GEORGIA’S DEPUTY MINISTER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMEMT SCEPTICALLY TREATS
OPPORTUNITY OF CONSTRUCTION OF TURKEY-GEORGIA RAILWAY

AKHALKALAK, January 17 (Noyan Tapan). Henrik Muradian, Deputy Minister
of Economic Development of Georgia, scpetically treats the opportunity
of realization of the agreement on construction of the
Kars-Akhalkalak-Tbilisi railway. The document was signed in late
December 2004 in Tbilisi by Alexi Alexishvili, Georgia’s Minister of
Economic Development, Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s Minister of Transport,
Musa Panahov, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Minister of Transport. According to
preliminary calculations, about $350m will be spent on the
construction of the railway, 200m out of which will be spent on the
construction of the Kars-Akhalkalak line, 150m on the reconstruction
of the Akhalkalak-Tbilisi line. According to Muradian, the agreement
is only on paper and there are no resources necessary for
implementation of the project yet. There is no investor who will
assume the construction of the railway. It’s not excluded that the
project won’t be implemented during the coming 20-30 years. At the
same time Henrik Muradian attached importance to the construction of
the Akhalkalak-Kartsakh-Kars motor highway. The construction of the
Turkish sector of the road has been already finished long ago and the
construction of the Georgian sector will begin this year. The Kartsakh
customs house will open, which, according to H.Muradian, will be
economically more profitable for Armenia, too. According to the A-Info
agency, the first agreement on construction of the
Kars-Akhalkalak-Tbilisi railway was signed between Georgia and Turkey
in 1997 January 28. According to the Anatolu Turkish news agency, on
the occasion of signing of the new agreement in 2004 December in
Tbilisi Turkish Minister Yildirim declared that Turkey, Georgia and
Azerbaijan will make a final decision on the program in 2005 April and
the program will be financed by the 3 countries.

New York Post
Jan 17 2005

STUN SHARES HYPE

By CHRISTOPHER BYRON

January 17, 2005 — Two weeks ago, stock in a stun gun company was
widely viewed on Wall Street as the hottest ticket in town, with just
a handful of previously unknown penny stock outfits soaring on the
shirttails of Nasdaq-listed Taser International Inc., to a combined
market value of more than $1 billion.
Yet by the end of last week the gig seemed to be up, with pink sheets
high-flyer Stinger Systems Inc. leading the way down with a one-day
drop of more than 40%. Through it all, one could hear again that
familiar tell-tale sound of hype, hope and hot air wheezing from yet
another penny stock soufflé gone flat.

It’s a sound that investors are hearing more and more these days as
the growing workload of legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and
the Patriot Act has caused the Securities and Exchange Commission to
increasingly ignore regulation of the penny stock market. Result: a
spreading plague of financial world squeegeemen in the gutters and
alleyways of Wall Street.

Last week in this space we looked at a bungled SEC effort to take on
a gang of penny stock pump-and-dumpers behind a North Carolina outfit
named Absolute Health and Fitness Inc., which claimed to own a
regional network of fitness clubs.

Now, at least one of the players in that affair has surfaced in the
stun gun bubble. He is a Casselberry, Fla. ex-con and registered sex
offender named Orville Baldridge, who served as the promotional
muscle behind Absolute Health and Fitness Inc. at the turn of the
decade. Baldridge has now reappeared as the oomph behind the shell
for a penny stock outfit called Law Enforcement Associates Corp.
(LENF), whose stock price had soared 1,693% since last autumn on stun
gun hype from a group of paid stock promoters in Vancouver.

LENF’s SEC filings are a hodgepodge of incomplete and conflicting
information. In one bizarre case, the filings indicate that nearly 22
million shares of stock in the LENF shell – known as Academy
Resources – were issued by a boat moving company that had no apparent
power to issue them in the first place.

According to the filings, LENF began life in May of 1998 as a Ne vada
penny stock shell called Academy Resources, Inc., with 5.45 million
shares outstanding. Management consisted of a one-person board of
directors, with the seat being occupied by a man named Nolan Moss.

The filings don’t provide any additional details about Moss, but if
the SEC had wanted to check him out, they would have found Moss to be
a Vancouver-based penny stock crook who had already been fined
$30,000 by Canadian regulators in a separate stock-rigging scheme.

Want more? Well, an exhibit to one of the SEC filings shows that in
June of 2000, a mysterious Nevada outfit called “Academy Yacht
Deliveries Corporation” popped up out of nowhere and purported to
issue 21.8 million shares of “Academy” stock to acquire a
Delaware-incorporated “development stage company” called Myofis
Internet Inc.

Nor does this mishmash of alleged facts explain why a company
identified only as “Carcinotek Internet, Inc.” would surface as well
in the deal as a joint signator alongside Myofis.

In fact, the appearance of Carcinotek simply underscores the
duplicitous and ragged way LENF seems to have been run from the
moment of its birth – as a toy for penny-stock promoters whose
handshakes are often worthless and whose contracts get signed in
disappearing ink.

In reality, Pasadena-based Carcinotek was not an Internet company at
all, but an Armenian-controlled cancer research outfit that got
shoehorned into the June 2000 merger of Myofis and the Academy shell
in the apparent belief that the Armenian bunch would agree to become
what amounted to financial tinsel in the deal.

Not surprisingly, the Armenians failed to play ball, leaving what had
plainly been set up as the first step in a penny stock promotional
hustle to go forward with not even a hint of a reason why the owners
of the Academy shell would give away 80% of the shell’s stock acquire
an “Internet” business having no value at all.

In any event, once the merger was consummated in June of 2000, Nolan
Moss surrendered his seat on Academy’s one-person board to a fellow
named Guy Cohen as Myofis’s designated hitter.

Documents filed with the SEC in July of 2002 try to gloss over this
entire period, stating only vaguely that by the end of 2000 the
Myofis Internet project hadn’t gotten off the ground so the
investment was “written off.”

Really? Archived Web pages obtained from a data collection research
project involving the Library of Congress and the National Science
Foundation show that a Web site called Myofis.com in fact went live
literally days after the company claims it was shut down. What’s
more, by May 2001 the site had morphed into a promotional vehicle for
penny stocks, called Streamingnews.net, with the Web site being
registered to one Guy Cohen, who promptly began using it to pump
LENF’s share price.

In January 2002, Academy Resources merged with Law Enforcement
Associates Corp., a privately-held North Carolina maker of various
sorts of policing equipment and espionage gear.

To acquire the family-owned business, which had been run by a North
Carolina State Senator named John Carrington, the shell’s owners
issued 10 million more shares of stock in the shell, complete with a
befuddling and selectively applied one-for-three reverse stock-split
designed to whittle down the holdings of the Myofis bunch while
leaving Carrington himself untouched.

So, who is John Carrington? Over the years, North Carolina newspapers
have reported on sales of paramilitary equipment by his company to
oppressive foreign regimes such as those of prewar Iraq and
Apartheid-era South Africa.

And just this last April, LENF was raided by federal agents seeking
evidence to explain how equipment manufactured by the firm had wound
up illegally in China. Yet the company has so far not issued a Form
8K to report this matter to the general public and no one at the SEC
seems to have asked that it be done either.

LENF’s newest cheerleader is a Vancouver-based stock promoter named
Dawn Van Zant, who waves her pom-poms tirelessly on behalf of LENF
and her other clients via more than three dozen different penny-stock
pumping Web sites she owns and operates.

And looming in the distance behind all of these characters are the
shadowy outlines of the penny stock world’s Mister Bigs, who are a
story for another day. But if the SEC lacks the manpower – or the
moxie – to rid Wall Street of its squeegeemen and penny stock
graffiti, why bother pointing out even bigger battles after that?

The penny stock market is a Wall Street alleyway that simply must be
hosed down, and so far no one’s doing nuttin’. Your tax dollars? Go
figure.

EurasiaNet Organization
Jan 16 2005

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: ANNUAL REPORT PAINTS BLEAK PICTURE IN MANY FORMER
SOVIET STATES
Andrew Tully 1/16/05
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL

The Iron Curtain fell nearly 15 years ago, but Human Rights Watch
says it is mostly business as usual in much of the former Soviet
Union. That’s according to “World Report 2005,” the annual survey
conducted by Human Rights Watch.

According to the rights advocacy group, all of Russia is effectively
controlled from Moscow, elections in Belarus are laughable, abuse of
prisoners is the norm in Uzbekistan, while Armenia and Azerbaijan are
run by authoritarian regimes as the two countries continue their
standoff over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Only Ukraine shows tentative signs of becoming an open society, but
democratic developments there are too recent to show a trend.

In Russia, the report says, police torture and the violent hazing of
military recruits continues. And it blames the government of
President Vladimir Putin for the disappearances and extrajudicial
executions of opponents in Chechnya. At the same time, it criticizes
Chechen rebels for similar abuses, as well as for the deadly school
siege in Beslan in September.

The Human Rights Watch survey also points out that Putin has drawn
virtually all power to himself. It points not only to the Kremlin’s
control of all electronic media, but also to Putin’s move to have
regional governors not elected locally but appointed by the
president.

Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s acting executive director for
Europe and Central Asia who oversaw the study of the countries of the
former Soviet Union, said no one should be surprised at Putin’s moves
to centralize power in the Russian presidency, given that he has
always favored a rigidly strong central government.

Denber told RFE/RL that Putin probably believes that centralizing
power will help keep politicians honest. But she added that it might
be just as difficult for members of the presidential administration
to stay honest as it is for local governors.

“I’m sure that from the Kremlin’s perspective, having governors
appointed is a path toward decreasing corruption. But from another
perspective, you could just look at that as moving corruption to a
different place,” Denber said.

Belarus, too, continues to be run as if it were a Soviet state,
according to Human Rights Watch.

It points to the elections for the 110-member Chamber of
Representatives in October, in which the opposition did not win a
single seat. The report says this was accomplished, at least in part,
because the state controls all national television stations and most
radio outlets.

And it accuses the government of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of
harassing the country’s media through the closing of independent
newspapers and arresting journalists on libel charges.

Denber said such behavior is nothing new in Belarus. But she said the
fact that Belarusians are seeing more of the same year after year
makes matters worse there.

“When you see a lack of change, when you see a repetition of
elections that are empty exercises and that shut out the opposition,
that is tantamount to things getting worse,” Denber said. “When you
see the state continuing to crack down on civil society groups and on
the press, it’s more of the same, but it actually constitutes a
worsening of the situation.”

The human rights records of neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan are
also not improving, according to the report. It says the political
life of Armenia, for example, continued to focus throughout 2004 on
the fraud-tainted presidential elections of the previous year.

The survey says there were calls for the resignation of President
Robert Kocharian, and notes that the government violently broke up
protests, raided opposition offices, arrested opposition leaders and
supporters, and even attacked journalists.

The political life of Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was similarly affected
in 2004 by the presidential election of 2003, which also was
fraudulent. Last year, the report says, Azerbaijani opposition
leaders were subjected to unfair trials in which they were charged
with responsibility for some of the violence that followed the
election.

All of this takes place against the backdrop of the on-again,
off-again conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the predominantly Armenian
exclave in Azerbaijan. Denber said the leaders of both nations have
subtly used the dispute as a way to keep people’s minds off each
country’s political shortcomings.

Another trouble spot is Ukraine. Human Rights Watch details what it
calls the mostly successful efforts of the government of President
Leonid Kuchma to limit political freedoms since the country achieved
independence in 1991.

The document says these political abuses led to the presidential
election in November, in which Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was
declared the winner, even though most outside observers found it
riddled with fraud.

Supporters of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko rallied in vast
numbers in downtown Kyiv, and the country’s Supreme Court eventually
called for a new election a month later — which Yushchenko won.

Denber said that, given 13 years of political corruption in Ukraine,
Yushchenko’s election offers real hope to the Ukrainian people
because they have demonstrated their own power as engaged and
educated voters. And she said their insistence on fair elections won
them powerful allies in Europe.

But Denber added one caveat: “There’s a huge onus now on Yushchenko
precisely because there are these expectations. And it would be
really sad if, instead of delivering on promises, the new government
ends up not delivering and in the process perverting the rule of law.
And that would make a lot of people very disillusioned.”

She said a disillusioned Ukrainian electorate could lose faith in the
system and eventually turn to a leader like Putin — one who promises
greater strength, but delivers less democracy.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Deccan Herald, India
Jan 17 2005

Will this baby be left in the cold?

Animal rights activists organised a signature campaign at the Mahatma
Gandhi statue on M G Road on Sunday opposing shifting of Veda to
Armenia.

BY DIPTI NAIR
DH NEWS SERVICE, BANGALORE:

Never look a gift horse in the mouth, it is said. The authorities at
Yerevan zoo in Armenia in West Asia are probably doing the same after
the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced six months ago that it
was gifting them an elephant as a `goodwill gesture’.

As Veda, a six-year-old female elephant at Bannerghatta Biological
Park, awaits her fate, animal lovers, especially children,
participated in a `Let’s walk for Veda’ campaign. Veda was supposed
to be airlifted from Bannerghatta to Armenia in December, but her
departure was postponed till February because of the extreme cold
conditions there.

According to Sharath Babu of People for Animals, `The move is in
total disregard of animal welfare, legal provisions and government
policies ensuring protection to captive animals.’ Adds Suparna
Ganguly of Cupa, `We contacted the former director of Yerevan zoo,
and she maintained that conditions there are not suitable for
elephants.’

The animal activists also maintained that they are in touch with
several NGOs in Armenia who have provided information regarding the
unsuitable conditions awaiting Veda. `The enclosure meant for Veda is
less than 10,000 sq ft and the winter shed is less than 2,500 sq ft
which is totally inadequate to house an elephant,’ says Sharath.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had instructed that the elephant be
directly airlifted from Bannerghatta. Says Ram Mohan Ray, Karnataka
chief wildlife warden, `We got the orders from the Centre and there’s
nothing much we can do. Of course, we requested them to make
necessary arrangements for her comfort.’

Besides the prospect of facing the harsh winter, with temperature
dropping from 4 to 14 degrees for four to six months, Veda also faces
separation from her herd. At present, Veda is part of a herd living
with her mother and grandmother. The separation, when it happens,
will be extremely painful considering female elephants rarely ever
leave their herd.

And, though the powers that be claim that she will be joining a male
elephant in Armenia (which was earlier gifted to erstwhile Soviet
Union), activists are sceptical about a union.

Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia)
January 16, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition

Overdue for frivolity

by Michael D. Reid, Times Colonist

After playing so many roles on the dark side of the spectrum — a
conflicted American president (Thirteen Days), a grieving father (The
Sweet Hereafter), a treacherous husband (Double Jeopardy) and a
sinister CEO (I, Robot) — Bruce Greenwood says he couldn’t have been
happier when he got the chance to switch to the bright side for
Racing Stripes.

“This is a little more frivolous, a little more fun and long overdue
for me,” says the boyishly handsome Canadian actor of his role as a
rugged Kentucky farmer in the kiddie comedy about a plucky zebra who
thinks he’s a racehorse.

Greenwood, 48, plays Nolan Walsh, an overprotective widowed single
dad and former horse trainer who with the best of intentions tries to
dissuade his teenage daughter (Hayden Panettiere) from riding her pet
zebra in the Kentucky Open.

“The sentiment is so genuine and it just really appealed to me on a
really visceral level,” says the Quebec-born actor during a
homecoming visit to Vancouver. This is the city where his father, a
geology professor, moved the family when Greenwood was 11 after
living in Princeton, N.J. and Bethesda, Md. He still considers B.C.
his home even though he lives in Los Angeles.

“It’s a nice uplifting film to do and it has humour and a couple of
tears — and that’s entertainment, dammit,” adds Greenwood. For an
actor best known for his serious roles, he’s such a wisecracker you
wonder why he doesn’t do comedy.

When asked if he’d like to play funny on screen, he jokingly lashes
out in his deep, gravelly voice.

“Michael! Michael!” Greenwood answers in a sing-song voice, playfully
stretching out the words.

“D’uh, yeah. Why don’t you make the call? If you could make that
happen for me, I’d be thrilled. They just don’t know.”

Greenwood says while his phone may not be ringing 24/7 from studio
executives looking for the next Bill Murray, he figures his
“off-the-wall” humour is part of the reason he gets along so well
with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

The actor has appeared in three of the Victoria-raised auteur’s films
— in The Sweet Hereafter; as a melancholic tax inspector obsessed
with a stripper in Exotica; and as the star of a film that dramatizes
the Armenian genocide in Ararat.

“Atom’s sense of humour is very black and bizarre and dry and ironic,
and quite broad, also,” says Greenwood. “We make each other laugh and
I think that helps.”

He also agrees with the observation Egoyan has another comic side to
him that many of his devotees don’t see.

“Atom has a very juvenile sense of humour and I think more people
should know that,” he deadpans. “He’s not nearly as clever as he
seems.”

Greenwood, who trained at the University of British Columbia and the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, has made substantial strides since
doing theatre in Vancouver and landing his 1986 breakthrough role as
Dr. Seth Griffin on St. Elsewhere.

Shifting smoothly from television to film, the former student of
Kerrisdale’s Magee Secondary went from playing characters on TV
projects such as Knot’s Landing and Peyton Place: The Next Generation
to a slew of Hollywood features — including Wild Orchid, Passenger
57, Disturbing Behaviour and as a nasty, spit-polished military
bigwig in Rules of Engagement.

Ironically, Greenwood found himself returning time and again to shoot
“runaway productions” in the city he left in the early 1980s after
landing minor roles in Bear Island (1979) and First Blood (1982)
during the B.C. industry’s infancy.

While he would become best known for roles such as the title
character living a Kafka-esque nightmare in the TV series Nowhere Man
and the humourless internal affairs investigator in Hollywood
Homicide, Greenwood also got to strut his romantic side as a
lovestruck late-night talk show host in The Republic of Love, Deepa
Mehta’s film based on the novel by the late Carol Shields.

Last year, he put on an upper-crust British accent to play Lord
Charles, the dashing bachelor confidante of Annette Bening’s
high-strung London stage star of the 1930s in Being Julia, Istvan
Szabo’s film based on the Somerset Maugham novel.

He’s at a loss to explain why he has such a knack for accents, except
to credit the influence of a childhood friend.

“I’ve always had it,” he says with a shrug. “A good friend of mine
who does the most brilliant accents I’ve ever heard installs alarms
for a living. I grew up with him and kept hearing all these accents.”

Working steadily on films shot in exotic locales from Budapest (Being
Julia) to South Africa (Racing Stripes) means Greenwood has a nomadic
lifestyle.

The actor and his wife of 20 years, fellow Vancouverite Susan Devlin,
don’t get much of a chance to just hang out at their home in Los
Angeles, although the avid musician is setting aside a chunk of time
to “work around the house” and jam with friends, as the accomplished
singer-guitarist did at last year’s Courtnall Celebrity Classic here.

“I’m always on the road,” says Greenwood, who flew back and forth
between Budapest and Vancouver to shoot Being Julia and I, Robot, and
last year also jetted off to locations for various films in England,
Halifax, Toronto and South Africa.

Greenwood also just wrapped a Vancouver shoot opposite Madeleine
Stowe for Saving Milly, a CBS television movie about the
life-changing experiences of Chicago political journalist Morton
Kondracke and his wife Milly, an activist in the ’60s who was
diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

“Saving Milly was one of the heaviest experiences of my career,” he
says. “It would have been nice to start the year off with something
more frolicsome than that.”

Greenwood also went to Utah last year to reunite with Thirteen Days
director Roger Donaldson on The World’s Fastest Indian, starring Sir
Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, a New Zealander who made the world’s
fastest Indian motorcycle in the 1920s.

He says his most rewarding experience of 2004, however, was playing
Truman Capote’s longtime companion Jack Dunphy opposite Phillip
Seymour Hoffman in Capote, a drama that focuses on the eccentric
author’s years writing In Cold Blood.

“Hoffman’s the most succinct, dedicated actor I’ve worked with,” says
Greenwood. “He’s really devoted to making it work and making it real.
It was kind of an eye-opener for me. He really raised the bar.”

With a laugh, he says it made it easier to bear the inclement weather
on location in Winnipeg.

“It was brutally cold,” he recalled with a shiver. “My wife and I
found some great linens there.”

He says working with Hoffman was worlds apart from acting opposite
the animals in Racing Stripes, whose live-action footage was mated
with animatronics and computer-generated imagery to create the
illusion they were mouthing dialogue.

“The animals don’t really care about your acting,” deadpans
Greenwood. “You can be acting up a storm and they’ll rip the back
pocket off your pants or wet your shoes.”

He recalls taking one of the many zebras used to portray Stripes into
the barn for the scene in which he tenderly dries off the abandoned
baby circus zebra that his character rescues.

When it started getting “inky and twitchy,” he held it a little
tighter. The zebra was not amused.

“It got quite antsy, hurled me to the floor and started kicking me
repeatedly,” he said. “It hadn’t read the script, obviously.”

Although W.C. Fields famously advised actors never to work with
children or animals, Greenwood begs to differ.

He says he had a ball in the company of co-star Panettiere and
assorted roosters, pelicans, goats and ponies.

“It was full-on crazy, wacky barnyard all the time and when one adult
would do something right the other animal would wander off and nibble
the grip or something.”

Still, there were moments when fun turned to frustration.

“Almost never would you see two animals do something right at the
same time. So the rooster would get it in one take and the goat would
get 40 takes.”

Greenwood says the end result was worth it, though.

“Generally when I watch a movie I’m in, it’s over a curved elbow with
fingers spread in front of my eyes and I’m so nervous, but this one
was different.”

GRAPHIC: Color Photo: Bill Keay, CanWest News Service; Actor Bruce
Greenwood says he’s happy with the switch to a family film after
roles in some dark dramas. ;
Color Photo: Warner Bros.; Bruce Greenwood appears with Hayden
Panettiere and a competitive zebra in Racing Sripes, a new family
film that combines live action and computer-generated animation.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

IRNA, Iran
January 16, 2005 Sunday 8:10 AM EST

Iran ready to boost academic cooperation with Armenia

Tehran

Minister of Sciences, Research and Technology Ja`far Towfiqi said
here Sunday that Iran was ready to bolster academic cooperation with
Armenia in the framework of signed agreements.

According to the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of
Sciences, Research and Technology, Towfiqi made the remarks in a
meeting with his Armenian counterpart Sergo Yeritsen.

He called for further scientific relations including exchange of
students and professors as well as holding joint seminars.

Towfiqi said that the number of universities and research centers in
Iran has been increased, adding the country attaches great importance
to scientific and research works.

The Armenian minister, for his part, outlined his country`s
activities, particularly in the fields of Iranology and Persian
language, calling on Iran to bolster higher education relations.

The Armenian delegation headed by Yeritsen arrived in Tehran on
January 15 at the invitation of Towfiqi.

Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA)
January 14, 2005 Friday
Idaho Edition

?Healthy skeptics? find spirituality by following Ancient Traditions

by Virginia de Leon Staff writer

Kamori Cattadoris is a skeptic.

“The healthy kind,” explained the founder of Ancient Traditions
Community Church, a new congregation in Hillyard. “The kind that
wants to know truth. Not the cynic who rejects everything.”

Although she spent years questioning religious doctrine, Cattadoris
was still open to finding a path to God.

Spirituality eventually became possible for her, she said, through
ancient teachings found in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Sufism,
Tibetan Buddhism and other traditions.

After starting a study group four years ago for “healthy skeptics” in
search of faith, Cattadoris and her husband, Bob, bought an old
church building in north Spokane and established Ancient Traditions.
On Saturday, the new church will open its doors to the community by
offering several activities that emphasize traditional ethnic music
and dance, as well as Middle Eastern foods that members have spent
the past few days preparing.

Ancient Traditions is not a new religion, members say. While its
teachings are based on early Christian principles, it is an
interfaith congregation that doesn?t force anyone to believe in
anything, Cattadoris said. Their goal is to work together in pursuit
of personal transformation ? to “drop our inflated self-importance,”
she said, and to “seek God within the human heart.”

At the altar of the church sanctuary is a large wooden cross, left
behind by the previous congregation. “We?ve made it our own,” said
Cattadoris, emphasizing that the group is not exclusively Christian.

To the right of the altar is a Tibetan gong; to the left in another
corner hang half a dozen handmade bells from India. The white walls
will eventually be decorated with Egyptian papyrus and Tibetan art
painted on rice paper. The church?s library includes books like the
Quran, the Dalai Lama?s “Training the Mind” and Jon Kabat-Zinn?s
“Wherever You Go, There You Are.”

Many who joined this group have been influenced by the teachings of
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an Armenian mystic, author and composer
who established a religious movement in the 1920s through the
Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.

Born in 1872 in Alexandropol near the Russo-Turkish frontier,
Gurdjieff spent years in Central Asia, North Africa and other areas,
where he came into contact with esoteric teachings. As a result, he
developed his own teaching: that ordinary people could attain a
higher state of awareness. After his death in 1949, Gurdjieff?s
followers started spiritual centers all over the world.

While Gurdjieff study groups exist throughout the United States, the
Spokane crowd is one of only two in the country that has evolved into
a church, Cattadoris said.

“We are an experiential group,” said Lyn Lamb, who joined Ancient
Traditions last year when it was still a study group. Through her
interaction with other members, she has focused on certain tasks each
week that include refraining from negative thinking and an emphasis
on self-observation ? actions, she said, that have given her more
awareness.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Film/Music Recommendations

The Absolute Sound’s 2004
Golden Ear Awards
2004_golden_music_awards.jsp

Welcome to our annual Music Golden Ear Awards, with each writer choosing up
to three of his favorite records and/or multi-disc series released in 2004,
giving equal consideration to musical and sonic merits. The selections aren’
t meant as the reviewers’ definitive Top Three from 2004, but as three of
the year’s unequivocal best.

BOB GENDRON
Diamanda Galás: La Serpenta Canta. Blaise Dupuy, producer. Mute 9255 (2 CDs)
Buy CD
Diamanda Galás: Defixiones: Will and Testament, Orders From the Dead. Blaise
Dupuy, producer. Mute 9254 (2 CDs) Buy CD

An inimitable performer whose confrontational methods and avant-garde
approaches are nearly as famous as her disarming four-octave vocal range,
Diamanda Galás has returned after a five-year hiatus with two astonishing
double albums, both recorded in concert during 2001 and ’02. Each finds her
sounding demonically possessed. A solo record of voice and piano, La
Serpenta Canta is a harrowing set of blues, spiritual, soul, and country
covers that Galás’ fiery voice makes shiver, shriek, and haunt. Fiendish,
mighty, and delicate, her radical reinterpretation of traditional American
song probes the psychological depths of loss, death and horror with a stark,
sacrificial vision. Gorgeously packaged in hardcover-book form with detailed
liner notes and translations, Defixiones: Will and Testament is a
multi-language song cycle of poems that speak to Armenian, Greek, and
Assyrian genocides committed by Turkey in the early 20th century. Unearthing
atrocities condoned by the Allied Nations, Galás invokes past historical
injustices, her arresting passion and dramatic ache capturing human tragedy
in an apocalyptically surreal manner. Galás turns piano keys into sharp
icicles that prick and pierce. Faint electronic treatments provide chilling
background ambiance. Against it all, her voice hisses like a snake,
screeches like a bat, and bellows as if it were that of a sinner trapped in
the bowels of hell. On both records, intimate sonics give listeners a
carnage-splattered front seat to the world’s ongoing social and political
conflicts, and bring Galás’ transfixing grief-stricken voice up-close and
personal. Both sets close with a sensory-shattering rendition of Blind Lemon
Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” the singer’s extreme cadence
ricocheting as if the song’s two white horses are being tied together and
pulled in opposite directions until all that remain are shallow pools of
blood.

Elliott Smith: from a basement on a hill. Smith, et al., producers. Anti
86741 Buy CD

Initially deemed a suicide, Elliott Smith’s death remains an unsolved
mystery. The artist’s battles with depression, isolation, and drugs-which
provided him bittersweet inspiration, even here-were widely known. But
according to close friends, before his untimely death, the sensitive
Portland singer-songwriter was approaching life with newfound zest. If from
a basement on a hill-circumstantially Smith’s last album, 15 beautiful and
often intimate songs he completed before passing-is any indication, he wasn’
t a man planning to die. Sunshine bursts through even the thickest liquor
hangovers and pharmaceutical hazes, Smith’s mellifluous voice softly
hovering over a harmonious blend of crashing cymbals, radiant rhythms,
glowing acoustic strumming, light piano notes, and ballroom romance. He
wistfully professes to being “strung out again,” yet if this heartbreaking
and hopeful batch of radiant pop waltzes, scintillating melodies, and
shimmering poetry says anything, Smith was drunk on life’s dreams. The album
‘s sonics-from the warm washes of guitar chords to the finger-pick scraping
of strings-make it painfully evident that, like Buckley and Cobain before
him, this shooting star streaked across the sky much, much too soon.

The Clash: London Calling (Legacy Edition). Mick Jones, producer; Tony
Dixon, mastering. Columbia/Legacy 92923 (2 CDs) Buy CD
Universally and justly regarded as one of the ten best albums in rock
history, The Clash’s London Calling has been significantly expanded and
given the red-carpet treatment as a two-CD, one-DVD 25th Anniversary “Legacy
Edition.” Originally released in December 1979, the 19-song double-LP
telegraphed punk’s vital cry out to every corner of the world, lassoing
reggae, soul, rock, blues, country, funk, and jazz as no artist had
previously done. Featuring 21 unreleased performances-including four unknown
Clash songs-the long-lost Vanilla Tape recordings, finally discovered in
March by Mick Jones, fill disc two of this seminal set. Though of rough demo
quality, they’re a window on rehearsal sessions that went down at Vanilla
Studios, the London car repair shop that functioned as the setting for
material that became a generational juggernaut. Remastered and loaded with
two booklets, superb liner notes, and photos, London Calling has never
sounded better.

Webindia123, India
Jan 16 2005

Kids refuse to part with baby elephant gifted by government to
Armenia:-

Bangalore

Dozens of children, some as young as five, lined the streets of
Bangalore protesting the Centre’s decision to send a baby elephant to
Armenia as a goodwill gift.

The children, many wearing elephant masks and struggling with banners
twice their size, shouted slogans and pleaded to the authorities to
let “Veda”, the six-year-old female elephant, to stay.

The baby pachyderm is currently spending its last few days at the
Bannerghatta National Park on the outskirts of the city.

People for Animals, a voluntary organisation spearheading the
campaign, says the cold and dry climate of the tiny European nation
is unsuitable for Asian elephants and “Veda”, who is used to the
warmth of the coast , faces a serious survival threat even in the
special climate controlled enclosures provided by the zoo.

Urging the government to reconsider its decision, Siddhant, also six
years old, said Veda was his friend and like him could not stay away
from home. “This elephant should not be sent to such a cold climate
which is zero degree. If my parents send me away to a cold climate I
cannot live,” he said.

Activists say that elephants are extremely sensitive and emotional
and little Veda will face both loneliness and confusion when shifted
from the sanctuary. Sharat Babu, an activist, said even the
government was not aware about how well the Armenia zoo was equipped
to handle Veda. “We are actually protesting against the illegal
transfer of Veda, the baby elephant which has for six years been in
Bannerghatta to Armenia, where temperatures are totally unsuitable
and the housing is incorrect in the Armenia zoo,” he said.

Armenian officials had asked the Indian government for a female
pachyderm in 1999. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
promised them an elephant during a visit to Armenia last year. (ANI)

Turkish Daily News
Jan 16 2005

Erdoðan’s diplomatic landing in the Kremlin

Yüksel Söylemez

In relation to President Vladimir Putin’s historic state visit to
the Presidential Palace in Cankaya the words of William Shakespeare,
“Within a month, yet within a month,’ are I feel apposite in the
context of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan losing no time and
hurriedly embarking upon a quick-fix businesslike return visit to the
Kremlin.

Why was he in such a great hurry? Setting aside the hair-trigger
timing “a la Erdogan” as the fastest Turkish leader of the decade not
wanting to lose momentum, the apparent pretext may have been the
long-delayed opening of the Turkish Center in Moscow built by the
Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodities Exchanges (TOBB) that took
seven troublesome years to complete.

Erdogan’s declared aim was better and bigger business with the
Russians and to increase the volume of trade from last year’s $10
billion to $25 billion, or at least Putin’s more modest target of $15
billion, or $50 billion annually in 10 year’s time.

But how do they propose to achieve this? Russia, after all, is
already Turkey’s second largest trading partner after Germany.
Turkey is dependent on Russian natural gas for 60 percent of its
energy requirements. Energy by other means, coal for example, is
becoming less and less preferred in Turkey as natural gas is cleaner
and comparatively cheaper, although the Blue Stream natural gas
prices that Turkey has to pay are higher than those for other
customers of Russia. Moreover, under the agreed contract Turkey has
to pay for even what it cannot use, however, these are the same
conditions Iran once imposed upon Turkey. Putin, however, offered to
sell electricity cheaply to Turkey from under the Black Sea and a
study group will now be established towards this end.

The Russian private sector will be participating in international
bids concerning the distribution of natural gas in Turkey, as well as
building depots for storing gas underground, thus evening out winter
and summer prices. Russia wants to sell its oil and natural gas to
Israel by an extension of the Samsun-Ankara pipeline. Russia also
now wants to export Russian oil to Europe through Turkey using the
Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline that they were previously against. Russian
interest may not stop here in matters of energy, but go over and
beyond Turkey’s prospective nuclear power plants, rumored to cost
about $20 billion of more, Chernobyl or no Chernobyl notwithstanding.

This three-day visit to the Kremlin came with a clear message from
Erdogan to Putin. To paraphrase, “Russia will continue to be
Turkey’s trading partner on an even greater scale, with or without
Turkey’s European Union membership. Contrary to the serious concern
you expressed in Ankara in December, Russia is not going to lose
Turkey or say “farewell” to it as a trading partner. Quite the
opposite as our trade and cooperation will increase by leaps and
bounds. Remember, Turkey’s customs union with the EU did not
diminish our bilateral trade, but did, in fact, increase it to a
greater extent. We are here in Moscow for business, friendship and
strategic a partnership.”

Never before has Prime Minister Erdogan been accompanied by an army
of 500 plus businessmen in four planeloads, as well as four
ministers, 50 members of Parliament and 90 media members underlining
his message. Some 20 prominent businessmen were among the chosen few
personally introduced to President Putin, probably for their
investment in Russia that is expected to increase from $2.5 billion
or more.

Erdogan proposed joint ventures with Russia in Iraq. Turkey and
Russia are also to cooperate in military procurement and hardware,
such as the Erdogan’s helicopter and aircraft deal which has yet to
be decided, perhaps as a give-and-take in return for reducing natural
gas prices — also to be paid in kind rather than in cash on an
offset basis. The Turkish and Russian navies are now scheduled to
make joint naval exercises against maritime terrorism in the Black
Sea, where Russia is concerned about the presence of non-coastal
navies and the Marmara and Aegean Seas, all of which are on the route
of Russian oil tankers.

Erdogan, including his delegation and entourage, was given an
extraordinary welcome in Moscow. To underline this auspicious
welcome, he and Emine Erdogan were entertained in Putin’s home in
Novo Ogareva as a sign of exceptional courtesy to show genuine
Russian hospitality reserved for only a select few. Putin’s, “I
trust Erdogan because he keeps his word,” shows that there is a
strong personal chemistry between the two leaders with a clear
political will to cooperate, truly and sincerely, in order to replace
centuries of mistrust and enmity, especially after the lost decades
of the USSR to communism when it was considered by Turkey to be
national threat number one. In fact, what is happening now is the
revival of the Turkish-Russian rapprochement era of the National
Liberation War of Mustafa Kemal and the first 10 years of
Turkish-Russian friendship in the 1920s and early `30s.

This visit confirmed that the dialogue started by Putin in Ankara
would continue. This visit, to say the least, confirms the
normalization of bilateral relations and underlines that Turkey is a
regional power, alongside its EU prospects. It definitely brings new
volume to the bilateral relations of two important countries
belonging to the region encompassing Iraq to the Caucasus and to the
problems of that region, of which, broadly speaking, they share
similar views.

In his tete-a-tete with Putin in Novo Ogareva during dinner with
the normal protocol sampling three kinds of exceptionally delicious
caviar, probably wetted with quality water rather than the best
Russian vodka, `Tayyip’ may have asked ”Vladimir’ whether Russia
could be more flexible over the Cyprus problem; and who knows whether
in a light-hearted moment `Vladimir’ did not try to persuade `Tayyip’
in return for such a favor to change his drinking habits and toast
him with Stolichnaya?

It is a two-way street after all, and now that Putin made a
surprise call to the U.N. Secretary-General to say that Russia will
now support his efforts to solve the Cyprus question, Russia is in
the picture to exert pressure on Greek Cypriot leader Tassos
Papadopoulos for a peaceful and equitable settlement that will be in
the best interests of Russia as well. Erdogan presenting the
Chairman of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (KKTC) Chamber
of Commerce Salih Tumar to Putin heralded a volte-face in Russian
traditional policies that hitherto historically favored their Greek
Orthodox brothers as Russian investments abound in Greek Cyprus.
Putin said, “The economic isolation of the KKTC is not fair and
should be ended.” This concession is an outright meeting of Turkish
sensitivities and a quid pro quo for Russia’s large investments in
Turkey.

On Armenia, Putin offered to act as a go-between, but Erdogan’s
condition for establishing relations requires Armenia to recognize
the 1923 Kars Agreement fixing Turkey’s eastern borders that may be
hope against hope.

As Erdogan runs from success to success with his foreign policies,
this visit to Moscow was realized quicker than in the wildest dreams
of all Russian watchers — to say the least. There seems to have
been a sea change in Russia’s traditional policies with much more
understanding shown to Turkey. Now we have to watch that things
agreed take concrete shape and translate into reality. As they say,
`the proof of the pudding is in the eating.’