RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
_________________________________________ ____________________
RFE/RL Iran Report
Vol. 9, No. 14, 18 April 2006
A Review of Developments in Iran Prepared by the Regional Specialists
of RFE/RL’s Newsline Team
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HEADLINES:
* INTIFADA CONFERENCE IN TEHRAN HAS MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES
* LEGISLATORS CITE SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIANS
* TEHRAN CLAIMS TO MAKE LOW-ENRICHED URANIUM
* RUSSIA SAYS IRAN HEADED ‘IN WRONG DIRECTION’
* LEGISLATORS CRITICIZE EARTHQUAKE RELIEF
* PARLIAMENTARIAN GIVEN JAIL SENTENCE
* RIGHTS GROUP ALLEGES OFFICIAL ABUSE OF ETHNIC ARABS
* BALUCHI GROUP CLAIMS TO KILL HOSTAGE
* AHMADINEJAD ADDRESSES UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM
* TURKMENISTAN, IRAN SIGN GAS AGREEMENT
* IRAN SAYS NO DATE SET FOR PURPORTED IRANIAN-U.S. TALKS
* INTERVIEW: PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN IRAN SUCCESSFULLY
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INTIFADA CONFERENCE IN TEHRAN HAS MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES. Tehran hosted,
on April 14-16, a Support for the Palestinian Intifada conference.
This is the third time Iran has organized the conference — and with
talk that it may face a military strike against its nuclear
facilities, Iran’s association with the new Hamas government in
Palestine and other Palestinian rejectionist groups is even more
relevant to global affairs than it was when it held the conference in
2001 and 2002. There are strategic, ideological, and political
reasons for Tehran’s decision to host such gatherings.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to Iran,
during a March 9 roundtable in Washington, as “a kind of central
banker for terrorism in important regions, like Lebanon, through
Hizballah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian territories, and we
have deep concern about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.” The
U.S. State Department has classified Iran as a “state sponsor” of
terrorism since 1984, and it lists a number of the groups that
participated in previous conferences — such as Hamas, Hizballah, and
the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — as “terrorist organizations” backed
by Iran.
Iran’s frame of reference is a requirement in the
country’s constitution that calls on the government to support
“the just struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors in every
corner of the globe.” The secretary-general of the conference series,
Hojatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-Pur, referred to this requirement
in an interview that appeared in the April 6 issue of “Iran”
newspaper. He went on to speak of the ways in which Palestinians will
benefit from the weekend’s event. The more than 500 participants,
he said, “will discuss the dangers of the anti-human activities and
policies of Israel, which have the backing of America, and they will
think of some ways of countering those policies.”
It is not just ideology or charity that motivates Iran.
Mohtashami-Pur suggested that the creation of a Palestinian state
would contribute to Iranian security. “Naturally, if the Palestinian
nation restores its legitimate right, even the threats [against] the
Islamic Republic of Iran, which come from abroad, will be reduced
substantially,” he said.
Security interests, furthermore, explain meetings held in
Damascus on April 13 between one of Iran’s top officials and
leaders of Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Ayatollah
Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Council,
which oversees the workings of government, met with the
secretary-general of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, and told him that
unity is a key factor in ensuring survival, the Islamic Republic News
Agency (IRNA) reported. He repeated that message in a meeting with
Ramadan Abdallah al-Shallah, the head of Islamic Jihad.
Given this perspective, one would expect success for the
Hamas delegation that came to Tehran on April 11 to secure funding.
Hamas needs to compensate for the refusal of Israel, the European
Union, and the United States to sponsor the Palestinians until Hamas
renounces violence and recognizes Israel’s right to exist.
Indeed, Tehran welcomed the Hamas victory in Palestinian legislative
elections earlier this year. At that time, Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei encouraged the Muslim community to come
forward with funding, and the head of the Hamas political bureau,
Khalid Mish’al, reportedly secured a pledge of financial
assistance when he visited Tehran in February. More recently, on
April 12, Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who now
serves as a foreign affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, urged
Muslim countries to fulfill their promises to fund a Hamas-led
government, IRNA reported.
Superficially, then, it would appear that Iranian support for
Hamas will be overwhelming. But there are indications that Hamas
would not be similarly supportive of Iran. When Khalid Mish’al
spoke at Tehran University on February 21, he was asked how Hamas
would react if Israel attacked Iran, “Etemad-i Melli” reported. “Have
no fear,” he responded, “we will pray for you.” When one of the
students retorted that Israel would be destroyed if it attacked Iran,
Mish’al laughed and said, “if you destroy Israel, you will be
doing so over our heads.” He went on to criticize U.S. polices, but
added that this disapproval does not mean Hamas should go to war with
the United States. This level of commitment is likely to give
decision-makers in Tehran pause when it comes to aiding Hamas.
There may be another reason to wonder about the level of
Iranian support for Hamas. U.S. Secretary of State Rice questioned
Iran’s willingness to fund the $1.9 billion that the Palestinian
Authority needs annually, “Al-Hayah” reported on February 18. “We
will wait and see whether Iran will provide aid of this magnitude,”
she said.
When it comes to return on investment, Iran’s
relationship with Hizballah may be more likely to pay off. Iran was
once Hizballah’s main sponsor, and Mohtashami-Pur, the
secretary-general of the Intifada conference, was instrumental in
Hizballah’s creation when he served as ambassador to Syria in the
1980s. Iran’s Martyrs Foundation (Bonyad-i Shahid), a
semi-governmental charity, continues to openly fund Hizballah
activities, such as schools and hospitals. Hizballah, furthermore,
seeks to recreate the Iranian model of a theocratic state and
continues to regard Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei as a leader. The
importance of the relationship was made clear when Hamas’s Hassan
Nasrallah visited Tehran in August 2005 to meet with the newly
inaugurated President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and the two met again in
Damascus on January 20.
In Lebanon, a number of political actors are expressing
concern about an Iran-Syria-Hizballah axis. The Supreme Leader’s
representative in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Mujtaba
Zolnur, referred to potential Hizballah support when discussing the
possibility a U.S. attack. He said, “Iran has a lot of supporters in
other countries and once our interests are endangered, the
enemy’s in other countries will also be endangered,” “Aftab-i
Yazd” reported on January 23.
Aside from strategic interests and constitutional
requirements, Iran probably has another reason for hosting Support
for the Palestinian Intifada conferences. It is a Shi’ite state,
whereas Sunnism is the predominant school of Islam in the world.
Moreover, the Persians are a distinct minority in the predominantly
Arab Middle East. Through its activism on this issue, Iran is
portraying itself as a committed leader — more Palestinian than the
Arabs, and more Muslim than the Sunnis. (Bill Samii)
LEGISLATORS CITE SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIANS. A leading Hamas figure,
Khalil Abu-Layla, said on April 7 that Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad should announce his readiness to fund the Palestinians,
Al-Alam television reported. “We call on President Ahmadinejad to
announce clearly and unambiguously that he is totally ready to cover
all the financial needs of the Palestinian Authority and that he will
do his utmost to get this aid [to the Palestinians], and if he does
so, the situation will change a great deal,” Abu-Layla said.
Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh, a member of the Iranian
legislature’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee,
said on April 8 that the Hamas-led Palestinian government does not
need Western funding, IRNA reported. Falahat-Pisheh said the Hamas
victory in Palestinian legislative elections has resulted in the
imposition of sanctions by the United States and EU. He urged the
governments of Islamic states to act so Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority do not have to depend on foreign aid. Falahat-Pisheh said
the upcoming Intifada conference in Tehran (see item above) will
provide an opportunity for the Islamic community to put an end to its
inaction and support the Palestinians. Falahat-Pisheh also denounced
perceived inaction on the part of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference.
Qazvin Province parliamentary representative Rajab Rahmani
said on April 8 that Israeli activities against Palestinians violate
international law, IRNA reported. Rahmani said the Islamic community
is concerned about this issue. Rahmani described Israeli activities
against the Palestinians as “genocide,” and added that countries that
purport to promote democracy and human rights support Israel
unconditionally.
Just two days before the Support for the Palestinian Intifada
conference gets under way in Tehran, 195 members of the Iranian
legislature issued a statement of support on April 12 for the
“Palestinian Resistance Movement,” IRNA reported. The statement
called on all Palestinians to participate in a general referendum and
added, “The courageous Islamic resistance of the noble Palestinian
people is a clear legal response to the occupation and tyrannical,
racist and expansionist policies of the Zionist regime.” The
legislators also congratulated Hamas on its success in January
elections in Palestine.
The same day, Ali Akbar Velayati, the former foreign minister
who now serves as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s
foreign-affairs adviser, urged Islamic countries to fulfill their
promises to fund a Hamas-led Palestinian authority, IRNA reported.
“The dignitaries taking part in the conference are expected to
encourage their own governments to extend more assistance to the
Palestinian government,” he said. Velayati criticized the
Organization of the Islamic Conference for its inaction on this
issue. (Bill Samii)
TEHRAN CLAIMS TO MAKE LOW-ENRICHED URANIUM. Speaking in the
northeastern city of Mashhad on April 10, President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad promised his audience a big surprise in the near future,
state television reported. “God willing, while I am in Mashhad, I
will announce good news about the nuclear issue which will be a cause
for pride,” Ahmadinejad said. He also predicted that officials from
other countries would be pleased with the development, according to
IRNA.
Parliamentarians, government officials, and nuclear experts
have recently made similar predictions of forthcoming “good news” in
the nuclear field, iranews.org reported on April 10. Gholamreza
Aqazadeh-Khoi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,
visited the legislature on April 9 and announced the upcoming news,
according to irannews.org. Two anonymous legislators told
irannews.org the news is that Iran has managed to enrich uranium to
3.5 percent. One of those sources reportedly went on to say that Iran
therefore is not dependent on other countries and will be a member of
the so-called nuclear club.
Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh-Khoi, head of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, announced on April 11 in Mashhad that Iran has
enriched uranium, state television reported. He said, “Praise be to
God, the start of the operation and achieving results from the pilot
and testing process of this complex and the establishment of its
technical and operational knowledge, which is considered as the
frontier of passing this progressive knowledge…were successfully
passed by enriching uranium at 3.5 percent on 20/01/85 [April 9,
2006].” Aqazadeh predicted bigger things in the future, saying, “This
has paved the way for starting [the process] at industrial-scale in
the Islamic Republic of Iran. And in order to enter this phase, we
are trying to operate a complete 3,000 [-centrifuge] complex by the
end of this year.” The level mentioned by Aqazadeh, 3.5 percent, is
considered low-enriched uranium and is appropriate for a light-water
reactor.
Speaking afterward, President Ahmadinejad said, “we have
completed the nuclear fuel cycle at the laboratory level and our
young people enriched uranium to the enrichment level required by
nuclear power plants on 20 Farvardin [9 April] of the current year,
1385,” state television reported.
Expediency Council Chairman Ayatollah Ali Akbar
Hashemi-Rafsanjani pre-empted Ahmadinejad’s nuclear announcement.
Rafsanjani told the Kuwait News Agency on April 11 that the 164
centrifuges at Natanz were put into operation and produced enriched
uranium. He noted that many more units must be made operational in
order to attain an industrial level of production.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s suggestion that Iran is far from industrial
production of enriched uranium may be intended as a reassurance to
the international community. It also could represent an effort to
undermine Ahmadinejad politically.
Mohammad Javad Saidi, deputy chief of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, said on April 12 that Iran does not intend to
enrich uranium beyond the level announced by state officials the
previous day, state television reported. “We are currently able to
carry out 3.5 to 5.0 percent enrichment, and because our main purpose
in producing nuclear fuel is to provide fuel for our power plants we
have no intention to go beyond this level of enrichment because we
are committed to the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and the
Additional Protocol,” Saidi said.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani said during an April 12 visit to Damascus
that Iran has used 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium, Iranian state
radio reported. He went on to say that many more centrifuges are
necessary if production is to be on an industrial scale and to make
enough fuel for a nuclear power station. “We are moving in this
direction,” Hashemi-Rafsanjani said. “Our steps are very firm,
calculated, scientific, and independent. And in no point of this
technology [do] we depend on foreign assistance — be it the supply
of raw material or in the field of technical requirement.” (Bill
Samii)
RUSSIA SAYS IRAN HEADED ‘IN WRONG DIRECTION.’ A spokesman for
the Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 12 that the statement the
previous day by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad that his country
has successfully enriched uranium shows that Iran has taken a “step
in the wrong direction,” Russian news agencies reported. The
spokesman added that the Iranian move “goes counter to the decisions
of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] and the [position]
of the UN Security Council. [Iran should] stop all work to enrich
uranium, including research.” The diplomat noted that his government
backs the mission of IAEA head Mohammad el-Baradei to Tehran, which
is slated to begin on April 12. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
later on April 12 that one should not make “conclusions in haste”
regarding Ahmadinejad’s statement, adding that “emotions too
often run high over the Iranian nuclear program.”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow on April 12
that the media should not “exaggerate” the importance of claims by
Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported. Lavrov argued that “Iran has
never declared it seeks to possess nuclear weapons. On the contrary,
Iran has declared repeatedly at the highest level that it has no such
plans and that it intends to develop nuclear energy exclusively for
peaceful purposes.” Referring to recent media reports that Washington
is considering a military strike on Iranian nuclear sites, Lavrov
said that “if such plans do exist…they cannot resolve the problem
but may, on the contrary, create another extremely dangerous
explosive hotbed in the Middle East, a region which has enough such
hotbeds already.” The Foreign Ministry has repeatedly stressed that
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is “the one and only
authoritative international body with sufficient expertise and power
to verify state compliance with commitments under the Nuclear Weapons
Non-Proliferation Treaty,” the Moscow daily “Vremya novostei”
reported on April 12. Lavrov has urged Tehran to cooperate fully with
that body. The paper commented that his “call does not seem to have
been heeded.”
Sergei Markov, director of the Institute of Political
Studies, which is closely linked to the Kremlin, said that the latest
Iranian statements about having joined the group of countries with
nuclear technology show that Tehran is ready to scrap the results of
all previous talks with the international community and indicate
Iran’s readiness to provoke a dispute regardless of the
consequences, Interfax reported. Markov added that Tehran’s moves
are the result of “a total inconsistency in U.S. policies…. The
crisis suggests that the United States’ power has failed to
evolve into a leadership capable of uniting the largest countries in
an effort to solve global problems.” He added that Washington’s
foreign-policy mistakes include unspecified differences with Russia
over the “post-Soviet space.” He stressed that “since the world
community will not be able to shape any pertinent policy [on Iran
because of the United States]…the crisis, by all accounts, will
linger on, culminating in the emergence of one more nuclear power,
then another one, and then more in a chain reaction.”
Academician and nuclear expert Yevgeny Velikhov, who heads
the Kurchatov Institute, said in Moscow on April 12 that the Iranian
media have exaggerated the level of sophistication of their
country’s nuclear technology, which he called low-level, the
website mosnews.com reported. Velikhov described some of the Iranian
claims as “fairy tales” that reveal the “full incompetence” of the
authors. Moscow-based researcher Vladimir Yevseyev said on April 12
that President Ahmadinejad’s statement is “largely a bluff…to
apply pressure on the West and ensure a better negotiating position,”
RIA Novosti reported. For his part, Federation Council International
Relations Committee Chairman Mikhail Margelov said that same day that
“Tehran has made us understand the firmness of its position and its
readiness to continue nuclear [research], which will complicate
further talks.” (Patrick Moore)
LEGISLATORS CRITICIZE EARTHQUAKE RELIEF. Mohsen Yahyavi, a legislator
from Luristan Province, which was hit by several earthquakes in late
March, said on April 8 that most of the survivors must spend their
time outdoors despite rain and cold because they fear their homes
will disintegrate, Mehr News Agency reported. Yahyavi added that
relief operations were slow in the first few days and survivors had
to buy their own tents at inflated prices. Uncoordinated efforts by
government agencies are further delaying relief efforts, he claimed.
Hussein Papi, another legislator from the same province, said the
tents were not distributed properly and Luristan is not adequately
equipped to deal with such emergencies. (Bill Samii)
PARLIAMENTARIAN GIVEN JAIL SENTENCE. The Tehran Province Penal Court
has sentenced a member of parliament to jail, the Iranian Labor News
Agency (ILNA) reported on April 9. Ali Dirbaz, who represents Bandar
Abbas and is also managing director of the banned “Tamadon-i
Hormozgan” weekly, must serve 20 months behind bars and is banned
from press activities for insulting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution. The weekly reportedly
published what it thought was a foreign report about AIDS without
realizing that it criticized Khomeini. If a higher court confirms the
sentence, Dirbaz will finish his term in office before serving jail
time. (Bill Samii)
RIGHTS GROUP ALLEGES OFFICIAL ABUSE OF ETHNIC ARABS. Amnesty
International issued an “urgent action” report 4 April documenting
alleged torture and ill treatment of prisoners of conscience —
including a pregnant woman and the wife and children of an Arab
activist — in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, Radio Farda reported
on April 6. The report claims that Hoda Hawashemi and her 2- and
4-year-old sons were arrested and their whereabouts are unknown; they
are the wife and children of fugitive Arab rights activist Habib
Farajallah Chaab. Amnesty International expressed concern about
Masumeh Kabi and her 4-year-old son and Soghra Khudayrawi and her
4-year-old son. In another case cited by Amnesty International, an
abortion was reportedly performed in early April on Sakina Naisi
after blood loss “possibly caused by torture and ill treatment.”
Naisi’s husband, Ahmad Naisi, also is a wanted Arab activist.
(Bill Samii)
BALUCHI GROUP CLAIMS TO KILL HOSTAGE. Al-Arabiyah television
broadcast on April 12 a videotape in which the ethnic Baluchi group
known as Jundullah claimed to have killed Ahmad Zahed Sheikhi, an
officer in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. Sheikhi’s
identity card was shown, and Jundullah leader Abdulmalik Rigi spoke
on the tape. Jundullah has claimed responsibility for the March 16
attack on a motorcade traveling between the cities of Zahedan and
Zabol in which more than 20 people were killed and another seven were
injured (see “RFE/RL Iran Report,” 29 March 2006). The group released
a videotape in which it said it is holding several hostages.
In a 13 April press conference in Mashhad, Interior Minister
Hojatoleslam Mustafa Purmohammadi refused to confirm the alleged
death of the military officer, IRNA reported. He said operations
against insurgents in Sistan va Baluchistan, as well as efforts to
free the hostages, are continuing.
In an April 14 speech to Shiite and Sunnite clerics in the
southeastern city of Zahedan, Pur-Mohammadi said the government would
deal with efforts to cause insecurity in Iran, IRNA reported. (Bill
Samii)
AHMADINEJAD ADDRESSES UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM. President Ahmadinejad has
discussed the issue of unemployment — estimated to be at least 11
percent and closer to 20 percent — in several recent speeches,
hinting at his recognition that he must satisfy voters’ most
immediate concerns. He announced in the northeastern town of Quchan
on April 11 that 180 trillion rials (approximately $200 million) will
be distributed in the provinces for job creation, IRNA reported. In a
speech in Mashhad on April 10, he said, “Employment is one of the
most important issues to be tackled by the nation and the
government,” state television reported. “There are so many young
people who have a specialization. They have learned and studied but
there is no employment opportunity for them.” (Bill Samii)
TURKMENISTAN, IRAN SIGN GAS AGREEMENT. Iran and Turkmenistan have
signed a natural-gas agreement on Iran’s purchases of gas from
Turkmenistan in 2006 and 2007, turkmenistan.ru reported on April 12.
Iran will pay $65 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, effective February
1, 2006, for 2006 shipments, which are set to total 8 billion cubic
meters, Reuters reported. Iran will purchase 14 billion cubic meters
of gas from Turkmenistan in 2007. DK
IRAN SAYS NO DATE SET FOR PURPORTED IRANIAN-U.S. TALKS. Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi told reporters in Tehran on
April 9 that no date has been established for purported Iranian-U.S.
talks concerning Iraq, adding that there is no hurry to do so, Radio
Farda reported. Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali
Larijani announced on March 16 that Tehran will discuss Iraqi affairs
with Washington. Assefi emphasized that Tehran has agreed to the
talks in order to encourage a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
The “Financial Times” on April 7 quoted an anonymous “top
Iranian adviser outside the U.S.” who said that Supreme National
Security Council official Mohammad Nahavandian is in Washington to
plead that the talks also cover regional security and the nuclear
issue. The Iranian-interests section in Washington, however, said
Nahavandian is in the country on private business, and anonymous
“White House and State Department officials” claimed ignorance about
the alleged visit. It is unlikely that an Iranian official could
enter the United States without the State Department’s knowledge.
A demonstration by the Justice-Seeking Student Movement
(Junbish-i Idalatkhah-i Daneshjui) took place outside the Supreme
National Security Council building in Tehran on April 8, ISNA
reported. The demonstrators called for the cancellation of purported
Iranian-U.S. talks, but the reason for their stand is unclear.
Legislator Imad Afruq said on April 8 that holding such talks
would legitimize the U.S. occupation of Iraq and confirm accusations
of Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs, Mehr News Agency reported.
Hussein Shariatmadari, managing editor of the “Kayhan” newspaper,
said his precondition for the talks is a complete U.S. withdrawal
from Iraq. Iran’s participation in the talks, Shariatmadari
continued, would fulfill Washington’s desire to show that Iran
has yielded after 27 years of resistance. (Bill Samii)
INTERVIEW: PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN IRAN SUCCESSFULLY. U.S. media and
opinion makers have devoted much comment to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice’s proposal to provide $85 million in assistance
to help promote democracy in Iran. One of these opinion makers is Dr.
Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford
University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the
Hoover Institution, who has spoken out about the U.S.
government’s proposal in articles published in “The Wall Street
Journal” and elsewhere. In an exclusive interview with Radio
Farda’s Fatemeh Aman, Milani discusses his views concerning the
promotion of democracy in the Middle East and Iran.
Radio Farda: In your recent article with the interesting
title of “Checking Account for Democracy,” you welcomed the Bush
administration’s allocation of $85 million for the promotion of
democracy in Iran. But in the article you don’t sound very
optimistic that this move will have a significant impact on the
democracy movement in Iran. Why?
Abbas Milani: I think that if it’s well spent — in other
words, if it is not squandered on things that cannot be done and it
is not given to groups that cannot manage it wisely — then it can be
very effective, particularly if it is used primarily to create
something like a surrogate radio and a surrogate television.
Something that would be the equivalent of what an Iranian television
and radio would have been, had Iran been a democratic society. I
think, if Iran had such a media outlet a few years ago, for example,
I think things would have been very different in Iran today. And I
think they will be very different in a few years once such an
institution is created with the help of this money.
Long Democratic Tradition
Radio Farda: Do you think the United States and the West have
been successful at promoting democracy in the Middle East and in
Iran? And if you think they have not been successful, what do you
think is the reason?
Milani: The chance of promoting democracy, successfully, in
Iran is greater than anywhere else in the Middle East for two very,
very prominent reasons. One is, the Iranian society has an
indigenous, powerful, now 100-year-old democratic movement. This is
not something that has to be created ex nihilo, from nothing. This is
something that is there; the United States doesn’t have to create
it.
Secondly, the United States faces in Iran a reality that is
the opposite of every other Middle Eastern country with the exception
of Israel, and that is that the government talks anti-American
rhetoric, but the people, the street, is predominantly pro-American.
What you have in the rest of the Middle East is that the government
is trying to be, at least ostensibly are, pro-American, but the
people, often influenced by advertisements in the media of those very
countries, are anti-American. So in the case of Iran, you have a
democratic movement that exists, that has made great strides in the
past (it is now in a period of relative retreat because of the
[former President Mohammad] Khatami defeat, the disappointment that
came as a result of Khatami, but those forces there, they haven’t
gone away), and the population is predominantly pro-American. In
other words, they will listen. It is not like they will not listen to
something that is openly, transparently American.
Radio Farda: You said it is easy to promote democracy in
Iran, but I also asked whether you think the United States has been
successful in promoting democracy. If not, what has been at fault?
Milani: The problem in Iraq, the reason that democracy
promotion in Iraq has not been successful is because in the case of
Iraq there was not [an] indigenous democratic movement. The United
States decided to invade Iraq, and that created a Pandora’s Box
that some scholars had anticipated but many planners did not
anticipate, in other words, the emergence of this kind of insurgency
and all of the other things that have happened.
But at the same time, if you look at the Middle East today
and compare it with 15 years ago, you, I think, have to admit that
there are more democracies in the Middle East than there were. The
Palestinians just had the freest elections in the history of probably
any Arab country. In Lebanon, the people succeeded in pushing out
Syria. There is a very viable democracy in Kurdistan, in the British
part of Iraq. There is at least the possibility of democracy coming
to Egypt; at least flickers of it are on the horizon, at least
[Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak knows the old trick of saying, “If
you push me, you will get Islamic radicalism” is no longer enough to
dissuade the U.S. from pushing for democracy. There have been
failures in the other places, or small successes as in the case of
Iraqi Kurdistan.
What has happened in Kurdistan is truly incredible. It’s
a very viable, democratic part of Iraq that thrives. But there, the
U.S. had to face the problem that it was working in a milieu, in an
atmosphere, which was very, very anti-American. And it had to face
the reality that there wasn’t much of a democratic movement in
these countries to begin with.
The U.S. had to sort of force democracy on these societies,
and that can’t be done. You can’t force societies to become
democratic. Democracy needs a lot of things. It needs civil society,
it needs a middle class, it needs a technocratic class, it needs a
culture of tolerance. And these things are beginning to exist on a
very extensive basis in Iran. In the case of Iran, I think if there
was a television and radio station that was doing this kind of a
promotion of democracy, I think it would be a very different story.
Helping Iranians Help Themselves
Radio Farda: You wrote that this help can be used by those
who are denouncing violence in their fight for democracy in Iran. As
you have indicated, U.S. financial support for Iran-based democrats
is a sensitive issue. So how can these forces be helped by the U.S.
without being hurt?
Milani: Fist of all, several things have to be very clear.
One is that the U.S. is not looking for a [exiled Iraqi opposition
leader Ahmad] Chalabi in Iran. Second, that the U.S. is not trying to
decide who the next ruler of Iran will be. Third, that the U.S. will
not support any group that has a history of terrorism, a history of
violence, a history of oppression. Fourth, that the U.S. will not
help movements that want to dismember Iran, that are trying to break
Iran apart.
The U.S. could be tempted to do that, and it would be easy
because there is a lot of national resentment among Kurds, among
Turks. The U.S., I think, has to say clearly, categorically,
unmistakably: “We won’t do this. We won’t support terrorists.
We won’t support anyone who is advocating the violent overthrow
of the government. And we don’t plan to force a solution on
Iran.”
The only thing that the U.S. should say it wants to do is to
help the Iranians themselves in this process. That’s a very
crucial thing. That’s a big difference between Iran and Iraq. In
Iraq, the U.S. essentially went in, occupied the country, ran the
country for a while, and then said, “OK, let’s see if you can
have a democratic government here.” That’s hard to get. But my
suggestion is that that should be avoided in Iran, and a different
path can be tried. And I think that if it is tried and if it is made
clear that the U.S. respects the rights of Iranians to determine
their own future, then you will get a different result, and you will
get a good result.
Radio Farda: Regarding your suggestion of the creation of an
American visa office in Tehran, how should we imagine this? How
realistic is this idea?
Milani: Well, as I said there, I don’t think the Islamic
regime will allow it, but the U.S. should make the offer. It should
be clear to the Iranians, who now are forced to go to Turkey and
Dubai and Germany and to spend a lot of money and wait in a lot of
lines and be humiliated to get a passport, that this is essentially
the fault of the regime. It’s the fault of Mr. [President Mahmud]
Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric.
It is crucial, I think, for the U.S. to separate the Iranian
people from this regime, to speak to the Iranian people and say:
“Look, we don’t have any problem with you. We respect your right
to develop a nuclear program within the existing laws. But the
problem is with this regime, and if we don’t give you visas,
it’s because the regime doesn’t allow us to have a visa
office there.”
It must be made clear who is responsible for the problems
that the people of Iran face. Because it has a monopoly on the media,
the regime has very successfully told people a lot of stories. They
have sold the nuclear issue as a David and Goliath story. America,
they have tried to sell — tried, they haven’t been successful —
as being a bully, singling Iran out and denying Iran its rights. It
must be made clear that it is the regime’s irresponsible rhetoric
and its action, its lying and betraying the trust of the Iranian
people and of the global community, that has gotten Iran into the
current impasse. It has to be made clear to the Iranian people that
the U.S. is willing to work with them. A truly, editorially
independent media would go a long way toward doing that.
******************************************* **************
Copyright (c) 2006. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
The “RFE/RL Iran Report” is a weekly prepared by A. William Samii on
the basis of materials from RFE/RL broadcast services, RFE/RL
Newsline, and other news services. It is distributed every Monday.
Direct comments to A. William Samii at [email protected].
For information on reprints, see:
p
Back issues are online at

ASBAREZ ONLINE
TOP STORIES
04/17/2006
TO ACCESS PREVIOUS ASBAREZ ONLINE EDITIONS PLEASE VISIT OUR
WEBSITE AT <;HTTP://WWW.ASBAREZ. COM 1) Central Genocide Commemoration Event to Be Held in Montebello 2) Karabagh Holds War Games 3) ARF Holds Ceremony in Memory of Shahen Meghrian 4) US Considers Setting up Naval Bases in Turkey 5) Armenian Women Politicians Discuss Lack of Female Representation 1) Central Genocide Commemoration Event to Be Held in Montebello The commemoration of the 91st anniversary of the Armenian genocide will be held Sunday, April 23 at 4:30 PM at the Armenian Genocide Monument in Montebello's Bicknell Park, announced California's Central Commemorative Body. The program will feature local and state officials, including State Senator Jackie Speier. The keynote speaker will be Professor Peter Cowe, Narekatsi Professor of Armenian Studies at UCLA. After the political portion of the program, there will be a requiem service for the 1.5 million victims of the Genocide. Transportation to and from the event will be provided at the following locations: GLENDALE, St. Mary's Apostolic Church GLENDALE, St. Gregory's Armenian Catholic Church PASADENA, St. Gregory the Illuminator Church PASADENA, St. Sarkis Church VAN NUYS, St. Bedros Church HOLLYWOOD, St. Hovhannou Garabed Church HOLLYWOOD, St. Garabed Church California's Central Commemorative Body urges all Armenians to attend Sunday's event and remember the victims of the Armenian genocide. 2) Karabagh Holds War Games YEREVAN (Armenpress)--The armed forces of Mountainous Karabagh Republic (MKR) will hold three-day military games starting April 18. The Armenian Ministry of Defense reported that the defense ministers of Armenia and Karabagh and other top army officers will watch the drills. MKR Defense Ministry spokesman Senor Hasratyan told journalists the war games are going to be held in compliance with the 2006 army training plan. "The measure aims at improving the combat readiness of Armenian forces of Nagorno-Karabagh and coordinating their work during defense and counterattack operations," he said. 3) ARF Holds Ceremony in Memory of Shahen Meghrian YEREVAN (Yerkir)--Monday marked the 13th anniversary of the death of Karabagh war hero Shahen Meghrian and Nigol Aghbalian Student Union member Grigor Grigorian. Marking the date, eleven new members were inaugurated into the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). The ceremony was attended by Meghrian's relatives, officials, and students visiting the hero's grave. Parliament Vice Speaker and ARF Bureau member Vahan Hovannisian, who was also godfather of the ceremony, said the new members were taking their oaths at the grave of one of the most beloved heroes of the ARF who, if alive, could have held a top post at the Defense Ministry. The eleven students took their inauguration oaths with their hands on the ARF charter, program, and a weapon. Hovannisian said, "We swear on the charter since it unites us for our work, we swear on the program because it unites us for our ideas, and we swear on the weapon, which symbolizes not only war, but also struggle, freedom, and the defense of our country." 4) US Considers Setting up Naval Bases in Turkey ANKARA (RIA Novosti)--The United States is considering setting up three naval bases in Turkey, a Turkish newspaper reported Monday. Cumhuriyet said the bases would have the same legal status as the American-Turkish Air Force base at Incirlik, where the presence of Turkish representatives is mandated and all activities must be coordinated with the local authorities. The paper said the port of Iskenderun on the Mediterranean coast and Urla in the Aegean Sea, as well as Mordogan on the Aegean Sea coast are possible locations for the bases, which are likely to host large naval ships including aircraft carriers. The US has been searching for appropriate locations for the last eight months, the paper said, and had been considering the use of current Turkish ports or establishing new ones. Initially, Washington wanted one of the three bases to be located on Turkey's Black Sea coast. But the request was denied because Turkey is a signatory to the 1936 Montreux Convention, which regulates navigation in the Black Sea straits and bans non-littoral states from maintaining a permanent naval presence in the Black Sea. 5) Armenian Women Politicians Discuss Lack of Female Representation YEREVAN (RFE/RL/Armenpress)--One of few women members of Armenian Parliament, Alvart Petrosian from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), said Monday that Armenia must demand democracy in order to boost the role of women in the country's political life. Armenian women are grossly underrepresented in government. Armenia has no female government ministers and only six out of 131 members of its parliament are women. Armenia has a legal provision stipulating that at least five percent of candidates from a party or alliance must be women. However, female candidates have usually been low on the electorate slates of competing political groups, meaning that they have very low chances of winning parliament seats. The most common explanation for this phenomenon is that Armenia is still a conservative male-dominated society where women are largely confined to minor positions outside their homes. But according to one of the country's best-known female politicians, this is not necessarily the case. Speaking at a roundtable discussion in Yerevan, Ruzan Khachatrian, a senior member of the People's Party of Armenia, said that Armenian women have primarily themselves to blame for their extremely weak presence in the executive and legislative branches of government. "Strangely enough, during elections in Armenia a woman is far more reluctant to elect another woman than a man is," said Khachatrian. "Why is this so? I don't know." Khachatrian was the main opposition candidate in last October's local election in Yerevan's central administrative district which a businessman won. She believes that that the vast majority of some 5,000 local residents who voted for her were men. Lyudmila Harutunian, a prominent Armenian sociologist who leads a small party called Arzhanapatvutyun (Dignity), agreed that winning an election or securing a high-level government post is extremely difficult for local women, but laid the blame squarely on the men. She said Armenia's government affairs have long been monopolized by wealthy businessmen and other powerful men reliant on brute force and there is little women can do about that. Harutunian said women should play a bigger role in moving the country towards true democracy. She said democracy has no alternative, adding that a democratic Armenia would face fewer problems in its efforts to settle the Karabagh dispute. All subscription inquiries and changes must be made through the proper carrier and not Asbarez Online. ASBAREZ ONLINE does not transmit address changes and subscription requests. (c) 2006 ASBAREZ ONLINE. All Rights Reserved. ASBAREZ provides this news service to ARMENIAN NEWS NETWORK members for academic research or personal use only and may not be reproduced in or through mass media outlets.

California Courier Online, April 20, 2006
1 – Commentary
‘We Will Remember not the Words of our
Enemies, but the Silence of our Friends’
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
2 – Dr. James Reid to Speak on Symptoms of Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder in Survivor Writings
3 – AAAA Honors Members, Guests
At Harvest Gallery Reception
4 – Armenian Dukuk is Hot Instrument in World Music
5 – L.A. City Attorney Delgadillo Hosts Armenian
Genocide Exhibit and LAUSD Training
6 – UCLA Will Host May 6 Conference
On Sustainable Development in Armenia
7 – Ohanesian Named
To City of Hope
Board of Directors
8 – Tennessee Titans Lineman
Visits Armenia, Karabagh
9 – Armenian Martyrs’ Day Commemoration
To be Held April 24 in Fresno’s St. Paul
10 – Mesrobian Students Collect $1500 in Pocket Change for
Armenian EyeCare Project’s Adopt-a-School Program
****************************************** *******************************
1 – Commentary
‘We Will Remember not the Words of our
Enemies, but the Silence of our Friends’
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
As Armenians are commemorating the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
this week, they should keep in mind that 91 years after the fact, a
distinguished U.S. diplomat has become its latest victim!
John Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, fortunately has not lost his
life, but has sacrificed his diplomatic career for speaking out on the
Armenian Genocide. He is being recalled by the State Department for
publicly acknowledging the facts of the Genocide during his tour of the
United States last year.
As Martin Luther King said: “At the end, we will remember not the words of
our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” This famous statement aptly
describes the regrettable situation Amb. Evans and Armenians find
themselves in. The U.S. Ambassador is a true friend of Armenia and
Armenians. But, more importantly, he is a defender of the truth. His
friends should not remain silent about his predicament.
By speaking out, Armenians would be defending not so much the Ambassador —
who deserves their full support — but their own cause. They cannot remain
silent when the State Department is indirectly trying to bury the truth
about the Armenian Genocide. A noble messenger is being eliminated in order
to silence his message!
The upcoming commemorative events of the Armenian Genocide are the perfect
opportunity for Armenians to raise their voices in defense of the
acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, in solidarity with Amb. Evans. As
Armenians gather in various cities throughout the world during the week of
April 24, the keynote speakers at commemorative events in every city should
condemn the shameful action of the State Department against one of its
finest diplomats! They should urge their audiences to write to the State
Department expressing their outrage about its inexcusable treatment of Amb.
Evans.
A group of Armenian Americans and their friends in Yerevan are launching
this week a “Yellow Ribbon” campaign in order to shatter the wall of
silence surrounding this affair. As more than a million Armenians will be
marching in a solemn procession to the Genocide Memorial Monument in
Yerevan on April 24, volunteers will be asking each individual to tie a
yellow ribbon on a rope along the path leading toward the Monument. The
organizers have chosen the “Yellow Ribbon” campaign as a mode of silent and
respectful protest that is so familiar to Americans. This activity will be
publicized throughout Armenia as well as the Diaspora.
These actions and the ensuing publicity would add to the extensive media
coverage in recent weeks of the State Department’s shocking recall of Amb.
Evans. As the Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial published on March
22: “Punishing an ambassador for speaking honestly about a 90-year-old
crime befits a cynical, double-dealing monarchy, not the leader of the free
world.” In a similar harshly worded editorial published on March 24, the
Fresno Bee wrote: “Shame on the State Department” for recalling Amb. Evans.
Prominent British journalist Robert Fisk wrote a scathing article in The
Independent on April 8. He castigated the State Department for recalling
Amb. Evans and took Pres. Bush to task for reneging on his campaign promise
of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Fisk said that after getting
elected, Pres. Bush “caved in, gutlessly calling it [the Armenian Genocide]
a ‘tragedy’ so that he wouldn’t get his fingers burned by that wonderful
democratic NATO ally – and would-be EU member – called Turkey.”
Despite extensive critical media attention and several letters of inquiry
by members of Congress to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the State
Department continues to stonewall and remain officially silent on the Evans
affair.
If Armenians worldwide react strongly on this occasion, maybe in the
future the State Department and the White House would carefully weigh the
repercussions of their actions, before contemplating important decisions on
Armenian issues. Silence and inaction are not valuable commodities in the
pursuit of any cause, let alone a noble one!
********************************************* *****************************
2 – Dr. James Reid to Speak on Symptoms of Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder in Survivor Writings
FRESNO – Dr. James Reid, Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at
Fresno State for the Spring 2006 semester, will be giving the final of his
three part lectures series on “The Inner Dimension of the Armenian
Genocide,” on April 25. The title of the this third lecture is “Symptoms
of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Survivor Writings.”
The lecture will begin at 7:30 PM in the Peters Auditorium of the
University Business Center at Fresno State and is free and open to the
public.
This third lecture will examine symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
in survivor writings. The problem of attaining a complete understanding of
the individual’s post-traumatic state of mind is more difficult in memoirs
or other personal writings left by deceased persons. The effort is
immensely important, though, since much can be learned by such
investigations, both for the history of the Armenian Genocide and for the
understanding of modern patients. In order to comprehend the absolute
devastation of the Armenian genocide and accompanying events, it is
imperative to make the effort to understand the human dimensions of this
immense tragedy.
Dr. Reid holds a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and a
Ph.D. from UCLA and is the author of several books, including Crisis of the
Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839-1878; Studies in Safavid Mind
Society and Culture and Tribalism and Society in Islamic Iran, 1500-1629.
Dr. Reid is a Tsakopoulos Hellenic Fellow, from 2001-2003 he was the
director of the Vryonis Center, and from 1991-2001 he was a senior research
fellow at the Center. He has written extensively on the Ottoman Empire and
modern Greece.
For more information on the lecture, contact the Armenian Studies Program
at 278-2669.
************************************************** ************************
3 – AAAA Honors Members, Guests
At Harvest Gallery Reception
GLENDALE – The Armenian Allied Arts Association presented an afternoon
reception at The Harvest Gallery in Glendale on March 26, from 2 to 5 p.m.,
honoring AAAA members and their guests.
In an effort to develop and expand the AAAA, the Board of Directors was
present to discuss plans and exchange ideas with the members and their
guests.
Karen Kaysing-Doty, AAAA President, welcomed the guests, introduced the
Directors in attendance, and expressed her gratitude to the Armenian
community who supports the arts. A reception followed the program where
guests were treated to an array of wine and cheese, coffee and gourmet
treats.
The Harvest Gallery, at 938 North Brand Boulevard, specializes in
exhibiting the work of Armenian artists and has a fine reputation. The art
of Vasken Brudian was on display, and he was present to discuss his work.
Twenty of his pieces were in the gallery, and many sold that day. The
guests enjoyed his presence, as it made his art come to life. In addition,
the music of Los Angeles violinist, Anne Rardin, complemented the artwork,
as she played pieces on solo violin to represent the genre of Mr. Brudian’s
work.
The 66th Annual Armenian Allied Arts Competition deadline for submissions
has now been extended. All hopefuls are encouraged to enter by contacting
the chairperson in the department of their interest.: Department
Chairpersons are:
Art – Siroon Megurian (323) 656-0261; Drama- Geraldine Chuchian, (310)
274-1694; Dance – Dr. Tina Vartanian, (323) 726-9192; Literature – Rosa
Madoyan, (909) 894-8944; Music Composition, Victoria Parian, (626)
303-2023; Music Instrumental & Vocal, Mary Agulian, (626) 791-9816.
For further information on Armenian Allied Arts events or/and competition
submissions, call (323) 654-7988 or visit
Competition forms may be downloaded on the website.
***************************************** **********************************
4 – Armenian Dukuk is Hot Instrument in World Music
That’s the soulful sound of the duduk. The duduk is a kind of folk oboe
from Armenia. It’s played here by the Armenian master of the duduk, Djivan
Gasparyan. In Gasparyan’s homeland, the duduk embodies Armenian culture and
pervades folk music. But there’s no need to leave the United States to hear
it. There’s probably one playing at a theater near you. The World’s Adeline
Sire explains.
The duduk has become the stuff of Hollywood soundtracks. It’s about 2000
years old, so it’s probably the oldest and the hardest working instrument
in show business. Many blockbusters have featured it, including The Crow,
Dead Man Walking, The Siege, and even Hulk. The trend started with the 1988
film “The last temptation of Christ.” That soundtrack was composed by
British rock musician Peter Gabriel.
Venezuelan-born musician Pedro Eustache was haunted by the sound of this
mysterious instrument.
Pedro: “I said what the heck is that? It sounded like a cello meets a
voice, meets a clarinet, meets a lot of pain, incredibly expressive and it
just rocked my world.”
Eustache took up the duduk in 1994 after he was introduced to it by Armen
Anassian, of Los Angeles, who was then Yanni’s music director. He then
studied with master Djivan Gasparyan. He soon learned the secrets of this
rudimentary instrument made of Armenian apricot wood. It’s topped with a
large reed.
Eustache is a freelancer and in Hollywood, he’s very much in demand by film
composers. He plays dozens of woodwinds from around the world. But he
treasures the duduk. And likes to improvise on it.
Pedro: Duduk is such a difficult instrument, pfffff…..it kicks my butt
all the time, excuse my French–which is not French– but
duduk can express something very specific, peculiar, particular, that
nothing else can express. I would say evocative, I would say
extreme expression from sweetness to pain and they say in Armenia, the
sound of this instrument is a prayer.”
That quasi-holy sound has made the duduk a welcomed guest in religious film
epics. In 2004, 16 years after “the last temptation of Christ ” the duduk
appeared in Mel Gibson’s film “the Passion of the Christ.” And this time,
Eustache was playing.
More than an instrument, the duduk is a dramatic device. John Debney
composed the score for “the Passion of the Christ.” He says he chose the
duduk because it sounds just like a human voice. But he says that usually
when film composers use it, they aim to refer to the distant past and
distant lands.
Debney: “It does evoke something ancient. I think that most westerners are
drawn to this instrument because it is a plaintive instrument that is very
exotic and very beautiful. And I think that’s very appealing.”
Filed under “ancient times” evoked by the duduk, you find the films
“Gladiator” and “Alexander.” And as for exotic, in 2005 alone, the duduk
evoked a fictitious land in “Chronicles of Narnia,” and the middle east in
“Syriana” and “Munich.”
Pedro Eustache is the featured duduk player in Munich’s soundtrack. And
he’s played many more gigs, even in settings beyond Hollywood. He says the
duduk is quite a chameleon.
Eustache: “I’ve played this in churches, in Hispanic churches, I have
played this in huge arenas all over the world, I have played this from
Dubai to India to Japan to Venezuela, I’ve used this in Iranian pop, you
know, it’s pretty amazing.”
Eustache also performs with classical Indian music master Ravi Shankar. In
2002, Eustache performed with Shankar and his band in London. It was a
memorial concert for the Beatles’ George Harrison. Shankar had written a
duduk solo for Eustache. And that solo didn’t fall on deaf ears. Paul
McCartney was so impressed by the sound of the instrument that he inquired
about the musician who’d played it.
McCartney: “He said that he called Ravi Shankar….and said “Ravi, I want
to have that Indian musician that plays this mournful Indian instrument….
voovoovoo…. and Ravi said “No no no, he’s not Indian, he’s from Venezuela
and the instrument is from Armenia.. hahaha…”
McCartney called Eustache and invited him to play a duet on his latest
album “Chaos and creation in the garden.” The song is “Jenny Wren.”
Pedro Eustache is convinced that this folk horn from Armenia has a powerful
and limitless reach. He says it will definitely outlive its current fad.
It’s just a hunch but it’s based on experience.
Eustache: “I’m from Venezuela, South America. My parents came from Haiti
and I am a whole multicultural weird thing. My point being, there are
things that go beyond geography and chronology an the sound of the duduk is
one of them. I have played this instrument anywhere and everywhere and it
affects people, it immediately capture’s people’s sensibilities, it
connects deeply with them, I think there is something so incredibly
universal about the sound, the strength, the reality of this instrument.”
Its appeal is so universal that last November, UNESCO issued a proclamation
naming duduk music a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of
Humanity.”
As for Eustache, he’ll next play on a couple of songs Stevie Wonder is
writing for a documentary. Eustache says the R’N’B star loves the
instrument so much he’s getting one for himself. The duduk’s next
appearance will be brought to the silver screen by composer Hans Zimmer.
Zimmer asked master Djivan Gasparyan to the play for the soundtrack of “The
Da Vinci Code,” out this May.
For information about Pedro Eustache and his latest solo CD, go to:

********’******************** *********************************************
5 – L.A. City Attorney Delgadillo Hosts Armenian
Genocide Exhibit and LAUSD Training
LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo hosted an exhibit
and teacher training program for Los Angeles Unified teachers about the
Armenian Genocide at Los Angeles City Hall on April 3
In attendance were over 100 guests including numerous dignitaries from the
Armenian-American community such as Raffi Momjian, Executive Director of
the Genocide Education Project, 43rd California State Assembly District
Candidate Paul Krekorian, Laurel Karabian, and numerous city employees of
Armenian descent.
Delgadillo addressed the attendees stating, “This month, we pause to mark
the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The scars from this
terrible event are still raw, and have been made even more painful by the
fact that the world has yet to heed the voices of so many senseless
deaths.”
Ara Oshagan, Levon Parian, and Raffi Momjian all had an opportunity to
address the audience with comments about their experiences commemorating
the Armenian Genocide.
The teacher-training workshop was conducted by the Genocide Education
Project, a non-profit education organization, which will ultimately train
more than 300 LAUSD teachers about the Armenian Genocide. Incorporated
into the Genocide training are elements from the iwitness exhibit.
Iwitness is an exhibit by the Genocide Project featuring the work of
photographers Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian.
The Genocide Project combines portraits of Armenian Genocide survivors with
their eyewitness accounts of their experience during the Genocide. It was
collected over a10-year period and features historical photographs and
testimonials from American and other officials present in the Ottoman
Empire before and during the Genocide.
Prior to the reception, there was a screening for the historical
documentary “Armenia: The Betrayed,” at which numerous individuals and
students from local Armenian Schools attended. After the screening,
iwitness photographers Oshagan and Parian answered questions from audience
members about their emotional experience photographing and interviewing
survivors of the Armenian Genocide. The artists related that survivors had
repressed their memories of the Genocide for years and how emotionally
straining it was for them to now relive the horrific events of their early
years.
Delgadillo thanked members of the community for attending the event and
stated, “My hope is that by co-sponsoring this exhibit with the Genocide
Education Project… we will all speak for the 1.5 million Armenian
Genocide victims — speak for millions who have died since and take another
step toward preserving memory and preserving life.” Delgadillo continues
to be a prominent supporter of the Armenian Community.
*************************************** ****************************
6 – UCLA Will Host May 6 Conference
On Sustainable Development in Armenia
LOS ANGELES – “Armenia: Challenges of Sustainable Development” is the theme
of an international conference to be held at UCLA, on May 6, from 9:30 AM
to 4 PM. in the Court of Sciences 50 (Young Hall).
The conference featuring specialists in economics, finance, and governance
is dedicated to UCLA Professor Emeritus of Economics, Armen A. Alchian, a
world-renowned economist and teacher who was born in Fresno in 1914 and has
been a member of the UCLA faculty since 1946.
The conference is organized by the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in
Modern Armenian History at UCLA, and the Armenian International Policy
Research Group (AIPRG), with support from the UCLA Von Grunebaum Center for
Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Economics.
AEF Chair Holder Richard Hovannisian will open the morning session with
introductory comments on “The Economic Factor,” followed by the
presentation of Professor Alchian and his contributions to economic theory
by a similarly distinguished Professor of Economics, Harold Demsetz.
Enrique Gelband, Deputy Division Chief and former Mission Chief to Armenia
of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will give the keynote address on
“Growth and Poverty Reduction in Armenia: Achievements and Challenges,” the
title of his recent book published by the IMF. A panel discussion on the
subject will be moderated by UCLA Professor of Economics Michael
Intriligator and include William Ascher, McKenna Professor of Government
and Economics at Claremont McKenna College; Daniel Mazmanian, Director of
the Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public
Enterprise at the University of Southern California; and Ara Khanjian,
Professor of Economics at Ventura College.
The Saturday afternoon session moderated by Prof. Lee Ohanian of the UCLA
Department of Economics focuses on specific topics relating to Armenia’s
economic development. David Grigorian of the IMF will speak on “Tax
Potential versus Tax Effort: Factors behind the Stubbornly Low Tax
Collection in Armenia”; Bryan Roberts of the Department of Homeland
Security, “Remittances, Poverty, and Growth in Armenia”; and Nerses
Yeritsyan, Central Bank of Armenia, “Financial Sector Development in
Armenia: Problems and Challenges.” A discussion period will conclude the
afternoon session.
Richard Hovannisian stated: “I am pleased that after 16 wonderful
semi-annual conferences on Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, we
shifted the focus to contemporary issues in 2005 with ‘The Enduring Legacy
of the Armenian Genocide’ and ‘Three Turkish Voices on the Armenian
Question.’ Now, for the first conference of 2006, the economic and fiscal
challenges facing the Republic of Armenia will be addressed. I am thankful
to David Grigorian for arranging much of the program, especially as Ascher,
Khanjian, Roberts, Yeritsyan, and Grigorian are also associated with AIPRG.
The subject of this conference is of critical importance to Armenia and all
those concerned with the welfare of its people.”
The conference is open to the public and free of charge. Parking is
available in Structure 2 at the Hilgard and Westholme Avenue entrance to
UCLA.
***************************************** **********************************
7 – Ohanesian Named
To City of Hope
Board of Directors
LOS ANGELES – John Ohanesian, President & CEO of Bosley has been named to
the national Board of Directors of City of Hope Cancer Center.
City of Hope’s Board of Directors is comprised of 28 members, spanning a
range of industries that include finance and health care.
Ohanesian has been President fo CEO of Bosley since August 2001, at which
time he completed the orchestration of Bosley, Inc., being acquired by
Tokyo-based Aderans, Inc. Since joining Bosley in October 1990, as
President and COO, Ohanesian has led the growth from eight offices to 98
offices and from 68 employees to over 600 employees. These include
locations in Canada, Mexico, and a surgical clinic in Tokyo, performing
more surgical hair restoration procedures than any company in the world.
Previously, John was Vice President of Saint John’s Hospital and Health
Center in Santa Monica from 1984 to 1990. Prior to that, he was
Administrator of Health Services for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing
Committee from 1982 to 1984.
>>From 1990 to 1996, he was a member of the California Citizens Compensation
Committee as an appointee of Gov. George Deukmejian.
Since September of 2001, Ohanesian has been an active member of the Los
Angeles Music Center’s Center Theater Board of Directors, the operating
company for the Ahmanson Theater, Mark Tape Forum and the Kirk Douglas
Theater.
John earned his B.A. in Political Science from California State University,
Sonoma in 1977, and his Master of Arts in Health Administration from
California State University, Long Beach in 1980. He resides in Beverly
Hills with his daughter Adona and Ava.
********************************************* *****************************
8 – Tennessee Titans Lineman
Visits Armenia, Karabagh
LOS ANGELES – In January, Rien Long became only the 4th Armenian American
in 50 years to complete three seasons in the NFL. In March, the 24-year-old
6’6″, 300-pound defensive lineman for the Tennessee Titans traveled to his
ancestral homeland of Armenia.
Long was joined on his journey by his mother and grandmother: three
generations of Armenian-Americans “returning” to Armenia for the first
time, since Rien Long’s great-grandparents, Toros Vartanian and Elizabeth
Krekorian fled to America right before the Ottoman Turks began
systematically killing 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
The entire trip was filmed for a documentary that will debut this year at
the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Father’s Day, June 18.
“The Long journey From the NFL to Armenia” was shot in Nagorno Karabagh;
Yuba City, Calif., Nashville, Tennessee; Eugene, Oregon; Moscow, Idahol;
Anacortes, Pullman and Vancouver, Washington, and in more than 10 cities in
Armenia.
>>From Yerevan to Gyumri to Sevan to Karabagh, Long toured historical sites
and visited with the people of Armenia. He even dropped in on Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian, where the conversation dealt more with American
football than Armenian foreign policy.
“The highlight for me was visiting Karabagh itself,” Long said. “I was
especially impressed with Father Ter Hovanes at Gandzasar Monastery. His
stories of the war with the Azeris put a lot of thing we consider struggles
in our country into whole different perspective. It was truly inspiring.”
Among others, stops included the Sartarabad Genocide Memorial, a maternity
clinic in earthquake-ravaged Akhuryan, Etchmiadzin, Erebuni, Garni Temple,
Geghard Monastery, an after-school program for at-risk youth, and Yerablur
National cemetery, where Long met veterans of the war in Karabagh.
Long, who sports a tattoo of the Armenian flag on his right arm, will be in
Glendale on June 18 for the debut of the documentary.
For more information, readers can log on to the web site of Global
Opportunity Productions @ or call filmmaker Peter Musurlian at
(818) 500-1234.
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****************************
9 – Armenian Martyrs’ Day Commemoration
To be Held April 24 in Fresno’s St. Paul
FRESNO – The Armenian Interdenominational Committee will host the Armenian
Martyrs’ Day Commemoration on April 24 at St. Paul Armenian Church.
Keynote speaker is Tom Bohigian.
The Committee is comprised of members from St. Paul, Holy Trinity Armenian
Apostolic Church, Pilgrim Armenian Congregational Church and the First
Armenian Presbyterian Church.
The program begins at 7 p.m.
Participating in the cultural portion of the program are Maria Amirkhanian,
Piano, Hermine Sahagian & Flora Mirijanian, Recitations.
At the conclusion of the Service and Program, there will be a fellowship
reception at the Social Hall.
St. Paul Armenian Church is located at 3767 North First Street, Fresno.
Admission is free.
******************************************** ******************************
10 – Mesrobian Students Collect $1500 in Pocket Change for
Armenian EyeCare Project’s Adopt-a-School Program
PICO RIVERA, Calif. -Students at Yerevan School N #105 received eye
screenings and eye heath education from the Armenian EyeCare Project
medical team, courtesy of their peers around the globe at the Armenian
Mesrobian School in Pico Rivera, Calif.
For the second year in a row, the Mariam Samoniantz’s 9th grade homeroom
class at Mesrobian School participated in the EyeCare Project’s
Adopt-a-School Program, which invites AECP donors to sponsor eye screenings
and treatment of the students at a specific school in Armenia. The
Mesrobian students emptied spare change from pockets, purses, and wallets
into a large jar each day for three months. “I felt good knowing that my
small change benefited another Armenian in a significant way,” said 9th
grader Nora Gourdikian. The news of the good deed spread around the
school, and students from all grades began to participate-eventually
bringing the grand total to $1,500.
The Mesrobian School, founded in 1965, was the second Armenian Day School
in the United States. The 240 students are taught the importance of
helping others.
“My 9th grade class wanted to help their brothers and sisters in Armenia,”
remarked Samoniantz. “We choose the Armenian Eyecare Project because the
gift of sight is the most precious gift of all.”
The AECP medical team screened 320 students at Yerevan school N #105 and
found that 35 children had existing eye problems. The students with eye
problems will receive follow up treatment, which can include a detailed
examination, surgery, medications, and eyeglasses. These services will be
provided at no cost to their families.
In addition to the screenings, the younger students were treated to an
interactive educational puppet show featuring Doctor Tesunik highlighting
the importance of eye care. Third grader Silva Yemenyan liked the puppet
show very much. “Doctor Tesunik told us how to keep our eyes healthy,” she
said, “And now I want to have healthy eyes.” The older students learned
about the anatomy of the eye and created colorful eye models, one of which
will be sent to their friends at Mesrobian School as a gesture of
appreciation.
Bella Sukiasyan, Schoolmaster of N#105, was “impressed and touched” that
the Mesrobian students gave their lunch money to help others in need. She
noticed that her students became more attentive to eyecare after the AECP’s
visit, and more importantly, “they were given an example of compassion and
are ready to exercise it themselves.”
The 7th grade class at Yerevan school N #105 decided that they will gather
money to support eye screenings for orphans and the elderly in their
community.
Founded by an American-Armenian Ophthalmologist, Dr. Roger Ohanesian, the
Armenian EyeCare Project, is dedicated to the elimination of preventable
blindness. Celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2002, the EyeCare Project
launched a seven-year initiative, “Bringing Sight to Armenian Eyes,” which
includes (1) direct patient care; (2) medical education and training; (3)
public education; (4) research; and (5) strengthening the Armenian eye care
delivery system. In 2004, the AECP was awarded a three-year grant from
USAID to integrate primary and ophthalmologic health care in Armenia.
For more information about the Armenian EyeCare Project, contact the
California office at 949-675-5767 or 866-GIV-AECP (448-2327) or visit the
AECP website at To make a donation, call the AECP
toll-free number or mail a check to 518 South Bayfront, Newport Beach,
California 92662.
************************************************* **************************
*****
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FROM IKE TO MAO AND BEYOND
by Bob Avakian
Revolutionary Worker Online, IL
April 17 2006
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist
>>From “Chapter One: Mom and Dad” and “Chapter Two: One Nation Under
God-A ’50s Boyhood”
Revolution #044, April 23, 2006, posted at revcom.us
Revolution is publishing a series of excerpts from Bob Avakian’s
memoir – as audio recordings of Bob Avakian reading from the book
are made available online. (See announcement) This week we feature
sections from Chapter One and Chaper Two.
>>From Chapter One Mom and Dad Now, my parents weren’t just together
for over sixty years, they were extremely fond of each other the whole
time. This was something that I always recognized and appreciated,
and in particular with my mom I always recognized and appreciated her
compassion and generosity and self-sacrificing qualities. But growing
up as a boy in the ’40s and ’50s, in the more middle class stratum that
I was from, in a lot of ways I kind of took my mother for granted. You
know, she was always there, she was always supportive, she was always
helpful, she was always so compassionate and sympathetic, and she was
always sacrificing for other people in the family or for other people
beyond the family. But as an adult I actually learned a lot of things
about my mother, and learned to appreciate her much more fully, than
I did as a kid. For instance, when she was still pretty young, back
in the 1930s, she drove her family across the country at one point,
which was not that common for a woman to do then. Another time, when
she was teaching high school, there was one student there who needed to
get certain credits for college-in particular she needed to take Latin,
but there was no Latin class there. So, just for this girl’s benefit,
my mom arranged to teach Latin. But even more than those incidents,
I’ve come to see how I’ve taken many of her values and made them
my own.
Also, my mother had a great love of the outdoors that she’d gotten
from her family, in particular her father. She liked taking us to the
mountains and out into nature, to all these beautiful places that I
learned to love. One time, my younger sister Mary-Lou and myself and
my parents had gone up into the mountains and on our way back home,
we had to go through the little, dreary town of Merced, just a little
ways from Fresno. It was getting to be about lunchtime, and Merced
was about an hour away, and my mother was very determined that we
were going to eat in the beautiful setting of the mountains. But the
rest of us wanted to have ice cream or something, down in Merced.
Finally after a long discussion we decided to have a vote, and
my father ended up voting with us two kids to eat in Merced. This
infuriated my mom and, looking back on it, with good reason. Of course,
she had the right stand, yet she -didn’t win out. But in order to
try to win, at one point, when we said we were ready to vote on it,
she said: “Okay, let’s have a vote now-who wants to eat lunch up in
the mountains by a beautiful rippling stream”-she said this in a very
lilting and appealing voice-“and,” she continued, “who wants to eat
in hot old Merced!” She said the latter with such disdain that you
would’ve thought we were going to be eating in a garbage dump.
Unfortunately, even her way of stacking the argument didn’t lead to
her winning out in that case-although it did become a sort of family
metaphor for indicating a strong preference while posing as neutral.
She was completely right, of course, and now I would have no hesitation
to side with her if she were here. But, that was my mom.
It shows both her determination and her love for nature.
I took that in from her and it’s been with me ever since. My dad
grew up on a farm, and later on he very much loved a home that my
parents had in the Santa Cruz mountains, but as far as roughing it,
that wasn’t really his thing so much. As I said, my dad grew up
in very modest circumstances, so it wasn’t that he was spoiled. But
“roughing it in nature” wasn’t his idea of an ideal vacation the way it
was for my mom. She often prevailed in that, for which I was very glad.
My parents met in Berkeley. My mom was a student at Cal, which was
also somewhat unusual for a woman at that time, and then because
of the Depression and because my dad was still in law school, they
couldn’t afford to get married. So they were engaged for three years
before they got married. And during that time, after she graduated
from Cal and after a year of looking for work, my mom got a job
teaching school in a small town a couple of hours from Berkeley-she
taught high school there for two years. She could not say that she
was engaged while she was teaching, because then they would think
she would leave once she was married and would fire her. So she had
to hide the fact that she was engaged, and a number of the guys who
were teaching at the school were trying to ask her out. It was a very
awkward thing. But after a couple of years, when my dad finished law
school, my mom and dad got married.
While my parents were from different backgrounds, neither of their
families resisted their marriage. Despite a lot of insularity among
the Armenian relatives, my father’s parents felt the important thing
was what kind of person you marry, not whether they were an Armenian.
My mother was pretty readily accepted both because of the attitude of
my father’s parents, but also because she was a very likeable person.
And my mother learned how to cook some of the Armenian foods,
and picked up some of the other cultural things. Beyond that, my
father would not have put up with any crap! So the combination of
all that meant that she got accepted pretty quickly. I’m not aware
of friction from my mother’s parents toward my dad. They were nice
people generally, although they too were pretty conservative in a
lot of ways, and also, to be honest, my father, having graduated from
law school, was someone who had a certain amount of stature when my
parents got married.
Despite the fairly conservative atmosphere in which she was raised,
my mother was very far from being narrow and exclusive in how she
related to people. If she came in contact with you, unless you did
something to really turn her off or make her think that you were a
bad person, she would welcome and embrace you. And that would last
through a lifetime. Besides things like the Sunday “sacrifice night”
meal, my parents, mostly on my mother’s initiative, would do other
“Christian charity” things, like in that Jack Nicholson movie, About
Schmidt, where he “adopts” a kid from Africa and sends money. But
they not only paid a certain amount of money, they took an active
interest-they corresponded, they actually tried to go and visit some
of the kids or even the people as grown-ups with whom they had had
this kind of relationship. My mother had a very big heart and very big
arms, if you want to put it that way. She embraced a lot of people in
her lifetime. You really had to do something to get her not to like
you. She was not the kind of person who would reject people out of
hand or for superficial reasons.
I remember when I was about four or five years old and somehow from
the kids that I was playing with, I’d picked up this racist variation
on a nursery rhyme, so I was saying, “eeny, meeny, miny moe, catch a
nigger by the toe.” I didn’t even know what “nigger” meant, I’d just
heard other kids saying this. And she stopped me and said, “You know,
that’s not very nice, that’s not a nice word.” And she explained to
me further, the way you could to a four- or five-year-old, why that
wasn’t a good thing to say. That’s one of those things that stayed
with me. I’m not sure exactly what the influences on my mom were
in that way. But I do remember that very dramatically. It’s one of
those things that even as a kid makes you stop in your tracks. She
didn’t come down on me in a heavy way, she just calmly explained to
me that this was not a nice thing to say, and why it wasn’t a good
thing to say. That was very typical of my mother and it obviously
made a lasting impression on me.
One thing I learned from my mother is to look at people all-sidedly,
to see their different qualities and not just dismiss them because
of certain negative or superficial qualities. And I also learned from
my -mother what kind of person to be yourself-to try to be giving and
outgoing and compassionate and generous, and not narrow and petty. I
think that’s one of the main influences my mother had on me.
>>From Chapter Two One Nation Under God -A ’50s Boyhood I had a sort of
typical American boyhood for the 1950s-a lot of sports, a lot of good
times (and bad) with my sisters, and a lot of cutting up in school. But
that doesn’t mean it was idyllic or somehow cut off from the world:
there was the pervasive gender conditioning and there were ways in
which the big issues of the “grownup world”-segregation, McCarthyism
and conformism-were expressing themselves even in my boyhood.
We moved to Berkeley when I was three, and I have a few very sharp
memories and some impressions from those days. I remember when I was
told there was no Santa Claus, when I was five years old. We used to
have Christmas presents on Christmas eve, and my father or one of my
uncles would dress up as Santa Claus. After you get to be a little
bit more of a thinking person, you realize that there’s always someone
missing every Christmas eve when you’re passing out presents.
So this Christmas eve, after “Santa” came and we passed around and
opened up our presents, as I was going to bed my parents came into my
room and told me, “I guess you’ve already figured this out, but you
know there isn’t really a Santa Claus.” And I said, “yeah, I kind of
figured that out.” I remember that this led to some tension with some
of the other kids in kindergarten because, of course, when you’re a kid
that age, you may not have that much awareness of or respect for how
other kids’ families are handling this. So you just start saying, “oh
there’s no Santa Claus,” but some of the kids still believed there was.
To give you a sense of the kind of little kid I was, one time I
got the idea that instead of going to school it would be fun to
go off and do something else, and another kid and I just completely
disappeared and never showed up for school. My parents were panicking,
and in particular my mom was trying to find me, and eventually they
found us somewhere-we just thought it would be fun to go off and do
something else that day. Another time, some teenager in the area was
trying to get me to jump out of a second-story window, promising to
catch me. I was just about ready to do it, but my mother came along
and just caught it in the nick of time-she stopped me just as I was
swinging my legs over the window sill. She was furious. I remember
little things like that, crazy things that happen but you somehow
survive-or usually people survive them.
Sports Sports has been a big part of my life since I was very,
very young. I think I started playing football and basketball and
baseball when I was about five. True to his word when he had polio,
my dad took me out and taught me how to play all these things. It was
a very important part of his life: he loved sports, and he wanted me
in particular to take this up-there was a whole thing about being the
boy in the family at that time, frankly. It’s not like my sisters were
explicitly excluded from this, but this was more of a thing with me,
being the boy.
My dad started taking me to Cal football games and basketball games
from the time I was about four or five years old. I remember every
year there’d be a parade through downtown Berkeley before the start
of the football season, and this was one of the highlights of my
year. The parade made it almost tolerable to have to go back to
school. Our elementary school was small, but we did have organized
teams in baseball, basketball and football. We played other schools
and had city champion-ships; we even had a young kids’ team for first
and second graders, and I played on that when I was six and seven.
Whenever he could take off from work, my dad would always come to my
games from the time I was really little. You’d always see him with
his little eight-millimeter camera taking pictures on the sidelines.
When I got a little older and I’d throw a pass that was a pretty long
pass for a fifth or sixth grader, you’d see my dad pacing down the
sidelines trying to measure how many yards long the pass was. He’d
say, “33 yards, that was a 33 yard pass for a touchdown.” So he gave
me a lot of encouragement. My dad had this friend-I think he was
a lawyer who worked with him as a government lawyer when we were
back in D.C.-and my dad used to write to him all the time in these
deliberately exaggerated terms, bragging about my sports exploits.
He’d write about it as though it were professional teams playing,
sort of in a self-consciously exaggerated way, and then his friend
would write back.
In her own way, my mom also shared in my enthusiasm for sports, but my
dad in particular was just full of passion for it, and he had a lot of
pride in whatever I was doing. But it wasn’t that sort of disgusting
thing where you put pressure on your kid and you have no appreciation
for other kids. He wouldn’t yell at me when things didn’t go well,
and when we lost the city elementary school championship game in
football, my parents consoled me, they didn’t act like I’d let them
down. It was never that kind of thing.
I just loved sports, and whenever I got a chance I tried to play-I
didn’t care if the other kids playing were a lot older than me. So,
from a very early age, around five or so, I started hanging around
kids who were older, playing sports-even young teenagers, or ten- or
eleven-year-old guys. And, of course, one of the big things when you
get into sports, in this kind of society, is that there’s this whole
macho element to it, and one part of that is you swear a lot. So,
one day, we were just playing catch with the family, and I think I
dropped a ball or something, and I said “Oh, shit.” Now my parents came
from the kind of a background where you didn’t say things like that,
especially in public. They didn’t get too angry, but they told me that
what I had said wasn’t a very good thing to say and I shouldn’t do
that. So after a little while I looked up at them and said, “Well,
okay then, but is it all right to say ‘hubba hubba’?”-which was
another thing I’d heard hanging around the older kids playing sports.
So, as a young boy, I was just football, basketball, baseball all year
around: from September until the end of November it was football;
then from December until the spring it was basketball; then in the
spring and through the summer it was baseball. My life was kind of
seasonal in that way, and I loved all those sports in their turn,
in their season.
When I was six we moved into a new house and it was about equidistant
between two schools that were in the Berkeley hills. One of them was
called Cragmont and the other one was called Oxford. I remember my
parents telling me: “You can go to either school you want. We’ll let
you choose.” I said “Okay, but I want to look at them.” So, my dad
drove me around and we looked at both schools, and I picked Oxford
because, when we drove by it, I could see the basketball courts on
the playground.
I was lucky enough to have a good coach when I was coming up. He was
a student at Cal and took care of the playground in summer and on the
weekends and after school. But he was also the coach of our teams. I
remember him fairly fondly-he was a nice guy, not like a military
drill sergeant. To give you the contrast between him and some of what
you often see, we had an incident when I was in fourth grade where we
were behind by a couple of points in a football game, and on the last
play of the game, I threw a pass for a touchdown and we won the game.
Or so we thought. Nobody had showed up to referee the game, so the
coach of the other team was refereeing, and his own team was offsides
on this play. He called offside on them, and then he came running up
to the kid who was the captain of our team for that day, and said,
“They were offside, you wanna take it? you wanna take it?” And the
poor kid got confused, not knowing what “it” was. He was thinking
this coach/ref was talking about the touchdown, so he said “Okay,
we’ll take it,” and then this coach/ref insisted that “it” meant the
offside penalty, so we were forced to run the play over again. We
ran the play again, I threw the pass again, but this time it was
incomplete and we lost the game. That coach/referee should not have
put that kind of pressure on an eleven-year-old kid, he should not
have tricked him in that way. There should not have been that kind
of atmosphere, where winning was that important.
Our coach was not like that-he was actually a fairly decent guy as I
remember, and he didn’t make us feel like we’d failed the universe,
or him, if we didn’t win a game, or even a championship game.
But from the time I was nine or ten I was pretty regularly playing
sports with teenage kids, and they inculcated in me the idea that
you had to win, you had to win, you had to win-and that losing was a
disgrace. They had had this drummed into them, and it’s not so much
that they sat me down and said, “this is the way it is,” but it just
kind of rubbed off on me, along with a lot of macho stuff and the
bullshit that boys in general absorb in this kind of culture. It was
generally very pronounced in the ’50s, but especially boys who were
deeply into sports got a heavy dose of this. Those are the kinds of
things that more came from hanging around with older kids playing
sports-that was kind of the negative side of it. There were a lot of
positive things that came out of it because of the particular times
and because of the opportunities that it presented to have a lot
of experience with kids from completely different backgrounds and
situations, particularly Black kids. That was very positive. At the
same time, there was the negative side-the sort of macho, militaristic,
win-at-any-cost kind of stuff. But I didn’t get that from my own
coach in grammar school, and I didn’t get it from my parents.
My Sisters Overall I got along well with both of my sisters. But, it
was kind of a classical situation where my sisters had to do things
like iron clothes-they even had to iron my clothes. When I got into
high school I had friends who were from poorer backgrounds who ironed
their own clothes. But my sisters had to do all the stuff like ironing
the clothes, even my clothes-there were all those “domestic” things
they had to do, while I didn’t have to do much of that-and generally
I didn’t have to do as many “chores” as they did.
I can even remember-at one time I had forgotten this, but my younger
sister reminded me of it-that when I got to be driving age and got
my license, my parents would let me use one of their two cars, and I
would drive all over, but when Mary-Lou came along later and wanted
to use the car, my attitude at that time was: “What do you need
the car for? You’re a girl, I need the car.” So there was tension
that resulted not just from being siblings, but also from the sort
of gender socialization and male domination which I just grew up
with-even though I loved my sister, I just assumed that driving the
car is what a guy does. A girl gets a guy to drive her around in a car,
girls don’t drive cars. That’s how I saw it then.
But even earlier, there was tension just because I was always kind of a
prankster. For example, my father would quite often at dinnertime say,
“okay gang” and then start telling us about the latest case he was
involved in as a lawyer. And so we got a lot of that training.
All of us got it, but one of the ways in which I used it-because,
again, I was always sort of a prankster-was, just for the nasty fun
of it, I’d get Mary-Lou, who had her favorite toys, to sign contracts
that would turn over these toys and the ownership of these toys to
me. Not because I wanted them, but just to trick her. She would naively
sign these contracts, trusting me, and then I would say, “okay now,
give me this toy or that toy.” She’d say, “no, that’s my toy”; and
I’d reply, “yeah, but you just signed it over to me.” Then she’d go
running, crying to my dad who would then come down and look at the
contract and invalidate it as having been achieved under fraudulent
circumstances! Now Mary-Lou and I were very close in a lot of ways,
so I don’t want to give a one-sided impression, but these were pranks
I liked to play, and then my dad would have to come down and invalidate
them. And all my hard-earned trickery would be undone.
We used to play around the house together a lot. From the time I was
about nine until into high school, I had this recurring “Sunday-night
sickness.” That is, when Sunday nights came around, I would not want
to go to school the next day, so I would start calculatingly coughing
about eight o’clock at night on Sunday; and after I went to bed, I’d
wake myself up and have these “coughing spells” in the middle of the
night. Then I’d wake up again at five or six in the morning and really
start coughing, and after a little while my mother or my father would
come and say, “Oh, you’ve been coughing all night,” and I’d answer,
“Yeah, I really don’t feel well, I think I’m sick.” Then there would
be this little dialogue: “Well, do you think you’re well enough to go
to school?” “All you care about is whether I go to school or not-you
don’t care about whether I’m sick.” So then I would get to stay home.
When my younger sister got a little older, I’d try to get her to
do the same thing, and sometimes she would, and we had all kinds of
games. We had a rollaway bed on wheels, and I used to tie a rope to
the rollaway bed and tie the other end to a door handle, and we could
pull ourselves around, and get rides on it and things like that. Or
we’d make a fort, using blankets, bed covers. I also remember when
I was about six, I guess, the big star football player at Cal was a
guy named Jackie Jensen, so my dad and I were always playing catch
and talking about Jackie Jensen. I remember Mary-Lou, she was just
three, picked up a football and ran around the backyard saying “me
Jackie Jensen, me Jackie Jensen,” because she was trying to get in
on things too, she didn’t want to be left out.
My older sister Marjorie would be in charge of us when my parents
would go out sometimes. So then there would be conflict between my
older sister and the two others of us, and we’d get into a lot of
fracases. But, while I’m talking about a lot of the conflicts we had,
we were also really good friends. We would confide in each other a lot,
the way kids do, and conspire against our parents, or complain about
our parents, about what they wouldn’t let us do, or what they made us
do. I remember one time my parents went on a trip for a week and they
left us in the charge of this college student who was a friend of the
family’s. He, of course, didn’t know anything about how to raise kids
anyway, and he particularly didn’t know how to deal with us. And so we
had all these grievances that had accumulated against this guy, who
we thought was a tyrant. We would get together and conspire against
him, and try to give him a hard time because we thought he was just
absolutely unbearable. Of course, he was actually in an impossible
position. But I remember we’d do a lot of conspiring together like
that, or just getting together and talking about things, the way
kids do.
So I was actually very close to my sisters. There was the usual tension
between siblings, and then there was the tension that came from the
larger societal roles that expressed themselves within our family. But
within all that, we were still very good friends and very close.
Still, the gender conditioning went on from an early age and was
pervasive. I would interact with girls in school-sometimes maybe we’d
work on projects together-but as far as things you would do outside
of school, at recess, or during your “own time,” the girls pretty
much played with the girls and the boys with the boys. There were
the usual grammar school flirtations that went on, but friendships
were not really developed that much across gender lines.
With my sisters, it was again a contradictory thing-I really loved my
sisters a lot, we were very close in a lot of ways, and I did some
things with them. In some ways, I was the good big brother, and in
some ways I was the jerk big brother-or little brother, depending on
which sister it was. But they would go to dance rather than sports, or
they were Girl Scouts, or Campfire Girls, when I was in the Cub Scouts
(I didn’t go on to join the Boy Scouts-because it took too much time
away from sports!). We were in different worlds a lot. When we got
older, when we started really getting interested in the opposite sex,
we’d talk about that with each other and get advice. So it was kind
of contradictory like that. Our worlds overlapped, especially in the
family context, but they were also very different.
And, again, this took place in a whole societal context. For instance,
there were all kinds of ads on TV at that point and, in retrospect,
you see that in addition to the products, they were selling ideology,
too. You had Lorraine Day, for instance, who was a spokesperson for
Amana, which is a religious group that financed themselves through
making household appliances. Lorraine Day was like an institution
herself. She’d demonstrate a refrigerator and show you what a great
freezer compartment it had, and so on. The Lorraine Day thing was
directed toward women as housewives, all the latest appliances that
they needed to have.
Although my mother was cast somewhat in the role of the classical
wife and mother at that time, there was a lot more to her than that.
She went back to teaching when we kids got a little older. She did a
lot of substitute teaching, and sometimes her assignments turned into
long term substitute teaching. A lot of the dinner table conversation
was dominated by my father talking about his legal cases, but she
would join in that and she would also talk about other things, and
not just “waxy build-up on the floor.”
-mao-and-beyond.htm

AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN OSCE CO-CHAIRMEN TO HELD CONSULTATIONS IN MOSCOW
Author: E. Huseynov
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
April 17 2006
Consultations with the American OSCE Minsk group co-chairman, Steven
Mann will be held in the Russian Foreign Ministry on April 19, OSCE
co-chairman from Russia, Yuri Merzlyakov told Trend.
Consultations on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict regulation will take place
on the eve of Mann` s visit to the region, he said.
The similar consultations took place in Moscow on April 14 on the
results of the visit to the region of the French mediator, Bernard
Fasie
, Mrzlyakov said. The French diplomat has been accepted by the
Russian vice foreign minister, G. Karasin and both sides discussed
coordination of the OSCE Minsk group activities (Russia, USA, France)
and further steps in the conflict resolution.
Speaking about the inconsistency in the co-chairmen proposals,
Merzlyakov said all matters discussed in the course of separate
visits of mediators to the region “are coordinated and practically
the same thing.”
He added that the co-chairmen will pay a joint visit to the region at
the beginning of May. Before, they will hold a consultation in Moscow.

POPE’S EASTER MESSAGE CALLS FOR TALKS ON IRAN
Catholic World News
April 17 2006
Vatican, Apr. 17 (CWNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI (bio – news)
called for “serious and honest” negotiations to defuse tension over
the development of nuclear power by Iran, in Urbi et Orbi message
delivered on Easter Sunday.
The Holy Father did not explicitly mention Iran as he addressed
the crowd in St. Peter’s Square at midday on Easter Sunday. But
his reference to “the international crises linked to nuclear power”
was unmistakable.
In other references to international affairs, the Pope called for peace
in several African regions– beginning with a mention of Darfur, and
including the Great Lakes region, Ivory Coast, Uganda, and Zimbabwe–
and in Latin America. In a balanced reference to the Middle East, he
said: “May the international community, which re-affirms Israel’s just
right to exist in peace, assist the Palestinian people to overcome
the precarious conditions in which they live and to build their
future.” And looking toward Iraq, the Pontiff prayed that “peace
finally prevail over the tragic violence that continues mercilessly
to claim victims.”
The Pope’s first Easter message, delivered from the loggia of
the Vatican basilica, was broadcast by 102 television stations to
audiences in 65 different countries. A large and enthusiastic crowd
welcomed the Pope’s solemn Easter blessing with loud cheering and a
persistent chant of “Benedetto!”
Pope Benedict began his Urbi et Orbi address with a reflection on the
meaning of Easter, encouraging believers to ” relive the the event
of the Resurrection, which changed the face of our life and changed
the history of humanity.” The risen Christ, he said offers hope to
“all those who are still oppressed by chains of suffering and death–
sometimes even without knowing it.”
Jesus rose, the Pope said, because “it was not possible for him to be
held prisoner by death, and the tomb could not hold ‘the living one’
who is the very source of life.” He added: “His resurrection becomes
our resurrection, through Baptism which incorporates us into Him.”
After delivering his message, the Pope offered his Easter greetings
to the world, using 62 different languages. (That number matched the
number of different languages used by Pope John Paul at his Easter
Sunday audience in 2004; at Christmas, Pope Benedict had used “only”
33 languages.) In addition to many European languages, he spoke in
Armenian, Hebrew, Turkish, Gaelic, Korean, and several African tongues.
After the Pope’s message, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos (bio – news),
the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, officially announced
the plenary indulgence that is granted (under the usual conditions)
to those who receive the Pope’s Easter blessing. Cardinal Castrillon
was at the Pope’s side along with Cardinal William Levada, the prefect
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The papal blessing
was delivered, in Latin and to the sound of a fanfare, at 12:30.
After the midday audience Pope Benedict– who was celebrating his
79th birthday– left the Vatican by helicopter for a few days of rest
at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandalfo. He will return to
Rome for his regular weekly public audience on Wednesday, April 19–
which coincides with the 1st anniversary of his election.

DM MEETS US EX-AMBASSADOR
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
April 17 2006
Defense Minister, Colonel-General Safar Abiyev on April 17 met Reno
Harnish, the U.S. Ambassador who has finished his diplomatic mission
in Azerbaijan. He mentioned there was a substantial progress in
development of Azerbaijan-US bilateral cooperation, including the
military one, during the diplomat’s tenure.
Touching on the process of settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Colonel-General Safar Abiyev
pointed out that the United States increase its efforts towards its
resolution on the base of the international legal norms and principle
of territorial integrity. “I believe the visit to the region by US
co-Chair Steven Mann will have its positive impact on the issue,”
he said.
Mr. Harnish said, for his part, that the US-Azerbaijan cooperation is
on a level of strategic partnership, and the upcoming official visit
by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Washington will foster the
existing relationship between the two countries.
The Defense Minister and ex-Ambassador also exchanged views on a n
umber of other issues of mutual interest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRMAN ARRIVES TO BAKU THIS WEEK
Author: E. Huseynov
TREND Info, Azerbaijan
April 17 2006
The OSCE Minsk group co-chairman, Steven Mann is planning to visit
Baku by the end of this week, the head of foreign affairs department
at the US embassy, Jonathan Henik told Trend.
The exact agenda of the visit is not yet known, though it is expected
that Mann will visit Yerevan and probably Tbilisi before arriving to
Baku. In Baku he will discuss the current stage of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict peaceful resolution.
Mann has previously said that his visit to the region will start on
April 18.

RUSSIAN, ARMENIAN DETAINED IN UZBEKISTAN FOR ATTEMPT TO SELL $1M BILL
MosNews
April 17 2006
A Russian and an Armenian have been detained in the central Asian
republic of Uzbekistan, while trying to sell a $1 million banknote
at half price, Uzbek prosecutors said Friday.
“The counterfeit banknote was seized as it was being traded off to an
Uzbek national for $500,000,” said Zuraf Yuldashev, senior inspector
at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The would-be buyer said the men had offered him the bill at a discount,
citing an urgent need for small change.
“An examination has shown that the $1mln banknote was a forgery,
though skillfully made,” Yuldashev said.
photo of bill: shtml

INJUSTICE VERDICT AGAINST RAMIL SAFAROV CAUSED STUDENTS’ MARCH-RALLY IN HUSEYN JAVID AVENUE
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
April 17 2006
Students have protested against injustice verdict of Budapest city
Court against Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov with march-rally in
Huseyn Javid Avenue. Baku (APA)
Students marching in the direction of Azizbayov monument were prevented
by Yasamal region Police office associates and led them to “Elmler
Academiyasi” metro station. Students sounded mottoes “Freedom to Ramil
Safarov”, “We should defend our officer”, “Losing Ramil Safarov we lose
Garabagh” and etc. This effort was silenced by the police. About 50
people were moved from the territory, some of them was taken to Yasamal
Region Police Office by bus. During the confrontation one person was
injured. Intending to the action holders Garabagh Liberty Organization
(GLO) chairman Akif Naghi was taken to Yasamal region police office
being detained. After that, about thousands of students made effort
to continue protest action in front of “Elmler Akademiyasi” station,
the action was prevented with interference of police. GLO members
and chairman of the organization Akif Naghi were set free after being
seriously warned. Though part of students detained by the police were
released, but some of them are detained in 26th police department.