Author: admin

AZERI PRESSURE GROUP STOPS HUNGER STRIKE OVER ARRESTED MEMBERS

Ekho, Baku
17 Jul 04

Text of X. Qasimova’s report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 17 July
headlined “The KLO has stopped the hunger strike”

Activists of the Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) stopped their
hunger strike yesterday, the KLO deputy chairman, Barat Imani, has
told Ekho. According to him, the action stopped at 1200 (0700 gmt) at
the request of the chairman of the committee to protect the rights of
the arrested KLO activists, Isaxan Asurov, and lawyer Elcin Qambarov.
Imani said that the hunger strikers agreed with Asurov and Qambarov
that the judiciary could see the hunger strike as pressure on the
court.

“The action caused an outcry in society. But we were simply surprised
at the attitude of MPs from the Karabakh region. With the exception of
MP Karam Aliyev, they did not even try to express their opinion on the
issue. As for Karam Aliyev’s statement on the populist actions of the
KLO activists, we try not to react to utterances of this kind,” Imani
said.

(Three KLO members began a hunger strike on 12 July, demanding the
release of six of their colleagues arrested for protesting against the
participation of Armenian officers in a NATO conference in Baku)

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Agency says Russia trying to hinder Azerbaijani gas going through Iran

Assa-Irada, Baku
15 Jul 04

BAKU

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received Russia’s ex-prime minister
and current ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, on 15 July.
Aliyev touched on Russian-Azerbaijani relations and drew attention to
positive dynamics in these relations which have a firm base. According
to him, the days of Russian culture recently held in Baku, a
Russian-Azerbaijani business forum, plans to hold a year of Azerbaijan
in Russia and a year of Russia in Azerbaijan, the fruitful work of the
intergovernmental commission and frequent mutual visits by official
delegations testify to a high level of understanding between the two
countries. Aliyev expressed the hope that this tendency will continue
in the spirit of strategic partnership in the future.

Chernomyrdin expressed the hope that Russian-Azerbaijani relations
will continue to develop and strengthen.

The aim of the sudden visit to Baku by one of Russia’s gas magnates,
Viktor Chernomyrdin, is not disclosed officially, and observers link
it to the fact that an Iranian gas pipeline might be built through
Azerbaijan to export gas to Europe. Russia, which does not want
Iranian gas to go to Europe, managed to prevent the construction of
the gas pipeline through Armenian territory.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Real Roots of Muslim Hatred

FrontPageMagazine.com
June 3, 2004

By Andrew G. Bostom

“Are you Muslim or Christian? We don’t want to kill Muslims.” That’s
what the Islamic terrorists reportedly told their innocent prey during
a murderous shooting spree last Saturday in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that
left at least 17 civilians dead in the initial assault.(1) How are we
to interpret such repeated acts of terrorism, targeting non-Muslims?
Perhaps the most influential contemporary doyen lecturing to us about
“Islamic fundamentalism” has asserted, in multiple writings since 1990
(2), the following: fundamentalism and its accompanying “Muslim rage”
derive exclusively from a steady decline in the geopolitical power of
Muslim states, evidenced, most dramatically, by the official dissolution
of the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I, and the creation of the
State of Israel after World War II. Despite his erudition, this doyen
appears unwilling to examine an obvious alternative explanation for
the etiology and persistence of Muslim animus toward non-Muslims- what
Muslim children, for generations, have been taught to think about the
infidel “other,” regardless of the geopolitical circumstances.

E.W. Lane wrote an informative firsthand account of life in Egypt,
particularly Cairo and Luxor, composed after several years of
residence there (first in 1825-1828, then in 1833-1835). James
Aldridge in his study Cairo/ /(1969) called Lane’s account “the most
truthful and detailed account in English of how Egyptians lived and

behaved.”(3) Egyptian Muslims, Lane explains, regarded/ /”persons of
every other faith as the children of perdition; and such, the Muslim
is early taught to despise…I am credibly informed that children in
Egypt are often taught at school, a regular set of curses to denounce
upon the persons and property of Christians, Jews, and all

other unbelievers in the religion of Mohammad.”(4) Lane, who had
perfect command of Arabic and went on to write a colossal
Arabic-English lexicon, translated the prayer below from a
contemporary 19th century text Arabic text. It contains curses on
non-Muslims,/ /”which the Muslim youths in many of the schools in
Cairo recite, before they return to their homes,* *every day of their
attendance.”(5) One typical curse is:

“I seek refuge with God from Satan the accursed. In the name of God,
the Compassionate, the Merciful. O God, aid El-Islam, and exalt the
word of truth, and the faith, by the preservation of thy servant and
the son of thy servant, the Sultan of the two continents (Europe and
Asia), and the Khakan (Emperor or monarch) of the two seas [the
Mediterranean and Black Seas], the Sultan, son of the Sultan (Mahmood)
Khan (the reigning Sultan when this prayer was composed). O God,
assist him, and assist his armies, and all the forces of the Muslims:
O Lord of the beings of the whole world.* *O God, destroy the infidels
and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion. O God,
make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their
feet to slip, and give them and their families, and their households
and their women and their children and their relations by marriage and
their brothers and their friends and their possessions and their race
and their wealth and their lands as booty to the Muslims: O Lord of
the beings of the whole world.”(6)

Not surprisingly then, Lane describes how the Jews, for example, were
“often…jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely
for passing on the right hand of a Muslim…(The Jews) scarcely dare
ever to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the
meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a
false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against
the Qur’an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his
jaded

ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by
calling the beast a Jew.”(7)

Over five decades later, in Tunis, 1888, the following personal
account reveals further evidence of the visceral abhorrence and
hostility inculcated in Muslim children, specifically, toward
non-Muslims: “(The Jew) can be seen to bow down with his whole body to
a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking
him in the face, a gesture that can prove of the gravest
consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In
such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has
been the custom from time immemorial.”(8)

Mary Boyce, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and a pre-eminent
scholar of Zoroastrianism, spent a 12-month sabbatical in 1963-64
living in the Zoroastrian community of Iran (mostly in Sharifabad, on
the northern Yazdi plain). During a lecture series given at Oxford in
1975,(9) she noted how the Iranian ancestors of the Zoroastrians had a
devoted working relationship (i.e., herding livestock) with dogs when
they lived a nomadic existence on the Asian steppes. This sustained
contact evolved over generations such that dogs became “a part in
(Zoroastrian) religious beliefs and practices…which in due course
became a part of the heritage of Zoroastrianism.”(10) Boyce then
provided an historical overview of the deliberate, wanton cruelty of
Muslims and their children towards dogs in Iran, including a personal
eyewitness account:

In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and
Zoroastrian, and were prepared to go…full of hope, into a crowded
Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian
lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boys…The
evidence points…to Moslem hostility to these animals having been
deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a point of
opposition to the old (pre-Islamic jihad conquest) faith (i.e.,
Zoroastrianism) there. Certainly in the Yazdi area…Moslems found a
double satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both
afflicting an unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who
cherished him. There are grim…stories from the time (i.e., into the
latter half of the 19th century) when the annual poll-tax (jizya) was
exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a Zoroastrian and a dog together,
and flogging both alternately until the money was somehow forthcoming,
or death released them. I myself was spared any worse sight than that
of a young Moslem girl…standing over a litter of two-week old
puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod
foot. The puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she
merely said blankly, ‘But it’s unclean.’ In Sharifabad I was told by
distressed Zoroastrian children of worse things: a litter of puppies
cut to pieces with a spade-edge, and a dog’s head laid open with the
same implement; and occasionally the air was made hideous with the
cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties on the Moslems’
part added not a little to the tension between the communities.(11)

Sorour Soroudi, an Iranian Jewish woman and academic, whose family
left Iran in 1970, published this recollection:

“I still remember the rhyme Muslim children used to chant when they
saw an Armenian in the streets, ‘Armeni, Armeni-dog, sweeper of hell
are you!’ “(12)

A decade later, anti-infidel discrimination intensified and became
state sanctioned policy with the ascent of the Khomeini-lead Shi’ite
theocracy in Iran.(13) Professor Eliz Sanasarian provides one
particularly disturbing example of these policies, reflecting the
hateful indoctrination of young adult candidates for national teacher
training programs. Affirming as objective, factual history the
hadith(14) account of Muhammad’s supposed poisoning by a Jewish woman
from ancient Khaibar, Sanasarian notes, “Even worse, the subject
became one of the questions in the ideological test for the Teachers’
Training College where students were given a multiple-choice question
in order to identify the instigator of the martyrdom of the Prophet
Muhammad, the ‘correct’ answer being ‘a Jewess.'”(15)

The ongoing proliferation of Saudi Arabian-sponsored educational
programs rife with bigotry against non-Muslims has been well
documented. A recent comprehensive report provided unambiguous
examples of these hatemongering teaching materials, accompanied by
this triumphal pronouncement from a Saudi royal family publication:
“The cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has been astronomical,
amounting to many billions of Saudi riyals. In terms of Islamic
institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly
financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 2,002 colleges
and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic
countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and
Asia.”(16)

Vilification of non-Muslims has been intrinsic to the religious
education of Muslim children and young adults for centuries, an
ignoble (and continuing) tradition that long antedates the modern or
even pre-modern Muslim “fundamentalist” revival movements. We must
acknowledge this reality and begin to think and act beyond the
well-intentioned but limited constructs of even our most respected
doyens. Perhaps it would be wise to heed the sober advice of this
courageous madrassa dropout and secular Muslim “apostate” Ibn Warraq:

First, we who live in the free West and enjoy freedom of expression
and scientific inquiry should encourage a rational look at Islam,
should encourage Koranic criticism. Only Koranic criticism can help
Muslims to look at their Holy Scripture in a more rational and
objective way, and prevent young Muslims from being fanaticized by the
Koran’s less tolerant verses…We can encourage rationality by secular
education. This will mean the closing of religious madrassas where
young children from poor families learn only the Koran by heart, learn
the doctrine of Jihad – learn , in short, to be fanatics…My priority
would be the wholesale rewriting of school texts, which at present
preach intolerance of non-Muslims, particularly Jews. One hopes that
education will encourage critical thinking and rationality. Again to
encourage pluralism, I should like to see the glories of pre-Islamic
history taught to all children. The banning of all religious education
in state schools as is the case in France where there is a clear
constitutional separation of state and religion is not realistic for
the moment in Islamic countries. The best we can hope for is the
teaching of Comparative Religion, which we hope will eventually lead
to a lessening of fanatical fevers, as Islam is seen as but another
set of beliefs amongst a host of faiths.(17)

Until Warraq’s recommendations are heeded, we can look forward to an
endless jihad/.

/ENDNOTES:

1.) Reuters, “Gunmen hunted “infidel” Westerners”
//Sun May 30, 2004 06:30 AM ET,
;storyID=520188&section=news
< html?type=topNews&storyID=520188&section=n ews>

2.) i.e., Bernard Lewis, for example, in 1990

; November/December
1998 <; “License to Kill: Usama
bin Ladin’s Declaration of Jihad”, Foreign Affairs;
2002 ;
2003 m

3.) Quoted by J.M. White, in his introduction to, Lane, E.W./ /An
Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, New York,
1973, p. v.

4.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 276.

5.) ^ Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 575.

6.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, p. 575.

7.) Lane, E.W./ /Modern Egyptians, pp. 554-555.

8.) Fellah. “The Situation of the Jews in Tunis, September 1888.”,
Ha-Asif (The Harvest) [Hebrew] 6 (Warsaw, 1889), English translation in,
Bat Ye’or, The/ /Dhimmi-/ /Jews/ /and/ /Christians/ /Under Islam,
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985, p. 376.

9.) Boyce, Mary. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (based on the
Ratanbai Katrak lectures, 1975), 1977, Oxford.

10.) Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, p. 139.

11.) Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, pp. 141-142.

12.) Soroudi, Sorour. “The Concept of Jewish Impurity and its Reflection
in Persian and Judeo-Persian Traditions” Irano-Judaica 1994, Vol. III,
p. 155 (footnote 33):

13.) See Tabandeh, Sultanhussein. A Muslim Commentary on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, translated by F.J. Goulding, London, 1970,
pp. 17-19. Tabandeh was a Sufi Shi’ite ideologue whose writings had a
profound influence on Ayatollah Khomeini’s discriminatory policies
towards non-Muslims in Iran, as discussed in Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious
Minorities in Iran, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 24-27.

14.) Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 47, Number 786: Narrated Anas bin
Malik: “A Jewess brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who
ate from it. She was brought to the Prophet and he was asked, ‘Shall we
kill her?’ He said, ‘No.’ I continued to see the effect of the poison on
the palate of the mouth of Allah’s Apostle.”

15.) Sanasarian, E. Religious Minorities in Iran, p. 111.

16.) Stalinsky, Steven. “Preliminary Overview. – Saudi Arabia’s
Education System: Curriculum, Spreading Saudi Education to the World and
the Official Saudi Position on Education Policy,” Middle East Media
Research Institute
<;Area=sr&ID=SR01202#_edn25>,
December 20, 2002.

17.) Warraq, Ibn. “A True Islamic Reformation,”
<;
FrontPageMagazine.com, May 19, 2003

Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown
University Medical School, and occasional contributor to Frontpage
Magazine. He is the editor of a forthcoming essay collection entitled,
“The Legacy of Jihad”.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th Street NW Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 16, 2004
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP ATTACKS SCHIFF AMENDMENT

— Speaker, Majority Leader and Majority Whip Seek to
Reverse Legislation Barring Turkey from using U.S. Foreign
Aid to Lobby Against the Genocide Resolution

WASHINGTON, DC – In a front-page statement posted today on the web-
page of the Speaker of the U.S. House, Congressional Republican
leaders, who have for the past eighteen months blocked the progress
of legislation recognizing the Armenian Genocide, attacked the
adoption, yesterday, of the Schiff Amendment by the full U.S.
House, reported the Armenian National Committee (ANCA). The
amendment restricts the Turkish government from using U.S. foreign
aid dollars to finance its campaign to defeat the Genocide
Resolution, H.Res.193.

The statement issued by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL),
Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO)
states that, “we are strongly opposed to the Schiff Amendment to
the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, and we will insist that
conferees drop that provision in conference. . . Turkey has been a
reliable ally of the United States for decades, and the deep
foundation upon which our mutual economic and security relationship
rests should not be disrupted by this amendment.”

The full text of the statement is provided at the end of the
release. Armenian Americans have the opportunity to express their
disappointment to the authors of this statement by visiting the
ANCA website:

“Speaker Hastert and his colleagues in the House leadership –
having spent the past year and a half trying to kill the Genocide
Resolution – are now trying to subvert the clear will of an
overwhelming bi-partisan majority in support of this human rights
measure,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “We find it
deeply offensive that these officials would allow a foreign nation
– particularly one that so blatantly disdains the democratic values
of the American people – to impose its dictates on our Congress.”

Yesterday evening, the U.S. House voted to approve the amendment,
introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). The measure was passed by a
voice vote and added to the fiscal year 2005 foreign aid bill,
H.R.4818.

The Genocide Resolution, H.Res.193, reaffirms U.S. support for the
Genocide Convention and cites the importance of remembering past
crimes against humanity, including the Armenian Genocide,
Holocaust, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, in an effort to stop
future atrocities. It faces intense opposition from the Turkish
government, which has enlisted the backing of the White House in
its efforts to press Congressional leaders to block this measure
from being scheduled for a vote of the full House.

#####

Statement of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Majority Leader Tom DeLay
and Majority Whip Roy Blunt Regarding the Schiff Amendment to the
Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill

(Washington D.C.) Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt
released the following statement regarding House adoption of the
Schiff Amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

“We are strongly opposed to the Schiff Amendment to the Foreign
Operations Appropriations bill, and we will insist that conferees
drop that provision in conference. We have contacted the Bush
Administration, and they have indicated their strong opposition to
the amendment. We have also conveyed our opposition to Chairman
Kolbe and he has assured us that he will insist on it being dropped
in the conference committee.”

“Turkey has been a reliable ally of the United States for decades,
and the deep foundation upon which our mutual economic and security
relationship rests should not be disrupted by this amendment.”

“On its face, the amendment is meaningless. Current U.S. law
already prohibits foreign governments from using American foreign
aid to lobby. But we understand the political motivation behind the
amendment, and for that reason, we will insist that it be dropped.”

“Our relationship with Turkey is too important to us to allow it to
be in any way damaged by a poorly crafted and ultimately
meaningless amendment.”

“Furthermore, we have no intention of scheduling H.Res. 193, as
reported out of the Judiciary Committee in April, during the
remainder of this Congress.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Interfax, Armenia
July 14 2004

Armenian PM, Federation Council speaker discuss bilateral cooperation

Moscow. (Interfax) – Armenia counts on Russia’s support for its
efforts to join the North-South international transport corridor,
said Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margarian.

“Participation in this project is very important for the Armenian
economy and for Armenia as a whole,” Margarian said following his
talks with Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov on Wednesday.

Margarian said that Armenia has handed over five Armenian
enterprises, including the Razdan thermal power plant, which accounts
for about 30% of Armenia’s energy production, in payment of its state
debt.

He also announced that the talks had dealt with diamond quotas
provided to Armenia by Russia.

Chairman of the Federation Council’s Economic Policies Committee,
Oganes Oganian, told journalists that under a Russian-Armenian
intergovernmental agreement, Russia has assigned a diamond quota of 4
million carats in rough diamonds to be cut at Armenian enterprises.
“This has allowed Armenia to create over 3,000 jobs and partially
solve the problem of unemployment which is very acute in Armenia,”
Oganian said.

He said the parties had discussed the question of unblocking the
railway running across Georgia, Abkhazia an Armenia. This would help
increase Armenia’s GDP by 40%.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Humanities Magazine, DC
July 14 2004

Recreating Pompey for Modern Eyes
By Cynthia Barnes

In 55 B.C.E., Romans applauded the debut of the world’s first modern
entertainment complex, a mammoth structure constructed by Gnaeus
Pompeius Magnus–better known as Pompey the Great, military conqueror
and rival to Julius Caesar. The showy consul named the theater for
himself. Today, using archaeology, three-dimensional modeling,
virtual reality technology, and digital research, architecture
experts are slowly raising the curtain on the Theater of Pompey.
“It’s shockingly enormous,” says James Packer, a Northwestern
University professor. “The scale is just astonishing.”

Crowds of between twenty-five and forty thousand people flocked to
see the latest spectacles played out on the 260-foot-wide stage.
Modern sports fans would recognize the curved stadium seating, the
barrel vaults, the VIP balconies–everything but the lack of
advertising–and feel right at home.

Pompey also had a curia constructed for meetings of the Senate. It
was here that Julius Caesar met his death, assassinated before a
statue of the theater’s namesake.

The Theater of Pompey became the model for all theaters throughout
the Roman Empire, says Packer. The plan for its seating areas and
façade served as models for the amphitheaters that inspired the
design for many contemporary sports venues.

Packer is directing the excavation of the theater as part of a
research project begun in 1996 with Richard Beacham of the University
of Warwick (U.K.). In 2002 Packer joined with archaeologist Cristina
Gagliardo, architect Dario Silenzi, and engineer Massimo Aristide
Giannelli to undertake the first excavation of the theater since
1865.

Until the end of the Roman Empire in the West, the Pompey Theater
remained the preferred venue for theatrical representations in the
capital. Yet, despite its renown and architectural significance, the
Theater of Pompey’s structure almost completely disappeared through
the centuries.

Today, the façade of a movie theater conceals the entrance to a
fortress and the piazza known as the Campo dei Fiori subsumes the
remains of the theater. The inner curve of the theater’s orchestra
survives in the Palazzo Pio’s curved façade along the Via di Grotta
Pinta. Its outer curve can be seen in the Via dei Giubbonari, the Via
Della Biscione, and on the Piazza Pollarola. These outlines hint at
what the theater once was. Leisure gardens were enclosed within the
Porticus Pomeianae, a rectangular colonnade. An elaborate temple
honored Venus Victrix, or Venus the Victorious. Galleries displayed
rare works of art from throughout the Roman world. A bronze statue of
Hercules–now in the Vatican Museum–probably adorned the stage
building or the Porticus Pompeianae. The story goes that the statue
was struck by lightning, removed from its original position, and
buried next to the south foundation walls of the Temple of Venus
Victrix, outside the theater, where it was found.

Built on the marshy “Field of Mars” beyond Rome’s seven hills, the
theater’s design took advantage of new techniques in vaulted concrete
architecture with sloping barrel vaults, which supported the internal
seats and a curved stone façade. Two imitators–the Theater Marcellus
and the Theater Balbus–were quickly constructed, and the design was
widely copied throughout the Mediterranean basin. The grandeur of the
theater and the sumptuous occasions held there astounded contemporary
Romans. Dio Cassius reported on the reception Nero gave the Armenian
king, Tiridates I:

Not merely the stage but the whole interior of the theater round
about had been gilded, and all the properties that were brought in
had been adorned with gold, so that the people gave to the day itself
the epithet of “golden.” The curtains stretched overhead to keep off
the sun were of purple and in the center of them was an embroidered
figure of Nero driving a chariot with golden stars gleaming all
around him.
After the fall of Rome, the Pompey Theater remained in use until
medieval times. It was repaired around 500 C.E. by Theodoric, king of
Gothic Italy. In the ninth century C.E., it was included in the
Einsiedeln itinerary, a document listing the sights of Rome written
for Christian pilgrims during the reign .of Charlemagne. By that
time, flooding from the Tiber and continuous occupation had taken its
toll, but the structure was still recognizable as an ancient theater.

By the year 1100, two Christian churches had been built on the site,
and the transformation of the theater into other structures had
begun. The church of Santa Maria in Grotta Pinta was built into one
of the vaults under the semi-circular seating area called the cavea,
and houses were built into the theater. Beginning about 1150, the
powerful Orsini family began buying out and combining these houses,
creating a powerful fortress from which they controlled the road to
Naples.

The assimilation continued. Pompey’s masterpiece was built into and
buried under the buildings near the Campo dei Fiori. The structure
became integrated into the medieval neighborhood. Archaeological
excavations by Victoire Baltard, a French architect working in the
first decades of the nineteenth century, and Pietro Righetti, then
owner of the Palazzo Pio, cleared and reburied only part of the
monument. Their reports detailed the plan of the curved lower section
of the façade of the seating area and the circular corridor behind
it, and Righetti reported fragments from the upper storeys of the
Temple of Venus Victrix.

Most medieval and ancient remains from the theater are unaccounted
for. The city is awash in archaeological treasures, and fragments
uncovered before today’s strict accounting methods often were not
tagged or labeled as to their origins. “There are storerooms
throughout the city filled with piles of capitals, slews of column
shafts, fragments of friezes. In earlier times, all these things were
put in storerooms,” says Packer. “When they were transferred, no
information was transferred with them. So we know that there were
pieces from Pompey. They are mentioned in earlier records, both
published and unpublished. But we haven’t been able to find these
things. We don’t know what’s become of them.”

Stripped of their archaeological context, the fragments are reduced
to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. From 1996 through 2001, Packer
collaborated with Beacham to document the accessible surviving
remains of Pompey’s theater.

Choosing new spots to excavate is no easy task. The modern streets
that pave over the site present both political and practical
problems. Disrupting traffic and rerouting underground electrical and
sewer utility services from the neighborhood is not feasible. Cellar
rooms under the theater’s cavea are accessible from Ristorante Da
Pancrazio–the arched barrel vaults of the old theater now make a
cool and cozy ceiling for diners enjoying Roman specialties such as
roast lamb with potatoes, spaghetti alla carbonara, and ravioli
stuffed with artichoke hearts.

But because these cellar rooms were filled with concrete, they cannot
now be excavated without damaging foundations and subjecting
residents to the sound of the pneumatic drills required to cut
through the fill. Extensive excavation could weaken the foundation of
centuries-old buildings like the Palazzo Pio, an archaeological and
architectural treasure in its own right.

The research in 2002 took place in one of the Palazzo Pio’s cellar
rooms, a part of the theater’s ambulacrum–the walkway, or circular
passage immediately behind the façade–adjacent to the foundations of
the stairs that led through the cavea to the Temple of Venus Victrix.
At the beginning of the excavation, researchers found that the room
had been filled with rubble from excavation in 1865 and from
post-World War II construction at the adjacent restaurant.

Removal of this detritus cleared the top of the medieval
archaeological strata that filled the excavation area and yielded
fragments of ancient, medieval, and eighteenth-century pottery. A
medieval wall closed one end of the ambulacrum. In a hole cut through
it were blocks of stone and an ancient impost block, which the
excavators temporarily left in place at the end of their season.
Rubble was hand-carried in plastic bags up a steep and narrow
staircase. “It was quite a chore,” Packer says. He and his colleagues
plan to install a small conveyor belt for the next excavation.

Packer is gathering information for a multi-authored monograph. The
Pompey Project will feature a computerized online database that spans
the entire history of the site. Virtual reality renderings of the
theater, acoustical renderings and sight lines, all known textual
references, plans of modern structures along with detailed plans of
the ancient remains, and digital photographs of all artifacts and
remains recovered at the site will be included.

It is the virtual reality modeling that may give the theater an
audience undreamed of in ancient times. By rebuilding the theater
three-dimensionally in cyberspace, any person on the planet with
access to the internet can stroll the gardens, admire the stage, or
marvel at the travertine marble-clad grandeur of Pompey’s monument.
They can examine the ornate temple where Venus received her
offerings, or even stand in the portico where Caesar met his end.

Cynthia Barnes is a writer in Columbia, Missouri.

Northwestern University received $35,000 in NEH support for the
excavation of the Pompey Theater.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Tucson Weekly, AZ
July 14 2004

Melding of Musicians

Jesse Cook travels to multiple continents for collaborators on his
latest album

By JOAN SCHUMAN

Jesse Cook

I’ve almost burnt a hole in Jesse Cook’s newest CD, returning again
and again to the seamless transition between the first and second
tracks.
“Prelude” slams into “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” with a punch of violins and
cymbals and deep, deep drums banging against each other before Cook’s
signature flamenco guitar bursts forth. And then, 25 seconds into the
second track, Maryem Tollar blares the lyrics of this traditional
Andalusian tune in a subterranean alto. An Egyptian string ensemble
headed by Hossam Ramzy in Cairo is responsible for haunting threads,
while back home in Toronto, Cook has enlisted Chris Church to
electrify the violin on the first track.

“It didn’t start as a master plan,” explains Cook of his aptly dubbed
fifth album, Nomad. We spoke by phone between gigs on his 14-city
U.S./Canada tour, which brings him and his Toronto-based band through
Tucson on July 24.

“I usually record at home in my own little studio. I tend to do all
the writing, arranging and producing myself. But I wanted to be far
enough away to get perspective.”

Cook was determined not to let distance drag down his dream of
incorporating musicians on several continents into the 12 tracks that
make up his Juno (Canada’s Grammy equivalent) award-winning album.

“I also was dying to work with Simon (Emmerson) of the Afro Celt
Sound System. So we called him in London and he loved the idea. He’s
the one who introduced me to Hossam who said, ‘Man, you need some
strings on here.'”

In the end, Cook grabbed musicians from London, Madrid, Cairo,
Toronto, Nova Scotia and, in the States, Milwaukee, Austin and Los
Angeles.

Paris-born and Toronto-raised, Cook already had four albums under his
belt before embarking on his latest project. Since 1995, he’s
produced CDs that have soared to the top of Billboard’s World Music
charts in the United States and gone gold in Canada–albums with
quirky one-word titles mostly on the Narada label (Tempest in 1995;
Gravity a year later; Vertigo in 1998; and finally Freefall in 2000).
His last two albums featured musicians from further reaches–like
Djivan Gasparyan (dubbed the god of Armenian Duduk) and Danny Wilde
of the Rembrandts, among others.

The Gypsy Kings influence is noticeable, as are hues of the Afro
Celts’ arrangement. At Narada, he shares a lineup with a litany of
world musicians including Lila Downs, Shelia Chandra, Jai Uttal and
Baka Beyond–all mavericks fusing their own styles into new genres.

Danny Wilde comes back for a cameo on Nomad, and Cook’s masterful
guitar yields its fiery, familiar taste–a smorgasbord of expressive
rumba and flamenco arrangements–a gypsy amalgam if there ever was
one.

“Montsé Cortés is a legend in gypsy music,” Cook says, discussing the
singer’s willingness to lend her vocals to “Toca Orilla,” the last
track on Nomad.

“Gypsy is a very guarded music. Sharing it with a foreigner like
me–a mungicake–is amazing,” concedes Cook of his admittedly “white
bread” status.

As for any fears of putting together an album with musicians living
far away from each other, Cook says it wasn’t that difficult.

“Hossam invited me to stay in his Cairo apartment, and it just
snowballed from there. It made sense to contact my vocalist friend
Maryem, who happened to be in Egypt at the time. She actually lives
three blocks away from me here in Toronto,” he adds with a chuckle.

“Once you get the travel bug, it’s pretty easy to just grab the
laptop and go. It’s amazing. I was flying home from Europe and I’m
mixing with 64 tracks on my Mac right there in row 13.”

He’s quick to add, “Just because you have the capability of recording
on the fly and have access to these tools, it doesn’t mean everyone
can be a producer. Remember, it’s in the ears.”

Going to where the musicians live is crucial, says Cook. “I’m not
sure you get the best take when musicians aren’t at home. In their
own space, they’re in the groove.”

The liner notes to Nomad hint at adjustments, however. Cook sprinkles
in bits and pieces of his album journal.

Cairo, January 11, 2003, 3:15: One of the violinists has arrived. The
first musician to show for a 2 p.m. call. Cairo time. Got to love it.

“I expected to have a hard time due to my Western origins. They all
thought I was from the States. I expected more hostility, post-Sept.
11. But people were great,” says Cook about his hosts. “I guess
politics operate above humanity.”

Nomad isn’t just different from Cook’s other albums for its melding
of musicians.

“Most of my previous music is instrumental. But I knew I wanted
lyrics and singing on this album. So, scary as it was, I made a demo
so I could generate interest in this project. It’s really awful, if
you’ve ever heard me sing. You begin to understand what a great
singer can do for a song–it makes it or breaks it.”

So, Cook wrote the tune for Montsé Cortés in her range. But he took a
different tact for Brazilian singer Flora Purim.

“I was just writing another version of ‘Girl from Ipanema,’ and then,
ironically, her CDs just flew across my desk and the project clicked.
I went to L.A. to record her voice tracks.”

Liner notes expand on his process for Purim’s track, titled “Maybe.”
It’s not so much Bossa Nova as it is Brazilian samba meets rumba
flamenco.

“I love eclecticism,” says Cook. “Finding a flow is important and a
bit of a trick. Basically, all the tunes are rumbas. The guitar is
front and center, chugging away.”

He adds, “I think people are obsessed with division–culturally,
spiritually and musically. For me as a musician, the similarities are
far greater than the differences. In Tibet, for example, when we
played there, it didn’t matter what language we were singing in or
even talking in. It’s the music that’s the universal language. Boy,
that sounds clichéd. But it’s true.”

For Cook, it’s all music from the planet Earth.

When I asked him to describe contemporary music in one sentence, he
responded quickly.

“It’s music of the next millennium. Our travel time is shorter now,
though we cover great distances, compared to say, France in the 18th
century. It changes how we listen. So, Britney Spears now has a
Bollywood string riff, and people don’t hear it as such. They just
hear that they like it.”

Yet with the shrinking of travel time and the ubiquitous ability to
taste everything, Cook says the business of musical genres and
audience promotion is slower to catch on.

“Here in Canada, the CD went gold. In the States, it’s more of an
underground following. Is it the music business or a cultural thing?
I don’t know. Some songs did quite well, even charted on the radio.
But not in the States. Oddly, “Qadukka-l-Mayyas” charted in the
United Arab Emirates.”

With all this globalism, Cook says he had the hardest time,
ironically, working with one musician closer by in the States.

“Once I decided I wanted to work with the BoDeans on the track ‘Early
on Tuesday,’ I went looking for Kurt Neumann in Austin. We made all
the arrangements, and I’m about to leave Toronto, and the SARS scare
hit. Kurt cancels, saying we all had cooties up here,” Cook quips.

“I spent a good deal of time convincing him that we’re all OK. No one
I knew had gotten sick–it’s a big city, you know. But Kurt wasn’t
taking any chances. The running joke later was that I’d be somewhere
in the States working, and I’d call Kurt in Austin just to tell him I
was doing OK.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Pasadena Star-News, CA
July 15 2004

Chess players poised for a strategic move

By Naush Boghossian , Staff Writer

GLENDALE — Chess enthusiasts are getting ready to move from their
normal haunts in local cafes to the city’s new $540,000 chess park,
which opens Saturday evening.
More than three years in the making, the free park offers 16 boards
amid towering chess piece sculpted in a converted passageway along
Brand Boulevard.

“We’re definitely excited because there are a lot of kids who like to
play at their leisure and don’t have a permanent place to play,’ said
Harout Akopyan, 23, a coach for the All American Association Chess
Club, which runs chess schools for youngsters in Glendale, Reseda and
Hollywood. “This park is good for everybody.’

Glendale is something of a chess hub, since the game is very popular
among Armenians, who make up more than 70,000 of Glendale’s 200,000
residents.

In Armenia, people begin playing chess when they’re young, and the
schools there encourage competitions from a very young age. Akopyan’s
club, which serves about 150 children, continuously produces national
champion chess players.

Akopyan has 13 national championship titles himself.

The concept for a park came from local chess clubs, who encouraged
the City Council to maximize the potential of the little-used
passageway.

“We’ve taken a piece of property that was underutilized and created
an urban park that is not only aesthetically attractive but serves
the community,’ senior project manager Emil Tatevosian said. “We’ve
realized that we have a large chess community in the city, and this
is a good venue for all of them to come together.’

The new park is divided into zones, each accented with a chess piece
King, Queen, Bishop and Rook and has tables with inlaid game boards
and benches.

And chess-themed light towers also will allow for nighttime games.

“There is potential to create a hub of activity there with the Alex
Theater and Brand Books, which is open until midnight,’ Tatevosian
said.

The concept of having an area for chess players to gather and play is
very popular in other countries, said president of the L.A. Chess
Club Mick Bighamian.

But in Southern California where the only other chess park is in
Santa Monica players tend to gather at coffee shops, where the
unwritten rule is you have to spend money to be able to stay and
play.

“I think this is a great movement as far as keeping the youngsters
and senior citizens to have something leisurely to do at no cost to
them,’ Bighamian said. “And the park helps the promotion of chess to
get the image it truly deserves as a fun and challenging game.’

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LA Times
July 16 2004

3rd Defendant Convicted in Fatal Glendale Attack

Times Staff Reports

The last of three defendants was found guilty Thursday of aiding in
an attack that left a 17-year-old dead outside Hoover High School in
Glendale.

Rafael Gevorgyan, 19, faces up to 18 years in prison for voluntary
manslaughter.

Gevorgyan used a tire iron in the fight that broke out on May 5,
2000, between small groups of Armenians and Latinos. Raul Aguirre,
17, was fatally stabbed.

Karen Terteryan, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced
to almost 24 years.

Anait Msryan pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to
seven years in the California Youth Authority.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Messenger, Georgia
July 16 2004

New French ambassador supports Azerbaijan

According to the Azeri newspaper 525 Gazeta, official Paris thinks
that the Karabakh problem should be solved through peaceful
negotiations. The president of Azerbaijan has received a letter from
the Ambassador of France to Azerbaijan Roland Blatman.
The ambassador stated that he will make every effort to make his
contribution to the economic and social development of Azerbaijan.
“At the same time I will do my best to achieve more progress in the
way of democratization in Azerbaijan,” stated Blatman and called on
Azerbaijan leadership to make their efforts to fulfill the
recommendations of the Council of Europe “more active.”
Blatman also said that France respects the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan and does not recognize the independence of
Nagorno-Karabakh. “France is rather satisfied with the fact that you
continue the dialogue with President of Armenia Robert Kocharian. At
the same time France, as co-chair of the Minsk Group of OSCE, is also
very satisfied with the successive meetings and constructive
negotiations and also with contacts of the ministers of foreign
affairs… We are entirely sure that the conflict should be settled
by peaceful negotiations,” concluded the ambassador.
For his part, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev expressed hope for
a resolution in the near future based on international law. “As a
result of the aggression of Armenia, 20 percent of our lands are
under occupation and one million of Azeri people live as refugees. We
recognize the territorial integrity of all states and expect the same
attitude toward Azerbaijan,” stated Aliev.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress