The Chicago Art Institute’s art news magazine- (F News)
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Artwa tch:
Cultural Amnesia: The Museum of Tolerance
By Farris Wahbeh

`The world should know we are not building a bunker. We’re building
something that breathes with life, just as God breathed life into us.’

So said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last May 2, in Jerusalem at the
groundbreaking ceremony for a new Simon Wiesenthal Center for Human
Dignity and a Museum of Tolerance, which is the Center’s educational
arm. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), named after the Ukrainian-born
survivor of the Nazi Death camps who later became a world famous
Nazi-hunter, was founded in 1977 as an international center for
`Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish
people.’ The organization is supported by an international member base
of 400,000 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New
York, Toronto, Miami, Jerusalem, Paris and Buenos Aires. The SWC’s
first Museum of Tolerance (MOT) was opened in 1993 in Los Angeles as a
`high tech, hands-on experiential museum that focuses on two central
themes through unique interactive exhibits: the dynamics of racism and
prejudice in America and the history of the Holocaust’the ultimate
example of man’s inhumanity to man.’

The new MOT in Jerusalem, which was conceived by SWC’s Dean and
Founder, Marvin Hier, is slated to open between 2006 to 2008 with a
price tag of $150 million. The MOT Jerusalem will be designed by the
esteemed international superstar-architect-of-the-moment, Frank
Gehry. The SWC in Jerusalem will house not only MOT but also a full
three-acre museum campus including an international conference center,
a grand hall, an education center and a library.

While the SWC in Jerusalem seems like an ideal ground for highlighting
violations of human rights against the Jewish people, something seems
to have been forgotten in the process’human rights violations against
Palestinians in Israel by the Israeli government. One example of this
historical amnesia is the fact that the SWC will be built on top of an
ancient Muslim cemetery that has now become a dilapidated parking lot.

The leftist politician and former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meron
Benvenisti, writing in Ha’aretz, confirms the hesitation that many
feel about the SWC and MOT moving into Jerusalem: `It is difficult to
imagine a project so hallucinatory, so irrelevant, so foreign, so
megalomaniac, as the Museum of Tolerance. The mere attempt to stick
the term tolerance to a building so intolerant to its surroundings is
ridiculous.’ Benvenisti also acknowledges the plight of Palestinians
in the occupied territories: `Fanatic, brutal Jerusalem, saturated
with the ambition to gain exclusive possession over it, will take
pride in a site that preaches equality between communities and the
brotherhood of nations, and from its rooftops will be seen the homes
of Palestinians, whose struggle for freedom is always defined as
`terror.”

According to Samuel G. Freedman in the New York Times, while the
museum’s content is still in the early stages, the director of Los
Angeles’ MOT, Liebe Geft, has already solicited ideas from Israeli
novelists, political scientists and religious leaders. So far,
however, the central exhibition at MOT Jerusalem, which is conceived
by Mr. Hier, will highlight the journey of the Exodus’a ship that
carried Jews from Europe after WWII and was later denied entry into
British controlled Jerusalem.

Since the museum’s mission is to specifically highlight the violations
of human rights against Jews, Mr. Hier, speaking to the New York
Times, has said that MOT is not about Palestinians. `It’s not about
the experience of the Palestinian people. When they have a state,
they’ll have their own museum.’ For a museum that boasts of
highlighting the effects of human rights violations and the practice
of tolerance, it seems rather odd that such an intentional omission
would be allowed.

The SWC’s MOT Jerusalem directly conflicts with their mission of
confronting `important contemporary issues,’ such as racism, terrorism
and genocide, when it turns its back on the Palestinian situation’a
situation that is known worldwide as an `important contemporary
issue.’ For instance, in 1949, the United Nations General Assembly
passed resolution 302 (IV) to carry out direct relief and works
programmes for Palestinian refugees that were displaced following the
Israeli incursion into Palestine, otherwise known as the Arab-Israeli
conflict. In 1950, The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which works with refugees
and refugee camps in Israel and has seen the number of Palestinian
refugees rise to 4 million in 2002, was the off-spring of Resolution
302 (IV), and the General Assembly has renewed UNRWA’s mandate
repeatedly since 1949 until June 2005. After Israel invaded East
Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day-War, the United
Nations Security Council passed resolution 242 which calls for the
`withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the
recent conflict’ and highlights the `inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by war.’ Interestingly, the SWC is an
accredited NGO at both the UN and its cultural division of the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Even if this form of cultural etiquette may come as a surprise to
many, this is not the first time that the SWC has turned its back on
human rights atrocities. The center’s MOT in Los Angeles came under
fire by the city’s Armenian community – which is one of largest outside
of Armenia today – in 2003 when the museum retracted their pledge of
including the Armenian genocide by the Turkish Ottoman Empire as part
of their permenant installation. A group of Armenian-American college
students even staged a six-day hunger strike in front of the MOT as a
sign of protest against the museum’s refusal to incorporate the topic
into the permanent exhibition.

Another Los Angeles-based artist/ activist group created an on-line
museum titled Museum of Amnesia (MOA) in protest against MOT’s
omission of the Armenian genocide. One of the members, speaking to F
News about MOT’s handling of political themes within their museum,
responded by saying, `In general I think the MOT (LA) appears as this
fortress that exhibits filtered-down (Wiesenthal’s filter) and in some
cases filtered-out information on complex issues. I think the
Palestinian writer/ scholar Daoud Kuttab who was quoted in the [New
York Times] article really echoes part of MOA’s position when he said
`What we often see is an attempt to give a superficial meaning to
tolerance.’

In response to the Armenian community’s protest, MOT’s Director Geft
responded the Jerusalem Post, saying, `Whatever we do, it won’t be
enough for some members of the Armenian community.’

Clearly, the SWC’s track record in recording human rights violations
at their museums is shaky at best. What that means for Palestinians
living within Israel, in a museum meant to display Tolerance and Human
Rights abuses within that very same country, remains contentious.

Israeli Reservist Art

While Israel is bracing herself for a new cultural display of
`tolerance,’ several Israeli reservists are exhibiting the exact
opposite. In a June exhibition titled `Breaking the Silence’ at the
Academy for Geographic Photography in Tel Aviv, three Israeli
Reservists, Micha Kurz, Yehuda Shaul and Yonathon Baumfeld, who
finished their three years of mandatory service in Hebron, exhibited
videotapes and photographs detailing the mistreatment of Palestinians
under Israeli army rule. The exhibition was intended to portray what
actually occurs during mandatory service with the Israeli army. In a
letter addressed to visitors at the entrance of the exhibit, the
soldiers said: `We decided to speak out. Hebron isn’t in outer
space. It’s one hour from Jerusalem.’

Among the exhibition photographs, some images included Palestinians
that are blindfolded and bound, and countless pictures of racist and
near fascist graffiti created by Israeli settlers and directed towards
the Palestinians. One such photo includes the phrase: `Arabs to the
Gas Chambers.’

The videotapes included in the exhibition comprise testimonials by 70
Israeli soldiers who reveal the use of Palestinians as human shields
and the overall mistreatment of Palestinians in general. The Israeli
Military Police interrogated several of the artists-cum-reservists,
including Micha Kurz. Kurz, after a seven-hour questioning session,
responded to the press: `The army wants to keep us quiet and scare us
way. They’re not going to shut us up, because we have a lot to say,
and they’re not going to scare us off.”

F Newsmagazine
September 2004

Web sites of Interest:

portal.unesco.org

Armenian leader’s aides want him to run for third presidential term – paper

SOURCE: Iravunk, Yerevan
27 Aug 04

Text of article by I.H. Iravunk entitled “Waiting for Putin’s
decision” and published in Armenian newspaper Iravunk on 27 August

Maybe the fact that Belarusian President Alyaksadr Lukashenka has
decided to run for presidency for the third time is the reason why
talk has begun in Armenia of President Robert Kocharyan doing the
same. It is clear that such a desire is unconstitutional, but it is
also obvious that in Robert Kocharyan’s inner circle they never pay
attention to such trifles.

But it is interesting that according to our sources close to Robert
Kocharyan, the incumbent president does not yet have the intention to
run for presidency for a third term. They also say that Robert
Kocharyan is not in a hurry to take the decision. He will watch
attentively his “strategic partner” Vladimir Putin’s next steps
because the latter is in some sense in the same situation. Putin also
seems not to be making any efforts to extend his presidency, although
he said that it would be better if the presidential term in Russia was
five instead of four years. Time will show if the incumbent Russian
president’s recommendation is taken into account or not. Unlike in
Russia, in Armenia this issue is not even relevant since in spring
2008, fortunately or unfortunately, Kocharyan will have been in power
for 10 years.

Anyway, as Lukashenka’s example and Putin’s “improvement” on it show,
Robert Kocharyan’s third presidential term does not seem
improbable. Moreover, according to our source, Kocharyan’s inner
circle headed by his first aide has already adopted a decision, in
spite of anything to persuade their “boss” to stand in the elections
for the third time.

Azeri, Belarus defence ministers discuss cooperation, Karabakh in Minsk

ANS TV, Baku
29 Aug 04

The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagornyy Karabakh conflict has been discussed
at a meeting between Azerbaijani Defence Minister Safar Abiyev and his
Belarus counterpart Leanid Maltsaw in Minsk. During the meeting, Safar
Abiyev said that Azerbaijan did not want war but it was provoked into
starting war.

The Belarus defence minister said that his country backed a solution
to the conflict that is in line with UN principles and international
legal norms.

Bilateral military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Belarus was also
discussed within the framework of the two-day visit.

Daily News Tribune

Capturing resiliency and hope: Two photo exhibits reveal the power of coping
amid war, disease

By Chris Bergeron / News Staff Writer
Sunday, August 29, 2004

WINCHESTER — Peering through their lens, two very different photographers,
Paul Mellor and Sebastiao Salgado, capture hope and humanity in distant
impoverished lands.

As photojournalists, they have little in common except a shared
artistry that transforms the grinding misery of disease and war into
striking images of endurance.

Together, Mellor and Salgado reveal photojournalism’s power to inform
and inspire in two complimentary exhibits at the Griffin Museum of
Photography in Winchester.

Mellor, a 54-year-old Englishman, journeyed to Nagorno-Karabagh, a
Christian enclave in the Caucasus Mountains which broke away from Azerbaijan
in the 1990s.

Salgado, a Brazilian with an international reputation, documented
efforts to eradicate polio in five struggling nations in Africa and the
Indian subcontinent. Now living in Paris, his works can be seen in “The End
of Polio” through Oct. 31.

Museum Director Blake Fitch said both photographers have succeeded in
bringing important stories to the world.

“Both Mellor and Salgado see the sadness people have to live with. But
they both show a glimmer of hope,” she said.

Mellor is exhibiting 20 memorable color photographs that record the
daily struggle for survival in a former Soviet republic where health care
services barely exist. Shown for the first time in the United States, the
exhibit, “Armenia & Karabagh: The Aftermath,” runs in the museum’s Emerging
Artist Gallery through Nov. 5.

By some alchemy of composition and compassion, Mellor’s work puts a
recognizable face on people caught in a conflict consigned to the margins of
public awareness. His photographs range from 20-by-14 inches to 40-by-32
inches.

A father tends his hospitalized young son with hawk-eyed vigilance. A
midwife with raw-knuckled hands waits for her next birth in a drab delivery
room. A family of six makes a home of a metal container. A woman sits in a
street corner market trying to sell a bundle of sticks.

Mellor takes photographs that present artful vignettes of people coping
with dire circumstances. Shooting from an neutral middle distance, he never
condescends to their poverty or reduces them to stereotypes.

“After surviving war and earthquakes, these people are doing the best
they can. They need help,” he said. “But, they have few resources and
there’s very little foreign investment. It’s a story the world hasn’t heard
about.”

Armenia took control of the largely Christian area of 200,000 people in
1994 after a four-year war.

Mellor has put a recognizable face on people struggling for normalcy
after a conflict that severely damaged the region’s roads, hospitals and
economy.

The exhibit’s most evocative image is Mellor’s large format photograph
of a rosy-cheeked child in a dingy room, looking with bright eyes toward a
sunlit window.

Mellor has spent nearly 35 years as a professional photographer
focusing on news, sports and commercial projects. His current show grew out
of a weeklong visit to war-torn Nagorno-Karabagh in January 2001.

Initially, he traveled with his wife, Kathy Mellor, a neo-natal nurse,
to take pictures of a hospital construction program for the relief
organization, Family Care.

Over the course of several more trips during the next three years,
Mellor found himself drawn into the lives of people coping with poverty and
neglect.

Rather than shoot digitally, he prefers the “greater latitude” of a 35
mm Canon camera that takes sharp detailed prints. “Film photography does
certain things to the imagination that digital images can’t do,” he said.

Mellor never resorts to “artsy” angles or distorted perspectives,
preferring to compose subtle visual narratives of people coping with their
circumstances. Mellor often frames his images around a single person or
small group in a room or street scene “to give viewers a strong point for
the eye to go to.” He mostly uses natural light to convey his subjects’
“depth of feeling.”

Like an photographic image emerging from a mixture of chemicals,
revealing details coalesce about the central subject, helping viewers
appreciate the complexities of life in a conflict-ridden region.

In one photo, a hospital anesthesiologist waits for her next patient in
a dingy room with outdated equipment. A sad-eyed young boy surrounds his bed
with a barricade of overturned wooden stools. Four children sit on the floor
of an empty room in a swath of sunlight.

Who are these people? Will their poverty crush them? Do they somehow
deserve their fates?

By observing his subjects with a respectful eye, Mellor invites viewers
to share their plights and, by extension, their humanity.

“When photographing these people I tried to record the sense of dignity
that had not only held the families together but was indeed the basic
ingredient for their bleak future,” Mellor wrote in a statement accompanying
the exhibit. “…The pictures are meant to convey their hope as well as
their acceptance of all that life throws at them.”

He hopes his photos raise awareness and support for relief efforts to
help the people of Nagorno-Karabagh. He and his wife are planning to return
this October. They now work with BirthLink, a charity based in England that
provides medical training and equipment to the region.

“This is an ongoing story. It doesn’t stop with this exhibit,” Mellor
said. “We will continue. We’re passionate we can make a difference.”

Salgado has achieved legendary status by creating powerful
black-and-white photographs that are startling in their polemical power and
beauty.

Initially trained as an economist, the 60-year-old global traveler has
spent three decades documenting the lives of dispossessed people around the
world.

In this exhibit, he documents the suffering and hopes of humans ravaged
by polio with an unforgiving realism.

Salgado has documented anti-polio campaigns in India, Pakistan, Sudan,
Somalia and the Congo in images that sear the soul.

An 11-year-old polio-stricken child, wearing sandals on his knees for
protection, crawls into a soccer game in Somalia. A father pours a vial of
vaccine into his son’s mouth in a railroad car in India where they’ve been
confined to prevent the disease’s spread. An emaciated Sudanese child
screams as an aide worker in a ragged shirt with a Disney logo provides
medicine.

In several memorable shots, Salgado photographs his subjects in extreme
close-ups with an immediacy that is, at once, harsh and humanizing.

Fitch said Salgado’s photos “go far beyond promoting public awareness
of a cause.”

“They grab you and force you to face the pain of others with the hope
that you will be motivated to fight for change. (Salgado’s) beautiful
pictures of people in harsh circumstances are designed to encourage us to
engage in what (he) calls ‘essential behavior,’ — doing the right thing.”

In these two impressive exhibits, Mellor and Salgado employ their
considerable artistry to show how conscience and decency can overcome
enormous obstacles.

THE ESSENTIALS:

The Griffin Museum of Photography was founded in 1992 by the late
Arthur Griffin to provide a forum for the exhibit of historic and
contemporary photography.

Mellor will give a lecture about the exhibit Wednesday, Sept. 8, at 7
p.m. Tickets are $7 for museum members and $10 for non-members.

The museum is located at 67 Shore Road, Winchester. The museum is open
Tuesday through Sunday noon to 4 p.m.

Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for seniors and free for members.
Children under 12 are admitted free. Admission is free on Thursday.

( For more information, call 781-729-1158 or visit the Web site
)

DeseretNews.com

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Cost of aging populations will be felt around the world

By Eduardo Porter New York Times News Service

The good news is we are living longer than ever before. The bad news
is it’s going to cost us.
As global fertility rates grow more slowly and increasing prosperity
enhances life expectancy, a complicated side effect has emerged: big chunks
of the world are starting to look like geriatric wards. It is uncertain how
the world will pay for them.
A larger population of retirees, living longer, mixed with fewer young
people means that the labor force will shrink as a percentage of the total
population. With fewer people at work to support everyone else, living
standards could fall.
Aging will put stress on government finances, drawing more and more
money from budgets to pay for pensions and health care. Interest rates could
rise sharply as a result, with the old drawing down their lifelong savings,
depressing savings rates across the industrial world.
The upshot is that the bulging cohort of the elderly will probably be
forced to work well into what today is considered old age and then get
stingier pensions when they eventually retire. Moreover, their children will
have to work harder to support them.
“This is the result of desirable trends,” says Joseph Chamie, director
of the U.N. population division. “Lower mortality is very good news. But
we’ve got to adjust the system.”
Consider Japan. With half of the population over the age 41, Japan is
among the oldest countries. With one of the lowest fertility rates – 1.32
children per woman – by 2050 there will be about 110 million Japanese, down
from 127 million in 2000. And half of them will be over 53.
According to projections by economists at the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, Japanese public spending on pensions
and health will increase by some 3 percent of the gross domestic product by
2050. (The total U.S. budget deficit, which is considered to be too large,
is 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.)
Aging will also whittle away Japanese prosperity by cutting into the
work force. In 2000 there were almost three people of working age for every
person over 60. According to U.N. projections, by 2050 there will be less
than one. By 2050, Japan’s per capita income would be 23 percent lower than
it would be if the dependency ratio remained stable, according to the OECD
study.
This profile is far from unique. By 2050, half of all Italians and
Spaniards, for example, will be over 52 years old.
Even in the United States, the youngest of the wealthy nations, those
over 65 are expected to represent 19 percent of the population in 2030, from
12 percent in 2000, when the bulge of baby boomers reach the autumn of their
lives. Even by mid-century, when most boomers will be dead, 21 percent of
the population will be over 65.
The poor world might help ease the rich world’s plight. Broadly
speaking, higher fertility rates and lower life expectancies mean that
poorer nations are much younger than rich ones. In 2000, the median age in
India was 23. Half the population of Brazil was under 25. According to U.N.
estimates, virtually all of the increase in the world’s population – from
6.1 billion in 2000 to 8.9 billion in 2050 – will come from the so-called
developing world.
Developed countries are relying on some of this youth by investing in
factories in poorer nations and drawing workers by easing immigration
restrictions.
Yet such steps are likely to be only temporary palliatives, because
countries with the pool of workers are getting old, too. The median age of
China’s population in 2000 was 30, five years younger than that of the
United States. By 2050 it will be 43.8, four years older than America’s. And
in India, half the population will be over 38.
The countries that will most suffer from aging populations are in the
former Soviet bloc. Today, the 10 nations with the lowest rates of
population growth are, in order, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Bulgaria,
Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Armenia and Belarus. Estonia’s
population will halve by 2050, to 657,000, and 42 percent of those left will
be more than 60 years old.
“We’ve gone from Pampers to Depends,” says Chamie.
The political battles of the future will be about who pays for them.

Voice of America
Aug 29 2004

Tens of Thousands Protest Republican Convention

Kerry Sheridan
New York

AP
A group carrying what was described as 1,000 coffins representing
U.S. dead in Iraq marches past Madison Square Garden during the
anti-Bush march

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, tens of thousands
of protesters took to the streets of Manhattan to speak out against
the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Several dozen bicyclists
were arrested, but a heavy police presence helped keep the march
largely peaceful.

The rally kicked off with a speech by the father of Nick Berg, a
26-year-old American contractor who was beheaded by Iraqi kidnappers
in May. “George Bush must go. He has stolen my son away from me. He
has stolen an election. He has stolen our democracy. He has our
freedom and our security and our peace of mind,” he said.

Many protesters called for American troops to leave Iraq.

AP
A demonstrator flashes the peace sign during a protest organized by
the group United for Peace and Justice in New York

“Iraq for Iraqis! Bring the troops home!”
Some carried coffins draped in American flags, to represent coalition
soldiers killed in Iraq. Others carried a variety of anti-Bush
posters and signs. Some wore their messages on their clothes, like
Zaum Dertaulian, an Armenian-American.

“My shirt says ‘Bush Lie Number Nine: I will acknowledge the 1915
Armenian genocide by the Turks.’ I especially made this because I
feel that America is a land of immigrants, its been stolen from the
Native Americans and since a lot of people here are from other
places, we do need to have a balance of information about every
single indigenous freedom struggle in the world,” he said.

Prior to the demonstration, some New York newspapers had published
reports about the potential for anarchist violence during the march,
which was put together by United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella
group of some 800 organizations.

Protester Jason Kapoor, part of a small group called the No Police
State Coalition, said he read about himself in the paper, but that
his group had no plans to start trouble. “We are one of the so-called
five violent groups that the NYPD intelligence sources said we are
planning violent attacks When all we do is come out here in Union
Square and promote free speech,” he said.

Tens of thousands of police officers filled the streets of New York
City and along the route of the march. Protestor Eva Braiman said it
was clear that police officers came prepared for the worst. “When I
came in this morning from the Bronx, all along 10th Avenue there were
hundreds and hundreds of police with, you know, riot batons and all
kinds of equipment,” she said.

Plenty of demonstrators just came out for a good time, like this
group, called the Radical Cheerleaders.

The marchers passed by Madison Square Garden and then headed back
toward downtown. Sunday’s march was the largest gathering organized
against the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in
New York, but more demonstrations are planned throughout the week.

The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
August 29, 2004 Sunday

Cocky attitude a threat to title

by Grantlee Kieza

THE supreme confidence of Australian boxer Vic Darchinyan is his only
danger going into the IBF world flyweight title fight in Florida on
Saturday.

That’s the opinion of the powerful southpaw’s trainer Jeff Fenech,
who won three world titles himself and sees a similar future for the
2000 Olympian.

Darchinyan, 28, fights undefeated Colombian world champion Irene
Pacheco, 33, at the Seminole Casino in Hollywood, Florida, on
Saturday afternoon (AEST) and has been training for two weeks in Los
Angeles with Fenech and world super-middleweight champ Danny Green.

Born in Armenia, he has lived in Sydney since the 2000 Olympics and
is undefeated in 21 fights with 16 knockouts.

“Vic has been sparring some great fighters in LA,” Fenech said.

“He has gone in with Orlando Salido, who fights for the world
featherweight title in a couple of weeks, and he has boxed with IBF
super-bantamweight champ Israel Vasquez and the Hawaiian Olympian
Brian Viloria.

“He looks tremendous in sparring but my only fear is that he’s going
to be too confident against Pacheco and try to take his head off in
the first round.

“I’ve told Vic that he has to give Pacheco the utmost respect as a
great champion who has never lost and has held the title for five
years.

“Our tactics will be to put pressure on Pacheco from round one and
just wear him down constantly with body shots.”

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
August 28, 2004 Saturday

Goodnight Irene, vows Vic

by GRANTLEE KIEZA

FOR a little bloke with an embarrassing first name, Irene Pacheco
lacks nothing in confidence.

Facing the undefeated, hard-hitting Australian flyweight Vic
Darchinyan next week, the IBF champion from Colombia declares
“Darchinyan has a serious problem coming across my path.”
Darchinyan, who represented Armenia at the Sydney Olympics and has
lived here ever since, fights Pacheco at the Seminole Indian Casino
in Hollywood, Florida next Saturday afternoon (Sydney time) and has
been training with Jeff Fenech and world super-middleweight champ
Danny Green in Los Angeles for the last two weeks.

The clash is a battle of unbeaten southpaw sluggers.

Pacheco has 23 KOs in his 30 wins and Darchinyan 16 KOs in 21
victories.

Pacheco, 33, has not fought since stopping Irishman Damaen Kelly in
Colombia last September.

Kelly outpointed Australia’s world title challenger Hussein Hussein
at the Atlanta Olympics but could not handle Pacheco’s speed and
power in their title fight and succumbed after six rounds of constant
bombardment.

Despite his layoff, Pacheco comes into the fight confident.

“I started training way back on January 13,” he told American
reporters.

“And I have hardly been out of the gym. I took just one break not to
overtrain but I got right back into the gym.

Darchinyan, 28, has been sparring world-class fighters such as
Hussein Hussein, Nedal Hussein and Lovemore Ndou, who has switched to
a southpaw stance to mimic Pacheco’s loose limbed style.

Pacheco won the world title in 1999 but has fought just six times in
the years since.

In fact in the last four years he has boxed four times compared to 21
starts for the Australian.

“It is not good for Pacheco to be out of the ring so long,”
Darchinyan said.

“I will pressure him from the start. That is why I am called The
Raging Bull. I will destroy him and bring the title back to Sydney.”
Darchinyan’s title shot comes in a huge week for Australian boxing.
The following day Central Coast rugby league prop Kali Meehan fights
Lamon Brewster for the WBO world heavyweight title in Las Vegas.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Philippine Daily Inquirer
August 28, 2004

A FUNNY STORY

by Bambi L. Harper

THIS is not funny in the sense of being comic but funny as far as it
shows the quirks in human behavior that make the study of human
beings in action an interesting pastime. Many of these stories would
certainly make entertaining movies as well. John Foreman in his book
“The Philippine Islands,” has many of them and would-be story-tellers
and scriptwriters are encouraged to read them for inspiration.

Some time early in the 18th century, a ship captained by an Armenian
arrived in Manila from India bearing a young man who called himself
Monsignor Charles Thomas Maillard de Tournon. He claimed to be the
visitor-general, bishop of Savoy, patriarch of Antioch, apostolic
nuncio and legate ad latere of the pope. As you can see, people have
a thing about titles (this is as true now as it was then, otherwise
why would they get a kick out of being addressed as “Your Honor” or
“Excellency” and so on?). Anyway, Cardinal Tournon (at some point he
must have been named so because he’s listed as such in the Index of
Blair and Robertson) claimed he was on his way to China to visit the
missions together with eight priests and four Italian families and
took a side trip to see how we were getting along. (The ramifications
of the China story are in themselves fascinating because it seems the
Jesuits were at first allowed to use Chinese rituals in Catholic
rites but this was later disallowed by Rome as being idolatrous.
Tournon had been sent to look into the matter.)

It was the practice in those days to place guards on foreign vessels,
perhaps for security reasons, by the custodian of the Fort of Cavite.
The act infuriated the stranger who insisted on a verbal message
being taken to Governor-General Domingo Zabalburu announcing his
arrival. Whatever powers of intimidation the legate had were enough
to send the custodian scurrying to Manila to convey the message to
the governor-general, who forthwith instructed the custodian to
accompany the stranger.

Tournon was greeted with cannon salutes from the plaza although he
still hadn’t shown any of his credentials. In Manila, he took up
residence in the house of the maestre de campo, Bernardo de Endaya,
where the governor went to visit him, although there was a question
about his papal credentials since no one had as yet seen them.

A commissioner was sent to request royal confirmation of his powers
and his papal credentials. Again the visitor got on his high horse
and waxed indignant that his position was being doubted and promptly
threw the commissioner out. Incredibly, neither the archbishop of
Manila nor the governor-general stood up to him. As a matter of fact,
the archbishop was ordered to set aside his archiepiscopal cross
while Cardinal Tournon used his own in religious ceremonies and left
it in the cathedral when he departed. Part of the official robes and
insignia of the archbishop were taken from him as well, and with his
consent at that. The chief authorities of the country paid Tournon
their respects while he, on the other hand, never returned their
gesture. It turned out that he was really Poe Clement XI’s legate and
not an impostor, just a pain.

However, he was nice to the maestre de campo, who was under
ecclesiastical house arrest at the time even if the former did spend
$ 20,000 getting on the good side of the man. Cardinal Tournon got
the archbishop and the governor to pardon the man and asked that the
pardon be proclaimed publicly. He also managed to have the Armenian
captain made a knight of the Golden Spur in a ceremony at the
maestre’s house in ceremonies to which the governor-general wasn’t
even invited.

Finally, Tournon left for China where his highhandedness had little
effect on the Chinese who after all weren’t Catholic and couldn’t be
intimidated with threats. Not only did his imperious ways get the
missionaries into trouble, but he was also thrown in jail by the
Chinese courts. The emperor, just as imperious if not more, then
booted him out of the country.

Tournon then made his way to Macao where he spent the time quarreling
with the missionaries and finally died in 1710 in the Inquisition
prison, having met his match when he tangled with the Jesuits.

Zabalburu got it in the neck when the king found out what had
happened in Manila. The governor-general was declared disqualified
for life to serve after having proved his incompetence while the
senior magistrates were removed from office. Each priest who had not
taken cognizance of regium exequatur had to pay a fine of $ 1,000.
The archbishop was degraded and sent to Guadalajara but continued to
intrigue and connive with Tournon, sending him $ 1,000 from Mexico
and promising him a fixed sum of $ 1,000 per annum for whatever
support he could give him.

Finally, the king in exasperation issued an edict to the effect that
any legate who arrived in his domains without royal confirmation of
his credentials was to be treated civilly but afforded no special
treatment. Every year the edict was to be read in full on certain
days before all the civil and ecclesiastical officials in case they
forgot and another papal Legate got them into another pickle.

As you can see, the struggle between Church and State has a long and
noble history with various footnotes in between.

Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Aug 28 2004

Opposition Bloc To Continue Parliament Boycott

28/08/2004 10:15

Armenia’s biggest opposition group, the Artarutyun (Justice)
alliance, decided on Friday to continue its seven-month boycott of
parliament debates, defying government threats to revoke the mandates
of its 14 lawmakers.

The other opposition force represented in the National Assembly, the
National Unity Party (AMK) is expected to follow suit — a move that
would mark a continuation of a political confrontation between the
Armenian authorities and their opponents.
Victor Dallakian, an Artarutyun leader, said the bloc’s governing
board headed by Stepan Demirchian decided that its parliamentary
faction will not attend the upcoming autumn session of the 131-member
legislature because the authorities have failed to meet any of the
opposition demands.

`In effect, there has been no serious change of the situation,’ he
told reporters. `Nor have the reasons for our departure from the
National Assembly been eliminated. That is why the alliance finds its
activity in the National Assembly not expedient.’

Dallakian said Artarutyun continues to demand a referendum of
confidence in President Robert Kocharian and a punishment of security
officials responsible for the violent break-up of the opposition
demonstration in Yerevan early on April 13. `Restoration of
constitutional order and formation of a legitimate government’ remain
the key opposition goal, he added.

The pro-Kocharian parliament majority’s refusal to debate such a
recall vote, suggested by the Constitutional Court in April 2003, is
what prompted the Artarutyun deputies and their nine colleagues from
the AMK to start the boycott. The move was followed by their joint
campaign of street protests aimed at forcing Kocharian into
resignation. The bid for regime change, which has been denounced as
unconstitutional by the authorities, fizzled out by early June amid
mass arrests of opposition activists across the country.

Leaders of the parliament majority have tried hard to get the
opposition minority to return to the parliament during the
traditional summer lull in Armenian politics. In particular they have
offered it a say in their ongoing efforts to reform Armenia’s
constitution and electoral legislation.

Earlier this month, the parliamentary leader of Prime Minister
Andranik Markarian’s Republican Party, Galust Sahakian, claimed that
the authorities need the opposition’s cooperation to better cope with
external challenges that might `endanger Armenian statehood.’ He at
the same time reiterated government threats to strip the opposition
of its parliament seats.

Armenian law allows the parliament to recall deputies that fail to
attend its sessions for `unjustified’ reasons.

The threats have been shrugged off as a `bluff’ by both Artarutyun
and the AMK. The latter’s outspoken leader, Artashes Geghamian, told
RFE/RL this week that government officials have tried to convince AMK
candidates that failed to get elected to the parliament on the party
list basis last year to take the place of the AMK deputies. He
claimed that none of them has agreed to break ranks.

Geghamian and Dallakian said that the opposition will rethink their
tactics which failed to bear fruit last spring. The Artarutyun board
will discuss the issue on September 2. `Naturally, there will be
unexpected approaches and solutions,’ Dallakian said without
elaborating.