BAKU; First Vice Speaker: Azerbaijan Attaches Great Importance To Co

FIRST VICE SPEAKER: AZERBAIJAN ATTACHES GREAT IMPORTANCE TO COOPERATION WITH NATO

Trend
April 12 2010
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan attaches great importance to cooperation with NATO, said
the First Deputy Chairman of the Parliament of Azerbaijan.

"Azerbaijan’s cooperation with NATO is at a high level, and the
Ministry of Defence of our country conducts a number of activities
with NATO," First Deputy Chairman of the Parliament of Azerbaijan,
Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Security and Defence
Ziyafet Askerov said to a meeting with Rainer Stinner, Chairman of
the Sub-Committee NATO Partnerships (PCNP)

The head of the Azerbaijani delegation to the NATO PA Askerov said
that the country’s economic development, the reforms implemented in
various spheres further increases its international prestige.

"Currently, Azerbaijan is amongst the leading countries worldwide
for the level of economic development. However, in addition to this,
we have problems as well," said the first vice-speaker.

According to the committee chairman, Armenia ignores the resolutions
and decisions adopted in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict by the UN Security Council, the Council of Europe and other
international organizations. "Despite that the OSCE Minsk Group deals
with the issue of conflict solution, Armenia continues to dictate the
terms of international law, and if this continues so, Azerbaijan will
be forced to exercise its right to liberate its lands from occupation
by military means. Today, the world countries, instead of exerting
pressure on Armenia, do it with regards to Turkey. Various countries
try to call the events in early 20th century the "Armenian genocide",
but the world treats with indifference to Khojali genocide that took
place in 1992 against the Azerbaijani people. These countries should
give up double standards, should know the truth," he said.

According to Askerov, the aggressor should be punished according
to merit.

Noting that during this meeting he obtained new information on the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Stinner said that he supports peaceful
solution to the conflict. He said that if military operations begin
in the region, this can lead to unexpected results. "Members of the
NATO PA are ready to provide all possible assistance to resolve the
conflict," said the head of the delegation.

NATO’s cooperation with the South Caucasus states – Azerbaijan, Georgia
and Armenia is mainly carried out within the Partnership for Peace
Program, an Individual Partnership Action Plans and the Planning and
Review Process. "These documents define the objectives and intentions
of the partner countries to hold consultations with NATO on reforms
in the spheres of defense, security and military policy.

In addition to supporting the reforms, an important goal of
cooperation between NATO and Azerbaijan is to develop interaction
of the country’s Armed Forces with the forces of NATO countries in
peacekeeping operations.

Since 1999, the Azerbaijani troops have being providing support
to peacekeeping operations of NATO in Kosovo, and since 2002 –
in Afghanistan.

BAKU: New Hydroelectric Power Stations Opens In Occupied Azerbaijani

NEW HYDROELECTRIC POWER STATIONS OPENS IN OCCUPIED AZERBAIJANI LANDS

news.az
April 12 2010
Azerbaijan

New hydroelectric power stations opens in Karabakh.

Leader of Karabakh separatists Bako Saakyan and Armenian Premier Tigran
Sargsyan visited several hydroelectric powers stations of Martakert
(Agdere occupied by Armenians) on April 11.

They attended the opening ceremony of a water pipe in Upper Oratakh
village and hydroelectric power station Trkhe-1 and then visited
the construction area of Trkhe-2 hydroelectric power station and
familiarized with the works conducted there.

Saakyan stressed importance of building hydroelectric power stations
and irrigation network for the socioeconomic development and provision
of the energy security of our country. Saakyan noted that the works
in this direction will continue throughout the ‘country’.

Turkish Premier Licking His Wounds?

TURKISH PREMIER LICKING HIS WOUNDS?

news.am
April 12 2010
Armenia

The Armenian Genocide resolutions approved by different Parliaments
are not of benefit to Armenia, Turkish Premier Recep Erdogan stated
on April 12 at the opening ceremony of the Center for Global Islamic
Studies at George Mason University in Washington.

Turkey rejects the charges of Genocide and unfair and biased
resolutions approved by different Parliaments, said the Turkish
Premier. It is up to historians, not Parliaments, to study history
and express their opinions, stated Recep Erdogan. Ankara stated its
readiness to make its archives available to the public and urged other
states to do the same. The Turkish Premier reminded the attendees
that he proposed the formation of a joint commission of historians
to the Armenian President, but the initiative remained unanswered.

The Armenian side, however, has repeatedly stated its position on
the issue. The fact that Premier Erdogan recalled that in Washington
is evidence that he understands the essence of the Armenian-Turkish
protocols and decided to make one more attack while on a visit to
country that initiated the Armenian-Turkish process.

Armenian Weightlifters Bring Record Number Of Medals From European C

ARMENIAN WEIGHTLIFTERS BRING RECORD NUMBER OF MEDALS FROM EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP

Tert.am
12.04.10

The Armenian team of weightlifters, by winning 7 "big" medals, once
again proved in the European Weightlifting Championship 2010 in Minsk
that it is one of the strongest in Europe.

According to local Armenian sports news web site Arm.sport, the
Armenian weightlifters had never before returned from Europe with so
many medals.

The record with gold medals is not that good this time as in 2008
Armenia had 4 champions at once, while the Armenian national anthem
was played in Belarus during this championship only twice.

Given some of the Armenian weightlifter were not participating in this
Minsk championship due to different reasons, Armenia’s achievements
become far more praiseworthy.

Among Armenian weightlifters that did not take part in this
championship were Arakel Mirzoyan, Tigran V. Martirosyan, Gevorg
Davtyan, Nazik Avdalyan, who are real contenders of gold medals.

Fine of Deno Gold Mining Company cut 20 times due to recheck

Fine of Deno Gold Mining Company cut 20 times due to recheck by State
Environmental Inspection

2010-04-09 16:08:00

ArmInfo. "For Ensuring Ecological Safety and Developing Democracy" NGO
says Deno Gold Mining Company managed to reduce the amount of the fine
from 300 million AMD to 12 million AMD as a result of the recheck by
the State Environmental Inspection of the Ministry of Nature
Protection of RA, Ecolur NGO reports.

The written application to Alexander Sahakyan, new Head of State
Environmental Inspection of the Ministry of Nature Protection of RA (Ø
011 dated on 08.04.2010), the NGO points out the public speeches of
Syunik Environmental State Inspection in the local press in 2008. The
representatives of Syunik Environmental State Inspection spoke about
the checkups of Deno Gold Mining in 2007 where a number of violations
in the sphere of soil management had been revealed. There is also
information about the amount of the fine imposed on the company in the
amount of over 300 million AMD equal to embezzling 550 kg of gold.

Then the letter mentions the recheck of the company assigned by the
Ministry of Nature protection of RA already in 2008. As a result of
this recheck, the amount of the fine determined in 2007 was reduced
more than 20 times and made up 12 million AMD. The statement also
mentions Expert Samvel Gasparyan’s removal from the personnel of the
recheck committee who first revealed the abovementioned violations.
Still in 2009 this NGO applied to the Ministry of Nature Protection of
RA, Syunik Territorial State Environmental Inspection and Deno Gold
Mining Company with a request to submit the results for 2007- 2008,
but no reply had been received so far. "After this fuss around Akhtala
Ore Processing Combine we realized why we hadn’t received these
results," the letter says, "we learnt from the press that Director
General of Akhtala Ore Processing Combine Vladimir Ladchenko and his
deputy Levon Vardanyan were invited to the Minister of Nature
Protection of RA Aram Harutyunyan and afterwards the amount of this
fine was reduced by 20 times, i.e. from 202 million AMD to 10,141,600
AMD." The letter also says that they brought an action to the court
with demand to present information and filed a motion the Ministry of
Nature Protection of RA and Syunik Territorial State Environmental
Inspection to be involved in this process.

The Future of Holocaust Studies

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
April 9 2010

The Future of Holocaust Studies*

Johannes Houwink ten Cate

Holocaust awareness has become a worldwide phenomenon, and an
international free republic of Holocaust researchers has emerged.
Among long-term trends in the field of Holocaust studies are the
universalization of victimhood and the extension of the circle of
perpetrators. Present trends include Holocaust history as local
history, the integration of perpetrator and victim histories, and the
explanation of perpetrator behavior in ideological terms. Anticipated
future developments include greater discussion of the outlawing of
Holocaust denial, and the return of the explanation of perpetrator
behavior in terms of disposition. The term genocide has come to be
used too often. It is not only used a shield, but also as a sword in
new quests for utopia.

The History of the Field of Holocaust Research
The field of Holocaust research became truly international in the
1970s.[1] The single most important development since then has been
the growth of a worldwide free republic of researchers, which now
includes scholars from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom,
both Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, and Australia. There is some
research by scholars from South America, but it mostly deals with
Jewish emigration to that part of the world during the 1930s, not with
the Holocaust proper. Not yet included are scholars from Africa and
Asia. The boundaries of this republic of Holocaust research are
essentially the boundaries of the part of the world that during the
Cold War, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, constituted the free
West – along with Eastern Europe.

This points to the fact that Holocaust awareness is a way to discuss
core political values of the West such as democracy, responsibility,
and solidarity. It also is an instrument to strengthen the democratic
ethos in Eastern Europe. As Omer Bartov has put it, "in a century
characterized by a quest for perfection," Holocaust awareness deals
with "the narrow path between utopia and hell." The murderous pursuit
of utopian politics has "been the engine of our epoch’s aspirations
and disillusionments, violence and annihilation…. In essence our
century has tried to define what and who is human, and then to set
rules as to how human beings should live in society and who must be
excluded from it altogether."[2]

In keeping with Yehuda Bauer’s outlook, the basis for these
discussions is the idea of the universalization of victimhood, that
is, the idea that everybody is a potential victim of genocide.[3] In
other words, identity is not only an unfailing source of empowerment;
the Holocaust makes abundantly clear that identity is also a risk, and
possibly a fatal one. As Bauer wrote: "What happened before, can
happen again. We all are possible victims, possible perpetrators,
possible bystanders…. The Holocaust is a warning. It adds three
commandments to the ten of the Jewish-Christian tradition: Thou shalt
not be a perpetrator; Thou shalt not be a passive victim; and Thou
most certainly shalt not be a bystander."[4]

This universality of the importance of the Holocaust by no means
contradicts the specificity of the Holocaust; the two notions are two
sides of the same coin. Holocaust educators across the globe prove
this every day. To quote Bauer once more: "This menace is universal
and at the same time – because it is founded on the experience of the
Holocaust – very specifically connected with the Jews. The specific
and the universal cannot be separated." And as Bauer also observed:
"as a symbol of evil the awareness of the Holocaust is spreading all
over the world."[5]

Division of Labor
In the somewhat smaller republic of Holocaust researchers there is –
or perhaps was – an implicit division of labor. American and German
scholars specialize(d) in studies of the perpetrators; Israelis have
strongly focused on the victims. In the past these two types of
research were not connected. There is not yet sufficient input by
younger scholars from Eastern Europe, although some of the younger
researchers from Ukraine appear promising. Within Eastern Europe,
however, Poland stands apart, as scholars from that country such as
Waclaw Dlugoborski, Czeslaw Madajczyk, Feliks Tych, Franciszek Piper,
and Jan T. Gross have been doing distinguished work since the 1980s at
the latest.[6] Not all East European political elites support
Holocaust studies and Holocaust education. They tend to regard the
states they govern as victims of Stalinist terror and not as
accomplices in the Holocaust; Ukraine is a case in point. Not many
institutions actively support the younger East European researchers.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, however, is doing
so.

Overall, the field is internationalizing because researchers from new
"member states" have entered the research republic. Sometimes this was
a result of the debates on the restitution of Holocaust assets. The
Scandinavian countries, Belgium, and Greece are examples of this
tendency.[7]

Worldwide, perhaps 250 PhD students are now in the later phases of
their work on the Holocaust. In April 2009, the Strassler Center for
Holocaust and Genocide Studies of Clark University (USA) organized its
First International Graduate Students’ Conference on Holocaust and
Genocide Studies. One hundred twenty graduate students applied; 53
delivered speeches, 80 percent of them dealing with the Holocaust.[8]
Genocide research, however, is not dominated by historians but by
social scientists and experts in international humanitarian law. Some
of the young European scholars working on the Holocaust have secured
international funding for their research, in particular at American
and British universities. But there seem to be too few possibilities
for them to remain in this field because, in Europe at least, the
number of available post-doc scholarships appears to be limited.

The methodology of this research is not unlike that of medieval
studies. One needs to be multilingual to enter the field successfully.
The researchers study the documents that have not been destroyed by
the Nazis. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, they discovered that
many East European civil servants and individuals were just as
implicated in the largest and most total mass murder in history as
were German society and other West European societies and
bureaucracies.[9]

The Perpetrators
Thus, the universalization of victimhood has been one long-term trend,
and the steady extension of the circle of perpetrators has been
another. Important studies by Yaakov Lozowick and Michael Wildt, for
example,[10] have disproved Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of
evil[11] and have proved that many higher German bureaucrats were very
much ideologically motivated. The rich post-Cold War harvest of
regional studies of the Holocaust in Europe has now become meager.[12]
This, however, may well be a temporary setback. In addition to Bauer’s
forthcoming book on the shtetls in eastern Poland, one of his leading
students is now working on the Carpatho-Ukraine. And as the
abovementioned Strassler Center gathering in April 2009 made clear,
the regional approach remains to be selected by young researchers in
the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.[13]

There was a long and fruitful debate on the decision-making that led
to the Holocaust, but it has ended.[14] Following the famous
psychological experiments performed by Philip Zimbardo and Stanley
Milgram,[15] there has been widespread agreement that the behavior of
the ordinary perpetrators, those doing the actual killing, was
determined by the situation they were put in, not by their
psychological makeup.[16] As Bauer put it in his speech to the German
parliament in 1998: "the most horrible thing about the Shoah is in
fact not that the Nazis were inhuman – the most horrible thing about
it is that they were indeed human, just as human as you and I
are."[17] This notion has been extended to research on other
genocides. Donald J. Bloxham has maintained that "the very existence
of mass participation in most genocides shows that the context is
generally more important than the disposition and beliefs of the
individual perpetrator, since in the `right’ situation so many people
of demonstrably different characters and values participate…."[18]

This agreement on the normality of the ordinary, lower-level
perpetrators, however, perhaps belongs to the past. There seems to be
a strong contrast between the conviction that, if the situation is
"right," everybody is a potential perpetrator, and the results of
recent research on the evolutionary and neuroscientific aspects of
morality and on the links between (recidivistic) crime and genetic
factors.[19] This will lead to a new focus on the disposition of
perpetrators.

Present Trends
Certain present trends appear to be here to stay, at least for the
immediate future. One is the rise of "Holocaust history as local
history." That was the title of a major conference held in
Thessaloniki in June 2008, and it was apt.[20] Historians are
attempting to tell the large story of the Holocaust through the
perspective of the history, not of one region but of one single city,
or even in one major labor camp. As Christopher Browning recently
pointed out, this local research will show the need for a new
vocabulary on Jewish resistance as well.[21]

Another trend is the integration of perpetrator and victim histories,
as Saul Friedländer has done successfully in his recent synthesis.[22]
The writers of the new local histories are putting the Holocaust in
the perspective of the longer-term history of the relationship between
Gentiles and Jews in these localities and regions. In other words,
Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and East European history are
moving in each other’s direction.

Another development, as seen in works by Michael Wildt, David
Cesarani, and Saul Friedländer,[23] is the return of the explanation
of perpetrator behavior in ideological terms. There also is a new
focus on the history of the different types of camps, following larger
German research projects on the camps.[24] The use of personal
documents, particularly diaries, has become widespread, not only as a
source for the social history of the persecuted Jews, as done by
Friedländer, but as a topic in its own right, in order to study how
the persecuted Jews dealt with this. As Dan Michman has noted, the
future use of these "Jewish voices" as expressions of Jewish societies
and their structures (and not as the voices of mere individuals) also
offers an opportunity to bring Holocaust history and Jewish studies
more closely together.[25]

Genocides
There is a strong focus on post-Holocaust studies, dealing with how
European societies have in one way or another repressed their memories
of the Holocaust. Some of these studies, however, are not yet fully
integrated into the broader picture of postwar political and cultural
history of these countries. In a number of countries – but by no means
everywhere – a strong interaction has emerged between Holocaust
research and research on other modern genocides.

The Holocaust, however, remains the paradigmatic genocide, if only
because of the ideological radicalism of Nazism and the sheer number
of its Jewish victims. Since Rwanda, for example, there has been a
strong focus on open-air executions in the Holocaust. Scholars of
modern genocides draw heavily on the highly sophisticated
historiography of the Holocaust, and in doing so have made great
progress. This is especially evident in the research on the Armenian
and Rwandan genocides.[26]

Thanks to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust
Education, Remembrance and Research,[27] and as represented by the
work of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Yad
Vashem, the gap between the research output and Holocaust education
has been narrowed.

Future Developments
Some future developments may be safely predicted. There will be more
discussions on the outlawing of Holocaust and genocide denial in
European countries. One of the most fundamental current political
problems concerns the dangers of unbounded freedom of expression,
which have become apparent.[28] Another future tendency will be the
return of the explanation of perpetrator behavior in terms of
disposition.

As for the needs of researchers, one is for more research on
bystanders of the Holocaust and other modern genocides – that is, not
on foreign governments but on the passivity of those who have chosen
not to get involved. As a reviewer of a recent study on the passivity
of the United Nations during the Rwandan genocide accurately remarked:
"in seeking to blame western actors, [this book] twists logic to
excuse those who most obviously caused the tragedy…." Research on
the passivity of the foreign bystanders is useless if it blinds to the
"responsibility of the local actors who author their own
tragedies."[29]

There is a pronounced need to support the younger researchers from
Eastern Europe in their efforts to enter the field. A still stronger
integration of Holocaust and post-Holocaust studies in the more
general history of the (East) European countries is another necessity.
The need to secure more international funding in Europe for post-doc
fellowships is also obvious, and perhaps European universities should
offer more opportunities to young researchers from other countries.

Finally, there are good grounds for prudence as far as the frequency
of the use of the term genocide is concerned. As the denotation of
absolute evil, genocide is perhaps taking the place of the Holocaust.
As Jacques Semelin put it recently in a book focusing on the Holocaust
and the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica: "The term has been
applied, aptly or not, to all sorts of violent situations:… from
Cambodia to Chechnya, including Burundi, Rwanda, Guatemala, Colombia,
Iraq, Bosnia and Sudan." Retrospectively the term genocide has been
used to characterize the "massacres by the Greeks of the inhabitants
of Melos in the 5th century BC," the killing of the native Americans,
the Soviet-induced famine in Ukraine, and the dropping of the atom
bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In short: "Any group today that wants to construct itself as a victim
in the eyes of the entire world claims to have been a victim…of
genocide." And as, for example, Arab delegates proved when they
accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians during
the Durban Conference in South Africa in September 2001, "given the
powerful emotional charge the word genocide generates it can be used
and re-used to heap international opprobrium on whoever is accused of
genocidal intent."

The term genocide is used as much as "a symbolic shield to claim
victim status for one’s people, as a sword raised against one’s deadly
enemy."[30] This is a feature of currents efforts to shatter reality
in the quest for political utopia and racial purity.

* * *

Notes

* This article is a slightly redrafted and extended version of a
lecture presented by this author in Jerusalem in August 2009. Previous
versions of this text were read by Yehuda Bauer, Dan Michman, and
Manfred Gerstenfeld, whom I thank for their friendship. Any errors,
however, are mine and mine alone. The works referred to in the
following notes are selected.

[1] Johannes Houwink ten Cate, "The Enlargement of the Circle of
Perpetrators of the Holocaust," Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol.
20, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 2008): 52.

[2] Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern
Identity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4-5.

[3] "In fact, all of humanity is likely to be a victim, given the
current state of possibilities of destruction and unrest"; Yehuda
Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2001), xv.

[4] Ibid., 67.

[5] Ibid., 267, x-xi.

[6] The high level of Polish scholarship is, for instance,
demonstrated by the five-volume history of Auschwitz that was
published by Waclaw Dlugoborski and Franciszek Piper, eds., Auschwitz
1940-1945. Studien zur Geschichte des Konzentrations- und
Vernichtungslager Auschwitz (OÅ?wiÄ’cim: Verlag des Staatlichen Museums
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1999) [German]. The first excellent Polish
historian in this field was Czeslaw Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik
Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945 (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988)
[German]. His successors include: Feliks Tych, see Beate Kosmala and
Feliks Tych, eds., Facing the Nazi Genocide: Non-Jews and Jews in
Europe (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2004) and Jan T. Gross, Neighbors:
The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

[7] See, e.g., Stéphane Bruchfeld and Paul Levine, Tell Ye Your
Children: A Book about the Holocaust in Europe 1933-1945 (Stockholm:
Swedish Goverment Offices, 1998); Rudi van Doorslaer, ed., Gewillig
België. Overheid en Jodenvervolging tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog
(Antwerpen/Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Manteau en Soma, 2007) [Dutch]; Mark
Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews,
1430-1950 (New York: Knopf, 2005).

[8] For the conference program, see:
rence/graduate/Program/html.

[9] Houwink ten Cate, "Enlargement," 53.

[10] Yaakov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police
and the Banality of Evil (London and New York: Continuum, 2002);
Michael Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of
the Reich Security Main Office (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2010).

[11] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil, rev. ed. (New York: Viking, 1968).

[12] Houwink ten Cate, "Enlargement," 67, n. 16.

[13] See note 8.

[14] Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The
Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942
(Lincoln/Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press/Yad Vashem, 2004).

[15] Philip Zimbardo, The Psychology of Imprisonment: Privation, Power
and Pathology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972); Stanley
Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Approach (New York:
Harpercollins, first ed. 1973, latest ed. 2009).

[16] Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion
101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harpercollins, 1992);
Harald Welzer, Täter. Wie aus ganz normalen Männern Massenmörder
werden (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2005). [German]

[17] Bauer, Rethinking, 264.

[18] Donald J. Bloxham, "The Organisation of Genocide: Perpetration in
Comparative Perspective," in Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W.
Szejnmann, eds., Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in
Comparative Perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 187.

[19] See, e.g., Jan Verplaetse, Jelle de Schrijver, Sven Vanneste, and
Johan Braeckman, eds., The Moral Brain: Essays on the Evolutionary and
Neuroscientific Aspects of Morality (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London,
and New York: Springer Sciences and Business Media, 2009).

Although it has been previously argued that genetics play no part in
shaping antisocial and criminal behaviour a growing literature base
has served to substantiate that genetic factors are as important to
the development of some forms of criminal activity as are
environmental factors. First, there are simply too many studies, in
too many countries, using different methodologies that converge on the
same conclusion: genes do play a role. Second, other potentially less
controversial fields of behavioural trait research have not only
identified heritability in psychiatric disorders such as autism,
schizophrenia and reading disability, but also in personality traits
such as political conservatism. Thus it would be surprising, if
criminal behaviour – particularly recidivistic crime – was not in some
way influenced by genetic factors.

Sharon S. Ishikawa and Adrian Raine, "Behavioural Genetics and Crime,"
in Joseph Glicksohn, ed., The Neurobiology of Criminal Behaviour
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 81-82.

[20] Conference on "The Holocaust as Local History: Past and Present
of a Complex Relation," University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, June
2008. For the program, see:
_program_thessaloniki.pdf.

[21] Christopher R. Browning, "The Holocaust as Local History:
Survivor Memories of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camp,"
lecture presented in Thessaloniki (see ibid.).

[22] Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of
Extermination, 1939-1945 (New York: Harpercollins, 2007).

[23] David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (London: Heinemann, 2003).

[24] Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann., eds., Die
nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, 2 vols. (Göttingen:
Wallstein Verlag, 1998) [German]; Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel,
eds., Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen
Konzentrationslagern, 9 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2005-2009)
[German]. For the current state of the art in English, see Jane Caplan
and Nikolaus Wachsmann, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The
New Histories (New York: Routledge, 2010). Despite the progress in
this field, it remains largely true – as the current trial in Munich
against the alleged Sobibor guard John/Iwan Demjanjuk also shows –
that (as noted by Margers Vestermanis and Michael Wildt in 1998) while
there is a large body of scholarly literature on Auschwitz, the
scholarship on the death camps Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor has been
far too limited. It is also true that virtually nothing is known about
the camps in the Nazi-occupied territories further east, in the Baltic
states and in the occupied Soviet Union; Michael Wildt, "Die Lager im
Osten. Kommentierende Bemerkungen," in Herbert, Die
nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 1, 508. Notable
exceptions are Witold Chrostowski, Extermination Camp Treblinka
(London: Valentine Mitchell, 2004) and Jules Schelvis (and Bob Moore),
Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp (London: Berg, 2007).

[25] This was the essential point of a draft lecture that Prof. Dan
Michman prepared for the World Congress on Jewish Studies that took
place in Jerusalem in August 2009.

[26] Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the
Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books,
2008); Ugor U. Ã`ngör, Young Turk Social Engineering, Mass Violence and
the Nation State in Eastern Turkey, 1913-1950, unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2009; Scot Straus, The Order of
Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2006).

[27] The website of the Task Force is:

[28] Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on combating racism and
xenophobia, 28 November 2008, Official Journal of the European Union,
6.12.2008, I.328/55-58.

[29] Alan J. Kuperman, book review of Daniela Korslak, The Role of
France in the Rwandan Genocide (London: C. Hurst, 2007) and of Fred
Grünfeld and Anke Huijboom, The Failure to Prevent Genocide in Rwanda:
The Role of Bystanders (Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007), in
Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 2009): 541.

[30] Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of
Massacre and Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007),
308-313.

* * *

Prof. Johannes Houwink ten Cate studied contemporary and socioeconomic
history at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. From 1985 to
2002 he worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for War
Documentation. Since 1989 his primary topic of interest has been the
Nazi persecution of the Jews in the occupied Dutch territories. Since
2002 he has been professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at the
University of Amsterdam.

wPage.asp?DRIT=5&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=1 11&FID=625&PID=0&IID=3562&TTL=The_ Future_of_Holocaust_Studies

http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/Sho
www.clark.edu/departments/holocaust/chgsconfe
www.fondationshoah.info/FMS/IMG/pdf/holocaust

Washington Meeting: Parliamentary view of Yerevan. By YerevanReporte

allvoices
April 9 2010

Washington Meeting: Parliamentary view of Yerevan. By YerevanReporter

The representatives of parliamentary political forces of Armenia today
presented their expectations from the upcoming Washington meeting,
April 12-13, President Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Recep
Erdogan.

The head of the parliamentary faction of the opposition Heritage
party, Stepan Safarian said that the consent of the Armenian president
to meet with the head of the Turkish government did not come as a
surprise. "The Armenian authorities have demonstrated to the world
community its willingness to continue to wait for steps by Turkey, as
in Yerevan, as well as in Ankara, unfortunately, are not ready to make
a decision to withdraw from the process of normalization of
Armenian-Turkish relations, in fact desired by external forces, he
said. Members expressed concern that the Turkish side will obviously
speculate upcoming Washington meeting, presenting it as a continuation
of the dialogue, while the ratification process of the
Armenian-Turkish protocols have no signs of life.

Leader of the parliamentary faction "Rule of Law" Eghineh Bisharyan
noticed that the Washington meeting is not due process of ratification
of the protocols. However, she expressed the opinion that the
Armenian-Turkish official contacts will contribute to Ankara’s
decision on the further course of normalization of bilateral
relations.

A member of the ARF faction of the opposition party Artsvik Minasyan
expressed concern that as a result of the Washington meeting will not
be able to fully protect the Armenian national interests and urged the
authorities to take steps to prevent the weakening position of Armenia
in the international arena. However, he noted with regret that the
political majority of Parliament rejected the initiative of the ARF to
give Parliament the function of making reservations to international
agreements in the process of their ratification, in particular, the
Armenian-Turkish protocols. According to the MP, this step of the
Armenian authorities was situational decision aimed at pleasing Turkey
and third countries. Minasyan expressed confidence that in the
American capital "will attempt to preserve the Armenian-Turkish
protocols on the agenda and some strengthening in the process of the
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. According to him, Turkey has not ratified
the Protocol and shall make every effort to justify its position.

A member of the faction of "Prosperous Armenia" Naira Zohrabyan said
that throughout the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish
relations official Yerevan has not violated the rules of the game and
keeps the continuity of the agreements reached. Against this
background, now a retaliatory move should take Ankara, facing an
impasse as a result of the nomination of preconditions, "she said.

The leader of the Republican Party of Armenia Galust Sahakian called a
positive step consent of the President Sargsyan will meet in the
American capital with the Turkish prime minister. He said the upcoming
meeting should not be regarded as a serious political or diplomatic
factors, since it gives a chance to Turkey to look interested in
continuing the process of ratification of the protocols. Sahakian said
he would closely monitor the "interesting meeting" Sargsyan-Erdogan,
expressing confidence that the Armenian side does not back down from
their stated positions. However, he stressed the importance of
meetings in Washington Presidents of Armenia and the United States in
the context of development of Armenian-American relations.

ews/5572612-washington-meeting-parliamentary-view- of-yerevan

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-n

Jivan Gasparyan awarded Commonwealth Star Prize

Jivan Gasparyan awarded Commonwealth Star Prize for maintenance and
augmentation of national music heritage and considerable contribution
to world music culture

2010-04-09 18:18:00

ArmInfo. The well-known Armenian musician, composer, duduk player
Jivan Gasparyan has been awarded the Commonwealth Star Prize for
maintenance and augmentation of the national music heritage and
considerable contribution to the world music culture, Alexander
Kalugin, Press-Secretary of the Interstate Fund for Humanitarian
Cooperation of the CIS Member States, told ArmInfo.

For the first time in the CIS history, the award ceremony took place
in Moscow, Pashkov’s House of the Russian State Library on April 9.
The guests of the ceremony were scientific and creative intellectuals
from the CIS, members of the Council for Humanitarian Cooperation of
the CIS Member States and Board of the Interstate Fund for
Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS Member States, and other
interstate structures. Chairman of the Federation Council of the
Russian Federation Sergey Mironov handed the prizes.

The Commonwealth Star Prize was established in 2008 by the Council for
Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS Member States and the Interstate
Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS Member States. The prize
consists of money reward, a diploma, badge of honor of the prize
laureate, and its certificate. In each of the nominations three prizes
worth 2 mln RUR are awarded.

Normalisation Turco-Armenienne : Envoi Prochain D’Un Emissaire Turc

NORMALISATION TURCO-ARMENIENNE : ENVOI PROCHAIN D’UN EMISSAIRE TURC A BAKOU

armenews
vendredi9 avril 2010

La Turquie va prochainement depecher un emissaire en Azerbaïdjan pour
apaiser les inquietudes de son allie quant a ses recents efforts visant
a la normalisation de ses relations avec l’Armenie, ont indique jeudi
des responsables turcs.

L’emissaire, le sous-secretaire du ministère des Affaires etrangères
Feridun Sinirlioglu, se rendra a Bakou vendredi avec une lettre du
Premier ministre Recep Tayyip Erdogan, deux jours après avoir effectue
une visite similaire a Erevan, a dit a des journalistes le chef de
la diplomatie Ahmet Davutoglu.

"Nous esperons parvenir a une normalisation des relations entre la
Turquie et l’Armenie en faisant progresser le processus dans la bonne
direction au cours des prochaines semaines".

Un diplomate turc a indique que M. Sinirlioglu rencontrerait a Bakou
le president Ilham Aliev et le ministre des Affaires etrangères Elmar
Mammadiarov. Il a souligne que la position d’Ankara sur le conflit du
Nagorny Karabakh entre l’Armenie et l’Azerbaïdjan demeurait inchangee.

"Il est evident qu’il (le Nagorny Karabakh) fait partie d’un tout",
a declare cette source.

L’Azerbaïdjan, qui est lie a la Turquie par d’etroits liens ethniques,
politiques et economiques, a vivement desapprouve la signature en
octobre par Ankara et Erevan de deux protocoles visant a l’instauration
de relations diplomatiques et a l’ouverture de la frontière entre
les deux pays.

L’Armenie et l’Azerbaïdjan se sont opposes au debut des annees 1990
au cours d’une guerre pour la possession du Nagorny Karabakh, une
region peuplee majoritairement d’Armeniens mais enclavee en territoire
azerbaïdjanais, actuellement sous contrôle armenien.

La Turquie avait ferme sa frontière avec l’Armenie en 1993 en soutien
a l’Azerbaïdjan.

En octobre, la Turquie a indique qu’une avancee sur la resolution de ce
conflit serait un element decisif pour permettre la ratification par
le Parlement turc des protocoles de normalisation, une precondition
rejetee par l’Armenie, qui n’a pas entame non plus le processus
de ratification.

RA Government Toughens Control Over Major Taxpayers

RA GOVERNMENT TOUGHENS CONTROL OVER MAJOR TAXPAYERS

PanARMENIAN.Net
April 8, 2010 – 13:02 AMT 08:02 GMT

The Armenian government will toughen control over big businesses to
make their activity more transparent, RA Prime Minister said.

"The Ministry of Finance has already produced the list of the country’s
major taxpayers, annual income of which exceeded AMD 1 billion in
2009," Tigran Sargsyan said during April 8 government session.

He admitted that the government is not in full control of big
businesses which suppress the small and medium businesses therewith.

"There is an apprehension that SMBs felt the burden of tax payments
more than big businesses," he said. "The only way to ensure
transparency of big businesses’ activity is to publish conclusions
of independent audit."