Cynthia Lennon, Pattie Boyd Share Recollections

CYNTHIA LENNON, PATTIE BOYD SHARE RECOLLECTIONS

PanARMENIAN.Net
08.11.2009 18:50 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Cynthia Lennon and Pattie Boyd – former wives of
Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison – visited Yerevan to take
part in a series of special events marking the Grand Opening of the
Cafesjian Center for the Arts on November 8. Lennon and Boyd will
share the stage for the first time ever, and lend intimate insight into
their husbands’ extraordinary lives and music. A book signing of John
by Cynthia Lennon and Wonderful Tonight by Pattie Boyd – who was also
married to the blues musician Eric Clapton – followed the interview.

A photo exhibition titled "Pattie Boyd: yesterday and today" will
be open till January 31. It features 50 unique photos presenting The
Beatles’ life.

Over 7.9 bln AMD to be budgeted for Armenian Culture Min. in 2010

Over 7.9 bln AMD to be budgeted for Armenian Culture Ministry in 2010

2009-11-07 16:12:00

ArmInfo. Over 7.9 bln AMD will be budgeted for Armenian Culture
Ministry in 2010 as against 8.3 bln AMD in 2009.

Armenian Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan said at today’s
press-conference that the budget reduction will not affect
implementation of a number of big projects. In particular, the project
on reconstruction and re-equipment of libraries in Yerevan and regions
of Armenia will be continued. A total of 360 mln AMD will be allocated
for the overhaul of the National Library and the Children’s Library
after Khnko Aper. In 2010 technical re-equipment of theaters will be
in the focus of Culture Ministry’s attention. Certain funds will be
spent on the performance of the opera "Aida". Over 612 mln AMD will be
allocated for film- making. The decline in budgetary funds mostly
affected protection and restoration of cultural and art monuments. A
total of 318.9 mln AMD are budgeted for this sphere. Despite the
decline in means, private organizations’ projects on studying Armenian
cultural and art monuments abroad will be financed by the state budget
2010. Moreover, the monuments being in a critical state will also be
in the focus of the Ministry’s attention. According to the minister,
over the previous years there were some problems with elaboration of
projects on restoration of monuments, as well as with organization of
the restoration work. To remove these shortcomings, an organization
headed by the former director of Erebuni Museum Ashot Piliposyan has
been set up to retrain personnel and work out projects on restoration
of monuments.

RA President to sign agreements in Hungary

RA President to sign agreements in Hungary
07.11.2009 15:56 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan is departing for
Hungary on a three-day state visit on November 8. The delegation
includes Foreign Minister Edward Nalbanidian, Diaspora Minister
Hranush Hakobyan, Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan, Agriculture
Minister Gerasim Alaverdyan and other high ranking officials.

A formal ceremony will be followed by a presidential meeting behind
closed doors. A number of agreements will be signed.

President Sargsyan is also expected to see the sights of the Hungarian
capital and lay a wreath to a khachkar commemorating the Armenian
Genocide victims.

Turk initiatives to restore Armenian churches game for superpowers

Turkish initiatives to restore Armenian churches game for superpowers
07.11.2009 17:11 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey and Azerbaijan are alike, since both built
their countries on historical Armenian lands, said Samvel Karapetyan,
director of Research on Armenian Architecture NGO.

`Reconstruction of Armenian churches in Turkey is a game played for
superpowers. While Turkish workers were reconstructing Holy Cross
Church on Akhtamar island, a Turkish bulldozer razed to the ground an
Armenian domical church 5 km away,’ he said.

Asked by a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter whether Turkish authorities will
hamper reconstruction of St. Kirakos Church in Diarbekir by the
Armenian community and whether they can be involved in the
organization of the recent fire in the church, he said, `You can’t
imagine how irritated the Turkish authorities are about the presence
of an Armenian church in Van or Mush. Armenians are prevented from
building a hotel, not to speak of churches.

For his part, expert Artak Shakaryan emphasized that reconstruction of
Armenian churches is nothing but a PR campaign. `An Armenian church
was lately consecrated in Kesaria, where 3 Armenians live. Anyway,
even such a game may help preserve Armenian architecture and culture
in Turkey,’ he said.

Ethiopian Dance Band Calls JP Home

ETHIOPIAN DANCE BAND CALLS JP HOME
By Sandra Storey

Jamaica Plain Gazette

N ov 6 2009

Performs Nov. 8 at Midway Cafe

Jamaica Plain’s local Ethiopian dance group Debo Band will perform
on Nov. 8 at the Midway Cafe.

Sunday’s show will be the first time 11-member Debo Band plays in
its home base since the group took a month-long tour of Ethiopia and
Tanzania this summer.

"We’ve been itching to play in our own neighborhood again," said
Debo’s founder, Danny Mekonnen, who is an Ethiopian-American and Ph.D.

candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard. The JP resident, who plays
saxophones, communicated with the Gazette mostly by e-mail last week.

Other JP resident band members are Stacey Cordeiro (accordion);
Jonah Rapino (electric violin); Brendon Wood (guitar); Arik Grier
(sousaphone); and PJ Goodwin (bass, sound engineer). Kaethe Hostetter
(violina, aka 5-string violin) lives in Roxbury.The group rehearses
on Green St.

Mekonnen said the group got its "big break" in JP at the Milky Way,
playing three successful concerts in 2008. "In two of these occasions
the line for entry extended all the way around the corner towards
the Hi Lo market," Mekonnen said.

He said in an e-mail that Debo re-creates the urban dance club scene
of 1960s Addis Ababa. "In the 1920s, Emperor Haile Selassie fell in
love with a brass band from Armenia and invited them home to become
the national band of Ethiopia," Mekonnen wrote.

In the decades that followed, the relationship developed into a
"sound unlike any other, combining brass band instrumentation with
the groove of American jazz and funk, all while preserving the
traditional rhythms, modes, and indigenous dance of the fiercely
independent Ethiopian people," he added.

Internationally known band Ansambl Mastika will be on the same bill.

Led by clarinetist Greg Squared, Matiska plays original tunes in
the style of village folk dance music of Eastern Europe, the Balkan
Peninsula and Caucus Mountains. Squared has traveled and studied with
some well-known Balkan folk musicians.

"We’re so excited that Mastika is coming to our local bar," Mekonnen
said.

Debo Band with Ansambl Mastika will perform Nov. 8 at 10 p.m. with
doors open at 9 p.m. at the Midway Cafe at 3496 Washington
St. Admission is $10.

http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/node/3724

WSJ: At Best, It Seems Turkey Will Be An Unreliable Partner

WSJ: AT BEST, IT SEEMS TURKEY WILL BE AN UNRELIABLE PARTNER

PanARMENIAN.Net
06.11.2009 19:20 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Union has long debated the merits of
Turkish EU membership. But now, nearly a decade after Islamists took
the reins of power in Ankara, the central question is no longer
whether Turkey should be integrated into Europe’s economic and
political structure, but rather whether Turkey should remain a part
of the Western defense structure, The Wall Street Journal’s David
Schenker says in an article titled A NATO without Turkey?

According to author, "recent developments suggest that while Turkey’s
military leadership remains committed to the state’s secular, Western
orientation and the defining principles of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the civilian Islamist government led by the Justice
and Development Party (AKP) seems to have different ideas. Ankara
is increasingly pursuing illiberal policies at home, for instance
by attacking independent media, while aligning itself with militant,
anti-western Middle East regimes abroad."

"The latest demonstration of Ankara’s political shift was its
cancellation last month of Israel’s long-standing participation in NATO
military exercises in Turkey. Even worse, on the same day Israel was
disinvited, Turkey announced imminent military exercises with Syria,
a member of the U.S. list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism."

These developments came just weeks after Ankara and Damascus
established a "senior strategic cooperation council." These
developments could signal the beginning of the end of Turkey’s close
military and economic cooperation with the Jewish state. While it’s
still too early to write Turkey out of NATO, in the not so distant
future, the alliance will reach a decision point. In 2014, NATO’s next
generation fighter plane, the Joint Strike Fighter, will be delivered.

Given the direction of Turkish politics, serious questions must
be asked about whether the Islamist government in Ankara can be
trusted with the highly advanced technology. It’s time that NATO
start thinking about a worst case scenario in Turkey. For even if
the increasingly Islamist state remains a NATO partner, at best,
it seems Turkey will be an unreliable partner. Since the 1930s,
the country has been a model of modernization and moderation in the
Middle East. But absent a remarkable turnaround, it would appear that
the West is losing Turkey. Should this occur, it would constitute
the most dramatic development in the region since the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran," says the article.

Armen Grigoryan: Foreign Investments-The Main Guarantee Of IT Develo

ARMEN GRIGORYAN: FOREIGN INVESTMENTS-THE MAIN GUARANTEE OF IT DEVELOPMENT
Nelly Danielyan

"Radiolur"
03.11.2009 16:43

Armenia has no oil, but has a professional potential, which can
serve as an impetus for the development of the state. Secretary
of the Information Technologies Development Support Council Armen
Grigoryan considers that foreign investments are the guarantee of the
development of the shpere. For that purpose the Armenian Government
has initiated the third international IT congress, where Armenian
companies will have an opportunity to present their achievements,
while foreign partners are expected to suggest new ideas targeted at
the development of the country.

"This is already the third ArmTech conference which brings together
Armenian and foreign IT representatives for discussing the main trends
of the sphere," Armen Grigoryan told a press conference today.

"The conference, which will last 3 days, will be attended by
representatives from 40-50 Armenian companies. That’s a good chance
for them to introduce their services and attract investments to
Armenia. Sure, the results cannot be tangible within a day, but if
we manage to attract a couple of companies, that will already be a
success," Grigoryan stressed.

Azerbaijan’s Great Experience In Distorting Historical Matters Well-

AZERBAIJAN’S GREAT EXPERIENCE IN DISTORTING HISTORICAL MATTERS WELL-KNOWN

PanARMENIAN.Net
03.11.2009 16:52 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A Turkish popular proverb reads that a man going to
the hell seeks for a friend. Azerbaijan found this friend long ago –
it’s Turkey, the core of their relations being not the implementation
of the principle of "one nation, two states" or impartial and stable
friendship, but their hatred towards Armenians, in particular, their
pathologic attempts to undermine the international image of Nagorno
Karabakh, NKR MFA Information Department Head Marcel Petrosyan notes
in his statement.

"From this viewpoint, the October 20 article by a certain Nazyl
Hyldrjak published in SABAH Turkish newspaper isn’t accidental at all.

According to the article, it appears that from the 11th century up to
the 1800s Karabakh was under the Turkish authority. Though the same
article emphasizes quite needlessly that "Tayip Erdogan has bright
memory", however, the Turkish newspaper’s memory is questionable.

Otherwise, they would remember that between the 11th century and the
1920s of the 20th century their predecessors were repeatedly defeated
in Karabakh and its approaches, and saving their lives, they cut and
ran without glancing back.

The fact that Azerbaijan has a great experience in distorting
and falsifying historical matters and events is well-known. So, to
console fraternal Azerbaijan, the Turkish SABAH, excelling its younger
brother, demonstrates a bright example of disseminating fabrications,
misinforming and misleading its multi-thousand readers. Probably,
the newspaper’s editorial staff is well aware of its readers’ being
ignorant of the historical events related to the region. So, they
can be inspired with any nonsense, such as the misinformation that
Karabakh was once part of the Ottoman Empire, and when it passed to
Russia, 95% of its population made the Turks.

SABAH newspaper’s hyperbolic imagination has no limits. Outbidding
the Azerbaijani mass media in this issue as well, the newspaper blames
Russia for allegedly expelling the Turkish population from Karabakh in
the past centuries, instead populating this territory with Armenians.

Fortunately, this newspaper doesn’t know from what planet the Armenians
have arrived in this region. If it knew, it would surely write about
this too. With a small dash of the pen, the newspaper trebles the
number of Azerbaijanis displaced as a result of the Karabakh war,
bringing it to 1,5 million. Moreover, it turns out that the ancient
manuscripts kept in the Shushi Museum were stolen by Armenians. The
newspaper considers it needles to note what alphabet the nomadic
tribes (now Azerbaijanis), which had no script of their own, used
while creating those manuscripts in the ancient period and what
they represent.

The newspaper also keeps silence about the Azerbaijanis’ atrocities
towards the peaceful Armenian population of Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad,
Maragha, and tens of other settlements. Instead, the newspaper
considered it to be its sacred duty to touch upon the events in
Khojalu, surely, exaggerating sufficiently the number of killed
and wounded and representing Armenians as monsters. Naturally,
we shouldn’t expect true information about the Karabakh events from
SABAH newspaper. Certainly, it will not state that Armenians provided
the civilian population of Khojalu with a special corridor for safely
leaving the scene of the military actions and that the tragic events
took place not in the territory of Khojalu, but at the approaches
to Aghdam – a territory controlled by the Azerbaijani armed forces,
specifically, by the hordes of the Azerbaijani National Front. How
could the Armenians guess that for the change of the leadership, the
National Front adventurers could open fire on their own compatriots
and kill the unarmed and helpless people? Maybe, the "hotheads"
of the Azerbaijani National Front had no alternative for coming to
power – they would, first, ascribe the incident to Armenians, then,
which is most important, will blame the authorities for their criminal
indifference about ensuring the security of the Azerbaijani civilian
population. Generally, the Azerbaijanis filled the Internet with false
propaganda of the so-called "Khojalu Genocide", its main organizer
being the State Heydar Aliyev Foundation, which, in particular,
for exaggerating the situation, used outright forgery and presented
the photos of disfigured corps in Kosovo as those of the Khojalu
tragedy victims.

SABAH newspaper seems to be infected with senile marasmus from the
Azerbaijani media, since they have similar symptoms. Otherwise,
it would have slightly cited Ayaz Mutalibov – the ex-president of
Azerbaijan and another hater of Armenians. However, the Azerbaijani
National Front leaders should be given credit for their calculations
with extremely high precision. The SABAH deliberately keeps deathly
silence about all this and instead, as if by chance, writes: "Maybe,
the Turkish Public Television should start showing a TV serial about
the occupation of Nagorno Karabakh and the pogroms in Khojalu?"

Surely, coming forth with a suggestion is not a sin. A sin is
distortion of the truth. I don’t think that SABAH newspaper can
ever remit its sins. But, it’s worth striving for this, at least,
for self-cleaning. And maybe, the Turkish Public Television should
start its TV serials with the events of 1915? Will SABAH newspaper
ever have the courage to come forth with such a suggestion?

As for Turkey’s position on Karabakh, the NKR takes it, to say the
least, with cool indifference," the statement concludes.

Concert Dedicated To Georgi Sarajev’s 90th Anniversary In Yerevan

CONCERT DEDICATED TO GEORGI SARAJEV’S 90TH ANNIVERSARY IN YEREVAN

Aysor
Nov 2 2009
Armenia

Today at the evening will take place the Gala Concert dedicated to
the musician Georgy Sarajev’s 90th anniversary. The concert will take
place in the concert hall after Aram Khachatryan at the evening 19:00.

G. Sarajev is well known especially by drafting Komitas works.

In the concert the Armenian State Youth Orchestra will participate,
conducted by Sergey Smbatyan.

The anniversary evening of the musician is available for everyone.

5 Armenians Included In FIDE List Of 100 Best Chess Players

5 ARMENIANS INCLUDED IN FIDE LIST OF 100 BEST CHESS PLAYERS

PanARMENIAN.Net
03.11.2009 13:21 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ FIDE issued its November Rankings upon completion
of European Chess Team Championship 2009. Armenian grandmaster Levon
Aronian is the fourth with 2786 points, following Veselin Topalov
(Bulgaria, 2810 points), Magnus Karlsen (Norway, 2801 points) and
Viswanathan Anand (India, 2788 points).

Vladimir Hakobyan is the 35th with 2700 points. Gabriel Sargsyan is
the 51st with 2676 points. Arman Pashikyan is the 71st with 2656
points. Sergei Movsisyan representing Slovakia is the 22nd with
2718 points.