KOSOVO PRINCIPLES SHOULD BE APPLIED TO ABKHAZIA, S OSSETIA-PUTIN
ITAR-TASS, Russia
13.09.2006, 16.07
MOSCOW, September 13 (Itar-Tass) – Russian President Vladimir Putin
is certain that in the Abkhazian and South Ossetian settlement the
same rules that are applied to Kosovo should be used. The president
believes the disruption of the Russian initiative in the Dniester
region is a mistake of European diplomacy.
“It is inadmissible to apply one rules for Kosovo and other –
for Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” said Putin answering questions
of participants in a meeting of the international discussion club
Valdai. A verbatim report of the meeting that was held on September 9
is published on the official Kremlin website. The Valdai discussion
club brings together leading political analysts, Russian affairs
experts and the heads of leading foreign policy and research think
tanks.
The President’s meetings with the club’s participants have already
become a tradition. This was the third such meeting. During the
three-hour discussion, Putin expressed his views on a number of key
foreign and domestic policy issues and answered numerous questions
put to him by the club’s participants, it is said on the website.
“(Regarding Kosovo) there is resolution 1244 (of the UN Security
Council) and nobody has cancelled it,” Putin said. “It is inadmissible
to manipulate public opinion and neglect decisions adopted by the UN
Security Council.”
The president stressed that international actions “in this sphere
should be coordinated and should be taken based on considering the
interests of all participants in this process.”
“We should once again think what will happen next if Kosovo
independence is recognized and legally formalized,” Putin said. “An
what will happen next in this region of the world? We had been told
that everything would be all right in Iraq. And now only Kurdish
flags are hoisted in Iraq’s Kurdistan, there are now no Iraqi flags
there. What will happen next in this region, in Europe? Has anybody
thought about it, no? But it is necessary to think,” the president
emphasized.
Putin stressed that international actions “should be universal.” “What
is the difference between the Kosovo situation and Abkhazian or South
Ossetian? There is no difference whatsoever,” he noted. “So as soon
as we begin to manipulate public opinion or make attempts to do this
we will encounter problems. People will feel deceived. Both in South
Europe and the Trans-Caucasian region. Such policy cannot be recognized
moral. It has no prospects,” Putin pointed out.
The president confirmed that Russia is ready to work with the European
Union in settling “any complicated, severe or conflict situation
wherever they emerge.”
“This certainly can also be said about the post-Soviet space. It is
Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it is the Dniester region,”
Putin added.
In the words of the Russian head of state, “it is not always possible
to coordinate actions and this causes damage to security issues
in Europe.” He said, “Thus, for instance, has happened during the
Dniester region settlement when we were just one step away from this
settlement and fears of our Western, American and European partners
disrupted this settlement, disrupted these agreements and brought
everything back to zero point.” The president stressed, “I believe
that it is a major mistake of European diplomacy.”

GUAM CONFLICTS NOT TO BE DISCUSSED AT THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Today.Az
13 September 2006 [19:46] – Today.Az
The issue on “Unresolved conflicts in GUAM, their impact on the
international world, security and development” has not been included
into the agenda of the UN General Assembly 61st Session by Russian
proposal.
Russian Foreign Ministry official Mikhail Kaminin said most committee
members supported Russian proposal at the General Committee’s meeting,
APA reports.
The Committee chairwoman Khalife decided that it is unadvisable to
include GUAM’s issue into the agenda yet.
Kaminin said Russia was against politicization of this issue and
presenting to the General Assembly format.
“Russia thinks it is not efficient to reconsider settlement mechanism
of the Nagorno Karabakh, Georgia-Abkhazia, Georgia-South Ossetia and
Transnistrian conflicts.”

MUSIC, A HEALING MEDIUM ON SO MANY DIFFERENT LEVELS
By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
The Daily Star
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Musicians come to the rescue of war victims with benefit concert and CD
INTERVIEW
BEIRUT: “We felt that we were trapped,” says Ghazi Abdel Baki, as he
sits in the colorful seventh-floor headquarters of his production
house for documentaries, animations and music. The noontime sun is
filtering through fabric panels that loop down from the glass ceiling
of a rooftop office. The labyrinthine spaces of Forward Productions,
situated in the neighborhood of Sakiat al-Janzir, between Verdun
and Raouche, include recording studios and editing suites and rooms
stuffed with low-slung couches and pillows.
Abdel Baki, who is 36 going on 37 this month, is a drummer by training
and a composer and producer by trade. At present, he is recalling
the initial motivation that sparked “We Live … ,” a compilation by
Lebanese musicians created under the summer’s siege.
“We didn’t know where the horizon of this war was,” he explains,
meaning that while Israel was bombing Lebanon during the months of
July and August, no one knew when it would end.
“If we had known where the horizon was, we might have lived this period
differently,” adds Carol Mansour, Abdel Baki’s partner at Forward and
a documentary filmmaker with boundless energy and an impressive head
of auburn curls.
“Moving around the city was very difficult,” explains Abdel Baki. “And
the feeling was very difficult. In the beginning, we felt all our
projects had been halted in their tracks. It was very abrupt. There
was no build-up to this. We were not prepared for a war.
We had to shift from being productive people very quickly.”
Less than a week into the conflict, Abdel Baki and a handful of
musicians he has known and worked with for years decided to meet up at
the Blue Note Cafe on Makhoul Street, between Hamra and the American
University of Beirut, one of the longest-standing and most-fabled
music venues in Beirut.
Among them was Charbel Rouhana, one of Lebanon’s best known oud
players, who performs regularly at the Blue Note; bassist Abboud
Saadi, whom Abdel Baki describes as “the godfather of all the modern
musicians;” and Ziyad Sahhab, an up-and-coming oud player, singer and
composer, who, at 23, is set to release his second album on Forward
next month.
“The Blue Note is like our second home,” explains Abdel Baki. “And
it was one of the few places that was open at the time. We stayed
from noon until seven in the evening, just discussing things.”
A friend from Kuwait, Meshal al-Kandari, was also with them. A
marketing manager for mobile phones who writes poetry and, as it
turns out, song lyrics – he got stuck in Lebanon when the war broke
out. Beirut was meant to be a stopover on his way to the rather more
rollicking Spanish island of Ibiza.
At the end of that first and ultimately only Blue Note session, Abdel
Baki, Kandari and company left with a plan. Kandari would orchestrate
a benefit concert for Lebanon in Kuwait with Rouhana and a band of
musicians who would join them there from locations as far flung as
Armenia (Arthur Satyan) and Minnesota (Tom Hornig).
Abdel Baki would take tracks by all the musicians present and rework
them – in some cases re-record them – into the compilation that is
now complete, a copy sitting in its jewel case on a desk in Forward’s
office.
“Whatever needs to be done on the outside needs to be linked to people
on the inside,” says Abdel Baki, addressing a contentious issue that
has afflicted those working in all spheres of culture in Lebanon –
whether to create for an audience at home (showing solidarity) or
abroad (raising awareness).
Abdel Baki and Kandari embraced the debate and did both. For six
days in July, Abdel Baki worked on the CD. It wasn’t easy. After
that meeting at the Blue Note, many of the musicians holed up in
their respective hometowns. The proximity of the Forward studios
to the Israeli warships located off the coast of Beirut made for
particularly harrowing and disruptive acoustics.
“We had no electricity. Our morale was down. Here, you hear very well
the gunboats and in this glass structure,” he explains, one feels
palpably exposed to the threat of death.
Still, Abdel Baki, Rouhana, Saadi, Sahhab and Kandari managed to rework
and update the six tracks that now comprise “We Live … ” Kandari
added new lyrics to Rouhana’s “Loubnan Fawk Hamat al-Duniah.” Saadi
rejiggered a previously unrecorded, jazzy instrumental piece called
“Najwa’s Song.” Sahhab captured the mood of the time with a tracked
named “Safar,” the expression used when someone has traveled. Abdel
Baki messed around with a track slated for his upcoming album
“Communique #2,” a follow-up to his debut, “Communique #1.” The song
now carries the title “Under Siege.”
“Before the title was much more cynical,” he says.
What was it?
“Happy Citizen,” he smiles.
What is immediately striking about “We Live …” is that, considering
the circumstances under which it was produced, it is a far from
somber album. While not particularly cohesive in terms of style or
even quality – a compromise to context – it is resolutely energetic
and suitably manic.
“Beyond the bombing and all that is, in our opinion, being imposed
on us, we felt that we as musicians, we live,” says Abdel Baki. “Out
of total chaos musicians can still produce. That was the challenge,
and some people criticized us for this but the fact that we were
producing an album is itself [the point].”
As evidence of how technology kept people tethered together during
the war, Abdel Baki finished the album, “liquefied” the tracks by
converting them into MP3 files, enlisted a graphic designer in New
York to do the layout of the cover and the liner notes and then sent
everything to Kuwait, where Kandari, who had grabbed Rouhana and fled
Lebanon to make it on time to that benefit gig, set up a group called
Wafa (“loyalty” in Arabic) to produce the CD there.
Now, all proceeds from both the benefit concert and sales of the
CD are going directly to humanitarian aid and refugee relief groups
working on the ground and with the people in Lebanon. That in itself
posed an additional round of challenges.
Over the past month, much criticism has been leveled at the Lebanese
government’s Higher Relief Council (HRC) for inefficiency, ineptitude
and worse in terms of distributing aid.
Particularly in its documentary division, Forward carries a distinctly
progressive political bent – producing films about migrant labor in
Lebanon, for example. So Abdel Baki is well positioned to say he thinks
such criticism about the HRC is valid: “It’s totally politicized
and arbitrary,” he says. For this reason, the contributions from
“We Live …” are going directly to the people. “No bureaucracy,
no red tape,” Abdel Baki says. To keep this system transparent,
Kandari has created a blog to track the movement of funds.
The first edition of “We Live …” consists of 2,000 copies, and
Abdel Baki hopes to follow it up with a series of concerts
at Masrah al-Madina this fall. This is only a slight modification of
his original plans for the season.
“We’re two weeks behind, but October is still October,” he says,
stepping toward a door with a schedule of appearances taped to
it. “This is from before the war,” he says, running a finger down
the list. “This haunted us. This was a reminder to us every day.” It
seems to have worked.
“We Live … ” is available at CD-Theque, the Virgin Megastore
and online. For more information, please see or
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARKADY I. VOLSKY, 74, FOUNDER OF RUSSIAN BUSINESS LOBBY, DIES
By Andrew E. Kramer
The New York Times
Published: September 13, 2006
MOSCOW, Sept. 12 – Arkady I. Volsky, a confidant of the Soviet leader
Mikhail S. Gorbachev and founder of Russia’s most prominent business
lobby, died here on Saturday. He was 74.
The cause was complications of leukemia, according to the Union of
Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the business lobby he founded in
1991 and directed until last year; it became known as a club for the
Russian oligarchs.
Mr. Volsky belonged to a generation of officials whose careers
straddled the breakup of the Soviet Union. He worked under four Soviet
general secretaries and three Russian presidents and served as a
peace negotiator in two wars. His successor at the business lobby,
Aleksandr N. Shokhin, described him as “a man of the Soviet system
who was accepted by the capitalists.”
Mr. Volsky grew up an orphan in Dobrush, Belarus, in the 1930’s and
worked on the floor of the Zil truck and limousine plant in Moscow,
eventually becoming the factory’s party boss.
Then, Mr. Volsky had his biggest career break without even interviewing
for the job. It came under Yuri V. Andropov, the former K.G.B. chief
who became general secretary, Mr. Volsky recalled in a recent interview
with the newspaper Kommersant, republished on Tuesday.
Mr. Andropov called Mr. Volsky to his Kremlin office; the two had
never met. “My legs felt like cotton,” Mr. Volsky said. Mr. Andropov
said simply he would appoint the younger man as his top economic
adviser. Mr. Volsky said he replied, “Maybe I should tell you about
myself first.” To which, Mr. Volsky recalled, the former spy chief
replied: “Do you really think you know more about yourself than I
know about you?” He started work the next day.
Mr. Volsky rode out the choppy Soviet leadership struggles of the
early 1980’s to become a close aide to Mr. Gorbachev, serving as
a peace negotiator during the Nagorno-Karabakh war between ethnic
Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
Earning his democratic credentials, Mr. Volsky was a supporter of
the dissident Andrei D. Sakharov. His ties with Communist factory
bosses, meanwhile, led him to found the business lobby in 1991, which
paradoxically was seen as a group opposed to capitalist reforms
because of the party background of its members. But soon enough
Russian industry was privatized, and Mr. Volsky began representing the
interests of the new owners, the rich businessmen known as oligarchs.
The Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs now represents the big
mining and energy businesses.
“He was always very flexible; he was friendly with any regime,
Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Putin,” Irina M. Khakamada, a political reformer,
said in a telephone interview.
In his political work, under President Boris N. Yeltsin, Mr. Volsky
opened a negotiating channel with the Chechen rebels. It made headway,
though a separate Russian team reached a cease-fire deal before
Mr. Volsky’s group.
Mr. Volsky is survived by his wife, Lyudmila; one son; one daughter
and six grandchildren.

UNSPECIFIED NUMBER OF POSITIVE DOPING TESTS AT EUROPEANS, IWF SAYS
International Herald Tribune, France
The Associated Press
Published: September 13, 2006
BUDAPEST, Hungary There were an unspecified number of positive
doping tests at the European weightlifting championships, the sport’s
governing body said Wednesday.
The International Weightlifting Federation recently received the
results of the doping tests from the laboratory in Cologne, Germany,
and was still in the process of dealing with the testing of “B”
samples and other appeals, IWF secretariat Monika Ungar said.
“I can confirm there were a number of positive tests and we expect
to have the names and other information available within weeks,”
Ungar said.
Ungar was speaking after French sports daily L’Equipe reported that
Ninel Miculescu of Romania and Nizami Pashayev of Azerbaijan tested
positive at the competition in May in Wladislawowo, Poland, and were
banned by the IWF for two years. Miculescu won the silver medal in
the 69-kilogram category, while Pashayev won gold at 94 kg.
L’Equipe said 10 others also tested positive, including Henadzi
Aliashchuk of Belarus and Ashot Danielyan of Armenia, who has tested
positive in the past and risk being banned for life.
The other eight were identified as Alexandru Brantan of Moldova,
Natig Hasanov of Azerbaijan, Oleksi Kolokoltsev of Ukraine, Vladimir
Smorchov of Russia, Florin Veliciu of Romania, Dmitry Voronin of
Russia, Dovile Blazunaite of Lithuania and Valentina Popova of Russia.
BUDAPEST, Hungary There were an unspecified number of positive
doping tests at the European weightlifting championships, the sport’s
governing body said Wednesday.
The International Weightlifting Federation recently received the
results of the doping tests from the laboratory in Cologne, Germany,
and was still in the process of dealing with the testing of “B”
samples and other appeals, IWF secretariat Monika Ungar said.
“I can confirm there were a number of positive tests and we expect
to have the names and other information available within weeks,”
Ungar said.
Ungar was speaking after French sports daily L’Equipe reported that
Ninel Miculescu of Romania and Nizami Pashayev of Azerbaijan tested
positive at the competition in May in Wladislawowo, Poland, and were
banned by the IWF for two years. Miculescu won the silver medal in
the 69-kilogram category, while Pashayev won gold at 94 kg.
L’Equipe said 10 others also tested positive, including Henadzi
Aliashchuk of Belarus and Ashot Danielyan of Armenia, who has tested
positive in the past and risk being banned for life.
The other eight were identified as Alexandru Brantan of Moldova,
Natig Hasanov of Azerbaijan, Oleksi Kolokoltsev of Ukraine, Vladimir
Smorchov of Russia, Florin Veliciu of Romania, Dmitry Voronin of
Russia, Dovile Blazunaite of Lithuania and Valentina Popova of Russia.
BUDAPEST, Hungary There were an unspecified number of positive
doping tests at the European weightlifting championships, the sport’s
governing body said Wednesday.
The International Weightlifting Federation recently received the
results of the doping tests from the laboratory in Cologne, Germany,
and was still in the process of dealing with the testing of “B”
samples and other appeals, IWF secretariat Monika Ungar said.
“I can confirm there were a number of positive tests and we expect
to have the names and other information available within weeks,”
Ungar said.
Ungar was speaking after French sports daily L’Equipe reported that
Ninel Miculescu of Romania and Nizami Pashayev of Azerbaijan tested
positive at the competition in May in Wladislawowo, Poland, and were
banned by the IWF for two years. Miculescu won the silver medal in
the 69-kilogram category, while Pashayev won gold at 94 kg.
L’Equipe said 10 others also tested positive, including Henadzi
Aliashchuk of Belarus and Ashot Danielyan of Armenia, who has tested
positive in the past and risk being banned for life.
The other eight were identified as Alexandru Brantan of Moldova,
Natig Hasanov of Azerbaijan, Oleksi Kolokoltsev of Ukraine, Vladimir
Smorchov of Russia, Florin Veliciu of Romania, Dmitry Voronin of
Russia, Dovile Blazunaite of Lithuania and Valentina Popova of Russia.

BOOKS TOWERING INFERNO
By Greg Goldin
LA Weekly, CA
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 – 12:00 pm
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship
Illustration by Mitch Handsone On the last page of The Fellowship:
The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & the Taliesin Fellowship, we
are told that without the Greco-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff, there
“very likely” would have been no Fallingwater, no Johnson Wax building,
no Guggenheim Museum. This claim is bold, and something new. Frank
Lloyd Wright was many things – unkind and uncaring toward his children,
violent and abusive of his wives, relentlessly egotistical among
his peers and apprentices, profligate and exploitative – but he was
no stooge.
The teachings of an occultist who happened to be his third wife’s guru
had as little to do with the 20th-century icons he produced as they
had to do with his own, homegrown monomania. Despite page after page of
attempts to link America’s greatest architect to the Montenegro-born,
self-proclaimed healer, it becomes obvious that Wright wasn’t taken
in by the muddle of Buddhism and Sufism that Gurdjieff promoted at
his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, in Paris.
Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, the authors of this long,
ramshackle discourse on the seamy side of Frank Lloyd Wright
and his Taliesin Fellowship, themselves provide sufficient proof
to contradict their own final assertion. In 1950, Wright’s wife,
Olgivanna, and their daughter, Iovanna, urged all the apprentices at
Taliesin to read Gurdjieff’s All and Everything. The architect, ever
imperious, “countered by buying an entire carton of his own American
philosopher-sage Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings and giving them out to
the apprentices.” He then declared that Emerson would be “obligatory”
reading at the Fellowship. How refreshing, and a fitting anodyne –
except that this recital of Wright’s clearheadedness is colored black
by the authors’ equation of Emerson’s followers to Gurdjieff’s. Which
is a sneaky way of bolstering their point: Frank Lloyd Wright was
under the sway… of someone.
Alas, the authors are stuck in a trap of their own making. The
Fellowship is an intriguing slog because it is about a genuinely
fascinating cult figure: Frank Lloyd Wright. Dozens of his apprentices
traipse through the book, forming lifelong devotions to Wright –
devotions that he almost never reciprocates. Why did they become
and remain his partisans, his boys, as he called them? Why did they
sacrifice their own talent and happiness to slave away in Wright’s
studio, their ambitions stunted, their ideas crushed? Why did they
literally wait on him, hand and foot, as cooks and carpenters,
chauffeurs and secretaries – paying him tuition for the privilege?
His son, Lloyd, a talented architect, wrote to his father, saying
that the fellowship “is in fact and principle a very sorry business
all around. And the sorriest part of it is the feudal business of
your students. That will make them ashamed of themselves and you if
they think and have any perspective and if they don’t they will go
thru life… as cowards and fools. God help your school if this is
what it turns out. You wonder why your pupils are such washouts.”
Every word of this assessment is true, yet Wright carried on
unscathed. “He lived from first to last like a god: one who acts but
is not acted upon,” Lewis Mumford said, and he too was right.
Mumford, who was Wright’s early champion and oftentimes friend (he
persuaded Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to include Wright
in the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1932 exhibit, “The International
Style”), said he possessed “the insolence of his genius.” Like it
or not – and he was more than occasionally unlikable – Frank Lloyd
Wright was one of those protean 19th-century figures able to tower over
the 20th century. Goethe’s model of the self-taught man who remakes
the world reverberated continuously in Wright’s mind. Beethoven’s
symphonies rang in his ears as he drew his buildings. Ruskin’s sense
of beauty limned his own. Wright was also a born huckster, in a line
of great American con artists stretching from Benjamin Franklin to
Mark Twain. He shared their uncanny instinct for deception, for making
up a persona who was strictly for public consumption.
The early tragedy of his life (his second wife and two of her
children were axed to death after a servant set Taliesin aflame),
his philandering, his illicit and bohemian lifestyle, were tabloid
news. But these events were, for the most part, a sideshow.
Architecture was the center of Wright’s life, and little else troubled
or distracted him. Perhaps this is one of the marks of genius. Another
is the ability to see your vision realized. Frank Lloyd Wright never
backed down, never acceded to a client’s wishes. He was an absolutist,
with unshakable faith in his designs. That was, arguably, his greatest
gift, and he made it manifest any number of times in the face of
powerful opposition.
So, at Fallingwater, he was warned against cantilevering the house
over the rocks at Bear Run.
More concrete, more steel, the engineers said. Wright persisted,
persuading his client, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., to build Wright’s house
Wright’s way. Fallingwater, of course, is an acknowledged (if
crumbling) masterpiece; the second half of Wright’s career, which
began after 20 years without a paying client, was launched from that
precarious work out in the woods of southwestern Pennsylvania. At
the Johnson Wax building, Wright was told by Racine officials that
his inverted, cone-shaped columns would collapse, but he got his way
by building a demonstration column and piling it high with sandbags
and rocks far outweighing the proposed load, then, cane in hand,
walking under the perilously overburdened column as if on a Sunday
stroll. At the Guggenheim, he stuck to his unprecedented spiral, which
pushed the limits of both conventional museum walls and concrete work,
waiting nearly 13 years for the museum to begin construction.
For such a man, and such accomplishments, there would always be a
steady supply of aspiring acolytes. Once at Taliesin, apprentices were
subject to Wright’s all-encompassing will. Unflinchingly, he would
tell you how to dress or whom to marry. He would mete out favors;
he would instigate punishments. He was the master. To live in a
world of one great man’s conception, apart from the confusion and
ambiguity of the outside, was like a gift. To some, the confinement
was liberating. Others simply fled.
In such a place, though, there could be no room for a competitor
hawking self-abnegation as a form of personal fulfillment. Frank Lloyd
Wright called Gurdjieff “the Devil and the God,” and he was abundantly
clear when he told his wife, “You’re not going to turn this into a
Gurdjieff Institute. Not while I am alive.” Olgivanna had to wait
until he died, and even then, The Fellowship says, she failed.
Taliesin is forever associated with Wright. Gurdjieff remains on the
margins, where he belongs.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REPRESENTATIVES OF TWO POLITICAL-MILITARY BLOCKS PARTICIPATE AT A PEACEKEEPING EXERCISE IN MOLDOVA
puls.md
12.09.2006
>From September 11 to 29, a multinational peacekeeping exercise within
the Partnership for Peace Program, “Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2006”,
will take place in Moldova. The exercise will involve approx. 1
housand military men and 50 civilians from 21 countries.
Together with the representatives of 9 NATO member-states, military
men from 3 out of the 6 member-states of the Collective Security
Treaty Organization – Armenia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and also from
the member-states of the Partnership for Peace Program. The United
Arab Emirates, Bosnia, Qatar and Serbia will participate as observers.
The main goal of the exercise is to promote the interoperability
of the military forces from various countries during peacekeeping
operations in crisis situations and humanitarian assistance operations.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded on April
4, 1949. The NATO block involves 26 member-states from Europe and
North America.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was founded on May
15, 1992. The members of the CSTO are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
Moldova is not a member of any political-military block, and its
neutrality status is stipulated in the Constitution. The Republic of
Moldova joined the “Partnership for Peace” Program in March 1994 and
participates in its
activities together with all the CIS countries, Mongolia and some
European states. In 2006, Moldova signed the Individual Action
Plan Moldova – NATO, which does not provide for its joining to the
North-Atlantic block, and the degree of cooperation is inferior to
those stipulated in similar treaties of NATO with Ukraine and Russia.

KENYA: OUR PEOPLE HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF SELF-HATRED
Koigi Wamwere
allAfrica.com
September 13, 2006
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
OPINION
Since the white man set foot in Kenya in the 19th century, consciously
or unconsciously, Africans have had to wrestle with the problem
of self-image.
Like other people, our self-image is what shapes our destiny. Before
slavery and colonialism, we lived at peace with the world and ourselves
and had no problem with our self-image.
But when the white man came, enslaved and conquered us, he embarked
on a process of eroding our self-image and pride to maintain his
conquest. Through laws, the media, religion and education, he taught
us that we were inferior and he superior. Now we accept our inferiority
and self-hate and seek more.
Knowingly, we get less African the more we imbibe foreign education
and religions. The Mzungu has certainly bewitched us!
For many years, freedom fighters resisted cultural conquest while
loyalists, home guards and the Western-educated accepted it. At
independence, Kenyans thought that with the exit of the white man and
the coming of independence, they would recover not just their stolen
lands but self-image. They were wrong.
When colonialism formally ended in 1963, the white man’s cultural and
ideological conquest did not vanish. African caricatures of Western
political parties, civil service, parliaments, courts, schools,
churches and media perpetuated, promoted and perfected the white
man’s ideology.
Today, our inferiority and regard for foreigners as superior to us
is total and instinctive. Indeed, the older our independence gets,
the more mentally enslaved we become, not by the efforts of the West
but our own.
And most unnaturally, the more enslaved, the more we loathe
liberation. We now have become a nation of self-haters and
self-enslavers. And here, I am not talking about individual
self-hate. You may love yourself, but be a self-hater if you believe
your kind is less able and others are better.
The malaise of our collective inferiority has sunk into depths
of great shame. We have lost our confidence. We seek foreigners’
approval in what we do and say. We consider something said only when
foreigners say it. When they walk half-naked in New York or Paris,
we walk naked in Nairobi. Whom they crown, we make a hero. Whom they
attack, we kill. We seek them to anoint us as leaders. Without them,
we feel impotent!
Oppressed nations look up to the youth for salvation.
For youth to liberate, however, they must desire freedom more and be
less mentally shackled.
Unfortunately, this is not so in Kenya and I hope I am wrong.
When I look at three recent generations – Mau Mau freedom fighters,
perpetuators of the White man’s values after independence and today’s
youth – the oldest are the best, the youth the least inspiring.
Black Europeans are, however, our worst enemies. They made a whole
generation – their children – robots in the delusion that they can
be white. Their worst crimes are adulation of foreigners and things
foreign, worship of money, self-interest, ethnic myopia and mind
conformism.
A good example will suffice. Recently, the Kenya Football Federation
kicked out our national team, Harambee Stars, out of the Moi
International Sports Centre, Kasarani, and invited the better-known
Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions to practise at Kenya’s best stadium.
Instead, the national team was taken to Ruaraka, a field not as good
as Kasarani. It mattered little that at the time, Harambee Stars was
preparing for a match with Eritrea. In the end, Kenya lost to a team
that had been dismissed as minnows.
I was surprised that the media found it odd. What KFF did is what
we all do all the time. Though United States Senator Barack Obama
has done nothing spectacular other than that he has a Kenyan father,
when he visited Kenya recently, our media put him at a pedestal with
Jesus, the Superstar.
They followed him wherever he went, covering his speech at the
University of Nairobi live and generally giving him inordinate coverage
in the papers and on television.
The Kenyan media gave Senator Obama coverage they or American media
would never give a Kenyan MP, President, Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai
or South African nationalist and former President Nelson Mandela or
any of their own.
Momentarily, I thought they believed an American senator means
president-elect and not the American equivalent of a Kenyan MP. When
they said they found him, “a born leader, star quality with youthful
looks and deep-voiced”, I wondered why the qualities in Obama were
not noticed in the other countries he visited, including South Africa.
Mr David Mendell, the American journalist travelling with him said of
the senator in South Africa: “He could walk down the street without
any trouble. A few people noticed and said: ‘This is that senator’,
but nothing more.”
Why did the Kenyan media see more in Obama than others? This is because
he, like the Indomitable Lions, is foreign and successful. That is
what we worship. Before Senator Obama were the Artur brothers.
For weeks and months, all we heard from the media before some ended
in their laps was Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargysyan.
The notoriety of the Armenian brothers may have deserved some coverage,
but no Kenyan equivalent can get pages and pages of coverage, week
after week.
The foreign suspects got far more coverage than the good works of great
Kenyans such as Prof Ngugi wa Thiongo, Prof Ali Mazrui or Dr Calestus
Juma would ever get. To our media, flamboyant foreigners with suspect
credentials deserve preference over unassuming Kenyan greatness!
I cannot conclude without mentioning Sir Edward Clay, the former
British High Commissioner, another foreign darling of Kenyan
media. When Clay lambasted corruption, Kenyan media gave him tonnes of
coverage as if they were hearing it for the first time. They applauded
more loudly than when a Kenyan said the same.
We may agree with whatever foreigners say, but there is something
seriously wrong if an issue makes sense and a song sounds sweet
only when a foreigner says or sings it. It is time we stopped being
parrots and apes of other people. Otherwise, we will remain behind,
poor and crippled.

NO PROGRESS IN SEARCH FOR SCHOOL FIREBOMBER
By Janice Arnold
Staff Reporter
The Canadan Jewish News
September 14, 2006
MONTREAL – The perpetrator of a Molotov-cocktail attack on a chassidic
boys’ school in Montreal over Labour Day weekend remains at large
despite the act having been videotaped by the school’s surveillance
camera and despite a $5,000 reward offered by an anonymous donor for
information leading to his arrest.
The images released by police show, from an angle, a masked
black-haired man, seemingly in his 20s and apparently alone, wearing
a beige top and beige pants reaching to below the knees. He is seen
lighting an accelerant and throwing it through a glass panel of the
main entrance of the Skver community’s Toldos Yakov Yosef school in
the city’s Outremont neighbourhood shortly after midnight on Saturday,
Sept. 2.
In the last frame, he removes his hood-like mask as he flees.
School and Jewish community officials told a press conference last
week that they’re confident and grateful police are putting the
necessary resources into their investigation.
The community and police, however, differ on the motivation for
the crime.
Police have so far not labelled the incident a hate crime, because
of the absence of evidence such as graffiti or phone calls, and are
treating it as arson.
But Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith Canada and Toldos
leaders are convinced the perpetrator deliberately targeted a
Jewish institution. No one was in the school at the time. About a
dozen teenaged students had left the building only about 20 minutes
beforehand.
Damage was limited to the school’s vestibule because sprinklers put out
the fire and the fire department responded quickly, school director
Binyomin Mayer said. He thanked the school’s non-Jewish neighbours
for immediately alerting police and coming to see if anyone was on
the premises.
The school reopened the next day, but it estimates it will cost
$150,000 to repair damage and add new security features.
Asked if he thought there was a connection between the incident and the
recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of the
Montreal Jewish Security Advisory Committee, told reporters that it’s
“a fair question to wonder whether the gathering of 15,000 Quebecers
under the flag of Hezbollah – unfortunately further legitimized by
the presence of politicians – creates an atmosphere where fanatics
draw the conclusion that violence against Jews is somehow acceptable.”
He said many in the community have been asking themselves that
question. Rabbi Poupko was referring to the Aug. 6 demonstration
against the recent war in which three politicians – Bloc Quebecois
leader Gilles Duceppe, Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair and
federal Liberal MP Denis Coderre – participated prominently.
At the press conference, held three days after the firebombing,
community officials asked that political leaders forcefully denounce
the Toldos attack. But reaction was slow and scattered, unlike the
firebombing of United Talmud Torahs’ library in April 2004, when
politicians at all levels, including then-prime minister Paul Martin,
immediately condemned the act. (Prime Minister Stephen Harper has
yet to issue a statement.)
Duceppe was one of the first politicians to condemn the incident and
affirm that Quebecers do not tolerate any such “hateful act whoever
it is directed at, or for whatever reason.” Boisclair soon after
denounced the incident as well.
Quebec Premier Jean Charest said: “No one can determine at this point
if it was motivated by hate.
But nonetheless I think it is important that all Quebec see very
clearly on this issue that we are a society of tolerance, that we
are a society that encourages free speech and that we should not and
cannot tolerate these kinds of acts.”
Federal Liberal leadership candidate and Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison
visited the school to express his revulsion against what he called
an act of “terrorism” against children and education.
NDP leader Jack Layton likewise stated: “How could someone be so
callous as to attempt to strike terror into the hearts of young
children?”
Alex Werzberger, president of the Coalition of Chassidic Organizations
of Outremont, pointed out there is an Armenian church and school two
blocks away from Toldos, as well as a French school on a nearby block,
which suggests to him that the perpetrator had “his pick of schools”
but went for the Jewish one.
“You can’t put any other spin on it than anti-Semitism.”
Werzberger said there hasn’t been a serious anti-Semitic incident in
Outremont for a long time, nor has there been any recent contentious
issue, such as disputes over shul locations, parking problems or an
eruv, which were all prominent several years ago.
“Other than someone yelling ‘damned Jews,’ which is almost a daily
occurrence, there has been nothing,” he said.
FEDERATION CJA, which co-ordinates community security, is re-evaluating
security at Jewish schools and other institutions in the wake of
the incident, but it did not raise its threat-assessment level as a
result of the incident. It continues to call for “heightened vigilance”
and implementation of existing procedures.
Since the UTT firebombing, the federation has had a full-time community
security director, Michel Bujold, formerly in charge of security at
Concordia University. He was on the Toldos crime scene about three
hours later.
After UTT, Combined Jewish Appeal raised $2.3 million specifically
for security, and all 40 school and day-care sites were assessed by
a U.S security professional. Toldos was found to be at risk and CJA
heavily subsidized the installation of a surveillance camera. The
school, located a former industrial area that is now mainly home to
condominiums, has been defaced with swastikas in the past. Its girls’
school is down the street, as is a Belzer chassidic school.
CJC Quebec region chair Jeffrey Boro said it will be determined if
additional security at the schools is needed. Rabbi Poupko said the
incident proved that the security structure in place worked well and
the community’s investment paid off.
The psychological damage from the attack may last a while, Mayer
said. Some Toldos students, especially those between six and 12, are
showing signs of anxiety and counsellors have been hired to help them.
Toldos has about 250 boys from age three to 16, Mayer said. There
are about 200 Skver families in Montreal.
Originally from Ukraine, the community is headquartered near Spring
Valley, N. Y., where its Grand Rebbe, David Twersky, lives.
Boro, a criminal lawyer by profession, admitted that no matter how
many layers of security are in place, there’s no way to totally
prevent acts such as the firebombing.
“What we have to do is educate people. Civil discourse is the rule
of the day. We have to continue outreach programs and show people we
are not so different.”
The UTT firebombing was immediately called a hate crime by police
because of a note left at the school, but the perpetrator was not
charged with a hate crime.
Sleiman El-Merhebi, 20, was released from a federal prison in May
after serving two-thirds of a 40-month sentence.
A date for his mother’s trial is to be set Sept. 25.
Rouba El-Merhebi Fahd is charged with being an accessory after the
fact of her son’s crime.

COURIC SLIPS TO THIRD PLACE
By Jacques Steinberg
The New York Times
Published: September 13, 2006
On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
more evening news viewers chose to watch “NBC Nightly News With
Brian Williams” than the broadcasts of his two main competitors,
Charles Gibson on ABC and Katie Couric on CBS, according to
preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research released yesterday
by the networks. Mr. Williams’s program drew an estimated 8.3 million
viewers, more than the estimated 7.9 million who watched “World News”
with Mr. Gibson, and the estimated 7.5 million who saw Ms. Couric,
on her fifth night. All three programs were pre-empted in some parts
of the West Coast on Monday by President Bush’s address, and yet
Mr. Williams’s audience was still bigger than the average number
he drew last week (about 7.1 million a night), as was Mr. Gibson’s
(6.9 million a night). Ms. Couric, who easily won the ratings race
last week with an average of 10.2 million viewers a night, was down
substantially on Monday.
JACQUES STEINBERG
Stolen Munch Paintings to Be Displayed Soon
Stolen and recovered, the Edvard Munch paintings “The Scream” and
“Madonna” will go on view once more at the Munch Museum in Oslo in
the fall even before they are restored, Agence France-Presse reported
yesterday.
Because of enormous interest in the paintings, “the museum will
display them, in their current state, to the public and the media,
for a short period,” a statement said. Both paintings were damaged
but “are in better shape than expected,” said Jorun Christoffersen, a
museum spokeswoman, who added, “They will need some major restoration
work.” A photograph, above, released by the museum on its Web site,
, showed that the lower left corner of “The
Scream” was crumpled, and that “Madonna” had a scratch and a tear
in the canvas. The paintings, stolen in 2004 in broad daylight,
were recovered two weeks ago. The police have not said how they
retrieved them. Before they were recovered, three men were convicted
of complicity in the theft.
Ratings Ride Coattails
President Bush’s 17-minute address on Monday night fell smack in
the middle of the second part of ABC’s contentious “Path to 9/11”
mini-series, with Harvey Keitel. But the thematic synchronicity, which
also extended to a 9/11 “Primetime” afterward, may have helped lift
ABC to No. 1 for the night, averaging about 12 million viewers over
all, according to Nielsen’s estimates. CBS inserted the president’s
9 p.m. speech into a lineup of repeats: “How I Met Your Mother” (5.9
million) at 8, “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (5.5 million)
at 8:30, and “Two and a Half Men” (7.6 million) after the speech. A
repeat of “CSI: Miami” (8.3 million) followed, propelling CBS to No. 2
for the night. On Fox, the interruption may account for some of the
drop-off for “Vanished” (5.9 million), which paled in comparison
with the solid audience at 8 for the serial drama “Prison Break”
(8.8 million).
That episode, which included the bloody death of the escapee Abruzzi
(Peter Stormare), led over all for the hour among adults 18 to
49. NBC’s “Dateline” (6.1 million) from 8 to 10, which paused for
Mr. Bush’s speech, could not compensate for a “Medium” repeat at 10
(4.8 million), which drove the network to a subdued last place for
the night. BENJAMIN TOFF
Turkish Novelist Faces Trial
A prominent Turkish novelist who faces trial next week for “insulting
Turkishness” says the case is the first to pivot on words uttered by
fictional characters, Reuters reported. The novelist, Elif Shafak,
above, a feminist who writes in English and Turkish, has been charged
in connection with her new novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul.” The case
is being followed closely by the European Union, which says Turkey
must foster more freedom of expression as a condition of membership.
Ms. Shafak, 34, is scheduled to give birth during the week the trial,
set for Sept. 21, is to begin. She has been charged under a provision
of Turkey’s penal code that has been used against several journalists
and authors. Ms. Shafak said that to date the article “has never been
used against fictional characters.” “In that sense this is a new step,”
she said, “and it’s quite surprising and upsetting, because if they
keep doing this, no one can write novels in this country anymore;
no one can make movies, even.” In her novel, Armenian characters
make disparaging comments about Turks and refer to the genocide of
Armenians during the Ottoman Empire, a massacre denied by Turkey.
Bush ‘Assassination’ Film Acquired for Wide Release
Newmarket Films, the company that handled Mel Gibson’s “Passion of
the Christ,” has acquired the distribution rights to “Death of a
President,” the provocative Gabriel Range pseudodocumentary that
depicts the assassination of President Bush, Reuters reported.
Newmarket is expected to give the film a wide release in the next
few months. It was seen recently at the Toronto International Film
Festival and is to be shown next month on Channel 4 in Britain. “We
portrayed the horror of assassination,” said Mr. Range, who said he
had received five or six death threats as a result of his movie,
which has evoked protests from some conservatives. “I don’t think
anyone would get the idea of assassinating Bush from this film.”
Accolades
Britain will pay tribute to the Beatles in January when it issues a set
of six stamps featuring album covers from their most famous recordings,
above, the BBC reported. The collection includes “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band,” “Abbey Road,” “Help!,” “Revolver,” “Let It Be”
and “With the Beatles.” …
The European Film Academy will honor Roman Polanski, 73, with
its lifetime achievement award at ceremonies in December in
Warsaw. Mr. Polanski’s films include “Chinatown” and “The Pianist,”
winner of the 2002 Academy Award for best director. Mr. Polanski fled
the United States in 1977 after pleading guilty to having sex with
a 13-year-old girl. … Shi-Yeon Sung, a 31-year-old South Korean,
has become the first woman to win the Sir Georg Solti International
Conductors’ Competition, held every two years in Frankfurt,
Agence France-Presse reported. In the finale of the competition,
which attracted 500 applications from 72 countries, Ms. Sung led the
Frankfurt Opera’s Museumsorchester in Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet”
fantasy overture; after being named the winner of the $19,000 first
prize, she conducted Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture.
Footnotes
The opening concert of the New York Philharmonic’s 165th season will
be telecast live tonight to a large screen suspended in Josie Robertson
Plaza at Lincoln Center, where the performances of Beethoven’s “Egmont”
Overture, Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E flat and Beethoven’s
“Eroica” Symphony may be seen and heard free of charge. The concert,
led by Lorin Maazel and featuring the pianists Emanuel Ax and
Yefim Bronfman, will be broadcast nationally on “Live From Lincoln
Center.” … A Yiddish-language version of the Neil Simon comedy
“The Sunshine Boys,” in a staged reading starring Theodore Bikel and
Fyvush Finkel, will be presented by the National Yiddish Theater –
Folksbiene for a single performance at 4 p.m. Jan. 7 at Symphony
Space. Directed by Isaiah Sheffer, the translation by Miriam Hoffman,
which had its premiere in Tel Aviv in 2001, will be presented with
English and Russian supertitles. … The London-based organization
Lost Musicals will present what is billed as the first New York
revival of the original, full 1929 Broadway book and score of the
Cole Porter musical “Fifty Million Frenchmen” for four performances
at Florence Gould Hall beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. It will also
be performed on Sept. 24, Sept. 29 and Oct. 8.