Author: Ekmekjian Janet

Agence France Presse — English
August 22, 2004 Sunday 1:50 PM GMT

France looking for missing journalists in Iraq: ministry

PARIS Aug 22

France is doing everything it can to locate two French journalists
who have been missing in Iraq for three days, the foreign ministry
said Sunday.

“The search is going on in all directions,” ministry spokeswoman
Maire Masdupuy said.

Christian Chesnot, a reporter for Radio France, and Georges
Malbrunot, a correspondent for Le Figaro newspaper, disappeared early
Friday last week.

They were to have left Baghdad for the central holy city of Najaf,
where US forces are attacking militia loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada
Sadr, but disappeared without making further contact.

Kidnappings of journalists and other foreigners have become common as
insurgents attempt to force countries to disengage from Iraq or
extort money.

The head of the all-news station of Radio France, France Info has
asked French authorities to urge action from US, British, Iraqi and
Red Cross officials to find the missing pair.

“The last time I had Christian Chesnot on the phone was Friday at
7:00 am (0500 GMT). He said ‘I am going to Najaf, it’ll take me four
hours’,” France Info’s editor in chief, Catherine Laurence, said.

The head of the foreign news desk at Le Figaro, Jean-Louis Validire,
said he had last spoken with Malbrunot late Thursday.

“We are increasingly looking at the idea it was an abduction, except
there has still been no claim of responsibilty nor ransom demand,” he
said.

He added that French diplomats were looking at the possibility the
two men were in a hospital in Iraq and were also searching for
Malbrunot’s Armenian fixer who may have been with them.

UKRAINE ASPIRES TO DEVELOP ITS RELATIONS WITH ARMENIA ON BASIS OF
FRIENDSHIP AND MUTUALLY PROFITABLE COOPERATION

YEREVAN, AUGUST 21. ARMINFO. The Ukraine wants to develop ots
relations with Armenia on the basis of friendship and mutually
profitable cooperation. It is said in the news release of the
Ukraine’s Embassy in Armenia on the occasion of the 13th anniversary
of the Ukraine’s independence marked on Aug 24.

As it is said in the release, the two countries have positive trends
in mutual commerce. Thus, in Jan-June 2004 the trade turnover of the
Ukraine with Armenia has increased 1.7 times as against the same
period of last year and totaled $36.1 mln. The exports of the
Ukrainian goods to Armenian market increased 1.7 times and totaled
$32.2 mln. The exports of Armenian goods to the Ukraine increased 1.8
times and totaled $3.9 mln. The huge potential in the mutual
trade-economic cooperation is put in further development of
interregional cooperation, in the cooperation in transport sphere,
agriindustrial complex and machine-building, in the development of
science-technical cooperation, in the sphere of information
technologies, in the banking sphere, in mutual investments in the
economies, in the sphere of tourism, etc.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

HIS HOLINESS ARAM I IN SOUTH KOREA

ANTELIAS, LEBANON – His Holiness Aram I will be in South Korea from 20-28
August to chair the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches.
During his stay in Seoul, His Holiness will preach at the Presbyterian
Church, he will address a reception organized by the State. He will also
give a talk on Ecumenism for the 21st century in a context of a symposium
organized by the churches in South Korea.

On his way back from South Korea, His Holiness will make a brief stop in
Dubai, where he will meet the Armenian Community leaders of the Emirates.
The Communications and Information officer of the Catholicosate V. Rev.
Krikor Chiftjian will accompany His Holiness during his journey.

##

The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

AMERICAN-ARMENIAN YOUTH CONSTRUCTION DETACHMENT CARRIES OUT
CONSTRUCTION WORK IN ARTSAKH

STEPANAKERT, August 20 (Noyan Tapan). A youth construction detachment
composed of the American-Armenians who participate in the construction
work in the various locations of the republic is now in Artsakh. Lilit
Balayan, executive of the Artsakh ARFD Office of the Youth Union, told
NT’s correspondent that besides participating in the construction
work, the detachment members also organized computer courses, as well
as the English language courses for the Artsakh youth, and the latter
organized the Armenian language courses for their compatriotes.

ARMENIA TREE PROJECT
65 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
617-926-8733
[email protected]
www.armeniat ree.org

Contact: Jeffrey Masarjian

August 18, 2004

ATP to Participate in Upcoming UN DPI/NGO Conference in New York City

WATERTOWN, MA – Armenia Tree Project (ATP) has been invited to attend the 57th
Annual United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental
Organization Conference (DPI/NGO) to be held at the UN headquarters in New
York City. The conference will be held from September 8-10 and is titled
`Millennium Development Goals: Civil Society Takes Action.’

The conference will focus on the roles of NGOs as well as civil society and
governments for implementing the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
adopted by the UN assembly during its high-level millennium session in 2000.

ATP was invited to participate in the conference in association with the
Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) as well as the Armenian Assembly of
America. Representing ATP will be Executive Director Jeffrey Masarjian.

The MDG target areas that ATP specifically focuses on in Armenia through its
multi-faceted environmental restoration efforts include poverty alleviation,
hunger reduction, sustainable development, and reversing the loss of
environmental resources through reforestation programs.

ATP has already begun implementing ambitious programs in the villages of
Aygut and Dzoravank located in the Getik River Valley aimed at restoring the
environmental integrity of the surrounding areas while jumpstarting the
local economic development of rural communities. Village residents are
provided economic incentives for fostering the growth of tree seedlings to
be transplanted in nearby decimated forests, thereby helping to reduce
poverty. ATP also provides resources to local schools for teaching
fundamentals about environmental protection and is also strengthening
communities by helping to create fruit and nut orchards, which will provide
greater food security and economic development. Mr. Masarjian will outline
these and other ways that ATP is contributing to the development of civil
society in Armenia during a panel discussion with representatives of two
other NGOs.

Conference delegates will attend five plenary sessions with UN agency, NGO,
civil society, and governmental leaders to assess the challenges associated
with meeting each of the goals by the target date, set for 2015. That same
date marks ATP’s goal to have planted 15 million trees throughout Armenia.

Since 1994, Armenia Tree Project has been dedicated to restoring,
revitalizing, and protecting Armenia’s environment, while simultaneously
alleviating the socioeconomic burdens facing its people. Thus far, over
531,000 trees have been planted and restored under ATP’s guidance throughout
Armenia. By 2006, ATP programs will have the capacity to produce and plant
over 1 million trees per year.

For more information about ATP, please visit

DWELLERS OF MINAZ APPEAL TO COURT AGAINST BP COMPANY

AKHALKALAKI, August 16 (Noyan Tapan). Dwellers of the village of Minaz
(Minadze) of the Akhaltskha region appealed to the court against the
British Petrolium (BP) company in connection with the construction of
the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeihan oil pipeline, which is carried out by this
company. According to the “A-Info” Agency, the reason for the
complaint of the dwellers of Minaz is that their houses greatly
suffered from shocks taking place as a result of the traffic of heavy
machinery used for the construction of the oil pipeline: some houses
are already considered as accident-prone and are under threat of
destruction.

Dwellers of the village demanded that BP should compensate for the
damage, the latter refused to compensate. According to the BP company,
corresponding testing was carried out in the village for checking the
level of shocks taking place as a result of the traffic of their
transport means, and the level of chocks was determined. The company
is sure that the traffic can’t influence the constructions of the
village. BP representatives think that the trumbledown state of the
houses of Minaz is connected with the landslides of the local land.

Boston Globe, MA
Aug 11 2004

Yogurt: The culture catches on
It’s creamy, satisfying, and healthy, and Americans are finally
diving in
By Joe Yonan, Globe Staff

ANDOVER — The story is familiar to anyone who has seen Bob and Alice
Colombosian mug for the camera in those jaunty commercials for the
company they sold long ago. This country’s first commercially made
yogurt dates back to 1929 and to the Andover farm where Bob’s mother,
Rose, first heated up milk on a wooden stove, stirred in some starter
from her native Armenia, and let the cultures work their magic.

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These days, the Colombosians have retired to the site of the former
farm here, and Colombo Yogurt is made by Yoplait-Colombo, a division
of General Mills and the top player in a $2.8 billion industry that
is growing as rapidly as the bacteria that turn milk into yogurt. The
industry, in fact, has gone against the trend of other dairy
products: While US consumption of milk dropped by almost 13 percent
between 1992 and 2002, per capita consumption of yogurt was up by 64
percent, continuing a steady rise since the 1950s.

The most tangible evidence of the explosion is lined up in the
supermarket dairy case. Where once a handful of companies sold a few
varieties, consumers now face an array of choices that is starting to
resemble the European model. Drinks, desserts, and products aimed at
babies and kids are driving the growth. “There’s squeezable,
drinkable — I haven’t seen wearable yet — but just about everything
else,” says Gary Hirshberg, president and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, the
New Hampshire company that has become the No. 3 seller of yogurt
nationwide and is top in the natural category. Yogurt has been around
for at least 4,000 years and has long been a staple of the Middle
Eastern and European diets. Americans are relatively late to the
party. “We can’t claim to have invented this craze,” Hirshberg says.
“If you go to Europe, not only will you see 100 meters of shelf space
relative to the 20 meters that we have in the US dedicated to yogurt,
but you’ll also see as much as 50 percent of the shelf there is now
in drinkable form.”

The influence is starting to go both ways, though, as European
companies look to the US market, not only for sales but for lessons.
Group Danone, the French company that makes Dannon, recently bought a
majority stake in Stonyfield Farm. But Hirshberg says a unique
arrangement leaves him in control of the board and the company’s
direction. Danone has brought him to European plants to tell the
story of how Stonyfield has managed to become 80 percent organic
while reaching $163 million in annual sales.

The United States still has a long way to go before it catches Europe
in all things yogurt. In Spain, Hirshberg says, Dannon’s
super-cultured yogurt drink Actimel outsells Coca-Cola, and that’s
because Europeans have long understood yogurt’s health benefits,
which have been studied and trumpeted for centuries. One benefit is
that yogurt is an excellent source of calcium and protein, but it’s
the live and active cultures that make it unique. Some yogurts have
other cultures, but they all contain lactobacillus bulgaricus and
streptococcus thermophilus, which convert milk sugar (lactose) into
lactic acid, giving yogurt its tart taste and thickened texture.

Evidence has shown benefits to gastrointestinal health and the immune
system, and yogurt is easier to digest than milk for people with
lactose intolerance, says Simin Meydani, Tufts University professor
of nutrition. In two reviews of previous studies, Meydani and her
colleagues call for further research to better understand yogurt’s
benefits. “We need to conduct larger studies,” she says.

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Some companies include more than the basic two cultures in the little
plastic containers, partly because different cultures are linked to
different benefits. The National Dairy Council says yogurt cultures
may improve intestinal health, protect against ulcers, lower
cholesterol, enhance immunity, and even protect against certain
cancers. Stonyfield Farm, for one, includes six cultures, and adds a
natural fiber to help increase calcium absorption.

With so many differences among the brands, the National Yogurt
Association advises health-conscious consumers to read labels. Some
yogurts are heat-treated after fermentation, meaning that all those
potentially beneficial cultures are killed. The association has
established a special seal for products that contain a minimum amount
of live and active cultures and is petitioning the Food and Drug
Administration to establish a clearer standard. “We want customers to
be assured that if they buy something called yogurt, it has a certain
amount of dairy product in it, and a specific amount of live and
active cultures in it,” says the association’s president, Leslie
Sarasin.

Consumers, meanwhile, are divided between newer converts, who may be
more inclined to eat the flavored varieties, and the faithful, who
prefer things plain and are buyers of the large 32-ounce containers.

Maxine Wolfson of Cranston, R.I., is something of a purist. She first
ate yogurt as a teenager in the 1970s when visiting Israel, in the
form of a drained variety the Israelis call labneh. Wolfson, now 50,
still sometimes strains the liquid from her yogurt to achieve a
similar cream-cheese consistency. “I’ll spread it on bread and put
honey on it, or a slice of cheese with herbs and spices, and make a
sandwich,” she says. She has always preferred the plain variety,
mixed with muesli in the morning and as a substitute for sour cream
or mayonnaise in recipes. Her daughter, 12-year-old Meri, though, has
gone a different direction. “When she was little, she would eat the
plain stuff with fruit, but now she has to have the kind that has 12
scoops of sugar in it,” Wolfson says.

Sugar or not, yogurt certainly beats a bag of chips when it comes to
snacking. And according to research by the NPD Group, yogurt is at
the forefront of a trend toward healthier eating among children. The
average child under 13 ate yogurt 11 more times in 2003 than in 1999.

The truest purists, of course, make their own. The Colombosians
demonstrate the technique in the Andover kitchen that was once part
of the company’s farm. They heat up whole milk on the stovetop, stir
in nonfat dry milk for extra body, cool it down, then add a few
tablespoons of plain yogurt as a starter. They pour the mixture into
empty yogurt containers — Colombo, of course — and let them sit in
a barely warm oven for a few hours. “The shorter the set, the finer
the taste, the sweeter,” says Bob, 78. “The longer the set, the
tarter.”

While they wait for the cultures to do their thing — about three
hours or so — Alice, 75, opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bowl
of fruit and three little cups of Colombo: lemon meringue, orange
creme, and cherry vanilla. “I prefer plain yogurt, and so do my
children,” she says. “But not the grandchildren. They like these.”

It’s not only children whose reluctant palates sometimes need a
little nudge to try yogurt. Wolfson says her husband, Paul, would
make “unprintable” comments to describe what he thought of the food
— until she left some strained yogurt in the refrigerator’s cheese
drawer one day. “He said, `Hey! This stuff’s good! What is it?’ “

The Republican, MA
Aug 11 2004

‘No one can beat Yo Yo Ma’
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
By CLIFTON J. NOBLE Jr.
Music writer

LENOX – “It sounds like the musical adventure has already begun,” Yo
Yo Ma said as he led his Silk Road Ensemble onto Tanglewood’s
Koussevitzky Music Shed stage Saturday, greeted by an enthusiastic
roar worthy of a rock star.

Ma’s own adventures with the ensemble began in 2000 at Tanglewood and
Saturday night the Silk Road brought them home, bearing musical
riches from Mongolia, Armenia, Iran and Turkey, and culminating in a
performance by Ma, the Boston Symphony, and composer/conductor Tan
Dun of the latter’s “The Map,” a concerto for cello, video and
orchestra.

Whether he’s playing standard repertoire, new commissions, vernacular
music of the wide world, or some combination thereof, Ma’s radiant
joy and white-hot intensity draw people together and infuse them with
like emotions.

This transfiguring unification under the infinite umbrella of music
was the pivotal activity of Saturday’s concert. Like Marco Polo in
his centuries-old travels along the Silk Road, Ma returned with
wonders to share with a willing and eager throng of fans who trusted
him implicitly. As one young woman behind me said just before the
lights went down, “No one can beat Yo Yo Ma!”

The concert’s first half grew from a state of solemn ritual to a
fever pitch of whirling dance. Ma first appeared carrying a Mongolian
morin khuur, a two-stringed horse-head fiddle (he remarked that he
liked the instrument both for its soulful sound and because in
Chinese his last name means “horse”).

With BSO trombonists Darren Acosta, John Faieta, and Murray Crewe,
percussionists Mark Suter, Joseph Gramley and Shane Shanahan,
Tanglewood Music Center pianist Elizabeth Pridgen, and “long song”
vocalist Khongorzul Ganbaatar (wearing a peaked hat topped with
peacock feathers that must have been 6 feet tall, as it brushed the
stage microphones when she stood to sing), Ma opened with the “Legend
of Herlen,” commissioned by the Silk Road Project from Mongolian
composer Byambasuren Sharav in 2000.

Within the high tinkle of crotales, piano, and keyboard percussion
and the menacing growl of trombones, crash of gongs and roar of
drums, Ma and Ganbaatar wove a keening, warbling song whose words
were immaterial in the face of the somehow holy bond they wove with
their utterance.

The remainder of the first half focussed attention on the core Silk
Road Ensemble, violinists Jonathan Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen (the
latter played a stellar recital for Springfield’s Tuesday Morning
Music Club in 1998), violist Nicholas Cords, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man
(who dazzled the Musicorda audience earlier this summer in a
performance of Chen Yi’s “Ning!”) and Ma, now playing cello.

“Gypsy music” might be the most apt term for the rest of the
repertoire, music of the nomadic Roma gathered from many of the
countries they influenced in their travels along the Silk Road.

Armenian folk songs and dances, both rollicking and melancholy, fiery
dances of the sort that surely influenced Liszt and Brahms in their
arrangements long-beloved by concert pianists, and two frantic races
through a kind of Eastern bluegrass, the Kayhan Kalhor’s “Gallop of A
Thousand Horses,” and Osvaldo Golijov’s arrangement of “Turceasca,”
brought the first half to a close and the audience to its feet.

Finger-picking the pipa (a Chinese lute) at blinding speed with
infinite grace and tapping out hoofbeats on its body, Wu Man was the
performing star of this show.

Tan Dun’s “The Map” blended video footage of his native Hunan
province with Ma’s poignant artistry and the expert, adventurous
spirit of the BSO musicians, who were required to explore extremely
extended techniques.

Cast in 9 movements, the piece traced Tan’s spiritual journey home in
search of a “man (who) talked to the wind,” an elderly practitioner
of “ba gua” stone drumming he had encountered during a 1981 visit who
died before his return in 1999.

The success of the piece lay in the minutes where Tan created the
impression that the orchestra and soloist were actually consumed by
the video footage and the two media became one vehicle of
communication.

The “Blowing Leaf” movement birthed trilling orchestral bird-songs
generated by the recording of a Tujia man on the screen who created
an ethereal sound-world by blowing across the edge of a leaf.

Ma’s cello responded to and danced with the melody of a beaming Miao
girl’s courtship “flying song” in the “Feige” movement, the two
utterances linking hemispheres in one of the work’s most magical
moments. “Stone drums” married the stark video images and recorded
sound of clicking rocks with percussive string gestures.

The text of an interview in which he described the genesis of the
work rolled on the video screen as the orchestra gave forth vast,
lumbering, portentous sonorities. It was as if Beethoven had turned
to the audience during a performance of his Ninth Symphony, picked up
a microphone and explained why its finale was so new and special.

A few Tanglewood concert-goers didn’t stick around to see how it all
ended. Those that did witnessed a provocative and at times very
beautiful twist of composition: a step beyond film-scoring and an
admirable and promising attempt at a global, if expensive art form.
An orchestra without the resources of the BSO would be hard-pressed
to present such an involved project.

NewsCentralAsia, Asia
Aug 10 2004

First World Hegemony and Mass Mortality – from Bengal to Afghanistan
and Iraq
Dr. Gideon Polya

The world has now been confronted for a dozen years by the continuing
devastation of strategically-located, oil-rich Iraq by Anglo-American
armies and their allies. Afghanistan has been devastated by a quarter
century of war intimately connected with First World rivalries and
both Russian and US desires for Indian Ocean access to Central Asia.
These extensions of what was once called the `Great Game’ between
Britain and Russia have had an appalling human cost.

Using United Nations population statistics for the period 1950 to the
present it has been possible to calculate the `excess mortality’ (or,
essentially, the avoidable mortality) for every country in the world
for this period. `Excess mortality’ is simply the difference between
the ACTUAL deaths in a country and the deaths EXPECTED for a
decently-run, peaceful country with the same demographic
characteristics. The results are startling and horrifying. The total
post-1950 `excess mortality’ has been 5.2 million for Iraq, 16.2
million for Afghanistan, 550 million for the Muslim world, 1,230
million for the non-European world – and 54 million in total for all
the countries of Europe, North America and Australasia.

The French have a saying `Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’
(the more things change, the more they stay the same). We can go back
in history and see that the same greed, violence, racism, dishonesty
and criminal immorality involved in continuation of First World
hegemony in the world today is closely mirrored in the European
expansion into the non-European world over the last 500 years.

Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British and French expansion into the
Americas brought disease that, in addition to egregious violence,
wiped out millions and destroyed sophisticated civilizations. The
subsequent slave trade from Africa transported 15 million to America
but associated deaths in Africa may have been much greater. While
knowing of the deadly transmissibility of disease in the Americas (23
million victims) and from the medieval Black Death (24 million
victims), the Europeans happily devastated Australasia and the
Pacific through disease in the 19th century (1-2 million victims).
The Europeans carved up Africa in the 19th century and imposed
horrendous colonial regimes. Thus the Belgians butchered some 10
million Congolese in exacting rubber supplies; colonial wars
slaughtered millions more. The Europeans left a crippled continent in
the 1960s.

Two hundred and fifty years ago Bengal was a prosperous province of
the Muslim Mughal Empire in India. Bengal led the world in its
agriculture, civil administration and textiles. The textiles were so
fine it was said that you could pass a sari of Dacca silk through a
wedding ring. However in the mid-18th century the East India Company
turned its attention seriously to Bengal and the British set up a
trading post called Fort William at the site of what is now Calcutta.
Steady pressure from the British (as well as from the French, Dutch,
Portuguese and Danes) eventually elicited Bengali resistance and in
1756 the Muslim Nawab (or Prince) of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah,
captured Fort William.

British-Bengali machinations may have meant that the Nawab was merely
supposed to besiege Fort William and then a palace revolution would
secure `régime change’ in favour of the British. In the event, Fort
William was taken and all school children in the British Empire were
subsequently told the dreadful story of the Black Hole of Calcutta –
how, supposedly, 146 British prisoners were incarcerated overnight in
a small prison cell in captured Fort William and in the morning only
23 survivors (including the one woman) emerged alive. This story is
believed by many historians to have been greatly exaggerated. However
for a quarter of a millennium it has very successfully demonized
Indians and, by extension, all non-Europeans who resisted European
hegemony.

In 1757 the British returned with a vengeance, bribed important
Bengali princes to withhold their troops and, at the Battle of
Plassey, Robert Clive won a stunning victory over numerically vastly
greater Bengali forces. Siraj-ud-daulah was hunted down, captured,
chopped into pieces and demonized forever. A key plotter was Mir
Jafar and he was rewarded by being made the next Nawab by the British
(just as the US helped install the Shah in Iran and Saddam Hussein in
Iraq)..

After the British had installed their puppet Nawab they set about
taxing the Bengalis. Taxes that formally would go successively
through collectors, zamindars and the Nawab to the Mughal Emperor to
pay for civil administration now started to flow to the East India
Company and its officers. Robert Clive returned to Britain in 1767 as
its richest man. In responding to Parliamentary cross-examination in
1773 about his excessive wealth from the down-trodden Bengalis, Clive
declared `By God, Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at
my own moderation’. The vast wealth flowing from India with the East
India Company and its returning officers (the so-called `nabobs’, a
corruption of `nawab’) helped fund the Industrial Revolution and 2
centuries of British global domination that has variously devastated
peoples and cultures on 6 continents.

Unfortunately the British exceeded themselves and a mere 12 years
after the Battle of Plassey a temporary food shortage in Bengal
translated inexorably into the man-made Great Bengal Famine of
1769-1770 that killed 10 million Bengalis, one third of the
population. Over-taxed Bengalis who could not meet the escalating
price of grain simply starved. The East India Company, concerned
about its diminishing profits, sent Warren Hastings out to Calcutta
to reorganize taxation of the half-starved, surviving Bengalis.
Hastings succeeded and indeed greatly extended British control in
India. However his rapacious excesses (from the robbery of the Begums
of Oudh to famine in the Gangetic plain) led to his impeachment by
Parliament after his return to England and a protracted trial.
Hastings was acquitted in 1795 in what has been Britain’s only war
crimes trial of a major colonial administrator. He has been lionized
by British historians as a great founder of Empire.

Two centuries of British rule in India saw recurrent famines that
killed scores of millions. Further, the British railways, irrigation
canals and shipping spread cholera (endemic to Bengal) throughout
British India at the cost of an estimated 25 million lives in the
19th century. The British taxation system deprived indigenous Indian
institutes of support (noting that education is vital in the war on
disease and want). The Bengal textile industry was destroyed and
Britain exported textiles to India. Well-watered, warm Bengal with an
energetic population is a part of the sub-continent that should never
suffer famine. Nevertheless Bengal suffered repeated famine in the
1860s and 1870s and at the turn of the century.

Of course Bengal was part of an empire `on which the sun never sets’.
The British traded Bengali opium to China for tea and silver, this
trade precipitating the 19th century China Opium Wars and the
subsequent Tai Ping rebellion that took 20-100 million lives

In 1918-1919 Indian soldiers returning from World War 1 brought
influenza to India (this causing 17 million deaths). Indeed the
global influenza death toll of some 40 million greatly exceeded the
military casualties of World War 1 (8 million). However in the middle
of World War 2 the price of rice begin to rise in Bengal for a
variety of reasons (cessation of supplies from Japanese-occupied
Burma, small seasonal losses from fungal infection and storm damage,
the divide-and-rule granting of food supply autonomy to Indian
provinces, sequestration of some rice stocks and decreased grain
imports via Indian Ocean shipping because of shipping losses in the
Atlantic). However, as analysed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen,
Calcutta was experiencing a war-time boom and effectively sucked food
out of a food-producing countryside. Those who could not afford rice
at 4 times the normal price simply starved under a callous British
administration.

The death toll from the man-made Bengal famine was 4 million as
compared to the deaths from the Jewish Holocaust (6 million), the
Namibian genocide (0.1 million), the Rwandan Tutsi genocide (1
million), the World War 1 Armenian Holocaust (1 million), the Polish
(6 million), Soviet (20 million) and Chinese (35 million) losses in
World War 2, the Chinese Great Leap Forward (16-30 million victims)
and the millions who died in the Russian, Chinese and Ukrainian
famines between the World Wars, the Soviet Gulags and Pakistan-Indian
Partition.

In an astonishing collective act of racist white-washing, the Bengal
famine has been largely expunged from British historical writing.
History ignored yields history repeated and the Bengalis have
continued to suffer: post-Independence Partition massacres and
displacements in 1947, US-backed West Pakistan invasion in 1971 (3
million dead, 0.3 million women raped, 10 million refugees) and
further famine and murderous US-backed régime change (1974). However
the biggest killers in Bengal since 1950 have been deprivation,
malnourishment, disease and illiteracy – the post-1950 `excess
mortality’ has been 51 million in Bangladesh (present population 150
million) and about 27 million in West Bengal (population about 80
million).

What can be learned from this sorry tale? The biggest message is that
ignoring or white-washing mass mortality simply allows unimpeded
continuance or repetition. Indeed Bengal is now facing a devastating
prospect of inundation from global warming-induced sea level rises.
The US and Australia, variously linked with Bengal’s previous
man-made disasters, refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol while being
among the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters. In the past month
over two thirds of Bangladesh has been under water from international
monsoon run-off. Afghanistan and Iraq simply illustrate the same
sorts of First World impositions that devastated Bengal for over a
quarter of a millennium in the interests of profit, power and
imperial satisfaction – manipulation, corruption of indigenous
leaders, régime change, vilification and demonization of indigenous
opponents, militarization, debt, economic distortion, economic
exclusion, divide-and-rule, support for intra- and international war,
sanctions, invasion, occupation, extirpation of undesired indigenous
opponents, installation of unelected governments and inclusion into a
new order of global, violence-backed hegemony. Of course, just like
the mythology of the Black Hole of Calcutta, the demonization of
Indians and the asserted nobility of British civilization and Pax
Britannica, today we have the non-existent weapons of mass
destruction, the demonization of Muslims and the violent and
massively deadly imposition of an Anglo-American vision of `freedom’.

Sensible analysis of the horrendous mass mortality in the world over
the last half century indicates that the First World imposes war for
profit and that war kills massively – but mainly through deprivation
and malnourishment-exacerbated disease that sweeps away 20 million
people a year or 60,000 a day and overwhelmingly in the non-European
world. It is the IGNORING of horrendous global mass mortality that is
the fundamental cause of this continuing tragedy.

About the author: Dr Gideon Polya is a Melbourne-based scientist and
writer. Over a 4 decade scientific career he published some 130
works, most recently a huge, pharmacological reference text
“Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds’ (Taylor &
Francis/CRC Press, London & New York, 2003).

Natural population growth 16 per cent down in Karabakh

Arminfo, Yerevan
6 Aug 04

STEPANAKERT

The mechanical population growth has doubled in Nagornyy Karabakh.

A 16-per-cent fall in the natural population growth was registered in
the republic in the first half of the current year as compared to the
same period of the last year, an Arminfo correspondent in Stepanakert
quoted the Nagornyy Karabakh national statistics service as saying.

There were 1,031 births and 730 deaths in the republic in the first
six months of 2004.

The mechanical population growth doubled – 548 people came to Nagornyy
Karabakh while 354 left it.