Author: Karabekian Emil

TURKEY’S ERDOGAN SAYS EXPELLING MINORITIES "FASCIST"

WorldBulletin.net
May 25 2009
Turkey

Erdogan said over the weekend that state policies that led to the
expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks in the last century
were "fascist".

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s criticism of the 20th Century
expulsion of ethnic Greeks from Turkey points to a new attempt to
deal with the country’s troubled past, newspapers said on Monday.

Erdogan said over the weekend that state policies that led to the
expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks in the last century
were "fascist".

"For years those of different identities have been kicked out of
our country … This was not done with common sense. This was done
with a fascist approach," Erdogan said on Saturday during a speech
in northwestern Turkey.

The comments were the first of its kind by a prime minister.

"For the first time you have a prime minister who wants to admit that
mistakes were made in the treatment of religious minorities. This is
historic," said Sami Kohen, a commentator at liberal daily newspaper
Milliyet.

"But whether this rhetoric will be followed with deeds, this remains to
be seen. In particular the Greeks, they have real problems," he said.

Other mainstream newspapers made similar comments.

It was unclear though whether Erdogan was also referring to the
population exchange of 1923 when more than 1.5 million ethnic Greeks
were expelled from Turkey to Greece and more than 500,000 mainly
Turks were driven from Greece in the aftermath of a war between the
two neighbours.

EURASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK INTENDS TO OPEN A BRANCH IN ARMENIA AND IMPLEMENT 2-3 LARGE INVESTMENT PROJECTS

ArmInfo
2009-05-23 13:02:00

ArmInfo. The Eurasian Development Bank intends to open a branch in
Armenia and implement 2-3 large investment projects, Armenian Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan said, Friday, when replying to ArmInfo
correspondent’s question.

He said that within the frames of the sitting of the Council
of CIS prime ministers, he met Chairman of Board of the Eurasian
Development Bank Igor Finogenov. "We discussed issues directly related
to investment projects to be implemented by the bank in Armenia",-
the prime minister said. In particular, Armenia has become the third
country-founder of EDB. He added that in summer 2009 the EDB is
going to visit Armenia, and this visit will cover various investment
projects, one of them in the sphere of ore-mining industry. "Armenian
banks can’t implement large investment projects, and the Eurasian
Bank can do this",- he stressed.

To recall, on February 3 the Armenian parliament ratified the
agreement "On creation of the Eurasian Development Bank", founders
of which are Russia and Kazakhstan. Armenia’s share participation
in the bank will initially make up $100 thsd allocated from the
government’s emergency fund. The invested amount will allow the
Armenian party to fully participate in management of the bank, and
during distribution of profit to receive a share commensurable with its
participation. Armenia’s participation in EDB will give an opportunity
to attract funds when reforming the country’s infrastructures,
developing agriculture, industry, ore-mining industry. The energy
sphere will most of all benefit from Armenia’s participation in
EDB capital. In particular, large projects will be implemented –
construction of a new power unit of Armenian Nuclear Power Plant ,
Meghri, Lori-Berd and Shnogh hydro-power plants, as well as laying
of Iran-Armenia railway mainline.

The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 22, 2009 Friday

A Witness to Genocide

by JAY PARINI
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW; Pg. 11 Vol. 55 No. 37

Toward the end of World War II, Winston Churchill memorably observed
that what had happened in the concentration camps of Germany defied
language itself. It was an unspeakable crime, quite literally. Raphael
Lemkin was a Polish-born adviser to the U.S. government at the time,
and he coined the word "genocide" in his remarkable study, Axis Rule
in Occupied Europe (1944), yoking a Greek root (genos) with a Latin
suffix (cide). The term was meant to describe something beyond simple
murder: the planned and systematic extermination of an entire group.

War is always immoral. Mass murder, however, doesn’t quite get to the
deep structural cruelty involved in the killing of large numbers of
people because they belong to a particular segment of a population. So
genocide isn’t just a "war crime." It occupies a realm of horror all
to itself.

Lemkin’s theorizing attracted widespread attention, leading to the
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide, in 1948, in which genocide was carefully defined
and set apart from war crimes. It was, of course, hoped that the
Holocaust itself would mark the end of genocide, but that has hardly
been the case, as we’ve seen in the Balkans, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda,
and other instances. Lemkin himself singled out the Armenian genocide
— which took place from 1915 to 1918, although most historians date
it from 1915 to 1916, when the bulk of the atrocities occurred — as a
template of sorts, a bleak blueprint for destruction that proved
eerily useful for genocidal maniacs like Hitler and Stalin.

The massacre, which took place in Turkey, got under way in the spring
of 1915, when the Ottoman government seized a group of some 250
Armenian cultural leaders in Constantinople. They were "deported" to
the interior. (The notion of getting rid of a particular culture’s
intelligentsia was clever; the Armenians were left without
leadership.) Within a year or so, more than a million Armenians had
been murdered, although to this day Turkish authorities spend a good
deal of time and money trying to deny that the genocide ever took
place.

Peter Balakian, a poet and professor of English at Colgate University,
has written movingly about the Armenian genocide in Black Dog of Fate:
A Memoir (Basic Books, 1997) and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian
Genocide and America’s Response (HarperCollins, 2003). In the latter,
he focused on the genocide itself, offering a good deal of fresh
archival research (including interviews with survivors) revealing the
origins and inhumanity of efforts to erase the population of Armenian
Christians within the Ottoman Empire. It was a conflict that had
simmered for two decades, although its roots lay deep in the Middle
Ages, when Turks invaded what was the Armenian homeland, in Asia
Minor. By 1915, Armenian Christians imagined themselves an integral
part of the Turkish state. They served largely as merchants and
middlemen, and their part in the economy perhaps gave them a false
sense of their own position. Certainly the idea of "ethnic cleansing"
was beyond their imagination.

Grigoris Balakian, the great-uncle of Peter Balakian, was a priest
(later bishop) in the Armenian Apostolic Church. He was among the key
intellectuals of his time and place, and he was one of the Armenian
leaders arrested in 1915 and deported to the interior. In 1918 he
wrote a shocking and brilliant memoir of the genocide, an eyewitness
account of a high order. Now, at last, it has been translated (by his
nephew, with Aris Sevag) in Armenian Golgotha (Knopf). It’s a memoir
that will fit well on a shelf beside the poems of Anna Akhmatova and
the memoirs of Vasily Grossman, Primo Levi, and Elie Wiesel. And it
defines what we have come to think of as "Holocaust memoirs."

It seems strangely ironic that, a couple of years back, the
Anti-Defamation League, headed by Abraham Foxman, actually backed the
Turkish government in its efforts to suppress historical truth by
dissuading Congress from recognizing the Armenian genocide. Foxman,
apparently under pressure, later changed his mind on that. Those who
commit genocide bank on the fact that the future has a weak memory, or
so it would seem. There is a natural instinct at work in the human
mind, which tries to erase the memory of pain.

Pain suffuses this book by Father Balakian, his own and that of
others. He recalls a conversation with a young Armenian woman who said
to him, "Oh, Reverend Father. There’s no pain that we haven’t
suffered; there’s no misfortune that hasn’t befallen us." Going on to
lament that even bowing to pressure to convert to Islam did not save
her people, she asks in anguish, "Oh, where is the God proclaimed by
us? Doesn’t he see the infinite suffering we have endured?"

In scene after scene, the unspeakable is spoken. The priest describes
one ghastly massacre outside of Sungurlu that occurred on August 20,
1915. More than 70 carriages conveyed a cluster of Armenian women,
girls, and small boys to a lonely valley by a bridge an hour and half
from the town. When the caravan reached the appointed area, police
officers and soldiers joined a wayward gang of Turkish slaughterers,
setting to work with a vengeance that is scarcely believable. "Just as
spring trees are cut down with bill-hooked hedge knives," writes
Balakian, "the bloodthirsty mob attacked this group of more than four
hundred with axes, hatches, shovels, and pitchforks, hacking off their
appendages: noses, ears, legs, arms, fingers, shoulders. … They
dashed the little children against the rocks before the eyes of their
mothers while shouting ‘Allah, Allah.’"

The situation of the Armenians was often so dire, he wrote, that "in
exchange for a piece of bread, Armenian mothers, known for their
maternal devotion, sold their beloved sons or daughters to the first
comer, Christian or Muslim." That wasn’t cruelty or indifference;
given the fact of certain death, there was at least a chance that the
child could survive in other hands. There was also the fact of
starvation, which was how so many came to grief in those terrible
years, while the world turned a blind eye.

For Grigoris Balakian, what persists after the human devastation is
always nature itself, and one of the few consolations of this book is
the refuge the author takes in the world around him, the shimmering
fields and streams, the high mountains and fruitful plains. Even when
imprisoned on a train taking him into exile, the author writes about
the "beautiful gulf" of the Sea of Marmara, "with its wavy ripples."
He extols "the beautiful verdant and fertile fields … the glimmering
lake of Sabanja … orchards in spring flower." Nature, with its
endless fertility, stands in contrast to destruction and degradation.

The natural world seems essential to those who seek to survive
genocide or the cruelties of war. I often recall Akhmatova’s poem
about her neighbor, a small boy in Leningrad, who begged for bread:

Bring me a twig from the maple tree,

Or just some blades of green grass

As you did last spring.

Bring me in your tiny cupped hand

Some clear, cool water from our Neva,

And with my own hands I’ll wipe clean

The blood from your little golden head.

It’s almost as if physical nature is able to compete with the
heartlessness of human nature. It can provide a solace that signals a
way out of the worst of times.

But survivors also need to remember — vividly, in concrete detail —
what happened to them. In Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night (first
published in 1960), he writes, "Never shall I forget that night, the
first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night,
seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that
smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose
bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue
sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith
forever."

Grigoris Balakian had such memories, and the power to evoke them in
detail. He also had the determination — seen in Wiesel and others —
to persist. When the full extent of the genocide dawned on him, he
resolved to keep going, telling a friend that "at whatever cost I had
decided not to die." Looking beyond the appalling misery of the
moment, he was able to envision the "dawn of a reborn Armenia."

As we know from the research on trauma by psychologists and from the
accounts of those who experience trauma, survival is also — perhaps
crucially — related to the capacity to bear witness, to describe what
happened, to create a narrative equal to the pain itself. "Don’t
listen," Akhmatova warns the sensitive reader in "So the Dark Souls
Fly Off." "Let me rant on deliriously."

In that vein, Balakian’s healthy instinct was, almost from the outset,
to remove himself from the site of trauma and write about what he had
seen and heard. "I withdrew to an orchard and busied myself with
literary work," he tells us. Throughout the years of his ordeal, he
kept detailed notes and worked on his memoir, determined to survive by
bearing witness. It was a way, he says, to endure "the climb up the
thorny and bloody Golgotha of the Armenian people."

There has been a good deal of writing about literature in the context
of trauma, as in the English professor Lawrence L. Langer’s
groundbreaking work, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (Yale
University Press, 1975). One also thinks of the essays in Testimony:
Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History
(Routledge, 1991), edited by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, or Kali
Tal’s vivid study of the effects of trauma on women in Worlds of Hurt:
Reading the Literatures of Trauma (Cambridge University Press,
1996). What we learn from such books and essays is that witnessing is
a complex act, one that involves "fiction making," or shaping of
details. Moral complexities abound — as we see in The Limits of
Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony (Cornell University Press, 2000),
a luminous study by Leigh Gilmore, a professor of gender and women’s
studies. The storyteller attempts to locate not only what is true, but
also what feels true. Experience is necessarily subjective.

Among more recent volumes that deal with the project of testimony as
it relates to a wide variety of fields is Teaching the Representation
of the Holocaust (Modern Language Association of America, 2004),
edited by the comparative-literature scholars Marianne Hirsch and
Irene Kacandes. In general, the writers in that volume talk about the
rhetorical effects conveyed by memoirs, and how such confrontations
with sites of atrocity can transform students who read and discuss the
memoirs. Teaching such potent material becomes a fierce and rewarding
process, wherein readers confront their own preconceptions, in effect
refining their consciences in the process of reading. That is the
height of active teaching.

Armenian Golgotha was a book that challenged me deeply. I found it
awkward to read, over and again, about babies, women and children,
innocent young men, tortured and murdered. Grigoris Balakian is such a
visually active writer that I could not ignore any scene. His book
unfolds coolly, inexorably: a nightmare itself, so exquisitely
rendered that it seeped into my unconscious as I read. Night after
night, I found myself dreaming about the scenes described, and my
outrage built. Why do people behave in such ways, hacking apart other
human beings for political reasons? Is there no bedrock of conscience
that we can depend upon in period of extreme crisis? Why did the
Turkish troops follow orders?

Of course the same questions arise in all genocidal situations. Why
did the German people allow the Gestapo to continue? Did they not know
about Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, or Gleiwitz? How could Joseph
Stalin have erased so many millions of people under the noses of the
average Russian citizen? How could so many countries have stood on the
sidelines while the horrors of Rwanda occurred? Questions like that
multiply, and the answers — the real answers — are never easy. They
take us deep into the realms of philosophy, even theology.

As a priest, Balakian had a firm moral center, and one can always feel
his toughness, his clarity. This book has the feel of a classic about
it, and I suspect that future writers on historical trauma and its
representation will turn eagerly to Armenian Golgotha. It’s a
massively important contribution to this field.

Jay Parini is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at Middlebury
College. His latest book, Why Poetry Matters, was published last year
by Yale University Press.

DEADLINES SHOULD BE SET FOR TURKS, FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER VARDAN OSKANYAN IS CONVINCED

Aravot
April 18 2009
Armenia

Yesterday the founder of the Civilitas and former foreign minister,
Vardan Oskanyan, frankly confessed that he had been missing journalists
much and that the launch of his book "Unfinished Decade" was simply
an alleged reason to get in touch with journalists. The book contains
Vardan Oskanyan’s speeches between 1998 and 2008.

While replying to the questions related to Armenian-Turkish
relations, he noted: "For me the recent situation has been a little
bit unclear. Before that both the Armenian and Turkish statements were
more or less consistent and seemed to sound optimistic. And I concluded
that something was moving forward despite my doubts coming from my 10
years’ experience. Actually, I have believed and still want to believe
and wish that there will be a positive result and the borders will
be opened. But the latest state of affairs has a little bit confused
me. On the one hand, there are [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip]
Erdogan’s and [Turkish President Abdullah] Gul’s, but mainly Erdogan’s,
brusque statements clearly stating that Armenian-Turkish relations
will not return to normal and the borders will not be opened unless
the Nagornyy Karabakh issue is settled and unless there are certain
steps forward in that regard. This has been said very clearly and
at the highest level. On the other hand, there is a statement by the
Armenian side that we continue to record progress in the issue.

"If we put those two side by side we get quite a worrying
picture. Is Nagornyy Karabakh dependent on the Armenian-Turkish
negotiations?" Vardan Oskanyan said that he personally wanted to
see the borders open though it would have positive and negative
consequences. But the opening of the borders would have more positive
outcome and that the negative outcome could be regulated by law:
"We should really achieve the opening of the borders, but we should
do this so that the Armenian side does not lose. The difference
between the Armenian-Turkish negotiations during my service period
and the current ones is in the approaches. During my tenure,
the negotiations were not public but the content was almost the
same. Today the contents are kept secret, but the negotiations have
become public. When one publicizes the Armenian-Turkish dialogue,
the Turks always take advantage of this. So, in this very case
publicizing is not in our favour. If a day passes and the border
is still closed or Armenian-Turkish relations are not settled yet,
Turkish diplomats get in a more favourable situation compared to that
of Armenia. At the moment if the border opens, we will get dividends
as well. The question is when this will happen. Do the authorities
have responsibility to give a precise answer to this question? The
time is not working in favour of Armenia in this dialogue."

Vardan Oskanyan is of the opinion that the country’s president has
demonstrated a political will by beginning a dialogue with Turkey
in public. But when it starts not to yield results and even to have
a negative impact on Armenia, Vardan Oskanyan commences to think
that there should be alterations in the approaches. This is what
the former foreign minister suggests: "The Armenian side should set
a concrete deadline, i.e. on this date and at this time, if we are
going to sign [as given] and open the border. Otherwise, let’s stop
the negotiations." Mr Oskanyan is convinced that something of the
kind should be done, otherwise there could also be pressure related
to the Karabakh issue.

2ND HRANT DINK WORKSHOP: "GENDER, ETHNICITY AND THE NATION-STATE"

41/
2009/05/22 | 17:17

Diaspora

Sabancý University, in collaboration with the International Hrant
Dink Foundation and Anadolu Kultur is holding the second Workshop in
Commemoration of murdered journalist Hrant Dink. The title of the
workshop is "Gender, Ethnicity and the Nation-State: Anatolia and
Its Neighboring Regions."

The workshop is taking place at the Tobacco Depot (Tutun Deposu),
Hacý Mimi Mahallesi, Luleci Hendek Caddesi No. 12, Tophand, Istanbul
and runs from May 21-24.

Registration is required for the workshop on Thursday, Friday and
Sunday, but events on Saturday are open to the public.

Drawing on Hrant Dink’s legacy of highlighting existing human
connections and imagining new ones across physical and imagined
borders, Hrant Dink Memorial Workshops seek to initiate and encourage
interdisciplinary academic dialogue among scholars working on Anatolia
and its neighboring regions.

Gender and ethnicity have been key categories of differentiation and
conflict in nationalisms and nation-states, interacting with each
other in multiple ways. Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop 2009 focuses on
the ways in which constructions and transformations of gender and
ethnicity in and beyond nation-states have shaped Anatolia and its
neighboring regions in the 20th century.

HAVING A DOUBLE MAJOR KEEPS SATENIK BUSY AT UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
Marsha James

Voice of America
May 21 2009

Having an opportunity to come to the United States in high school
was Satenik Sargsyan’s initial exposure to studying in the U-S. "Well
first of all I was an exchange student, an high school exchange student
in the United States before and I went back home after a year in the
United States I went to college there and then I learned about this
program, this scholarship that was offered to Armenian students to
come and study in the United States and I have always thought of the
United States as a country of great opportunities and I decided to
take a shot and come and study here."

Studying at Utah State University is far from home for Satenik. "I’m
from Armenia. It is a tiny dot on the map. It’s Eastern Europe,
sometimes considered Western Asia, sometimes Middle East, but it is
a beautiful country with a lot of culture and a lot of traditions,"
she says. "I am going to Utah State University. I am double majoring
in Political Science and print Journalism and minor in French and
I’ve have not regretted for a second for coming and studying here."

Choosing Journalism and Political Science as her majors came easy
for Satenik due to the fact she enjoys talking and getting to know
people. "I was studying Journalism back home and it’s something that
I am good at. I know I am good at writing. I am good at communication
and I really, really enjoy communicating, socializing with people," she
says. "I could never see myself as a Computer Science major, Business
major because numbers at boring to me I just love communicating with
people and talking to people and I figured that Political Science
and Journalism would both be good majors for that."

With the workload Satenik has pursing two majors; she says it all
will be worth it in the end. "I’ve always seen the United States as
a country of opportunities and here I go to college and I realize
that it is going to pay me back and what I am learning here is maybe
the tuition, maybe to go to school in another place, another country
would be less expensive, but the education is really worth it and I
realize that after all it is going to pay me back for all my hard work
and all the money that my sponsors are putting in for my education,
it is going to pay me back in the end."

Satenik also says just the difference in the education system here
versus back home is another reason why studying here is for her. "Well,
the education system the college system is totally different. Back
home we go to school for let’s say four months and then we have all
of our exams at the end and we have maybe one exam in the middle of
the semester and here I am constantly busy," she says.

"I would say here it is not hard, college is just very time consuming
and if one wants to get good grades then one should really put
their time into it. So that would be one difference. It is very time
consuming whereas I would say back home the studies would be more based
on theory and here it’s more of a hands on learning experience. It’s
the practice that matters and of course the environment is different
as well."

Graduation for Satenik takes place in two years, 2011 and what’s next
consist of … "I’m thinking about going to Law school. I would for
sure love to go to one of the Ivy League schools here if I get the
chance," she says. "I was also thinking about going and studying in
France. So, I am going into Law I have decided that for myself and
we will just see what happens."

Satenik’s advice to other students….."I would tell them don’t be
afraid to try. If you win you get to study in a great country with
many opportunities open for everyone. If you lose at least you gain
experience and learn how to do better the next time," she says. "I
think if you have a goal nothing should stop you from achieving
it. All you have to do is just try."

ATOM EGOYAN INTERVIEW, CONCLUSION
by Peter Keough

The Boston Phoenix
ve/2009/05/20/atom-egoyan-interview-conclusion.asp x
May 20 2009

Is art just a futile attempt to cover up trauma and an illusory
substitute for loss? Is the internet, like cinema, a reflection of
the subconscious processes of the mind? Sometimes I wonder how these
people have the patience to put up with me, asking questions like that.

PK: I was reading Roger Ebert’s review of your film "Ararat," and
he’s saying that it’s a very powerful story, but why do you have to
make it so difficult, , why not just tell one of the stories instead
of having it a film within a film and so forth. How do you respond
to criticism like that?

AE: It’s funny when critics’ tell you what should have done as opposed
to what you have done. I think the other extreme reaction I had was,
oh, it should have been a documentary. And it’s like, well, , no, it
shouldn’t have. That’s not the story I wanted to tell. So the question
is, given what I did want to tell, I mean, what’s the feeling about
the actual telling? You could say that it’s too complicated for it’s
own good, maybe. My own feeling about that film with a bit of distance
is that it’s wildly ambitious. I’m really proud of it, I think it’s
probably, it’s not the best film I’ll make, but I certainly think
it’s the most important one in terms of what it’s actually trying to
deal with.

I think it’s quite unique, , it’s unwieldy for sure. I mean, I think
it’s actually a film that probably should have been written as a
novel first and then adapted, but that wasn’t the way it evolved. And
it’s still seven years later, a film of mine that’s really discussed
a lot. There’s some seminars about it. It’s dealing with a really
important issue, which is: how do we deal with the legacy of trauma
through generations? And how does that distort our entire relationship
to history? I had a specific agenda with that, and it wasn’t about
trying to present the Armenian Genocide. I wasn’t trying to make the
film within the film, the film within the film actually is not for
me to make.

It’s weird that my wife [Arsinee Khanjian] starred in a version of
that film that the Taviani brothers made, called "The Lark Farm." It
was made three years after "Ararat." It’s dealing with the Armenian
Genocide based on a very successful Italian novel and it’s just not my
interest to make that type of a historic epic…I wrote the film that
I had in mind and I think with some distance people can appreciate
it for what it is. Or not, again, time tells. I think the wonderful
thing about films is that, unlike theater, they last, they persist.

Sometimes things, especially in this very accelerated kind of culture
we live in…some things that need attention may find that they get
attention after the fact, that they don’t necessarily think up to
a particular moment that they have. But, the tragedy is when those
films are not even available for distribution. I mean the great
thing about a film like "Ararat" is because it had Miramax and it’s
available through their output deal that they had with Disney, so,
that film is widely available. And that to me the triumph of a movie
like that, that it’s accessible to people and they can make their
own choice. I think what’s really sad is when a film doesn’t even
have that opportunity to enter into people’s consciousness.

And then finishing going back to what you were saying, with the
Internet being kind of a source of a collective subconscious, so you
could say that maybe it can find it’s way somehow, through YouTube or
some other alternate way of distributing it. But I wonder whether or
not that that really gives some work its fair due. It’s interesting,
I wrote a piece for "The New York Times" on summer films – I don’t know
if you read it, about a week ago, or ten days ago – and I was talking
about Frank Perry, who is actually one of these forgotten figures
of American independence cinema. He made films like "The Swimmer"
and "David and Lisa" and there was this film called "Last Summer,"
and I tried to find it.

It was never released on DVD, it was never released on VHS, but someone
has posted scenes from it on YouTube. And you go, ok, well, I guess
it’s there somehow. It has a few hundred hits…people, somehow,
have exchanged it. So then it becomes this other product, right,
it’s not really the film, it’s this sort of composite of scenes so
the rest of it exists in people’s imagination. And that’s fascinating,
isn’t it? That’s a new type of cinephilia, right, constructed of these
particular moments people wish to download or have access to and share.

PK: Sort of like with the modernism, like T.S. Eliot or something,
taking these broken fragments of past culture and making them into
something new..

AE: Yeah, and , that’s a very fascinating process to me. And in a way
that’s what Simon’s doing, right, he’s taking these items and these
objects and he’s kind of breaking them down, right, and fracturing
them, and kind of creating a new culture around them that’s relevant
to himself. Because the old one certainly doesn’t work anymore.

PK: I read a quote that you had about film, "film grammar is similar
to dream grammar" and then you suggested that’s why it caught on
so quickly not only with film makers but also audiences are able to
adapt to the language of film so readily. It’s natural. What do you
think the internet is, I mean, that caught on as quickly as film did,
certainly. Is that another form of dream grammar or dream structure?

AE: Hm, that’s a really good question. I don’t think in the same way,
no, because it’s not as hypnotic and we’re not as spellbound just
because the nature of how we receive a video image. It’s not made
for the same concentration, and I’m talking about it as the whole. I
think there are individual images that are obviously made that way,
and you can find an individual image maybe on YouTube that is made
that way, but as a collective concept the internet is so open., the
thing about a film is that it unspools, or it – again that’s an old
concept – but it is being played in a certain way, that, in a way,
there’s an inevitability about it. I mean, it’s going to end at a
certain point, and so there’s a fixed chain of images which have been
predetermined. And in that sense, we are in it’s thrall. In a way that
we are not in the thrall of the internet. It’s by it’s nature…There
are so many other possibilities that are open for us to explore at any
given time that we commit ourselves to the idea and that becomes part
of a …It’s very much rooted in our conscious world, I think. Because
it involves us, it requires us to make very clear, strategic choices
in terms of how we navigate it. Film allows us to drift a lot more,
and that’s its beauty, I think, and what makes it so intoxicating.

PK: There seems to be a catastrophe or some sort of trauma, as you
put it, at the center of most of your films, and it’s sort of a pearl
affect; you get more and more layers covering it in order to make it
something beautiful and also to make the pain something far away. Do
you think that’s an accurate description?

AE: Well yes, and often those are layers that have been constructed
by people to either hide or to protect, right? I mean, and maybe,
a grandfather thinks that he’s protecting his grandson from certain
realities [as in "Adoration"], but doesn’t really understand that
he’s also harming him. I don’t think that necessarily these things
are done maliciously, but they end up being very damaging.

PK: He wasn’t a nice man though, you have to admit that.

AE: He was not a nice man, no.

PK: Your recent film, "Chloe…" something traumatic happened during
the making of that. [the death of Natasha Richardson, the wife of
that film’s star, Liam Neeson, in a skiing accident].

AE: That was crazy, that was an insane thing.

PK: Has that every happened to you before while making a movie?

AE: No, I think it’s happened very rarely, I mean, I’ve talked to film
makers and it’s a very rare situation where a whole production comes
grinding to a halt, , and where it’s as traumatic as that was. Yeah,
very sobering, and it also really affected the crew, because I think,
, we’re in a profession where people are away from their families
sometimes, so the idea that something like that could happen of that
scale, that you wouldn’t be there. We ended up making it…but it
was just so freakish. I mean, the whole thing was just so…and it
also alerted us to [the fact that] we all fall, and we all know the
situations where someone says, "are you sure you’re ok?" And we go,
"Oh yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine."

PK: You took a couple weeks off, was that right?

AE: Yeah, and then he came back, which is so amazing. He was able
to resume.

PK: It’s also probably a way to cope too, is to focus on something.

AE: Yes, and I think it would have been more difficult for him to
come back now, say. There was a great, for him, this moment where his
whole family was there, and the boys were being looked after and he
knew that he could come and finish it, and that would be with family
while he was able to come for the four days that he had.

PK: And you’ve worked with him a lot in the past. You did "Krapp’s
Last Tape" with him, the Beckett play.

AE: That’s right, yeah.

PK: Beckett seems…I mean, the sort of starkness of Beckett in
this and the almost rococo structure of your films seem, like, along
diametrically opposite lines…

AE: I don’t know if you ever saw the film version if "Krapp’s Last
Tape?" That to me was one of the most amazing projects I ever had,
with John Hurt, and it was like, again, this idea of using different
sort of structures, but in that case, in that play, it’s all within
a linear, sort of real time. You have a 69 year old man listening to
his 39 year old self on tape, referring to his 24 year old self.

PK: Right, that is a little convoluted.

AE: Yeah, but beautiful, and so carefully wrought.

PK: When is "Chloe" coming out?

AE: It’ll be ready for the festival [Cannes]

PK: And you didn’t write this?

AE: No, no. This is the first project I’ve done where I didn’t have
any say into the writing. I mean of course, what am I saying…I spent
a year working on it, but it was with Erin [Erin Cressida Wilson,
the writer]. I mean Erin did all of the writing.

PK: And you’re working on something else now?

AE: No, just editing "Chloe."

PK: Well, it’s always rewarding to see a new film of yours.

AE: Thanks, Peter.

LEFT-WING RADICAL INFLUENCING OBAMA?

Fox News
,2933,520841,00 .html
May 20 2009

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 19, 2009. This copy
may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: During the campaign we learned that candidate
Obama had internalized some of the lessons of the late great radical,
Saul Alinsky, but in a new column, the National Review’s Jim Geraghty
argues that Mr. Obama is ruling the country according to Mr. Alinsky’s
radical rules.

He writes, quote, that "moderates thought they were electing a
moderate. Liberals thought they were electing a liberal. Both
camps were wrong. Ideology does not have the final say in Obama’s
decision-making. An Alinskyite’s core principle is to take any action
that expands his power and to avoid any action that risks his power."

The author of that column, Jim Geraghty, joins me now.

Jim, thanks for being with us.

JIM GERAGHTY, COLUMNIST, NATIONAL REVIEW: Sean, very glad to be here.

â~@¢ Video: Watch Sean’s interview

HANNITY: Ridicule, the — one of the biggest weapons in the Alinsky
model. To ridicule your opponent. You see that aspect of it, because
I think that’s actually a key component in the tactics that are being
used by Obama?

GERAGHTY: I would. I would point out that he often lets surrogates
do it. We saw a little bit of his — Obama’s attempted ridicule at
the White House Correspondents Dinner.

But I think really, actually, he’s got everything from "The Daily
Show" to "The Colbert Report" to, you know, liberal bloggers,
entertainers, Bill Maher. He kind of outsources that aspect of the
Alinsky operation. So he can often seem above the fray. It’s all very
important, because seeming too snide or too hostile might actually
minimize his power.

The object is to look, you know, like he’s respectful and fine while
the other side are doing what they can to beat his opponents over
the head.

HANNITY: So pick the target, freeze the target, personalize it,
polarize it, all of that stuff that he talks about. You know, but we
did see it when Santelli and Robert Gibbs went after Santelli, they
went after Jim Cramer. They went after Rush Limbaugh. At different
times, they’ve gone after me by name, trying to demonize people. That
is a big part of the model and maybe even silencing talk radio could
be a part of that. No?

GERAGHTY: Oh, absolutely. Just one thing that’s interesting is I
think Jim Cramer was perhaps one of the most interesting examples,
because Jim Cramer, generally I like him, but even, you know, just
as a financial mind, not as a political guy. He only became an issue
to the Jon Stewarts of the world once he started criticizing Obama.

Cramer has been doing his, you know, fired-up and easily mockable
schtick for a long time.

HANNITY: And by the way, do that again.

GERAGHTY: Criticizing…

HANNITY: Show me how — show me how you do that…

GERAGHTY: I know it’s another network, but it’s an often entertaining
show. It’s for those who find Glenn Beck too laid back and calm.

And so it’s one of those things where I would say once you become a
critic of Obama, it doesn’t matter if you’ve praised him in the past,
it doesn’t matter if you were previously a friendly voice, you need
to be tamped down. And even Obama doesn’t do it. Other folks in his
administration or other allies will do that.

HANNITY: All right. There is a photo of Obama in a classroom teaching
students about Alinsky’s methods. So who is Alinsky? Why don’t you —
because you’ve taken the time to investigate. Who is he?

GERAGHTY: I think he’s best thought of as Obama’s ideological
grandfather. Alinsky died in 1972. It’s not like he ever met Obama, but
he had a great deal of influence on the Chicago community organizers
who were kind of the mentors for Barack Obama during his key formative
years as a young man. And it’s a very interesting approach.

It is — the book I picked up, "Rules for Radicals." And I would
just kind of point out that, for about 11 bucks, it was kind of the
Rosetta Stone for Obama’s decision making.

It kind of lays out that — that to a certain extent, it’s almost
Machiavellian. It basically says, yes, accumulate power. If you win,
you one remembers how you’ve one, and then you can enact the changes
you want.

HANNITY: All right. So — but no, go ahead. Finish your thought.

GERAGHTY: I was going to say that he almost kind of sneers at people
who say they wouldn’t compromise their principles and their pursuit of
power and their pursuit of their goals. And he says, "Oh, you know,
it must be really tough to tuck your angel wings under your covers
when you go to bed at night."

So the message coming up from Alinsky when it comes to accumulating
power is very clear.

HANNITY: So really for Obama, your analysis is that all of this for
him, following the Alinsky model, is about power. So, in other words,
if they want to dictate CEO pay, if they want to control or nationalize
the banks, we know now they’re going to — they’re going to own GM as
a result of this bankruptcy deal that we’re talking about. They want to
take over health care. They want to tell us what kind of cars to drive.

You’re saying that they want to nationalize health care. They want
to do all of this because it’s government power?

GERAGHTY: It is, but I would note that it’s not merely spending
government power, it’s about spending Obama’s power. And that Obama
will sacrifice his liberal allies if it will put him into a position
less than his power.

The three basic examples that just come to find are gays who wanted
to see an end to "don’t ask, don’t tell," and nothing has happened
on that front. Armenian-Americans who wanted him to denounce Turkey
for genocide back in the early part of the last century.

And I think another one probably would be those who kind of figured
there would be sweeping changes in counterterrorism policy, rendition
is sticking around and we’re seeing continuing tribunals at Gitmo, now
they’re talk Gitmo may not be closed within a year, all of these things
are being changed because Obama’s not going to risk his popularity
and his power just to placate people who are supposed to be his allies.

HANNITY: It almost seems like triangulation on speed, I mean when
you think about it…

GERAGHTY: It’s a good way of putting it, and I think to a certain
extent Obama’s goal — it makes him tougher to beat, but I would note
this means it’s not unbeatable. And to a certain extent, this is not
a liberal ideologue. This is a very careful and strategic…

HANNITY: All right.

GERAGHTY: … liberal ideologue. He’s not going to make the easy
mistakes with the military, the way Bill Clinton did.

HANNITY: But he does dramatically want to alter the American
economy. He does have hard-core leftist views. And it’s all about —
while he’s getting his power in the process, it’s all about advancing
those radical views, too. Correct or wrong?

GERAGHTY: No, you’re right on this. I think one of the things that’s
most infuriating for those of us who don’t often agree with President
Obama, is to note how often he will do the exact opposite of what
he’s saying.

He talked about how much he doesn’t want the government to run the auto
industry. And for those of us there’s a very simple way to avoid that,
which is to not do it. But instead, he has the ever greater government
role in running these American auto companies.

He keeps saying how he doesn’t want to bail out Wall Street, and yet,
you look at what Tim Geithner is doing in the extension of the TARP
funds and how they don’t want banks to give back the TARP money. He
keeps doing the exact same thing. Acting one way and doing the precise
opposite — saying on thing and doing the opposite.

HANNITY: Thank you for being with us tonight. Appreciate it.

GERAGHTY: Any time, Sean.

Watch "Hannity" weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!

DISAGREEMENTS OVER BEIRUT I ARMENIAN CANDIDATES COULD COST MARCH 14 A SEAT
Matt Nash

NowLebanon
icleDetails.aspx?ID=93549
May 15 2009
Lebanon

In a neighborhood peppered with posters of generations of Gemayels
and Christians keen on entering parliament, the shot of Saad and
Rafik Hariri smiling seems misplaced. The picture adorns the window
of the Armenian Ramgavar party’s building in Gemmayzeh and reflects
the political alliance now more than a decade old between Hariri’s
Future Movement and both Ramgavar and Henshag, another Armenian
political party.

Those three parties have been locked in a struggle for weeks with
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea over who will be the Armenian
Catholic candidate on March 14’s Beirut I list. The Future Movement and
the March 14-allied Armenian parties want Serge Torsarkissian as the
candidate while Geagea is insisting on LF member Richard Kouyoumjian.

Neither side seems willing to budge, and, in a district where neither
coalition is expected to sweep all five seats, two March 14 candidates
for the seat on election day all but guarantees March 8 will win it,
several sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NOW.

The Armenians argue they deserve to nominate their potential
representative and resent what Henshag described as outside
interference in Armenian affairs. Geagea, meanwhile, maintains he
brings March 14 more votes than the Armenians do in Beirut I and
should be given a seat.

Armenians comprise around 20 percent of registered voters in Beirut I,
and it is widely accepted that 70 to 80 percent of Armenians in Lebanon
vote for the Tashnaq party, which is allied with the Free Patriotic
Movement this year. The rest generally support Henshag, Ramgavar or
smaller parties, though some Armenians bucked the communal trend of
neutrality and joined the LF and other militias during the civil war.

Henshag and Ramgavar first allied with the Future Movement back in
1996 – an electoral arrangement that also included Tashnaq. Relations
between the late Rafik Hariri and Tashnaq quickly soured but Henshag
and Ramgavar have coordinated with the Future Movement ever since.

In both 2000 and 2005, Henshag and Ramgavar agreed to support an
Armenian Future Movement member -Torsarkissian – for one of the four
seats in Beirut officially reserved for the community. The three
parties want Torsarkissian to be the March 14 candidate for Beirut
I’s Armenian Catholic seat again in 2009.

Geagea, however, has not backed down, and this disagreement is
postponing the announcement of the March 14 Beirut I list. March 8,
on the other hand, released their list for the district on April 1,
after Tashnaq announced their alliance with the FPM. The opposition’s
intra-alliance bickering is taking place in Jezzine and, as of now,
that district has two opposition lists.

Repeated attempts to untie the knot have failed. Lebanese press
reports have said Geagea offered to step back if Hariri sacrifices
a candidate so that LF candidate Wehbe Katicha can be added to the
Future Movement list in Akkar or if Hariri agrees to let Torsarkissian
side with a parliamentary bloc of LF MPs and independents instead of
the Future bloc. Hariri reportedly rejected the offers.

Charles Chartouni, a political science professor at the Lebanese
University, told NOW that there was also word of Hariri persuading
Ghattas Khoury to withdraw his independent candidacy for the
Maronite seat in the Chouf in return for Kouyoumjian withdrawing in
Beirut. Khoury is viewed as a potential challenge to the LF’s Chouf
candidate Georges Adwan, who is on the March 14 list in that district.

However, Chartouni said, "Apparently that didn’t work."

The Lebanese press and the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat also reported
March 14 Armenians threatened to boycott the election if Kouyoumjian
does not withdraw. In such a close district, any votes lost would be
sorely missed.

Sarkis Seferian, manager of Ramgavar’s party newspaper Zartonk, told
NOW his party will not boycott. A Henshag party spokesman referred NOW
to a press release that did not address the issue directly but noted,
"We believe that this matter will be solved, so it’s too early to
make any judgment at this moment."

A representative of the Free Lebanese Armenian Movement, a small group
formed around two years ago specifically dedicated to supporting March
14, refused to even entertain the possibility that a deal would not
be reached.

"There will be a deal," she said, cutting off her interviewer before
the question ended. "For sure. For sure. For sure. Ok?"

BOXERS ANDRANIK HAKOBIAN AND TSOLAK ANANIKIAN BECOME WINNERS IN CZECH REPUBLIC INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT

Noyan Tapan
May 18, 2009

USTI NAD LABEM, MAY 18, NOYAN TAPAN. The Boxing International
Tournament finished on May 17 in the city of Usti nad Labem, Czech
Republic.

Eight sportsmen represented Armenia in the competitions. Andranik
Hakobian (75 kg, Etchmiadzin) and Tsolak Ananikian (91 kg, Abovian)
won all fights and took the first place. Hovhannes Danielian (51
kg, Yerevan) and Azat Hovhannisian (57 kg, Yerevan) became second
prize-winners.

In the team competition Armenia’s national team took the second place
being inferior to only Russia’s boxers. The sportsmen of Czech Republic
took the third place.