Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

IS TURKEY’S CONSUL UNHAPPY THAT NOT ALL ARMENIANS WERE SLAUGHTERED LIKE SHEEP?
Harut Sassounian

Panorama.am
04/05/2010

Hakan Tekin, the young and inexperienced Turkish Consul General in
Los Angeles, is trying hard to earn brownie points with his bosses in
Ankara by countering any reference to Armenians in the U.S. media. He
went overboard last week by sending an offensive letter to the Los
Angeles Times.

Tekin was displeased with Patt Morrison’s interview with me published
by the Times in its op-ed page on April 23. The article was titled,
"Harut Sassounian: True to the Past."

In his brief letter, Consul General Tekin made several misjudgments.

The first was to criticize the L.A. Times’ Pulitzer-Prize winning
veteran journalist Patt Morrison, alleging that there were "many
misleading elements" in her interview, without naming a single one.

Judging from the text of the Consul General’s letter, it was probably
drafted by one of the many American public relations firms hired by
the Turkish government at great cost. While the words may have been
written by Americans, the thoughts are definitely those of a Turkish
denialist! P.R. firms don’t really care how silly their letters
sound, as long as their employer is satisfied and compensates them
handsomely. Here is a piece of free advice that the Turkish government
and the Consul General should keep in mind before taking on again
the free press in a free country: "Never pick a fight with someone
who buys ink by the barrel."

Tekin is behaving as if he is still in Turkey, where the media is
routinely suppressed by such fascist tactics as throwing journalists
in jail or physically eliminating them. He is vainly trying to import
Turkey’s undemocratic "gag rule" into the United States by trying to
silence the L.A. Times!

The Consul General goes on to attack me for the photograph that
accompanies the L.A. Times article, in which I am holding the
picture of my grandmother "garlanded with a bandolier of bullets." I
am very proud of grandma Gadar, because at a time when more than a
million Armenians were being marched to their deaths by the genocidal
rulers of Tekin’s ancestors, she and her fellow Zeitountsis — men,
women and children — defended themselves valiantly and refused to
be slaughtered like sheep. Had she not fought to save her life, I
would not have existed today, which may have made the Consul General
happier! Is Tekin upset that the Turkish government was unable to
finish the job of exterminating every last Armenian?

Consul General Tekin then criticizes me for my "relentless opposition"
to the infamous Armenia-Turkey Protocols. He has no one else to blame
than his own government for not ratifying these Protocols which have
been collecting dust in the Turkish Parliament for more than six
months. Armenians are indeed fortunate that Turkey’s leaders have
inadvertently protected Armenia’s national interests by not ratifying
the Protocols, so that they could extract more concessions from the
Armenian government!

Incredibly, Tekin ends his pathetic letter by admonishing me to
be more like William Saroyan, who he claims was "compassionate"
toward Turks! May I remind the Turkish Consul of Saroyan’s well-known
statement castigating the Turks for having destroyed Armenia and its
people. Here is the original version of that quotation, as it was
published in Inhale & Exhale, New York: Random House, 1936: "Go ahead,
destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915. There is war in
the world. Destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them from their
homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn
their houses and their churches. See if they will not live again. See
if they will not laugh again. See if the race will not live again when
two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years after, and laugh, and
speak in their tongue. Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it.

See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world,
you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world,
go ahead and try to destroy them."

Could it be that the Turkish Consul General is trying to denigrate me,
because I have rejected his repeated invitations to get together, and

TATEV TOURISM CENTER ESTIMATED $40MLN

PanARMENIAN.Net
May 3, 2010 – 11:55 AMT 06:55 GMT

The works for reconstruction of Tatev tourism center are rapidly
progressing.

"Construction of aerial tramway proceeds within the schedule and will
be finished by October 16. It will be the longest aerial tramway
meeting all international standards," executive director of the
National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia Bekor Papazyan told
a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

"Tourism products, including organization of walking tours and
establishment of an oil mill, will be launched. Paths will be laid
towards the cave of Khndzoresk, where national dishes will be offered
to the tourists," he said.

The investments have totaled $20mln, with the whole project estimated
$40mln. "$10lmn was invested for the aerial tramway construction
and $10mln for the reconstruction of the monastery. A part of extra
expenses will be covered by the government," Mr. Papazyan said.

ARMENIAN MUSIC WAS PLAYED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TURKISH PARLIAMENT

PanARMENIAN.Net
April 29, 2010 – 10:26 AMT 05:26 GMT

Great Armenian composer Sarkis Efendi’s music was played during a
break between Grand National Assembly of Turkey conferences. This was
the first time it happened in Turkish parliament, more accustomed to
classical European music, Milliyet reported.

Sarkis Efendi was born in 1885 to a family of Istanbul-residing
Armenian musician. In 1930 he emigrated to Paris, where he died
in 1944.

Fraud nets man 7 years

He deprived state of $3.2M by smuggling cigarettes from North Carolina.

By Max Zimbert

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Glendale resident who was convicted of cigarette fraud and tax evasion in
April 2008 was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years in a federal
prison.

Between January 2002 and June 2005, Avedis Djeredjian, now 41, bought more
than 367,960 cartons of cigarettes from North Carolina without adequate tax
stamps from California regulators, depriving California of $3.2 million in
tax revenue, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

U.S. District Court Judge George King also ordered Djeredjian to pay back
more than $6.4 million. And upon completing his prison sentence, Djeredjian
will have three years of parole.

"With the outcome of this case, it should be very clear that there is no
state line that will insulate illegal traffickers of cigarettes from our
vigorous investigation and prosecution," Zebedee Graham, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms special agent in charge, said in a statement.

In 2008, the jury did not convict Djeredjian’s wife, Carmen Badrian, or
Roobik Ohaniansaki, whom authorities had tried to tie to the scheme. Both
lived in Glendale at the time.

John Torres, the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the sentencing vindicated the
inter-state and undercover investigation.

"This sentencing clearly shows that trafficking in contraband tobacco
products will not be tolerated," he said in an e-mail. "This is a great
conclusion."

George Holding, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina,
said in a statement that the verdict upheld the federal government’s role to
ensure that people do not thwart state taxing authority.

Copyright © 2010 – Glendale News Press

A NEW SYSTEM OF PROVIDING TEXTBOOKS TO BE WORKED OUT IN 2011

ARMENPRESS
Apr 29, 2010

YEREVAN, APRIL 29, ARMENPRESS: The system of providing textbooks
published by state funding must be changed, Chairman of the Oversight
Chamber of Armenia Iskhan Zakaryan said at today’s governmental
session. According to him, though a great sum of money is extended
for publishing textbooks for junior classes, which must be provided
for free, their sale in the market is continued.

I. Zakaryan said the studies have shown that the demand of books
through state means is satisfied in 100 %. In that case it is not
clear why more books are published, as a result of which the textbooks
appear in the market. According to him, one of the issues is that
there are selective textbooks, and the other issue is that the books
do not reach to schools from governor offices.

Armenian Education and Science Minister Armen Ashotyan noted that the
current system of providing books does not justify itself. He said
that in many cases the applications received from schools and governor
offices do not correspond to the wish of a school director or teacher.

He noted that the mechanisms and approaches must be changed for
the next year; the selection of books must not depend only on the
governor office or school. According to the minister, special oversight
mechanisms must be worked out, in order it becomes clear which books
to provide to children.

FINDINGS FROM YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY IN SCIENCE REPORTED

Journal of Mathematics
April 27, 2010

According to recent research published in the journal Symmetry
Integrability and Geometry – Methods and Applications, "The Lieb-Mattis
theorem on the antiferromagnetic ordering of energy levels is
generalized to SU(N) extended Hubbard model with Heisenberg exchange
and pair-hopping terms."

"It is proved that the minimum energy levels among the states from
equivalent representations are nondegenerate and ordered according to
the dominance order of corresponding Young diagrams. In particular,
the ground states form a unique antisymmetric multiplet," wrote T.

Hakobyan and colleagues, Yerevan State University.

The researchers concluded: "The relation with the similar ordering
among the spatial wavefunctions with different symmetry classes of
ordinary quantum mechanics is discussed also."

Hakobyan and colleagues published their study in Symmetry Integrability
and Geometry – Methods and Applications (Ordering of Energy Levels for
Extended SU(N) Hubbard Chain. Symmetry Integrability and Geometry –
Methods and Applications, 2010;6():24).

For additional information, contact T. Hakobyan, Yerevan State
University, Alex Manoogian 1, Yerevan 375049, Armenia.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Symmetry
Integrability and Geometry – Methods and Applications is: National
Acad Science Ukraine, Institute Math, 3 Tereschchenkiv Ska St.,
Kyiv 4, 01601, Ukraine.

ARMENIAN NGOS SET UP GROUP TO PROMOTE NORMALIZATION OF TIES WITH TURKEY

Mediamax
April 28 2010
Armenia

Yerevan, 28 April 28. Four Armenian NGOs announced establishment of
a consortium on normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations.

Mediamax reports that the memorandum was signed by the Union of
Manufacturers [Industrialists] and Entrepreneurs (Employers) of Armenia
(UMEA), Yerevan Press Club (YPC), Eurasia Partnership Foundation and
International Centre for Human Development (ICHD).

Executive Director of ICHD Tevan Poghosyan stated that the memorandum
aims at coordinating programmes [being] realized for normalization
of Armenian-Turkish relations. "The sides of the memorandum attach
importance to Armenian-Turkish relations and want to make their
contribution to this important process for Armenia," Tevan Poghosyan
stated.

UMEA Chairman Arsen Kazaryan stated that he does not consider
establishment of the consortium "a belated initiative" against the
background of the suspension of the process of Armenian-Turkish
protocols’ ratification in the Armenian National Assembly
[parliament]. According to him, "civil initiatives should be next to
political processes in order to achieve the desired results".

According to him, each of the four organizations has a circle of
Turkish partners, jointly with whom they will be elaborating projects.

Chairman of YPC Boris Navasardyan stated that he does not agree to
[with] the opinion that "the process of normalizing Armenian-Turkish
relations has been exhausted".

"The first stage of the dialogue might have been described as
constructive indefiniteness, and now the sides try to make analysis
of the reasons, which hindered achieving a result," he noted.

GENOCIDE IS PANTURKISM IN OPERATION
Leonid Martirosyan

Azat Artsakh Newspaper
April 26, 2010
Nagorno Karabakh Republic

On April 24th all progressive humanity celebrated tragic date –
the 95th anniversary of the Genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Empire.

Memorial services and processions passed in many cities of the
world… In many countries… There were memory meetings, meetings
of reminders, protest meetings. On April 24th, from the earliest
morning people, citizens of Armenia and Artsakh – groups or one by one
went to pay a tribute of respect to innocent killed old men, women,
children – the Armenians living ninety five and more years ago in
the territory of modern Turkey. In Yerevan the stream of people was
pulled to Tsitsernakaberd, in Stepanakert – to the Memorial complex.

People put flowers on monuments and once again reminded the world
of one and a half millions shot, strangled, crucified, raped
Armenians of the Western Armenia who had become victims of the
criminal policy of young Turks. And the world once again will
shudder for the horror created by fanatics of panturkism in the
beginning of the last century. The world will shudder and once again
will call things by their proper names. The genocide will be called
genocide. How this crime against humanity is designated in United
Nations documents. And, probably, on what would be desirable to hope,
other fair people of a planet will join to the voices of the people,
who have already recognized the Genocide of the Armenian people in
Ottoman Turkey. And really it is necessary to hope for it, because
already in the Turkey are sounded more loudly voices of Turks, whose
consciences are tormented with crimes of their predecessors, whose
hands are empurpled by blood of innocent people. In Turkey already
there are people who, feeling a huge pain for ruthlessly destroyed,
fellow citizens, urge the others to divide this pain. Unfortunately,
as though loudly these fair voices sounded, they are muffled by others’
voices. In modern Turkey still dominates aggressive incite against
Armenia and the Armenian world. And Turkish authorities give tone to
this aggression.

The governmental circles of Turkey in any way do not wish to recognize
monstrous crimes of the past, in any way do not wish to listen to
reason of world community, do not think even of, at least evil deed.

Moreover, in Armenian-Turkish relations even a paradoxical
situation has been created. In relation to Armenia Turkey is adjusted
aggressively, even spitefully. And after all, apparently, all should be
on the contrary. Turks carried out genocide, Turks destroyed Armenians,
and at a Turk the misanthropic doctrine of eradication of Armenians
as the nations was preached. But at Turks hatred to Armenians and all
Armenian today prevails. Thus the same Turks like to argue today on
tolerance, about peaceful disposition, about the European standards
and civilized relations. By what is not a paradox?

However, there is no paradox .Because if to exclude those fair Turks,
who listen to the conscience, who urge to recognize the Genocide not
for the sake of diplomatic shifts, and at heart’s bidding, so in all
the rest Turkey has remained the same Turkey. And at all there is no
difference how to name it – Ottoman or modern.

Because not the country name reflects on its essence, but conducting
of such state policy which defines its place in a world civilization.

Today the state policy of Turkey differs by nothing from a state
policy of Ottoman Empire. There is no need here and now to interfere
in historical-cultural urological layers of a mentioned theme: it is
an object of research of historians and politicians, however all the
same it costs to mention one important aspect of the characteristic
of Turkish statehood. It’s about panturkism as that. Some experts and
"Turkologists" are for some reason inclined to consider panturkism as
a chimera, a weak echo of the past. As those representatives of the
Turkish people who are ready to recognize errors of the past, probably,
think so and do not amuse themselves by hopes on Great Turan. Actually
the geopolitical doctrine of Turkey and in whole its state policy have
not undergone any changes. The ominous phantom of the ideologist of
young turks doctor Nazim still soars in the governmental offices of
Turkey. As acknowledgement to the told can serve the tightened history
with the notorious Armenian-Turkish reports, proceeding blockade of
Armenia by Turkey, and by all ways, including the military, barefaced
support to Aliev’s totalitarian-expansionist regime in Azerbaijan. So
the ideology of panturkism has not sunk into oblivion, it is till now
a reality and rather serious factor during discussion of geopolitical
situations – not only in the region, but also behind its borders. A
factor about which it is necessary to be quite earnestly. And it,
in particular, means, that the Genocide theme should not be limited
only by struggle for its international recognition. This theme should
sound all time. Together with a genocide of our days – "Sumgait",
"Baku", "Kirovabad", "Maragha" and other crimes of Azerbaijan.
Do you remember their slogan: "One people – two states"? Let’s add –
two massacre states.

YEREVAN MUNICIPALITY’S TALE ABOUT KILLER EXCAVATORS

ArmInfo
2010-04-27 20:12:00

ArmInfo. The legality of the project to build a cafe near National
Library and Agrarian University can be disputed at court.

During a special discussion today representative of Transparency
International Anti-Corruption Center Sona Ayvazyan said that the
center was ready to sue the owners. She urged representatives of
other NGOs to support them. She said that the center’s last attempt
to appeal to court (against the Teghut project) was a failure: the
Administrative Court dismissed the claim while the Court of Cassation
satisfied only the claim of Ecodar NGO and refused to recognize the
center as claimant.

To recall, the cafe in one of the Yerevan parks has been a subject for
ceaseless disputes between ecologists and Municipality of Yerevan
for over a month. According to the Association of Consumers of
Armenia, the cafe "swallowed" 20 trees, which is proved by photos
and video-materials. At the same time, the official position of the
Municipality is that the trees became the victims of not an axe,
but excavators, which allegedly caught them accidentally. Garnik
Manoukyan, a representative of the Armenian Nature Protection Ministry,
thinks that the main problem is that the part, which earlier belonged
to the Agrarian University, has been transferred to the Yerevan
Municipality. Thus, the students of the Agrarian University and the
rectorate are deprived of the opportunity to defend their rights. As
regards possible interference of the ministry, it is practically
brought to null, as according to Manoukyan, the owners of the cafe
have all the necessary documents for construction. It is noteworthy
that the documents are certified by the Municipality, which is famous
for its numerous swears of love for green areas. And if the promises
and the reality do not coincide, it is always possible to find the
guilty – for instance, the excavators-tree haters (Armenian response
to the Hollywood transformers).

IN ARMENIA THE PRACTICE OF NUMBERS REMOVAL FROM A CAR WILL BE SUBSTITUTED BY THEIR EVACUATION TO THE CAR POUND

ArmInfo
2010-04-27 14:46:00

ArmInfo. In the near future in Armenia the practice of numbers removal
from the cars of the "guilty" drivers will be substituted by their
evacuation to the car pound, commander of the Road Police of Armenia,
Colonel Margar Ohanyan, said at today’s press-conference.

Having confessed that removal of numbers from a car is not foreseen
by the law, he said that with a help of such an "illegal" action
policemen were trying to prevent violations by the drivers.