National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Morning Edition 11:00 AM EST NPR
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Patriot camps cause concern in former Soviet Republic [DP]
ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE
REPORTERS: LAWRENCE SHEETS
In the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, thousands of young people
have been attending voluntary Patriot camps. The government says the
camps help to counter cynicism and hopelessness among young
Georgians, but the camps feature basic military training and they’ve
been criticized by Georgia’s political opposition. NPR’s Lawrence
Sheets reports.
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
LAWRENCE SHEETS reporting:
Along the lush green mountainside, military officers in tan fatigues
bark out commands to young men and women dressed in orange and blue
uniforms and caps emblazoned with the word `Patriot.’ The military
officers pass out loaded Kalashnikov rifle magazines to the 15- to
20-year-olds who stand at attention.
(Soundbite of a rifle)
SHEETS: Marika Bayurmanyan(ph), a university student from the capital
of Tbilisi, lies down in a firing trench.
What does it feel like when you’re shooting a Kalashnikov?
Ms. MARIKA BAYURMANYAN (University Student): I don’t know. I think
that’s great.
SHEETS: A military trainer help Marika steady the weapon as she
unloads a hail of bullets at white targets about 80 yards away.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
SHEETS: Marika’s one of more than 15,000 young people attending the
10-day Patriot camps this year. Next year the Georgian government
says 100,000 will attend. Sergeant Yorgi Tzeveteli(ph) says the
military aspect is secondary.
Sergeant YORGI TZEVETELI: (Through Translator) This training provides
the young people a basis for how to handle weapons. This is not
enough for them. The main principle is to raise their spirits as
patriots.
SHEETS: The government of President Mikhail Sakashvili says the camps
are needed to induce young Georgians with a sense of discipline and
national pride. Sakashvili recently spoke with several hundred young
patriots after they completed camp.
President MIKHAIL SAKASHVILI: (Through Translator) Two years ago, our
country was laughed at and ridiculed, above all by its own government
and president. Not only did they have no idea what governing a
country was about, but they did not have any self-respect and
dignity. They were not proud to be Georgian.
SHEETS: Another idea behind the camps is ethnic integration.
Relations between minorities and ethnic Georgians are not always
smooth. Marika Bayurmanyan, an Armenian herself, says the camps try
to break down those barriers.
Ms. BAYURMANYAN: Yeah, we have different nationalities and the
children, for example, Armenians or others–children are from all
parts of Georgia, and they learn how to communicate with each other,
with children from different parts of Georgia.
SHEETS: But critics, like opposition lawmaker Pata Zakarashvili(ph),
say the Georgian Patriot camps are just an updated version of the
Soviet Pioneer camps.
Mr. PATA ZAKARASHVILI (Opposition Lawmaker): (Through Translator)
This is dangerous. Sakashvili wants to instill these people with his
own ideology. He wants to mobilize the young people so that they
don’t mobilize against him.
SHEETS: Zakarashvili says the weapons training in the Patriot camps
is part of a campaign by the government to encourage militant
attitudes and prepare people psychologically for new wars against
Georgia’s two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But
even the opposition admits the camps are popular. Many of the kids
are from poor backgrounds. Drug abuse, unemployment and street crime
have exploded in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. And many parents
are happy to keep their kids off the streets, if only for a couple of
weeks. Lawrence Sheets, NPR News, Bakuriani, Georgia.

RusData Dialine – Russian Press Digest
October 13, 2005 Thursday
Eurasian horde
by Mehman Gafarli
SOURCE: Noviye Izvestia, No 187, p.4
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are creating a
jointarmed force
A major group of forces will be created in Central Asia to protect
regional countries from external military threats, Nikolai Bordyuzha,
general secretary of the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO’s members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia
and Tajikistan), said on October 12. Independent analysts say the
authorities of Russia and some former Soviet republics of Central
Asia need a joint army to fight “color” revolutions.
This rather big army will “consist not of battalions, as the
Collective Rapid Deployment Forces, but of regiments and divisions,
and possibly larger formations,” Bordyuzha said. The regional
countries need it to “protect the sovereignty of CSTO member states
in all directions against a threat of military conflict.”
In case of an all-out war, four of the six member states (Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) will put their armed forces at
the disposal of the organization. In fact, they are creating a
military bloc under the patronage of Russia. Uzbekistan is expected
to join as well.
The main dangers to stability in Central Asia are drugs, terrorism,
political and religious extremism, organized crime, illegal
migration, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and
man-made and natural disasters. However, independent analysts say
that Russia and Central Asian states are creating their military bloc
to prevent “color” revolutions and fight the growing influence of the
United States in the region.
Political scientist Andronik Migranyan, a professor of the Moscow
State University, said it would not be a joint army of Russia and
Central Asian states but a common group of military forces, which is
a normal practice in the world.

Agency WPS
What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
October 12, 2005, Wednesday
ORANGE REVOLUTION WILL BE MET WITH WATER
SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 12, 2005, pp. 1, 3
by Andrei Riskin, Mikhail Tolpegin
Law-enforcement agencies are preparing to suppress mass protest
rallies. Large-scale exercises by Interior Ministry special units
intended for countering public unrest have been held in some regions.
New weapons and equipment intended for dispersing rallies and
demonstrations are being purchased abroad. For example, a large batch
of water cannon will be bought in Israel.
Major General Mikhail Sukhodolsky, Deputy Interior Minister,
announced this yesterday. Sukhodolsky said, “We have already signed a
contract with the Israeli party on purchase of water cannon that will
be used very soon for liquidation of unauthorized rallies and mass
street disorders.” The police official did not say because of what
the authorities were afraid of mass disorders very soon.
Meanwhile, if we believe the optimistic reports of senior state
officials, the situation in Russia has become completely stable. The
Stabilization Fund is growing rapidly, billions of rubles are
allocated for the national programs announced by President Putin,
state-sector workers are promised wage rises, and so on. The most
recent mass protests were connected with monetization of social
benefits, and the participants were mostly law-abiding pensioners. So
the law-enforcement agencies did not need water cannon. Even in the
rare cases when use of force was required, the police made do with
cheaper but equally effective rubber batons.
Of course, it is possible that the authorities are afraid of, mass
actions by skinhead youth gangs, for instance. However, skinheads do
not march in lines. They commit their crimes usually under disguise
of darkness and do not war the authorities. If they do this in
daytime like in Voronezh last Sunday they are not caught at the site
of the crime anyway. Thus, a water cannon – even Israeli-made – will
hardly manage to arrive at the event location on time.
Incidentally, Sukhodolosky emphasizes that “purchase of armament and
equipment from foreign manufacturers is a single case and the
Interior Ministry is mostly oriented at Russian developments in this
area.” Sukhodolosky remarked patriotically, “We have weapons that can
be fired in such a way that you won’t be able to tell which direction
the fire is coming from.” We can only hope that in the course of
“eliminating unauthorized rallies and mass street disorders” matters
will not deteriorate to the point of firing weapons, especially since
our weapons usually don’t hit their proper targets. Incidentally,
according to Sukhodolsky, “By resolution of the government last
summer the Interior Ministry adopted the use of 17 kinds of new small
arms and 23 new kinds of ammunition.” By and large, additional
allocations for arming of OMON and police special units this year
will amount to 370 million rubles.
One aspect is alarming in all this. Sukhodolsky said, “Simultaneously
we are developing a water cannon of our own and plan that a prototype
model will be received in October or early November.” Why it was
impossible to wait until production of domestic models? What will
happen “very soon”?
Lyudmila Alexeeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, says, “The
Deputy Minister knows best, but I don’t expect such mass disorders
and such street actions against which sensible people use water
cannon. It seems to me that after the well-known events in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan state officials starting from deputy ministers
and higher have lost sleep and quietness. That is why they buy water
cannon on money of taxpayers to disperse these taxpayers although
they do not plan to gather yet.”
Boris Makarenko, deputy general Director of the Center of Political
Technologies, says, “Water cannon and tear gas are absolutely
necessary tools in the inventory of a police force in a democratic
state. As everyone knows, the lack of such non-lethal weapons in the
arsenal of Kyrgyzstan’s police had very bad results last spring. With
regard to the statement of the Deputy Minister about the use of this
equipment very soon, I think that he simply expressed himself in an
unfortunate way. He probably wanted to say that the use of water
cannon would be adopted soon, not that dangerous rallies would be
held soon. Since last autumn our law-enforcement agencies have been
seeing orange devils everywhere.”
Last Monday, special units of the Russian Interior Ministry and
Armenian police had joint tactical special exercises in stopping mass
disorders in the Krasnodar territory. According to the legend of the
exercises, a group of about 150 aggressive young people went out on
an unauthorized rally into the square in front of the building of the
administration and arranged mass disorders there shouting
anti-governmental slogans. Afterwards a group of armed rebels broke
into the building of the administration, looted it and took hostages
(interestingly, all this reminds very much events in
Karachaevo-Cherkessia last autumn and in Kabardino-Balkaria this
summer). Naturally, “by skillful actions of special police and
Interior Forces units with use of armored personnel carriers the mob
was dispersed and ousted from the square and afterwards the building
of the administration was released with assistance of paratroopers
and landing of a special police department.” All criminals were
arrested and sent to a filtration camp, and the hostages were
liberated.
Among the observers at the exercises were Russian Interior Minister
Rashid Nurgaliev, chief of Armenian police Aik Arutyunyan and
representatives of the law-enforcement agencies of Ukraine,
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Similar exercises were arranged last December in Altai, this May in
Chuvashia, in June in the Orenburg Region, in July in the Khabarovsk
Region and so on. As a rule, many policemen from various regions of
the country participated in them. For instance, 1,500 servicemen of
special police units, police of Armenia and Russian Emergencies
Ministry participated in the exercises in Krasnodar.
When asked if the exercises in Krasnodar and the intention to buy
Israeli water cannon mean that the Interior Ministry expects mass
unrest, Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said, “This is
not connected with any possible demonstrations and actions.
Rearmament of special police units is underway. New uniforms and
equipment are being purchased. We bought new Russian-made Tigr
all-terrain vehicles, similar to the Hummer. By the end of the year
22 such vehicles will be supplied to the regional OMONs. We have
bought one water cannon, made in Israel, and a number of Russian
plants are currently making counterparts. With regard to the
exercises in Krasnodar, they have been planned a long time ago. We
are not preparing for any war.”
Translated by Pavel Pushkin

RosBusinessConsulting Database
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Russian transportation minister on cooperation with Armenia
Russia may soon become a major trade partner with Armenia, Russian
transportation minister and co-chairman of the Armenian-Russian
economic commission, Igor Levitin, reported. Moscow is still
considering possibilities for oil, fuel and petrochemical supplies to
Armenia, Levitin said. It is necessary to develop the legal basis for
cooperation and to organize a railway ferry service for the direction
the Port of Caucasus – the Port of Poti. “The transportation link has
not existed for 15 years, so we should not assume it would be easy to
reestablish it,” Levitin stressed. The transportation minister also
pointed out that businesses should take part in the restoration of
the ferry service, because it would enable them to supply goods to
Caucasus and Iran. It is important for Armenia to develop relations
with Moscow further and Russia has always considered Armenia a
reliable partner and friend, Levitin concluded.

RusData Dialine – Russian Press Digest
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Russian police to face an “orange revolution” well-prepared
by Andrey Riskin, Mikhail Tolpegin
SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, No 220, p.1
Law enforcers getting ready to suppress large-scale riots
Russian law enforcement agencies are preparing to deal with mass
protest actions. Large-scale exercises of the Interior Ministry riot
units have been held in several regions of the country and new riot
equipment and hardware is being purchased abroad. A large batch of
water cannons will be bought in Israel, Major General Mikhail
Sukhodolsky, deputy interior minister, said Tuesday. He said they
“will soon be used to stop unsanctioned demonstrations and riots.”
The general also said that an additional sum of 370 million rubles
($13 million) would be allocated for the OMON special police units
and special operations forces.
“Fear sees danger everywhere,” said Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the head of
the Moscow Helsinki Group, a prominent non-governmental human rights
body. “Officials, starting from the deputy minister, have lost sleep
after the events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. So, they are
spending taxpayers’ money to buy water cannons so that they can
disperse those same taxpayers, although those have shown no intention
to riot so far.”
“Water cannons and tear gas are the necessary instruments of police
in a democratic state,” said Boris Makarenko, deputy general director
of the Center for Political Technologies. “The absence of such
non-lethal weapons in the arsenal of the Kyrgyz police led to very
serious consequences this spring.” As for the deputy minister’s words
about the use of such special equipment ‘soon’, the expert described
it as a Freudian slip: “Our law enforcers have been seeing orange
everywhere since last autumn.”
Last Monday, the special units of the Russian Interior Ministry and
the Armenian police held a joint anti-riot tactical exercise in the
Krasnodar region. Similar exercises were held in Altai last December,
in Chuvashia last May, in the Orenburg region in June and in the
Khabarovsk region in July.

SUNDAY TELEGRAM (Massachusetts)
October 09, 2005 Sunday, ALL EDITIONS
Too big for his own good;
Successful jeweler leaving stress behind
by Dianne Williamson
He came to the United States as a teenager and slept with his parents
on an Oriental rug in a small apartment off Grafton Street. He got
started in the jewelry business by making two filigreed rings with
the melted gold from his mother’s wedding band and his father’s
teeth.
Today he’s known simply as Shavarsh, like Picasso or Cher, a local
artist who built from nothing a business so bustling that soon he’ll
be forced to retire at age 43, a victim of his own success, and he’s
literally heartsick at the prospect of closing his doors for good.
“I feel so bad I’m doing this,” he said last week, sitting in his
office at Shavarsh Elite Jewelry Design at 420 Main St., a space he’s
occupied for more than two decades. “But it’s time. I make my
business too big, way too big. My dream was to make a success in this
country. But this was more than my expectation.”
Only the prospect of death could force a man such as Shavarsh Azizian
to abandon his passion. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with heart
disease that his doctors attribute to stress. He’s had 10 stents
inserted to keep his arteries open and still must undergo heart
bypass surgery in February. These days when he works, he often feels
a searing pressure in his chest, he said.
His last day on the job is Dec. 24. To strengthen his resolve to
retire, he keeps a photograph on his desk that he cut from a
magazine, showing a dead man being wheeled into a morgue.
The picture keeps things in perspective.
“I don’t want to end up in that place,” he said. “But I’m very
emotional and enthusiastic about my work. Everything has to be
perfect. If I don’t like it, I crush it and start again. I get
tension when I’m working. I don’t want to close, but I don’t want to
end up like in that picture. All this money and jewelry means
nothing.”
He still speaks with the accent of his native Armenia, where both his
father and grandfather were jewelry makers. The young Shavarsh was
somewhat of a prodigy in his country; an accomplished portrait of his
father that he drew at age 13 hangs in his office. He trained with
one of the top jewelry makers in the former Soviet Union and, at 16,
became the youngest jeweler in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
That same year, in 1979, his parents emigrated with their only son to
the United States. They lived briefly in California before moving to
Worcester and staying in an apartment owned by his mother’s uncle.
They came only with jeweler’s tools and the Oriental rug they used
for a bed. The young Shavarsh made pies for Table Talk before getting
started in his craft by selling the two rings he made with help from
his parents. Soon he was selling to other stores, eventually moving
to a workshop at 405 Main St.
In 1984, he opened Guaranty Jewelers and in 2001, changed the name to
Shavarsh, because by then he was the draw. Today he has a
multimillion-dollar inventory of rings, bracelets, necklaces and
earrings, 80 percent of which he makes by hand with the help of his
assistant, Hosep Atechian. Much of their work is custom-designed for
clients.
“I’m good,” Shavarsh said simply, with neither modesty nor bravado.
“There’s so much passion in my job, but business got too good. If I
throw my customers out the door, they’ll come in through the window.
Once they find me, they never leave.”
Indeed. Shavarsh said he served 5,000 customers last year, many of
whom become friends who send their friends to see him. One such
client is local lawyer John Murphy, who bought his fiancee’s
engagement ring from Shavarsh two years ago.
“I love the guy,” Mr. Murphy said unabashedly. “When I bought my
ring, he was so warm and he was so happy for my happiness. And he’s
one of the most generous men I’ve ever met. He carries a lot of
people on his back. He has a box where he keeps slips of paper from
people who owe him money. It’s overflowing. There’s a great loyalty
among his customers because he treats everyone with respect.”
Frank Carrier, owner of F. Carrier Corp. and the Zipango sushi
restaurant on Shrewsbury Street, has been a friend and client for 14
years.
“I absolutely know he’s one of the best jewelry designers in New
England, if not the Northeast,” Mr. Carrier said. “His work is very
detailed, meticulous and precise. He’s a great jeweler and a great
friend.”
For years, he never took a vacation and typically worked 12- and
14-hour days. He’s used some of his success to help other families
emigrate from Armenia.
Now he and his wife, Lusia, spend a week in Aruba every year. He
recently stopped taking orders from customers and will have a closing
sale beginning Oct. 24.
“I have dedicated my life to carving jewels for customers I truly
cared for,” Shavarsh wrote in a mailing to customers. “Now with this
closing, I must carve time for my own special jewels: my wife and my
children.”
He looks forward to driving his three children to school and helping
them with homework. He’d like to teach them to draw and perhaps teach
one of them the craft of his father and grandfather. He may “do
golf,” he said, and he wants to travel. But he’ll make no more
jewelry, he claimed, because he can’t do anything halfway.
“I’m very heartbroken because this is all I’ve ever known,” he said.
“This business was like my fourth child. But I’m a lucky man. I
started with zero and look what I did.”
Then he brightened like the diamonds and rubies that shine from the
storefront he loves.
“I was lucky to have my customers,” Shavarsh said with a wide smile.
“But they were lucky to have me, too.”

Chicago Daily Herald
October 9, 2005 Sunday
F3 Edition; F4 Edition
Parents’ language of love for newlyweds needs no interpreter
Marnie Mamminga
They spoke almost no English.
Journeying from the biblical vistas of Mount Ararat, they flew
thousands of miles across the cities of Europe, the blue-green swells
of the Atlantic Ocean, and the drought-dried fields of America’s
heartland before arriving in the concrete heat waves of the
distinctly different Dallas.
He is Hamlet and she is Karine (Kara), and they traveled all this way
bearing gifts of cognac and hand-made pillow covers from their native
Armenia in celebration of their daughter’s wedding to my nephew.
It is my fifth wedding of the summer, beginning with my own son’s
joyous celebration to his beautiful high school sweetheart and
concluding with our nephew’s long-awaited marriage to his Armenian
bride. In between were the wonderful weddings of friends.
Each celebration reflected not only the unique love of the bride and
groom but of the parents’ love for their children as well. For
although it is a time of great happiness, it is also a time of
separation as our children journey forth with their beloved partners
and create lives of their own.
They go, of course, with our blessings but not without a soft sigh
from our hearts in the definite realization that our children are now
grown and belong to someone else.
We try to be subtle about this letting go, but we are not so good at
it.
I witnessed it in a myriad of undisguised moments during each of
these summer breeze-brushed weddings: the gradual weakening of a
dad’s voice at the rehearsal dinner as he delivered a humorous and
heartfelt toast; a mother’s sweet, prolonged adjustment of her son’s
tuxedo tie as they wait for the ceremony to begin; and a father’s
continuous tender kisses on his daughter’s forehead as they so
lovingly dance at the reception.
Like the ancient rivers that have long caressed the Earth, such small
moments are wordless expressions of the deep, ever-flowing love a
parent has for a child.
And although we parents try to keep these powerful emotions under
wraps, they keep bubbling up at unexpected moments. So my heart went
out to Hamlet and Kara, who were not only celebrating their only
daughter’s wedding in a foreign land but also adjusting to their
first trip to America as well.
Besides not knowing the language, there was the heavy heat of Dallas,
the congested traffic, the mix of American-Mexican food, and the
ongoing introductions to yet another set of family members that kept
appearing on the scene. Not to mention, that as the bride’s parents,
they had an important role to play.
But none of that seemed to ripple Hamlet or Kara’s demeanor. Kara’s
beautiful smile and sparking eyes spoke volumes, and she knew a
smattering of gracious words like “beautiful” and “good” and “thank
you” which, when you think about it, cover a lot of territory.
Hamlet emanated a quiet dignity that overshadowed what must have been
tremendous cultural differences. Although he knew no English, he was
not afraid to venture forth in his own language with interpreting
help from the bride’s two Armenian girlfriends. (After all, the
bride, who also speaks impeccable English, could hardly be expected
to translate her father’s toast to herself.)
“Shhhhhh, Hamlet is going to speak,” someone would announce
throughout the weekend celebrations. And then Hamlet would take
center stage, gather his thoughts, and in a strong voice, confidently
deliver a toast in the musical language of his native tongue.
” ‘He says we parents are like gardeners, and these are our
flowers,'” the young Armenian woman translated to the groom’s parents
in impeccable English. “‘We have raised and nurtured our flowers
separately, but now these beautiful flowers will bloom together.’ ”
Gathered guests nodded in perfect understanding of this wisdom.
” ‘He wants to know if the vows included honoring one another in
sickness and health, in good times and bad?’ ” the young interpreter
asked the bride and groom, who confirmed this was so.
” ‘He wishes that you love each other always. May you share one
pillow as you go through life and grow old together.
” ‘When you have difficulties, and you will, for life is hard,'”
Hamlet continued, “but your love can overcome these obstacles. Your
love will see you through.’ ”
Although we do not know much of Hamlet’s Armenian or personal
background, it is clear he knows of what he speaks.
Earlier in the day, with the morning shadows still cooling the
wedding’s backyard garden setting, Hamlet stood poised in his
American tuxedo with his radiant daughter on his arm. To the sounds
of a lush brass quintet, they started down the down the aisle
together.
This is always one of the most poignant moments of a wedding for me,
for unaccountably, even if I don’t know the family well, a wall of
emotion surges up like a dam ready to burst. It takes all my strength
to keep from breaking into a sea of sobs.
I can only attribute this emotional flash to the sub-conscious memory
of my own deep love for my father as we began our walk down the aisle
together at my wedding 35 years ago. I was only 20, and at the end of
the aisle waiting for me was a man my father loved and respected and
I adored (still do).
Perhaps it is because my father died a mere six years later that such
a bonding moment, a time to leave and a time to join together, holds
such a cherished place in my heart.
And so I felt a special empathy for this Armenian father as he
listened and watched an entire ceremony whose words held no meaning
for him. What could be going through his head as his daughter not
only leaves his family to join another’s but also trades a culture
and a country?
As the bride and groom concluded their vows with a kiss and began
their walk back down the garden path to a new life of their own,
Hamlet spoke out over the background of the brass in his native
Armenian language to his once little girl:
” ‘Be happy,'” he says in a loud and clear voice. “‘Happiness to you
always.’ ”
The universal language of a parent’s heart.
No interpretation needed.

New Scientist
October 15, 2005
The riddle of time;
What keeps the cosmic clock surging onwards? The answer is written in
curious elliptical patterns in the sky, says Amanda Gefter
by Amanda Gefter
YOU wake up one morning and head into your kitchen, where you get the
distinct feeling that something strange is going on. A swirl of milk
separates itself from your coffee, which seems to be growing hotter
by the minute. Scrambled eggs are unscrambling and leaping out of the
pan back into their cracked shells, which proceed to reassemble. And
the warm sunlight that had flooded the room seems to be headed
straight for the window. Apparently, you conclude, time is flowing in
reverse.
You can deduce this because it is obvious that time has an arrow,
which, this morning aside, always points in the same direction. We
take the unchanging arrow of time for granted. Yet there is nothing
in the laws of physics as we know them that says it can’t point the
other way. So the riddle is: where does time’s arrow come from?
Our perception of the direction of time is linked to the fact that
the world’s entropy, or disorder, tends to increase. When you pour
milk into your coffee, the concoction, at first, is highly ordered,
with all the milk molecules entering the coffee in a neat stream. But
as time passes, the milk loses its organisation and mixes randomly
with the coffee. Keep watching and you will see it become thoroughly
mixed, but you won’t see the milk suddenly regroup. Strange as it may
seem, it’s not that such a scenario is impossible. It’s just
incredibly unlikely.
That’s because there are vastly more ways for the molecules to
arrange themselves in a random, spread out, high-entropy fashion than
in the tight formation in which they began. It’s a matter of
probability: as the molecules perpetually rearrange, they almost
always find themselves in high-entropy arrangements. Of course, if
they start off in a high-entropy arrangement, we won’t notice any
change. But if entropy is low at the start, it’s bound to increase.
Therein lies the origin of the arrow of time as we perceive it. It
has two essential ingredients. The first is a low-entropy beginning,
like the milk starting out in an ordered arrangement. The second is
mixing: the constant rearrangement of the milk and coffee molecules.
Mixing is necessary for the system to evolve and rearrange from a
low-entropy to a higher-entropy state.
And exactly the same must be true on much grander scales. The
cosmological arrow of time – the process that started with the big
bang – requires the universe to have started off with low entropy,
and the contents of the cosmos to have mixed ever since.
First evidence
So can we find these ingredients for time’s arrow in our universe?
Cosmologists already have evidence for the first one. They see that
the universe had a low-entropy beginning by looking at the
arrangement of the photons in the cosmic microwave background
radiation that provides a snapshot of the universe near the beginning
of time.
The CMB photons are uniformly spread out, with variations in density
and temperature detectable at a mere 1 part in 100,000. If the spread
of the CMB photons is uniform, we can assume that the other contents
of the nascent universe – such as the atoms – were also spread
uniformly at that time.
At first glance, that seems like the very definition of a disordered,
high-entropy state, but it’s not. The universe is governed by
gravity, which always clumps things together, so a spread-out state
is incredibly unlikely. Although no one knows exactly why, it seems
the universe was born in a low-entropy state.
So what provides the second ingredient? What mixes and rearranges the
contents of the universe? According to Vahe Gurzadyan, a physicist at
the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and La Sapienza University
in Rome, the answer is the shape of space itself.
In 1992, Gurzadyan and his student Armen Kocharyan were looking at
what a universe with “negative curvature” would do to the CMB.
Negative curvature – the exact opposite of the curvature of a sphere
– means that every point in space would be curved both up and down,
like the mid-point of a saddle or a Pringle chip. Physicists have
long considered this to be a possible geometry for the universe.
The temperature of the CMB varies slightly from point to point in the
sky, and maps of this variation reveal a multitude of hot and cold
spots. These maps have enabled cosmologists to infer many things
about the universe: its age and composition, for example. In their
theoretical work, Gurzadyan and Kocharyan found that negative
curvature would stretch the CMB spots into ellipses. That’s because
the CMB photons we observe today have been travelling through the
universe for nearly 14 billion years. If that journey took them
through negatively curved space, each little patch of light would
appear as if it has been through a distorting lens. Five years later,
Gurzadyan was looking at data from NASA’s COBE satellite, one of the
first to map the CMB, and saw exactly what he and Kocharyan had
predicted: all the spots appeared elongated (Astronomy and
Astrophysics , vol 321, p 19).
The observation was exciting but inconclusive because COBE did not
provide sufficiently fine resolution to measure the shape of the
spots precisely. Perhaps, Gurzadyan and Kocharyan reasoned, this
apparent elongation was just an illusion created by the low-quality
images. But when vastly more detailed CMB maps arrived from NASA’s
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in 2003, Gurzadyan and
colleagues ran the data through their programs, removing all
irrelevant distortion effects – and there it was (Modern Physics
Letters A , vol 20, p 813). “All the spots have the same constant
elongation, independent of temperature and the size of the spots,”
Gurzadyan says.
Because spots of all sizes are distorted in exactly the same manner,
this effect can’t be due to something that happened at the time the
radiation was created. Some of the spots are so big that their
extremities were already out of causal contact at the time of their
creation: light from one side could never reach the other. Just as
there is no way for us to communicate with a region that has slipped
beyond our causal horizon (New Scientist , 20 October 2001, p 36),
there is no way a distortion effect at that point in time could have
produced the symmetry of the ellipse. So it must have happened some
time later, during the photons’ journey through the universe.
And if that’s the case, Gurzadyan says, we have all the ingredients
we need for the arrow of time. The universe starts out in an
unlikely, low-entropy arrangement, with all of its contents almost
perfectly spread out. But as particles travel through the universe,
their paths follow the curves of space. In a negatively curved space,
any two particles that start off next to one another quickly diverge,
which means all the particles dramatically rearrange: the geometry of
space mixes the cosmos.
Since most particle arrangements correspond to high entropy, the
negative curvature inevitably guides matter into higher-entropy
states. In the case of the universe, that means states with
gravitational clumping: as entropy increases, things like stars and
galaxies form and with them heavy elements and, eventually, us.
Evidence of this process is encoded in the CMB. The elliptical shape
of the CMB spots reveals that the photons’ paths diverged in
precisely the way Gurzadyan expected for a negatively curved
universe. If spatial geometry mixed the photons, then it also mixed
everything else. And low-entropy beginnings plus mixing equals the
arrow of time.
Although Gurzadyan has published his ideas and his data in various
places, the work remains controversial: the traditional view is that
the universe is flat, not negatively curved. The usual interpretation
of the WMAP results, which comes not from looking at the shape of the
temperature spots but instead from what’s called the power spectrum,
is that the universe is flat. And most cosmologists believe this
flatness supports the cherished theory of inflation, the idea that
the universe underwent a fleeting moment of faster-than-light
expansion shortly after its birth.
The trouble with that objection is that a different aspect of WMAP’s
findings goes against inflation’s predictions. When astronomers plot
the power spectrum of the data, they see a big problem – hints of
which had also been seen with COBE. The power spectrum compares the
amount of temperature variation at different scales in the sky. When
close regions of the sky are being compared, the temperature
variations of the CMB fit with the predictions of inflation. But on
very large angular scales the variation conflicts with inflation’s
prediction. The anomaly, for which there is no accepted explanation,
suggests that there is something strange going on in the large-scale
geometry of the cosmos, perhaps because it is not flat. “This anomaly
is very curious,” says Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist at the
University of Oxford. “It seems to be out of kilter with the
inflation model, and it could be due to negative curvature.”
Gurzadyan regards the elongation of the hot and cold spots as
powerful evidence that the universe is negatively curved, and Penrose
agrees. Negative curvature would distort the CMB far more than a flat
universe could, Penrose explains, squashing the light in one
direction and stretching it in another. “If the geometry of space is
negative, then you expect the ellipses to stretch much more than they
would in positively curved or flat space,” he says. “And this is
exactly what Gurzadyan sees.”
Nonetheless, most cosmologists are still not ready to abandon the
flat universe or inflation. Although no one has actually shown or
even suggested that there is anything wrong with Gurzadyan’s
elliptical spots, they are hesitant to accept its implications. “At
the moment, I don’t feel that we have any compelling evidence against
space being flat,” says Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Princeton University’s Lyman
Page, a member of the WMAP team, is similarly reluctant. “Though I’m
a strong believer in alternative analyses of data, it is too early to
put much stock into the interpretation of Gurzadyan’s result,” Page
says.
Penrose, however, is excited by the result, and says there is much
more to be gained from the CMB than physicists so far seem to
realise. “There’s vastly more information in the data than people
look at normally. So far we’ve seen an infinitesimal amount, and
people tend to look at the same things that everyone else is looking
at. Gurzadyan is only using a tiny bit, but it’s a different tiny
bit. I think the analysis has to be taken very seriously.”
Elliptical time
Of course, directly linking the ellipses to the flow of time is even
more controversial, but we don’t have any other satisfactory
explanation. The flow of time we observe is certainly not compulsory:
it is perfectly possible for the time-symmetry of relativity, quantum
theory and our other descriptions of the universe to produce a
universe where time doesn’t flow – or even one where time flows in
the opposite direction to the one we experience. In 1999 Lawrence
Schulman of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, showed that in
principle regions of the universe where time flows in the normal
direction can coexist with regions where it flows backwards (New
Scientist , 6 February 2000, p 26).
But in our universe a negative curvature would stop this by imposing
a global condition for the increase of disorder. This may even be
what allows life to exist in the universe, Gurzadyan suggests: a new
kind of anthropic principle .
Of course, if the saddle-shaped universe provides us with a mechanism
for the increasing cosmic disorder, it still doesn’t explain the
arrow’s ultimate origin: it doesn’t explain the first ingredient, why
the universe began with low-entropy conditions. “Of course you need
mixing,” explains University of Chicago physicist Sean Carroll, “but
that’s the easy part. The hard part is getting the initial entropy to
be low.”
That remains a mystery, perhaps only to be resolved by the “theory of
everything” that physicists are avidly searching for. And we do have
hints that this final theory might address the problem. For example,
Rafael Sorkin of Syracuse University in New York state has proposed
“causal set theory”, which attempts to unite quantum theory and
relativity. It supposes that the fabric of the universe grows as
effects follow causal events – giving a sense of time’s flow (New
Scientist , 4 October 2003, p 36). Although Sorkin and his colleagues
admit it is not yet a complete theory of quantum gravity, it does at
least install a one-way arrow of time and a low-entropy beginning.
Of course, all these attempts to understand the irrepressible passage
of time assume that time’s arrow is a “real” phenomenon to do with
the physical universe – and that is not entirely certain. Some think
it might arise from the strange metaphysics of the quantum world;
others see it as a purely psychological phenomenon, an artefact of
our consciousness.
But Gurzadyan is now convinced that the passage of time is a
cosmological process. The hands on the cosmic clock are driven round
by the chaotic movements of photons through the negatively curved
universe, he says. Though that may be a little beyond what most
cosmologists are willing to accept for now, the idea must be worth
exploring: the search for answers to the flow of time goes to the
heart of physics, Penrose believes. “The problem of the arrow of time
is absolutely fundamental,” he says. “It’s telling us something very
deep about the universe.”
Life and time
Amanda Gefter
Vahe Gurzadyan’s idea has a startling implication: if the geometry of
space were different, there would be no “arrow” of time. Could life
exist in a universe without an arrow? If not, would that help explain
why the geometry of our universe is as we observe? Gurzadyan has
dubbed this idea the “curvature anthropic principle”.
The standard anthropic principle says that certain aspects of the
universe – like the values of physical constants – are the way they
are because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to wonder about them. For
instance, if the mass of the electron were different, the universe
would be unable to support human life, so we shouldn’t be surprised
by its value, given our very existence. Some scientists consider this
common sense, while others see it as a sorry stand-in for a real
explanation. The curvature anthropic principle applies this logic to
the shape of space: without this negative curvature, we wouldn’t have
evolved as we did, Gurzadyan suggests.

Agence France Presse — English
October 14, 2005 Friday 3:32 AM GMT
Armenia faces key referendum on boosting parliament’s powers
by Mariam Kharutyunyan
YEREVAN
Armenia will hold a referendum on November 27 on constitutional
changes that would strengthen the Caucasus nation’s parliament, but
which have failed to win round opponents of President Robert
Kocharian.
Reforming the constitution has moved up the agenda of this ex-Soviet
Caucasus republic since a 2003 referendum failed to gain the required
number of votes to endorse reforms, leading the 46-nation Council of
Europe, a democracy-promoting body, to threaten symbolic sanctions.
“Fulfilling this obligation is important for our country,” analyst
Alexander Iskandaryan said. “The existing constitution, which was
accepted in 1995, is now obsolete and needs to be amended for the
country’s political development. Otherwise we will stand still.”
For the reforms to be approved, at least half of those who vote must
give their approval and the “yes” votes must equal at least a third
of eligible voters.
The package, which was approved by parliament on September 28, would
limit the president’s powers, boost the role of parliament and the
cabinet and would also strengthen the independence of the judiciary.
It also aims to strengthen human rights protection.
Under the reformed constitution, “parliament would at any time be
able to vote no confidence in the government, ordinary citizens could
address the constitutional court, and parliament would appoint a
human rights ombudsman,” parliament speaker Tigran Torosyan said.
“The parliament is becoming the strongest branch, which is natural
for countries seeking major reforms,” he said.
Kocharian has resoundingly endorsed the reform package.
“This is undoubtedly a high quality document,” he said earlier.
But this view is not unanimously shared.
>From February 2004 until recently the opposition had boycotted
parliament, angered at what it saw as abuses by Kocharian. It only
returned at the urging of the Council of Europe, which has been
involved in drafting the reform package.
The opposition declined to vote on the reforms, objecting that the
president would still have the right to dissolve parliament if it
blocked government-backed legislation over a two-month period.
The opposition also objects that the constitution leaves in place the
president’s immunity from prosecution, both during and after his term
in office.
“The president should know he will answer for violations of the law,
both during his rule and afterwards,” said Viktor Dallakyan, a leader
of the Justice opposition bloc.
Following popular uprisings in three other ex-Soviet republics —
Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan — the opposition sees in the
referendum a chance to boost its standing and push out Kocharian’s
leadership, Dallakyan said.
“If this project does not go through, it will be the authorities’
political death,” Dallakyan said.
However analysts doubt that the opposition can really win mass
support.
“It may be that the opposition will not let this chance pass and will
destabilise the situation, but it will not be able to manage a
revolution… there is no basis for it in the country and the
opposition lacks the forces to do it,” Iskandaryan said.
Baku residents questioned by AFP had mixed views, but underlined
their dissatisfaction with the present situation.
“I do not yet know what changes there are, but I will vote for it
because European experts have worked on it. It can’t be worse than
the present constitution,” Mkhitar, a 60-year-old street vendor, told
AFP.
Arus Mnatsakanyan, a 46-year-old mother of three, said she doubted
the changes would have much effect.
“It is not what is written in the law that matters, it’s how it is
implemented,” she said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Press Association
October 14, 2005, Friday
TRAINEE PILOT JAILED FOR PASSPORT FRAUD
by Melvyn Howe, PA
A trainee pilot at the heart of a US terror alert was jailed for a
year today for obtaining a bogus passport.
Zayead Hajaig, 36, used it to pursue his “dream” to get round visa
restrictions and fly commercial planes in America.
But earlier this year, he aroused suspicion when he tried to persuade
instructors to falsify qualifications that could have put him at the
controls of passenger jets.
The FBI was alerted, but an attempt to catch him failed when he
learned they were on his trail.
He promptly used the false passport to flee to Britain, “terrified”
that if he was caught he would end up in Guantanamo Bay.
London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that, once back here, he
eventually contacted Scotland Yard anti-terrorist branch officers and
was finally arrested in connection with the passport matter.
In the meantime, a US grand jury indicted him on three counts of
being “an illegal alien” in possession of a small armoury of hunting
rifles.
American authorities also placed him on an international “no fly”
list – effectively making him a “prisoner” in Britain for the rest of
his life – scrapped his light aircraft pilot’s licence and rescinded
all his qualifications.
Although no moves are currently being made to extradite him, the
possibility of such a development remained like a “sword of Damocles”
hanging over his head.
Hajaig, of Howard Road, Ilford, Essex, admitted one count of
dishonestly obtaining a UK passport by deception between January 29
and February 6, 1997.
The charge stated he “falsely represented” that the details of the
passport photograph were a true description of Barry Felton – a
former colleague at a record shop he once worked at in Essex.
A second allegation claiming he stole the man’s driving licence to
provide identification for the passport application was ordered to
lay on file and not be proceeded with.
“You did this in order to gain entry into the United States, where,
previously, you had overstayed on a tourist visa.
“You knew you would have difficulty obtaining a further visa
yourself, so you used deception to get another passport in a
different identity. Your deception worked and you stayed in the US
until earlier this year.
“But it is true to say that, while there, you did not use that
passport again except to return to this country.”
The judge said that, following his return to the States, Hajaig
resumed the pilot’s training he began in the early ’90s and gained
further qualifications.
“But your deception caught up with you,” said the judge.
“After the atrocity of September 11, someone in your position was
bound to fall under suspicion and, eventually, you did. That prompted
you to return to this country.”
He went on: “I make it clear there is no evidence whatever before the
court to suggest for a moment that you have had any terrorist
connections.
“I accept that you were genuinely training to be a pilot. I also make
it clear that I am sentencing you today only for obtaining a passport
by deception.
“You were charged with the theft of the driving licence, which you
used for identification in 1997, but the Crown has asked for that to
lie on the file and I don’t sentence you for it.
“Nevertheless, to obtain a passport by deception in circumstances
like this is a very serious matter and to commit such an offence now,
when proper immigration control is one line in the defence against
terrorism, is highly culpable and would call for a long sentence.
“In 1997, when you committed this offence, the world was a different
place. The terrorist threat did not exist in the same way and your
sentence will reflect the date when you committed the offence.
“But, even then in 1997, to obtain a passport by deception in
circumstances such as these is so serious that a custodial sentence
is inevitable.”
Bearing in mind his guilty plea, his previous good character and his
poor health, the minimum term he could impose was one of 12 months.
Hajaig, who had remained impassive throughout the hearing, gave the
tiniest of bows in the judge’s direction, muttered a barely audible
“Thank you” and was then led from the dock.
The court heard Hajaig had been born in Nigeria to Armenian parents.
Because his father had a British passport, that allowed him to have
one too and he eventually settled in Britain.
As the years passed, he developed a “dream and ambition” to fly
commercial aircraft in America.
Finally, in the early ’90s, he travelled to the States as a
holidaymaker and immediately began taking lessons.
He later returned briefly to Britain, only to realise he would almost
certainly not be able to go back to America.
At the time, he was working in a record shop in Barking, Essex, as a
security guard, and decided the only way to resume his training was
to get a new identity.
After using Mr Felton’s identity to get the passport, he flew to the
US and enrolled once more in flight school.
He chose Atlanta in Georgia – where two of the September 11 suicide
hijackers also trained – to continue his lessons.
Leo Pilkington, prosecuting, told the court that in March this year
Hajaig came to the attention of the FBI.
“That followed allegations that during his pilot training – and he is
a qualified pilot – he tried to persuade and convince the instructors
to overstate his qualifications and falsify his pilot records.
“As a result, the flight school in question was contacted by
officers. They ascertained that the defendant would be there the
following day and decided to meet him.
“Unfortunately, there was a mistake by the flight school and he was
informed about this in advance and as a result failed to appear,
flying instead to the United Kingdom.”
The barrister said inquiries into his background continued, leading,
amongst other things, to the discovery that he had three rifles.
Stephen Requena, defending, said his client had felt he had no option
but to flee America.
“He was absolutely terrified about the treatment he might receive at
the hands of the US authorities.
“Whatever the rights and wrongs of Guantanamo Bay, one can perfectly
understand that such a hard-working man would be terrified.”
He said Hajaig had not obtained the passport for any “nefarious
reason”, but simply to “resume his training and pursue his dream”.
His decision to do so had resulted in all that he had achieved and
the hopes he still had and the hopes he had had being destroyed.
In addition, the publicity his case had attracted had resulted in him
being spat at in the street, his car being damaged, and his children
being bullied and abused at school.
Furthermore, he now found himself in an “extraordinary, nightmarish
situation” as a virtual prisoner in his home country because of the
no-fly list.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress