PM aide not ruling out role for ex-President in Karabakh process (video)

PanArmenian, Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net – An aide to the Armenian Prime Minister has not ruled out that the country’s 3rd President Serzh Sargsyan may one day become a special negotiator in the process of the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Sargsyan was forced to resign one week after his election as the country's PM following a massive disobedience campaign launched by tens of thousands of Armenian citizens who blocked the streets across the entire country.

Speaking on Armenia’s Public TV, Arsen Kharatyan said he doesn’t rule out the involvement in the issue of any person for Armenia’s interest if there is public consensus and if one particular person proves to be “very useful” in that particular position.

“Just like [former Prime Minister] Tigran Sargsyan who heads the Eurasian Economic Commission or [former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia Yuri] Khachaturov, who serves as the Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO),” Kharatyan said.

According to him, not many in Armenia know the Karabakh process inside out.

Asked whether Serzh Sargsyan may one day accompany Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to a meeting, Kharatyan said “no one can say what will happen in a month or in the next one to five years.”

“The knowledge and skills of those people may come in handy in some situations,” Kharatyan said, adding that no meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents is planned for the moment.

Official representative of Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev said Friday, June 22 that Armenian and Azeri Foreign Ministers Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Elmar Mammadyarov have agreed to hold a meeting in the near future with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan, however, did not confirm that such an agreement has been reached.

168: Glendale CA renames stretch of Maryland Ave. to Artsakh Ave. in homage

Category
World

The Glendale (CA) City Council has renamed a stretch of the city’s Maryland Avenue to Artsakh Avenue, a move honoring the Republic of Artsakh, ANCA said.

Earlier in March, the city council of the City of Glendale unanimously voted to initiate the process of renaming Maryland Avenue between Wilson and Harvard Street in honor of the Republic of Artsakh. The city council made the decision one day after Artsakh President Bako Sahakyan’s visit to the United States.

10 Spectacular mountain monasteries

The Traveller
Sunday
10 Spectacular mountain monasteries
by  Brian Johnston
 

Monks always had an eye for remote places and fabulous scenery, and this ninth-century monastery is the perfect example, lodged on a basalt shelf above a gorge in southeast Armenia with views to snowy mountains. The cable-car ride is magnificent. For centuries, it was an important religious, political and trading centre, and in the Middle Ages housed a university. It's now history and earthquake ravaged, but still impressive. See armenia.travel

This Tibetan Buddhist monastery rises from a rock in the Spiti Valley at over 4000 metres in the Himalayas, above the tightly clustered village of Kibar. It's part monastery, part fortress, with the current labyrinth of tiny prayer rooms and staircases dating from the 14th century. Lovely Buddhist murals line the walls. Some 350 very welcoming monks live, chant and often play pipe music here. See himachaltourism.gov.in

The country's most important Orthodox destination inhabits two big caves with an exterior facade that clings to a cliff face some 900 metres above the Zeta Valley. It's a hugely popular pilgrim destination that houses the bones of St Basil of Ostrog. The view is superb. In the valley below, a lower monastic complex has colourful frescoes and accommodation for pilgrims, plus a purportedly cure-all natural spring. See montenegro.travel

Lodged on a cliff side in the Paro Valley, the Paro Taktsang complex is an important sacred site devoted to Padmasambhava, who is said to have meditated in a cave here and introduced Buddhism to Bhutan in the eighth century. Getting to the huddle of temples, icon-crammed chambers and rock crevices involves a two-hour climb up some thousand-odd steps and across a bridge at a waterfall. Breathtaking, literally. See bhutan.travel

See also: Bhutan, the ultimate bragging-rights destination

This hilltop extravaganza south of Rome is a pilgrim destination, since it houses the relics of sixth-century St Benedict, the founder of Christian monasticism. He perhaps never envisaged vast buildings embellished with mosaics, paintings and stucco. Views get ever better as you ascend the switchback road to the summit. The well-defended outcrop is also notable as the site of a key World War II battle in 1944; the abbey was rebuilt after bombing. See abbaziamontecassino.org

No prizes for the architecture here, the main drawcard being the 12th-century Black Madonna, patron saint of Catalonia, enthroned above the altar, plus top artworks in the monastery's museum. The location, 48 kilometres west of Barcelona and accessible by rack railway, is also magnificent, since the monastery is wedged 300 metres below the summit of Montserrat, with plunging views extending to the coast. See montserratvisita.com

Dodge aggressive monkeys and clamber up 777 poop-slick steps and your reward is a petite, golden-spired monastery where marble Buddhas smile and strange, mischievous spirits called nats are appeased by locals with offerings of fruit. Mt Popa sits atop an astonishing basalt outcrop some 50 kilometres southeast of Bagan with views over lush fields and distant mountain ridges. Seen from a distance, it looks like an improbable, golden sci-fi fantasy. See myanmartourism.org

This fabulous medieval concoction isn't exactly a mountain, more a huge rock sitting on a bay in Normandy. Watch out on the sands, as tides are notoriously tricky. The conical outcrop rises like an illumination from a book of prayers, with a great Gothic abbey topping a village of houses and churches. Visit the abbey's interior – where steps are worn by centuries of shuffling monks and tourists – to admire stupendous foundations and sea-gazing outlooks. See ot-montsaintmichel.com

Advertisement

Emperors once favoured the Heng Mountains of Shanxi Province for Daoist retreats. The Hanging Temple is lodged halfway up a cliff above a frothing river, with wooden facades fronting scooped-out caves linked by rickety wooden walkways. It looks like the set of a kung-fu fantasy movie. The temple unites Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian elements and has been clinging on here, in one form or another, since the fifth century. See shanxichina.gov.cn

The improbably located, gravity-defying World Heritage monasteries in northern Greece sit atop grey rock pinnacles, some soaring 300 metres above the Pinos Valley, and surrounded by sometimes snow-capped mountains. Orthodox monks have lived here since the 11th century and were once hauled up in baskets. Six monasteries are open to visitors. The oldest and most elaborate is Grand Meteora, featuring a 12-domed church hung with icons and adjacent monastic complex. See visitmeteora.travel

Brian Johnston travelled both as a guest of tourism offices and at his own expense.

Read more: #ixzz5I9JzIyVU
Follow us: @TravellerAU on Twitter | TravellerAU on Facebook



Mikael Melkumyan: Magic wand is in the hands of the new government (video)

Economist Tatul Manaseryan sees serious challenges in EAEU member countries from environmental issues to financial security.

“We just have to do a teamwork at the regional level to solve the issues,” he says.

During the discussions organized by the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Armenia, the possibilities of cooperation between the EAEU member states were discussed.

Mikael Melkumyan, a member of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), notes that the cost of agricultural and industrial goods increased by 20-25 per cent in foreign markets, so Armenian production was deprived of competition, and it is necessary to develop areas that did not have a transfer problem, especially the IT sector.

“How can the state support its development, every government when coming up claims that they do not have a magic wand and once every two years the governments change and it turns out that there is no magic wand.”

According to Mikael Melkumyan, now that wand is in the hands of the new government, now it is necessary to believe in the development of the country and to unite around that idea.

Political scientist Gevorg Melikyan reminds the participants that EAEU member states have military cooperation with Azerbaijan.

“The EAEU is only an economic union, Kazakhstan has its own agenda in relations with Azerbaijan, and it is quite wide and pragmatic,” says Ambassador to Khazakhstan in Armenia.


168: Artsakh soldier dies in car accident

Categories
Artsakh
Official

On May 30, at 22:20, soldier of the Defense Army of Artsakh Suren Ayvazyan, 1992, has died as a result of a car accident, Artsakh’s defense ministry reported.

Investigation is underway to clarify the details of the incident.

The Artsakh defense ministry shares the grief of the loss and extends condolences to the family, relatives and fellow servicemen of the soldier.

Armenia, Artsakh to host first Armenian-American int’l dental congress

Panorama, Armenia

The First Armenian-American International Congress of Dentists will be held in Armenia and Artsakh from 24 to 28 May.

The event organized through the joint efforts of the Yerevan State Medical University after Mkhitar Heratsi and the Armenian Dental Association is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the First Republic of Armenia, Chief Dentist Lazar Yesayan said on Thursday.

The doctor noted the dentistry, as the other branches of medicine, is facing some issues.

“Those problems are generally inevitable across the world. One of them refers to improving knowledge, as well as mastering professional capacities and skills,” he said. “Such international conferences both in Armenia and abroad are considered one of the most important components of continuous medical education.”

Mr. Yesayan stressed similar events further enhance the knowledge in the sphere, helping experts to acquire new skills. 

The event is also expected to include practical trainings, he said.

Yerevan, Armenia’s capital is set to host the First Armenian-American International  Congress of Dentists from 24 to 26 May. The congress featuring a series of professional meetings on pressing issues of modern dentistry is shceuled for Artsakh’s Stepanakert on 28 May.

The annual meeting of the Academy of Dentistry International will also be held as part of the event, expecting to bring together renowned experts, doctor-stomatologists from Armenia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Georgia.  

Armenia’s new leadership shows a common touch

EurasiaNet.org


Armenians have been charmed by the men-of-the-people style of the new government.

A woman sews Armenian flags in Republic Square on the day Pashinyan was elected premier. (Photo: Nazik Armenakyan)

Riding the subway. Eating a fast-food burger. Laundry. Armenia's new leaders, it appears, are just like the rest of us.

Since coming to power on a wave of popular protest last month, the new government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has adopted a conspicuously everyman style.

A photo of Education Minister Arayik Harutyunyan riding the metro home from work was eagerly shared on social media, for the vivid contrast it made to the black cars and tinted windows Armenians have come to expect from their leaders.

Diaspora Minister Mkhitar Hayrapetyan was seen eating a burger in the Syrian-Armenian basement burger joint The Pit Stop, and Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan was spotted eating a burrito as he waited in line at a bank.

“Our officials' simple lifestyle has excited and inspired many people,” wrote Karen Andreasyan, Armenia's former human rights ombudsman, in a widely shared Facebook post featuring the aforementioned images. “It is a truly new government culture in a new post-revolutionary Armenia.”

The change in style is being led from the top. Pashinyan's protest movement began with a humble gesture: a walk from the second city of Gyumri to Yerevan. The casual uniform of camouflage T-shirt, cap, and backpack he adopted for the march achieved cult status – and the scorn of an MP from the then-ruling Republican Party, who told Pashinyan that a “hunting shirt that cost 4.99 Euros” was unbecoming a leader.

Since becoming prime minister Pashinyan has switched to suits, but he is still trying to maintain the close contact with citizens that won so many hearts.

As prime minister, he has adopted the practice of hosting regular Facebook Live video streams to speak directly to citizens. In one, on May 19, he showed viewers around the government dacha where he is now living with his family. The dacha itself was typical post-Soviet formal: huge rooms empty but for a couple of pieces of heavy furniture. And so Pashinyan's tour – including his jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing wife, two young daughters, their laundry drying and a kid’s bike underfoot – was a symbolic takeover of this previously inaccessible space by the man who has fashioned himself as “the people's candidate.”

The new guard's common touch has also spilled over into the old guard. President Armen Sarkissian – who was elected by the parliament less than two months before Pashinyan took over – has since been working in tandem with the new government.

President Armen Sarkissian's ice cream social (Photo: President.am)

The influence seemed clear when, on May 18, Sarkissian invited a bunch of schoolchildren into his office for ice cream and a photo op. “Presidents, prime ministers and ministers have children and grandchildren too,” he told the press. Sarkissian also took the occasion to announce that he would open up parts of the presidential residence to the public. “This residence must be the symbol of the people’s power, and not the authorities’,” he said.

It remains to be seen how much of this common touch translates into governance that helps ordinary Armenians, who have suffered years of deprivation at the hands of a distant, kleptocratic state.

There have been gestures toward cutting back some of the excessive perks of office. At a recent cabinet meeting Pashinyan discussed the number of official cars that top officials had and called for “serious cuts.” Deputy Prime Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that on assuming office he found that he had inherited five official cars; he planned to give up three and “will discuss the need for the other two.”

Some Armenians, though, are already grumbling that the focus on style is hindering serious engagement with the substance of how to govern Armenia. One essay on the website EVN Report worried about the lack of a clear ideological direction in post-revolution Armenia, and noted that the public's “excessively emotional interpretation of how the new members of the government use public transportation, walk on the streets, and talk to ordinary people” was a crutch to keep Armenians thinking about the past rather than the more challenging future.

Still, for most Armenians it's a welcome change. “Armenia's new govt members talk to the public in live video broadcasts; they use [the metro] or walk to work,” tweeted Anahit Shirinyan, a Yerevan-based fellow at the think tank Chatham House. “They are the neighbor next door, one of your facebook friends. Power in #Armenia has never been so touchable.”

Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.

A1+: Eduard Sharmazanov leaves for Slovakia

Eduard Sharmazanov, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, head of the Armenia-Slovakia friendship group, has departed for Bratislava on May 24 at the invitation of Slovakia’s National Council.

During the visit Eduard Sharmazanov will have meetings with Speaker of the Parliament of Slovakia Andrej Danko and head of the Slovakia-Armenia friendship group Dusan Tittel.

Vice Speaker Sharmazanov will also deliver remarks at the opening ceremony of exhibition titled “Parliamentarians Against Genocides” dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Office of Information and Public Relations of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia reports.

The Task of History

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Tuesday
THE TASK OF HISTORY
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
 
 
At community dialogue, MIT historians discuss the power of historical knowledge to make a better world.
 
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
 
The first class of the "MIT and Slavery" undergraduate research project ran in the fall of 2017, set in motion by MIT President L. Rafael Reif with School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Dean Melissa Nobles. As the research project continues over coming semesters, MIT is also conducting a community dialogue series that creates opportunities for shared discussions of the early findings and our responses to the emerging research. At the first dialogue event, students presented their research findings. This story reports on the second event, The Task of History, which was designed to share insights about the nature of historical research and the role of historical knowledge in making a better world.
 
"Today's world is constructed on the injustices of the past. … Where we are is no accident."
 
Those remarks by MIT historian and Associate Professor Tanals Padilla reflect the overarching theme of The Task of History, a May 3 event that brought four MIT historians together for a panel discussion centered on why it's important to understand history particularly for a forward-looking institution such as MIT.
 
"The past and the present influence and illuminate each other reciprocally," said Lerna Ekmek ioglu, the McMillan-Stewart Career Development Associate Professor of History, who joined Padilla in the discussion along with Malick W. Ghachem, associate professor of history, and Craig Steven Wilder, the Barton L. Weller Professor of History. Wilder teaches the new MIT and Slavery class with Nora Murphy, the MIT archivist for researcher services within the MIT Libraries.
 
The Task of History was the second event in an MIT community dialogue series launched in response to the MIT and Slavery project, which this winter revealed some of the Institute's complex linkages to the slave economy of the 19th century and to ongoing legacies of slavery. The project was begun at the behest of MIT President L. Rafael Reif.
 
Padilla remarked that the task of investigating MIT's ties to slavery is an example of the kind of contribution historians make. "One of things historians do is analyze how systems of power are constructed state power, corporate power, racist power and what role different institutions play in that," she said. "I hope we are asking those same questions…. about the present."
 
What gives us the right to interrogate the past?
 
The springboard for the evening's discussion was a set of questions drawn from those posed by members of the MIT community, including alumni, about the MIT and Slavery project. Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, served as moderator.
 
The panelists began by examining some of the assumptions in the first question: "What gives us the right to interrogate the past or to make judgments about people and cultures of earlier times by our contemporary values, laws, and worldviews?"
 
"The past is never dead; it's not even past."
 
It's not a question of interrogating history so much as understanding it," said Malick Ghachem. "Most of the historians of slavery I know aren't really interested in judgment first and foremost; they want to dwell with this story to be able to understand it, and then to draw some conclusions that perhaps involve an element of judgment. But understanding is the focus. The other word that's tricky in that question is the word 'contemporary.' It's not so clear to me that there is such a sharp separation between history and 'the contemporary,' which is what is implied in the notion that we today are passing judgment on a past that is separate from us."
 
Wilder agreed. "The separation between past and present is often an artificial one and a convenient one. It tends to be a kind of barrier we throw up when we become uncomfortable with certain kinds of historical and political inquiries." He went on to frame this idea within the context of slavery. The idea of such separation "pretends that people living in the past are morally less complicated than we are that people in the past didn't understand that slavery was wrong." But, Wilder said, "there is no moment in the history of slavery when people don't know that slavery is wrong. I may point out that the slaves knew it was wrong and they were people."
 
The power of historical knowledge
 
Nobles also asked the historians to give examples of how a deeper understanding of history can help us build a better future and improve conditions in the present.
 
Ghachem, who teaches an MIT course on race, criminal justice, and citizenship, said that "one of the things we have gained from a more profound history of mass incarceration is better law." Until about 30 years ago, he explained, there was very little awareness of "the outlandish size of our criminal system, particularly in comparison to our peers in the North Atlantic world. It was because of a couple of generations of scholarship people writing about the racial embeddedness of our system, and the sheer size of it that we began to make criminal justice reforms. That's an example of how historical inquiry has transformed a fundamental aspect of our contemporary society."
 
Another tangible benefit of studying history, he said, is to increase respect for peoples, and even entire countries. "For example," he said, "through much of the 19th and 20th century, people looked upon Haiti as a country that was underdeveloped through its own cultural faults. That view has gone away because several generations of historians have shown how important [and detrimental] slavery was to the development of the Haitian nation." And for the Haitian people themselves, he observed, understanding how this history was transformed by the Haitian Revolution of 1789-1804 can provide some sustaining optimism and hope.
 
Ekmek ioglu said she has seen a similar transformation related to her area of scholarship, the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. "Turkey has long refused to acknowledge its crimes which has kept tensions high between ethnic Armenians and ethnic Turks," she said. But as the history has become better known, Ekmek ioglu has seen a remarkable change in attitudes in Turkish civil society, although the state's official stance remains more or less the same.
 
"Right now at MIT," she said, "the Armenian Student Association is doing an exhibition to commemorate the Armenian genocide and I heard that some members of the Turkish Student Association came and … wanted to learn more. This would have been unthinkable only 10 years ago," Ekmek ioglu explained. After the event, she added, "I am now hopeful that historians' efforts will yield more fruit for the future, and will lead the way towards restorative justice in general."
 
Models for making a better world
 
Padilla, who studies agrarian protest movements in modern Mexico, said history also offers up many practical lessons and models for people working to make a better world today. "Looking at past movements of resistance helps current people think of different strategies, of ways of resisting, and of alternate visions of what something might look like," she said. She gave the example of teacher training schools in Mexico where youth from poor backgrounds learn about their rights, justice, and leadership. While the government has attempted to close these institutions, Padilla says, "that many still exist is thanks to the fact that the graduates and communities know the history of those schools" and protect them.
 
"Another broad example," Padilla added, "is the history of indigenous peoples in Latin America in general. These peoples have suffered centuries of discrimination and genocide, and the fact that they have preserved their history and their traditions has forced government after government in Latin America to recognize their rights and to negotiate with them."
 
"The same with the Armenian case," said Ekmek ioglu. "The production of historical knowledge is itself an actor in the fight for recognition and reparations. In the last 15 years there has been in a boom in studying the Armenian genocide, as well more historical attention to other non-Turkish groups such as the Kurds, Jews, and Greeks of Turkey that has led to a new kind of thinking about who we are. It's like the movements of indigenous people to sustain themselves; scholars working on Armenian history too try to produce as much as possible to have evidence for the time when the Turkish state will officially acknowledge its 'dark past.'"
 
Building on these examples, Wilder noted that studying the struggles of the past and others helps us see the challenges in our own lives as part of a larger human story, "For me," he said, "the real joy of history is that it helped me to discover my own humanity [and] expand my sympathies." Similarly, he reflected, more understanding of the past "opens the door to more aspirational conversations about MIT today."
 
The panel discussion was followed by a question-and-answer session, during which the historians responded to questions ranging from how technology is transforming historical research, to the role historians play in effecting change, to how MIT can best use its influence in the service of making the world a better place.
 
Wilder pointed out that every generation lays claim to "inventing the future" and that the history of some of those efforts is troubled. Being informed by successes and tragedies of the past can be a peerless guide, however.
 
"When we make declarations about the tomorrow that we want to see, those declarations have to be informed by a really rigorous and honest engagement with the past," he said, "because we aren't the first people to think we are doing good work.
 
Story prepared by SHASS Communications
 
Writers: Kathryn O'Neill and Emily Hiestand

Rafting takes place in Armenia for first time (video)

In Tumanyan community of Lori region, rafting- a ride on inflatable boats through the river, took place for the first time in Armenia.

The participants of the rafting have arrived at the Sanahin station from the nearby Tumanyan city via the Debed River, overcoming 12 kilometer in an hour.

RA Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Levon Vahradyan highlighted the potential of our country with regards to its nature (mountains, rivers, green zones) in the implementation of the Sport Tourism Concept, and noted that these potentials should be used to develop extreme sports in our country.

In autumn of 2017, Armenian and foreign experts conducted a study to rebound on the Debed River and recorded that Debed has a favorable 4+ degree complexity.