Kocharian
successor, is thereby trying to enhance his pro-Western credentials.
Economic dealings with Russia are one of the least transparent areas of
governance in Armenia, with Kocharian and Sarkisian believed to make
all key decisions without outside input. Both men have repeatedly
stated that the controversial deals cut with Moscow are purely
commercial, infusing the Armenian economy with badly needed capital
investments. But Armenian opposition leaders and many local analysts
claim that their main motive is to ensure the Kremlin’s support
for their continued hold on power. Hmayak Hovannisian, a maverick
parliamentarian sympathetic to Russia, insisted on November 6 that
the Kocharian-Sarkisian duo has served as the catalyst for the deals.
“The Russians have a good proverb: Accept what you are given, run
when you are beaten. If the Armenian authorities are ready to easily
present strategic facilities, why should Russia refuse to accept
them?” Hovannisian told a roundtable discussion in Yerevan.
Whatever the real motives of its two top leaders, Armenia is beginning
to face the possibility of disruptions in Russian gas supplies as a
result of the festering confrontation between Russia and neighboring
Georgia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Adding a
new twist to the standoff are Gazprom’s threats to drastically raise
the price of its gas for Georgia from $110 to $230 per thousand cubic
meters unless the pro-Western government in Tbilisi follows Yerevan’s
example and cedes some of its own energy assets, notably the sole
gas pipeline running from Russia to Armenia.
[For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
“If no agreement on gas deliveries is signed with Georgia [before the
end of this year], gas will be delivered through Georgian territory
to Armenia only,” the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Gazprom
Deputy Chairman Aleksandr Medvedyev as saying November 7.
There are mounting fears in Yerevan that Georgia could retaliate
against what its leaders have denounced as “political blackmail”
by siphoning off the gas intended for Armenia and thus forcing the
Russians to stop the supplies altogether. It is also unclear what
the gas price will be for Armenia from January 2009, when nothing
will prevent Gazprom from charging Yerevan as much as it seeks from
Tbilisi. The asset handover to Russia may thus have brought only
temporary relief to Armenian consumers.
Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst.

TURKEY: SHARPSHOOTERS AND SECURITY CAMERAS FOR POPE’S ISTANBUL VISIT
AKI, Italy
Nov 16 2006
Istanbul, 16 Nov. (AKI) – Authorities in Istanbul say they will deploy
police sharpshooters on rooftops and install closed circuit television
surveillance cameras during Pope Benedict XVI’s scheduled visit to the
city on 30 November, part of his historic visit to Turkey. Benedict
will celebrate the feast of Saint Andrew with the Ecumenical Patriarch
of Constantinople Bartholomew I and the Armenian patriarch, Mesrob II –
the two leaders of Turkey’s tiny Christian community.
The pope will stay at a church residence near the Cathedral of the
Holy Spirit and authorities say that police will carry out checks on
people moving in and around the vicinity of the building.
While people will be able to protest against the pope’s visit –
a possibility since Benedict angered many Muslims with comments he
made on Islam in September – such gatherings will only be allowed at
places determined by the police.
Police will also monitor groups suspected to be hostile to the pope,
such as an ultra-nationalist lawyer’s group behind a series of court
cases against intellectuals, including new Nobel Literature Prize
winner Orhan Pamuk, for saying that the Muslim Ottoman authorities
planned genocide against Christian Armenians in the early 20th century.
A total of 4,000 police will be tasked with protecting the pope and
wellwishers during the Istanbul leg of the visit, Benedict’s first
to an overwhelmingly Muslim populated country since becoming pope in
April last year.

SECULARISM IN TURKEY MEANS GOVERNMENT CONTROLS ALL RELIGIONS
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Nov 16 2006
ROME (CNS) — Turkey’s unique brand of secularism is not separation
of religion and state, but rather government control of religion,
impacting both the Muslim majority and religious minorities.
The government builds and funds mosques, employs Muslim prayer
leaders, controls religious education and bans Muslim women and men
from wearing certain head coverings in public offices and universities.
The Turkish Constitution guarantees the religious freedom of all the
country’s residents, and a 1923 treaty guarantees that religious
minorities will be allowed to found and operate religious and
charitable institutions.
Secularists in Turkey see control of religion as the only way to
guarantee Islam will not overpower the secularism of the state and
its institutions.
However, the fact that the constitution and Turkish law do not
recognize minority religious communities as legal entities has severely
limited their ability to own property, and laws restricting private
religious higher education have made it almost impossible for them
to operate seminaries and schools of theology.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to address the need for a broader
understanding of the religious freedom guarantees during his Nov.
28-Dec. 1 visit to Turkey.
Otmar Oehring, head of the human rights office of Missio, the German
Catholic aid and development agency, said that when the Republic of
Turkey was founded in 1923 the Department of Religious Affairs was
established “to crush Islam and replace it with Turkish nationalism,
which was seen as the only way to promote the modernization and
development of Turkey.”
“But it is clear that you cannot take religion away from a religious
country,” Oehring said in a Nov. 15 telephone interview from Aachen,
Germany. “Turks are not fundamentalists and radicals, but they
are pious.”
Oehring lived in Turkey until he was 16, and he wrote his doctoral
thesis on ideological tensions within the country.
Once multiparty democracy was established in Turkey in the 1950s, he
said, the Religious Affairs Department started opening more mosques
and training and hiring more imams.
Although the effort to crush Islam was set aside, a conviction that
religion had to be controlled was not, he said.
“The state controls and organizes a state brand of Islam,” he said.
Particularly as Turkey’s human rights record is examined as part of
its bid to enter the European Union, “many say religious freedom in
Turkey would be dangerous” because of a perceived threat of Islamic
fundamentalism, Oehring said.
“However, I argue that under international human rights agreements
people must be given full religious freedom, but the state can take
action against those who pose a danger for public safety or the state,”
he said.
As far as religious rights go, “in Turkey they first say ‘no,’ then
try to see how they can make it work. We say ‘yes,’ then work to
prevent abuses,” Oehring said.
While Turkish Muslims live their faith under government control,
minority religious communities operate under government restrictions,
and minorities often face discrimination in education and employment,
he said.
“If you are a Turkish citizen of Turkish origin, with a Turkish name
and you are a Sunni Muslim, you will have no problems,” Oehring said.
“But if you are Catholic — or worse, Greek Orthodox with a Greek name
— you are considered a foreigner, even if you are a Turkish citizen.”
One of the most difficult issues Christians, Jews and other religious
minorities are facing is their lack of recognition under Turkish law,
particularly as it applies to their ability to acquire and own property
for churches or synagogues, schools and hospitals, he said.
Running seminaries is evening more difficult, Oehring said.
“In 1971, the government decided there would be no more private
religious schools offering higher education,” so the Greek and
Armenian Orthodox seminaries were closed, he said. The Jewish community
already was sending its rabbinical students abroad, and the Latin-rite
Catholic seminary remained open since it was housed in the compound
of the French consulate in Istanbul.
“The Muslim schools had already been closed in 1924 and were reopened
as government-run high schools or faculties of divinity in Turkish
universities,” so the state controlled what the students learned,
he said.
While many people recognize the continued closure of the seminaries
as a problem, he said, “the Kemalists and secularists say if you give
Christians the possibility of opening schools, Islamic schools not
under state control also would have a right to open.”
In early November, under pressure from the European Union, the
Turkish Parliament passed a “religious foundations law” ordering
the state to return property it owns that had been confiscated from
religious communities. As of Nov. 15, the legislation had not been
signed into law.
“A lot of church people prefer that this not become law because then
the government can say it did what it was asked to do and nothing
will change for another 20 years,” Oehring said.
The biggest problem with the law, he said, is that it applies only to
confiscated property still owned by the state, but it does not address
the issue of compensation for confiscated property subsequently sold
by the government.
ies/cns/0606536.htm

PUTTING PAIN TO WORK
by Paul Brand and Philip Yancey
Christianity Today, IL
Nov 16 2006
Healthy bodies know how to make use of pain. A healthy church does too.
I admit, a professional career devoted to people with leprosy, whose
main defect is an absence of pain, has biased me on the subject. And
yet numbness, too, is a form of suffering. In the case of leprosy
patients it can lead to a life of acute suffering.
When I reflect on pain I prefer not to think in a detached way of
a hypothetical sum of the world’s suffering; instead I focus on one
individual with a face and body. At such moments my mind often flashes
back to the refined, upper-caste features of my friend Sadagopan,
whom we called Sadan. Readers of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made know
him as the forbearing subject of my early experiments with proper
footwear for leprosy patients.
When Sadan first came to Vellore, his feet had shrunk to half their
normal length and his fingers were shortened and paralyzed. It
took us nearly two years of unflagging effort to stop the pattern
of destruction in his feet. Meanwhile we began reconstructing
his hands, a finger at a time, attaching the most useful tendons
to the most useful digits and retraining his mind to control the
new set of connections. In all, Sadan spent four years with me in
rehabilitation. He personified the soft-spoken, gentle Indian spirit.
Together, we wept at our failures and rejoiced at the gradual
successes. I came to love Sadan as a dear friend.
At last Sadan decided he should return home to his family in Madras
for a trial weekend. He had come to us with badly ulcerated hands and
feet. Now his hands were more flexible, and with a specially designed
rocker type shoe he could walk without damage. “I want to go back to
where I was rejected before,” he said proudly, referring to the cafes
that had turned him away and the buses that had denied him service.
“Now that I am not so deformed I want to try my way in the great city
of Madras.”
Before Sadan left, we reviewed all the dangers he might encounter.
Since he had no warning system of pain, any sharp or hot object
could harm him. Having learned to care for himself in our hospital
and workshop, he felt confident. He boarded a train to Madras.
On Saturday night, after an exuberant reunion dinner with his family,
Sadan went to his old room where he had not slept for four years. He
lay down on the woven pallet on the floor and drifted off to sleep
in great peace and contentment. At last he was home, fully accepted
once again.
The next morning when Sadan awoke and examined himself, as he had
been trained to do at the hospital, he recoiled in horror. Part of
the back of his left index finger was mangled. He knew the culprit
because he had seen many such injuries on other patients. Evidence was
clear: telltale drops of blood, marks in the dust, and, of course,
the decimated clump of tendon and flesh that had been so carefully
reconstructed some months before. A rat had visited him during the
night and gnawed his finger.
Immediately he thought, What will Dr. Brand say? All that day he
agonized. He considered coming back to Vellore early, but finally
decided he must keep his promise to stay the weekend. He looked in
vain for a rat trap to protect him that last night at home-shops
were closed for a festival. He concluded he must stay awake to guard
against further injury.
(To prevent such tragedies, we later tried to maintain a rule at the
hospital: all released patients must take a cat home to protect them
from rats during the night.)
All Sunday night Sadan sat cross-legged on his pallet, his back
against the wall, studying an accounting book by the light of a
kerosene lantern. About four o’clock in the morning the subject grew
dull and his eyes felt heavy and he could no longer fight off sleep.
The book fell forward onto his knees and his hand slid over to one
side against the hot glass of the hurricane lamp.
When Sadan awoke the next morning he saw instantly that a large patch
of skin had burned off the back of his right hand. He sat trembling
in bed, despair growing like a tumor inside him, and stared at his
two hands-one gnawed by a rat, the other melted down to the tendons.
He had learned the dangers and difficulties of leprosy, in fact had
taught them to others. Now he was devastated by the sight of his two
damaged hands. Again he thought, How can I face Dr. Brand, who worked
so hard on these hands?
Sadan returned to Vellore that day with both hands swathed in
bandages. When he met me and I began to unroll the bandages, he wept.
I must confess that I wept with him. As he poured out his misery
to me, he said, “I feel as if I’ve lost all my freedom.” And then,
a question that has stayed with me, “How can I be free without pain?”
As I turn from the network of pain in biology to its analogy in the
Body of Christ, comprising all believers, again I am struck by the
importance of such a communicative system. Pain serves as vital a
role in protecting and uniting that corporate membership as it does
in guarding the cells of my own body.
Deep emotional connections link human beings as certainly as
dendrites link cells in our bodies, evident even in such relative
trivialities as sporting events. Watch the face of a wife sitting in
the stands at Wimbledon as her husband plays in the championship tennis
match. Strands of concern and affection unite them so intensely that
every on-court success or failure can be read on the wife’s face. She
winces at every missed shot and smiles at each minor triumph. What
affects him affects her. Or, visit a Jewish household in Miami,
San Francisco, or Chicago around election time in Israel.
Many Jews know more about the campaign ten thousand miles away than
about their local elections. An invisible web, a plexus of human
connections, links them with a tiny nation of strangers far away.
Or, recall the effect on a nation when a great leader dies. I
experienced the unifying effect of pain most profoundly in 1963 when
I came to the United States to address the student chapel at Stanford
University. As it happened, the chapel service occurred just two days
after the assassination of President John Kennedy. I spoke on pain that
day, for I could read nothing but pain on the faces of hundreds of
students jammed into that building. I described for them scenes from
around the world, where I knew clusters of people would be gathering
together in prayer and mourning to share the pain of a grieving
nation. I have never felt such unity of spirit in a worship service.
Something like those sympathetic connections should link us to members
of Christ’s Body all over the globe. When South Africa jails courageous
black Christians, when a government systematically destroys the church
in Cambodia, when Central American death squads murder Christians,
when Muslims drive a person from town for the crime of converting,
when more of my neighbors lose their jobs, a part of my Body suffers
and I should sense the loss. Pain also comes to our attention in
whispered signals of loneliness, despair, discrimination, physical
suffering, self-hatred.
“How can a man who is warm understand one who is cold?” asks Alexander
Solzhenitsyn as he tries to fathom the apathy toward millions of Gulag
inmates. In response, he has devoted his life to perform the work of a
“nerve cell,” alerting us to pain we may have overlooked. In a Body
composed of millions of cells, the comfortable ones must consciously
attend to the messages of pain. We must develop a lower threshold
of pain by listening, truly listening, to those who suffer. The word
compassion itself comes from Latin words cum and pati, together meaning
“to suffer with.”
Today our world has shrunk, and as a Body we live in awareness of
all cells: persecuted Russian believers, starving Africans, oppressed
South Africans and Indochinese and Central Americans … the litany
fills our newspapers. Do we fully attend? Do we hear their cries as
unmistakably as our brains hear the complaints of a strained back
or broken arm? Or do we instead turn down the volume, filtering out
annoying sounds of distress?
And closer, within the confines of our own local membership of Christ’s
Body-how do we respond? Tragically, the divorced, the alcoholics,
the introverted, the rebellious, the unemployed often report that the
church is the last body to show them compassion. Like a person who
takes aspirin at the first sign of headache, we want to silence them,
to “cure” them without addressing the underlying causes.
Someone once asked John Wesley’s mother, “Which one of your eleven
children do you love the most?” Her answer was as wise as the question
foolish: “I love the one who’s sick until he’s well, and the one who’s
away until he comes home.” That, I believe, is God’s attitude toward
our suffering planet. He feels the pain of the suffering; do we?
God gave this succinct summary of the life of King Josiah: “He
defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.” And
then this profound postscript: “Is that not what it means to know
me?” (Jer. 22:16).
I hear many cries for unity in the church today; a watching world
sees divisiveness as our greatest failure. Calls go out exhorting one
denomination to merge with another, or for many denominations to join
hands in a national or worldwide campaign. Out of my experience with
the nervous system in the human body I would propose another kind of
unity: one based on pain.
I can read the health of a physical body by noting how well it
“listens” to pain-most of the diagnostic tools we use, after all
(fever, pulse, blood cell count), measure the body’s healing
response. Analogously, the corporate Body’s health depends on how
the stronger parts attend to the weaker.
Some cries of pain in the Body come to us loudly and persistently. We
cannot help but acknowledge them. I am more concerned with the distant
outposts of pain, the extremities of limb in His Body that we have
somehow silenced. I have performed many amputations in my life,
most of them because the hand or foot has gone silent and no longer
reports pain. There are members of Christ’s Body, too, whose pain we
never sense, for we have denervated or cut whatever link would carry
an awareness of them to us. They suffer, but silently, unnoticed by
the rest of the Body.
I think of my Lebanese friends, for example. In Beirut, children
have grown up knowing nothing but war. They carry submachine guns
as nonchalantly as American children carry water pistols. They play,
not in parks, but in crumbling skyscrapers gutted by bombs. Christians
in Lebanon, especially the Armenians, feel utterly abandoned by the
church in the West, which focuses so much attention on Israel and
assumes all non-Israelis in the Middle East to be Arab and Muslim.
Spokesmen for Christians in Lebanon eloquently plead for compassion
or some token of understanding by their brothers and sisters in the
West, but we act as though the neural connections have been cut, the
synapses blocked. Few hear their pain and respond with Christian love.
Or I think of the homosexual population scattered throughout our
churches and colleges. Some surveys show that as many as 20 percent
of males in Christian colleges struggle with homosexual tendencies.
The reality is so abhorrent to Christian leaders, though, that
the church may simply pretend they do not exist. They are left to
flounder, cut off from the balance and diversity of the larger Body
and the compassion that might help them.
Or I think of the elderly, often put away out of sight behind
institutional walls that hold in all sounds of loneliness and
mourning. Or of battered children who grow up troubled, unwelcomed
into foster homes. Or of races who feel cut off from participation
in the Body. Or of prisoners sealed off behind huge fences. Or of
foreign students who live tucked away in cheap lodging, isolated and
afraid. Even those within the church judged for some minor doctrinal
disagreement can feel cut off, severed.
In modern society we tend to isolate these problems by forming
organizations and appointing social workers to deal with them. If
we are not careful, a form of institutionalized charity will grow up
that effectively isolates hurting members from close personal contact
with healthy ones. In such an event, both groups atrophy: the charity
recipients who are cut off from human touch and compassion and the
charity donors who think of love as a kind of material transaction.
In the human body, when an area loses sensory contact with the rest of
the body, even when its nourishment system remains intact, that part
begins to wither and atrophy. In the vast majority of cases-95 of
100 insensitive hands I have examined-severe injury or deformation
results. The body poorly protects what it does not feel. In the
spiritual Body, also, loss of feeling inevitably leads to atrophy
and inner deterioration. So much of the sorrow in the world is due
to the selfishness of one living organism that simply does not care
when another suffers. In Christ’s Body we suffer because we do not
suffer enough.
I must also mention one further service that members of Christ’s
Body perform by embracing others’ suffering. I say this carefully:
we can show love when God seems not to.
The great accounts of Christians who have suffered, beginning with the
Book of Job and the Psalms and continuing through the writings of and
about the saints, speak of a “dark night of the soul” when God seems
strangely absent. When we need Him most, He is most inaccessible. At
this moment of apparent abandonment, the Body can rise to perhaps its
highest calling; we become in fact Christ’s Body, the enfleshment of
His reality in the world.
When God seems unreal, we can demonstrate His reality to others by
modeling His love and character. Some may see this as God’s failure
to respond to our deepest needs: “My God, why have You forsaken me?”
I see it as a calling for the rest of the Body to push through
loneliness and isolation and to embody physically the love of God.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort
we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of
Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort
overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation;
if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you
patient endurance of the same suffering we suffer.
And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share
in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort (2 Cor. 1:3-7).
As I reflect on the need to develop greater sensitivity to pain,
I think of one of my favorite patients at Carville, a man named Pedro.
For fifteen years he had lived without pain sensation in his left hand,
yet somehow the hand had suffered no damage. Of all the patients
we monitored, only Pedro showed no signs of scarring or loss of
fingertip. My associate went over Pedro’s hand with great care and
came up with a surprise. One tiny spot on the edge of his palm still
had normal sensitivity so that he could feel the lightest touch of
a pin, even a stiff hair. Elsewhere on the hand he could feel nothing.
We also found on a thermograph that the sensitive spot was at least
six degrees hotter than the rest of Pedro’s hand (which supported our
theory, still being formulated, that warm areas of the body resist
nerve damage from leprosy).
Pedro’s hand became for us an object of great curiosity, and he
graciously obliged without protest as we conducted our tests and
observed his activities. We noticed that he approached things with the
edge of his hand, much as a dog approaches an object with a searching
nose. He picked up a cup of coffee only after testing its temperature
with his feeling spot.
Finally Pedro tired of our endless fascination with his hand. He said,
“You know, I was born with a birthmark on my hand. The doctors said it
was a hemangioma and froze it with dry ice. But they never fully got
rid of it, because I can still feel it pulsing.” Somewhat embarrassed
that we had not considered that option, we verified that indeed the
arteries in his hand were abnormal. A tangle of arteries brought an
extra amount of blood and short-circuited some of it straight back to
the veins without sending it through all the fine capillaries. As a
result, the blood flowed very swiftly through that part of his hand,
keeping its temperature close to that of the heart, too warm for the
leprosy bacilli to flourish.
That single warm spot, the size of a nickel, which Pedro had previously
viewed as a defect, had become a wonderful advantage to him when he
contracted leprosy. That one remaining patch of sensitivity protected
his entire hand.
In a church that has grown large and institutional, I pray for similar
small patches of sensitivity. We must look to prophets, whether in
speech, sermon, or art form, who will call attention to the needy by
eloquently voicing their pain.
“Since my people are crushed, I am crushed,” cried Jeremiah (8:21).
And elsewhere, “Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the
agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent”
(4:19). Prophets like Jeremiah and Micah stand in great contrast to
an insensitive one like Jonah, who cared more about his comfort than
about an entire city’s destruction.
The prophets of Israel tried to warn an entire nation of social and
spiritual numbness. We need to encourage modern Jeremiahs and Micahs
and to value our compassionate, pain-sensitive members as much as Pedro
valued his tiny spot of sensitivity. By shutting off sensitivity to
pain, we risk forfeiting the wonderful privileges of being part of
a Body. A living organism is only as strong as its weakest part.
churchvitalsigns/articles/061115.html

CO-CHAIRS HOPE TO AGREE ON BASE PRINCIPLES CONCERNING NAGORNO GARABAGH CONFLICT
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Nov 16 2006
“OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs hope that Azerbaijani and Armenian
presidents will meet soon,” Russian co-chair Yuri Merzlyakov said,
APA reports quoting to RIA “Novosti”.
He said that they expect the meeting to be realized within the CIS
presidents’ summit in Minsk on November 28. He said that the co-chairs
made speech in the OSCE Standing Council. Russian diplomat said that
there are great opportunities to come to an agreement on the settlement
of Nagorno Garabagh conflict.
“The sides should at least agree on base principles of the future
peace treaty,” he said.
The Russian diplomat said the elections of 2007-2008 approach and the
election campaigns make negative influence on the negotiations. Asked
if the settlement of Kosovo conflict will influence the settlement
of Nagorno Garabagh conflict the diplomat said that the settlement
of Kosovo conflict will more or less influence the conflicts in the
OSCE space, as well as Nagorno Garabagh conflict.