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Archives for August 2018

Fresno CA. William Saroyan House Museum Grand opening

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By Wally Sarkeesian
Lee Brand, the Mayor of Fresno Today we officially opened the William Saroyan House Museum. A great way to celebrate what would have been Saroyan’s 110th birthday at the house where he spent the final years of his life. This museum house will preserve the history and legacy of William Saroyan for future generations.

The grand opening of the house-museum welcomed City Councilmember Esmeralda Soria, founder of Renaissance Cultural and Intellectual foundation Artur Janibekyan and Fresno Mayor Lee Brand. Soria said Saroyan grew up in what is now downtown Fresno because of a city law that blocked immigrants from owning or living in certain areas.

Saroyan purchased the house 17 years before he died of cancer at Veterans Hospital.  

The Renaissance Cultural and Intellectual Foundation, based in Armenia, purchased the house in 2015 and renovated it. Councilwoman Esmeralda Soria and Fresno Mayor Lee Brand were in attendance for the grand opening. The museum is in Soria’s district, Fresno Bee reported.

Armenia’s Ambassador to the United States Grigor Hovhannisyan was also in attendance for the inauguration.


The architect from the project Meroujan Minssian told Wally Sarkeesian Gagrule.net they wanted to design a museum that kids of all ages would like, 

Meroujan Minssian said “Hologram is usually something that is fun for kids to see an actual character in actual space so that’s why we came up with the hologram thing,

William Saroyan (1908 – 1981), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright.

The House-Museum is located at 2729 W. Griffith Way.

The museum will opens its doors to the general public in mid-September and will operate every day, except Monday, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

An Israeli Firm Reportedly Sent A Suicide Drone To Bomb Armenian Troops For Azerbaijan

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ISIS Islamic State may have pioneered the use of the suicide drone on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, but formal governments are increasingly getting in on the action.

An Israeli drone maker apparently attempted to bomb Armenian military personnel with “one of its unmanned kamikaze aerial vehicles” back in October 2017, the Times of Israel reported on Wednesday. According to the leaked complaint with the Israeli Defense Ministry, drone manufacturer Aeronautics Defense Systems’ Orbiter 1K suicide drone was dispatched to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region “at the request of Azerbaijani clients during a sales demonstration.”

Here are the technical details, per Joseph Trevithick at The War Zone:

Aeronautics employees reportedly refused to carry out the 2017 mission and company executives subsequently stepped in to fly the drone themselves. Though it’s not clear if this was deliberate or not, the drone reportedly missed the target, only injuring two ethnic Armenian fighters.

It could very well be that the executives made this decision consciously since Orbiter 1K has a so-called man-in-the-loop guidance system whereby the operator is either actively flying or otherwise monitoring the video feeds from the drone and they can see what it sees throughout the mission.

“The Israeli government has permitted private defense companies to demonstrate their wares in actual combat,” he writes, “but this is rare and is unlikely to have occurred in this case, since Israel does not view Armenia as an enemy.”

State-run suicide drones are nothing new: U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Army have all independently pursued kamikaze drones deployable through man-portable systems. Indeed, the Israeli military has embraced kamikaze drones in recent years, and the Justice Ministry’s complaint primarily focuses on Aeronautics’ violation of the country’s security and arms export control regulations rather than, say, a new form of explosion delivery.

But the incident underscores the practical future of kamikaze drones in government arsenals, a rising concern among national security experts. In April 2015, a drone deployed radioactive material to the top of the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s official residence. More recently, anti-government dissidents attempted to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with an explosives-laden drone during a military celebration.

Ironically, the world first learned that the Israel had sold suicide drones to the Azerbaijan thanks to an April music video from pop star Narmin Karimbayova that appeared to show one of Israel’s IAI Harop loitering munition systems launched from a truck-mounted missile battery.

The Fresno City Council declares August 31 as William Saroyan Day

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The Fresno City Council is honoring the life of Fresno born playwright and author William Saroyan. The City Council issued a proclamation declaring Friday August 31, 2018 as William Saroyan Day in the City of Fresno. The honor comes as the Fresno home where Saroyan spent the final 17 years of his life is about to open as a museum.

The foundation based in Armenia that bought the home in 2016 says at one point city officials wanted to move the house to downtown Fresno. But they say it was important to keep it in the neighborhood where Saroyan lived and breathed.

“William Saroyan has walked there, he has ridden his bicycle there, he has lived there, he has communicated with his neighbors there, he has written some of his works there. So, I feel this energy when I’m there,” says Hakob Hakobyan of the Intellectual Renaissance Foundation.

The grand opening and ribbon cutting at the William Saroyan House Museum is Friday, August 31. which will be followed with a public celebration at the Satellite Student Union at Fresno State.

Sole Armenian village in Turkey holds Grape Blessing ceremony

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1,000 pilgrims and tourists arrived in Turkey’s sole remaining Armenian village, Vakifli, in August to mark the Christian holiday of Asdvadzadzin, or the Assumption of Mary, and the blessing of the grapes, an ancient rite that celebrates the first fruit of the harvest, Eurasianet.org says in an article.

The village endured the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century and was reborn in a staunchly nationalist republic. Today, the inhabitants battle far different pressures that threaten the community’s survival.

The event also pays homage to the six other Armenian villages that once occupied the slopes of Mount Moses, or Musa Dagh in Turkish, which stands north of Vakifli. The night before the mass, villagers light fires beneath seven cauldrons to prepare harissa, a stew of beef, wheat and salt that evokes the provisions their forebears survived on during exile to the mountaintop to escape the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

The extraordinary story of the Musa Dagh resistance, and Vakifli’s perseverance a century later, are rare examples of survival among Turkey’s Armenians. Subject to massacres during World War I in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, Armenians have mostly disappeared from the lands in Turkey they occupied for millennia. Scholarly consensus holds that the killings amounted to a genocide, a judgment the Turkish government continues to reject.

Vakifli’s 130 residents farm 50 acres of land, raising citrus fruits, walnuts, and honey. Women jar fruit and sell homemade jams and pomegranate syrup to tourists who flock here for the cool breeze in summer – and a window into Turkey’s multicultural past.

Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city with an estimated 15 million people, is home to about 1,000 Vakifli natives, among a total population of 60,000 Armenians. Others have moved to Europe, Canada and the United States.

Source: 

Eurasianet.org. Turkey’s last Armenian village honors long-ago stand

 

Robert Kocharyan to participate in upcoming snap parliamentary elections

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2nd President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan will participate in the upcoming snap parliamentary elections, he said in an interview to Sputnik Armenia.

The 2nd President said it’s still early to talk about with which format and political team he will participate in the elections, adding that there is still a lot of time, and the situation is changing dynamically and will change. “I don’t think now it’s right to talk about the formats. Now it is necessary to form the unit by organizational steps by which you have been presented in the political field, the targets your activity will be directed for, and the mass of voters who you think can be your future support. This is the main task at the moment”, he said.

He didn’t rule out that he can become the center of the opposition pole or one of that centers. “I first of all try to rely on myself and the forces, mass voters, citizens uniting around me. The stronger this force, the greater the possibility to form alliances”, the 2nd President said, but didn’t mention the political forces which will be members of the possible alliance.

The 2nd President said those citizens of Armenia, who remember the achievements during his tenure, are his political support.

 

Merkel And Aliyev Hold ‘Open’ Talks On Human Rights In Azerbaijan

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Merkel meeting with rights activists and the prominent Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, a former RFE/RL contributor.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel held what she called “intensive” discussions with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in talks that addressed energy cooperation, human rights, and the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The meeting between Merkel and Aliyev in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, on August 25 included a discussion of the human rights situation in the South Caucasus nation that the German chancellor said was conducted in an “open atmosphere,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Twitter.

Critics accuse Aliyev’s government of carrying out a targeted crackdown on dissent in recent years, though the Azerbaijani leader has repeatedly rejected such criticism.

“We discussed the issue of the domestic situation in Azerbaijan and addressed human rights, also in a very open atmosphere,” Merkel said, according to a transcript of her press conference with Aliyev released by her office.

“We did not find common ground on all issues. But I argued that a strong civil society must be part of an open, secular society and made clear that we would like to see this strong civil society,” Merkel added.

Merkel’s stop in Baku on August 25 — the final leg of a three-day tour to South Caucasus that included visits to Georgia and Armenia — also included a meeting with rights activists and the prominent Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, a former RFE/RL contributor.

Ismayilova, who spent nearly 18 months in jail on charges widely viewed as retaliation for her investigative reporting before her release in May 2016, wrote on Facebook following the meeting that she spoke to Merkel “about corruption and how it undermines peace, democracy, and security in Azerbaijan.”

“I asked to be more outspoken on human rights and democracy issues because people here need to see examples of European politicians who aren’t silenced by corruption money,” she wrote.

Merkel “said our concerns are important and some have been addressed in the meeting she had with President Aliyev. I hope to hear more from her,” Ismayilova wrote.

Azerbaijan’s opposition, as well as Western officials and international human rights groups, have accused Aliyev’s government of persecuting opposition politicians, activists, independent media outlets, and journalists, often using what they allege are trumped-up criminal charges.

Aliyev, who has repeatedly shrugged off accusations of corruption and stifling dissent, defended his government’s record on human rights during an August 25 news conference alongside Merkel, saying Baku “is committed to democratic values.”

“All democratic institutions exist in Azerbaijan. All the liberties have been provided, in particular, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. There are hundreds of media outlets in Azerbaijan, including opposition media. Thereby, no one is being persecuted for the criticism [of the authorities] or for the [critical] views in Azerbaijan,” Aliyev said.

The two leaders also discussed energy cooperation between Europe and Azerbaijan, where Aliyev has ruled the nation of almost 10 million people with an iron fist since 2003.

Addressing a business roundtable in Baku on August 25, Merkel described Azerbaijan as “an important partner in the diversification of our energy supply within the European Union,” according to a transcript released by her office.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Merkel also said that Berlin could assist in mediating the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“Germany wants to help find peaceful solutions,” Merkel told reporters, adding that the conflict over the mountainous territory is a significant burden on the region.

The region, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Since 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces which Baku says include troops supplied by Armenia. The region’s claim to independence has not been recognized by any country.

Internationally mediated negotiations involving the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) helped forge a cease-fire in the region, which is not always honored, but have failed to produce a lasting settlement of the conflict.

In Yerevan a day earlier, Merkel told reporters that “it is important that the conflict is resolved peacefully” and that Germany “stands ready” to contribute to a solution.

Merkel noted that Germany is a member of the OSCE’s Minsk Group and that “we stand ready to assume responsibility within the framework of the Karabakh settlement process.”

With reporting by DPA, Azernews, DW.com, and TASS

Criminal case filed against Lydian Armenia

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YEREVAN. – A criminal case has been filed against Lydian Armenia mining company over illegal activities, Armenia’s General Attorney’s office reported.

According to the source, Armenian Nature Protection Ministry submitted documents to the Armenia’s General Attorney’s office drafted as a result of inspection at Lydian Armenia mining company over illegal activities.

On this basis, the General Attorney’s corresponding department conducted research.

The research revealed cases of illegal activities by the organization, causing a serious damage to the mine and environment which amounts to 18 million AMD.

The investigation is underway. The preliminary investigation is assigned to Armenia’s Investigative Committee.

 

Azerbaijan declares international search for Dan Bilzerian

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After a long contemplation, Azerbaijani authorities have decided to declare an international search for American Armenian internet personality and professional poker player Dan Bilzerian.

Azerbaijani media have reported about the abovementioned, citing the Prosecutor General’s Office of the country.

Bilzerian’s recent visit to Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) is noted as the reason for this search.

Armenia police detain a Turk Kevin (Kemal) Öksüz wanted by US

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YEREVAN. – In cooperation with the Interpol bureau in Armenia, Armenian police on Wednesday have found—in capital city Yerevan—ethnic Turk Kevin (Kemal) Öksüz, whom US law enforcers are seeking, and who had founded a company in Armenia and started business activities in the country.

On August 23, an international search was declared for Öksüz, under the US criminal code, and on charges of falsifying documents and submitting a false statement, Police of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

He was the chairman of a public, nonprofit organization of Turkish Americans and Eurasians. The objective of this organization was to establish close relations between Turks and Americans by organizing trips to Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In 2013, Öksüz had invited several US Congress members and some others to a private trip to Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), established by the US House of Representatives, oversees Congress members’ private visits, and under the US Federal Travel Regulation (FTR). According to this regulation, the tour sponsors need to fill out respective special forms.

As the alleged organizer of this trip, Kevin (Kemal) Öksüz had submitted to the OCE forms which he had falsified, and he noted that the aforesaid organization had received no funding from any source.

It was found out, however, that the Öksüz-led organization had not paid for all the travel expenses and had received funding, including from the Azerbaijani government-owned State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).

Also, it was found out that nine members and 32 staff members of the US Congress had received gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kevin (Kemal) Öksüz has been detained.

 

Armenian Museum in Watertown to open new gallery om November

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The Armenian Museum of America in Watertown is updating its space under the leadership of new Executive Director Jennifer Liston Munson. The museum will open its new gallery to public in November, Wicked Local reports.

Munson has an extensive art background and worked as a senior member of the Exhibitions and Designs department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Before becoming executive director, she had collaborated on many projects and exhibitions with the Armenian Museum.

Munson wants the museum to be a place of discovery. A place where Armenian-Americans can connect to their heritage, and also a place where people of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds can learn how integrated the Armenian experience is with American culture and identity.

“We are creating a space to welcome people, to educate, and to enlighten,” she said.

Munson is also introducing new exhibition concepts. She wants to create a space that is dynamic rather than stagnant. To do this, she is organizing cultural events. Some might feature Armenian music, of Armenian cooking, but the idea is to bring art alive.

Munson is also creating an introduction gallery. The gallery will be at the front of the museum entrance and will highlight different Armenian artifacts every month. The artifacts will be accompanied by descriptions narrating their different histories, and how each came to the museum.

The museum has permanent collections that highlight Armenia’s ancient history and the genocide. Munson is also working to integrate more about the Armenia diaspora which is not a well-known tale.

Munson is a non-Armenian trying to tell the Armenian story. However, she believes that sometimes it takes somebody from the outside to help tell the story in a way that will connect with everyone. Her museum background and expertise, she believes will allow her to do this successfully.