administrator, Author at Gagrule.net

BarCamp Yerevan 2012 Brings Together 1,000 Technologists, Activists, and Media Innovators

February 25, 2013 By administrator

Over 1,000 people converged on the American University of Armenia from June 9-10, 2012 for the 4th Annual BarCamp Yerevan. This year’s event was the largest ever, with more than 1,300 IT specialists, software developers, bloggers, civic activists, and curious newbies attending.

The BarCamp format, pioneered in Silicon Valley in 2005, consists of a series of informal sessions focused on what’s new and interesting in the field of Internet and technology. The schedule is not announced in advance; participants who want to deliver presentations slot themselves into a timetable after they arrive at the event, with some sessions evolving spontaneously out of ideas sparked by on-site discussions. Popular topics include civic applications for social media, applied programming problems, and various online and mobile tools.

In addition to over 70 participant-led sessions, the camp also featured a job fair and workshops by respected trainers on guarding against DDoS attacks, protecting sensitive files on your computer, and safer internet browsing and social networking.

This year, BarCamp Yerevan organizers deviated from the typical unstructured format to invite several international guest speakers, which included media marketing consultant and trainer Mike Villers-Stuart on creating engaging online content and distribution methods, MN-RU editor-in-chief Aleksandr Bogomolov on covering the recent protests in Moscow, prominent Russian blogger and photographer Petr Lovigin on his latest creative projects, and Lana Pinayeva, head of marketing at the major Russian news agency RIA Novosti, on convergent media and the future of media consumption.

Funding for the event was provided by Internews’ “Alternative Resources in Media” project through USAID, as well as companies Orange, AtTask, BetConstruct, and Be2 and the Russian RIA Novosti news agency.

Unforgetting Iraq- CrossTalking Peter Lavelle RT (Video)

February 25, 2013 By administrator

Even after the US occupation, Iraq continues to witness external intervention on an enormous scale. Is this what is driving the country towards becoming a failed state? Is the Maliki government contributing to Iraq’s fragmentation?

And why is Iraq currently out of the media spotlight, despite all the things happening there? CrossTalking with Pepe Escobar, Sami Ramadani and Meir Javedanfar.

Kurdish women in Syria create first female battalion

February 24, 2013 By administrator

For the first time in Syria, 150 Kurdish women have set up a female-only battalion in the northern province of Aleppo, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting since the start of the Syrian uprising in early 2011.

The news comes from a statement by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Saturday. While women have been known to fight alongside men in both pro and anti-regime forces – as well as the Kurdish militia, it is the first time they have formed their own fighting unit. An amateur photograph has been circulating on the internet, showing rows of women in military fatigues during training.

The announcement comes a month after the government set up paramilitary units called the National Defense Forces, which have actively been seeking to recruit women of all ages. This is testimony to the steady increase of women’s numbers in armed units. They are also becoming very useful in assisting male fighters, as they arouse less suspicion when transporting supplies and weapons.

“Women are fighting on all the fronts now, though it’s possible the Islamist rebel ranks have the fewest women taking part in them,” says Abdel Rahman of the Observatory.
The Kurdish question

The city where the battalion originated is Afrin, which in late 2012, was the last scene of fighting between Kurdish units and Arab militias fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad. While a number of Syrian Kurds remain neutral, they also exist on both sides of the current Syrian split, getting invariably involved in the violence.

The Kurds also happen to be the second largest ethnic group in Syria, comprising three out of the 23 million of its total population. They have been discriminated against in Syria by several Arab regimes, often being denied citizenship, similar to their plight in other states in the region. Their eventual goal seems to be autonomy within a united Syria.
In January, at least 56 were killed in a week’s fighting in north-east Syria between anti-Assad rebels and the long-oppressed Kurdish minority, in which tanks and mortars had been used against the Kurds. While the rebel-on-government violence was to the west and south, the Kurds used the opportunity to set up schools and cultural centers, as well as armed militias and police units. The rebels have been blaming them for seeking self-rule by using the civil war to their advantage.

And many Kurds do tread carefully, knowing that President Assad’s failure to crush the rebellion could spell doom for their own ethnic group as well. They fear that the rebels would not honor the autonomy of various regions – especially one that holds around 2.5 billion barrels of Syria’s crude oil reserves.

Living predominantly in the mountainous regions of the north, the Kurds are situated next to the Turkish border. Their political group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is closely allied to the marginalized Kurdish faction in Turkey – the PKK. President Assad, according to some, has chosen to seize the opportunity for friendship with the Kurds, many of whom never joined the uprising against him. This could also play into his hands in light of the Turkish government’s opposition to his regime.

However, the Syrian Jihadists have directed huge blame at the Kurds for not participating in the uprising. Clashes between rebels and Kurds have intensified as soon as government forces withdrew from Kurdish-held areas in the summer of 2012. Often very little incidents at checkpoints had started major firefights between the Kurds and the rebels.

This split is one among several ethnic fault lines that run parallel to the Syrian revolution of 2011. In its two years, it has grown into a fully-fledged civil war and took more than 70,000 lives, according to UN estimates. It has also made more than 650,000 flee their homes, while over a million are displaced

An Armenian injured due to Damascus shelling

February 24, 2013 By administrator

17:03, 23 February, 2013

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 23, ARMENPRESS: A shelling orchestrated in Syrian capital Damascus left more than two hundred victims, an Armenian inclusive on February 21 . Young Armenian Ara Halagyan has been injured; Syrian Armenian Nazaret Elmagyan told Armenpress. In the words of Elmagyan, the young man was immediately taken to hospital, fortunately currently his condition is stable and his life is out of danger. Three clashes were held in Damascus on February 23 which resulted in the death of 53 people, 235 people were wounded.

arabic.rt.com web site reports one of the clashes was hosted in the nearby territory of Baas party building in Saba Bahrat square, the second was in Rukn ad Din and the third in Brze district. Syrian SANA agency informs security forces succeeded to prevent another explosion. The terrorist was arrested; one ton blast device deployed in a car over was neutralized.

According to UN data over 70 thousand people were killed during 23 months lasting clashes in Syria, including four dozen Armenians.

Raffi Hovannisian meets with residents of Armenia’s Gyumri

February 24, 2013 By administrator

February 23, 2013 | 19:36

YEREVAN.- February 18 is a day of “greetings’ revolution”, presidential candidate Raffi Hovannisian said addressing the residents of Gyumir, Armenia’s second largest city.

Addressing the crowd, Hovannisian said the residents of Gyumri stated they are responsible for the votes and will never sell them. He noted that although previous authorities announced their contribution to renovation of Gyumri, destroyed after the 1988 devastating earthquake, nowadays the city remains a disaster area. Hovannisian promised to tackle the problems and create new jobs in a year.

Answering to the calls to overturn the regime, Heritage party leader said he respects Serzh Sargsyan.

“But we are the opposition, we will have enough courage to express gratitude to the first, second and third presidents and tell them the new time has come when power belongs to the people,” he emphasized.

He also announced the rally planned for Sunday in Yerevan, noting it will take place regardless of whether the demonstration will be authorized or not. “If they try to block roads heading to Yerevan, I will take it into account and come here again.”

Armenian youth of France informs Parisians and tourists about falsifications of Azerbaijani propaganda

February 24, 2013 By administrator

“Nazarbek”, the youth organization of Social Democratic (Hnchakyan) Party in France conducted a campaign to inform the public about falsifications of the Azerbaijani propaganda. In one of the tourist centers of Paris, in Montmartre, activists handed out leaflets and flyers to tourists and those interested, which were reflecting the real information about Aghdam events taken place in 1992, called “Khojalu” by the Azerbaijani side.

Today the “House of Azerbaijan” held an action in Montmartre, in Paris, near the Church of the Sacre Coeur by launching balloons with the names of the victims of the events taken place in Aghdam.

On February 26, 1992, during the war in Karabakh, around 200 to 300 people (according to Human Right Watch, and 600 according to the version propagated by Azerbaijan) were killed in unknown circumstances near the city of Aghdam. They have been deliberately withheld by the Azerbaijani authorities in the midst of the military actions. Population of the village of Khojalu, which was one of the firing points shooting at the blockaded Stepanakert (among five others) was kept in the village for months by force and was not evacuated by the authorities of Azerbaijan deliberately, in order to use them as human shields later.

Residents of Khojalu coming out through the humanitarian corridor, that the self-defense forces of NKR had left open, freely passed more than 10 km and reached the Aghdam city controlled by the Azerbaijani troops. Later, not far from the positions of Azerbaijani troops dead bodies of the villagers were found. The exact death toll remains unknown as the official Baku publishes data contradicting each other. Parliamentary Commission investigating the tragic death of the civilians at Aghdam city was dissolved by the order of Heydar Aliyev, the investigative materials are kept secret.

Ahead of Election in Cyprus, Gloom and Voter Apathy Tied to Financial Woes

February 24, 2013 By administrator

Graffiti that reads “Troika get out,” in Limassol, Cyprus.
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: February 23, 201

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — Evagoras Georgiou will go to the polling station at the Tsireio middle school in the St. John neighborhood here for Sunday’s presidential election. But he will leave his ballot blank, voting for neither of the two candidates in the runoff for Cyprus’s most powerful political office.

Both candidates have promised to abide by a deal with international lenders that promises to help the country service its debts but that will bring harsh austerity and recession with it.

Mr. Georgiou, 28, studied business management in Britain and returned almost a year ago to look for work. He has yet to find a job and says he believes that a deal with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — known collectively as the troika — will only make matters worse.

“They both have the same policies but find a way to make the public believe they disagree,” Mr. Georgiou said of the two candidates. “We see that any country with a troika agreement is ridden with debt and has high unemployment of youth.”

What many Cypriots find most frustrating is that their crisis, like those in Ireland and Iceland before them, was concentrated in the banks. There is no sovereign debt crisis and, before the banking collapse, their economy was relatively healthy. Why, they wonder, should they suffer for the misdeeds of a few bankers? Why cover losses that should be borne, at least in part, by private investors?

This small Mediterranean nation goes to the polls at a moment of rising uncertainty and apprehension. Nicos Anastasiades, the leader of the conservative party Democratic Rally, is expected to best Stavros Malas, who is backed by AKEL, the Communist party.

Mr. Anastasiades comes from the same conservative bloc in Europe, the European People’s Party, as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Ms. Merkel came here for a party conference in January and met with Mr. Anastasiades at that time.

But on the subject that preoccupies many Cypriots, the anticipated bailout, the difference between the two candidates may be slim. Mr. Malas has called for a softening of the harshest austerity measures but otherwise has promised to stay the course with the sort of budget-slashing measures advocated by Germany that have led to deep recessions in other European countries.

“Fundamentally, the average Cypriot and even the average politician realizes this model being imposed by Germany all over Europe is flawed,” said Bambos Papageorgiou, who is a member of the Cypriot Parliament’s finance committee from AKEL and who used to work in the London derivatives market. “But our situation is such that we can’t avoid negotiating.”

Cyprus has known its share of adversity. The island has been divided since the Turkish Army invaded the northern part of the island in 1974. United Nations peacekeepers still patrol the buffer zone, which runs through the center of the capital, Nicosia.

Graffiti written in black spray paint near one of the blue and white guard posts at the edge of the zone on the Greek side reads “Troika Go Home.”

Cyprus has been unable to raise money in international bond markets for a year and has been kept afloat only by a loan of $3.5 billion from the Russian government. That allowed it to put off the final reckoning, which is now coming due.

In absolute terms, the bailout of Cyprus under discussion is quite small compared with the cost of keeping Greece afloat, around $22 billion compared with roughly $327 billion. But German politicians have balked at what they see as a bailout for Russian oligarchs and money launderers, who they say keep their money in Cypriot banks.

Cyprus signed a memorandum of understanding with the troika in November, cutting salaries for government workers by up to 15 percent. Additionally, public pension payments were pared back by as much as 10 percent, and the value-added tax will rise. Both sides decided to wait until a new government was in place to complete the bailout.

In the meantime, Cyprus’s economy shrank by roughly 2.3 percent last year, according to preliminary estimates by the government statistics office, driving the unemployment rate up to 14.7 percent by the end of the year.

Though frustrated, European voters have tended to hold their noses and vote for pro-bailout candidates, as they did in Greece last year when Antonis Samaras eked out a victory over Alexis Tsipras’s radical-left Syriza. But political analysts wonder how long their patience will hold as austerity measures punish the most indebted countries and their pared-back spending pulls down even the Continent’s healthier economies.

And there is little hope for a rapid recovery. The European Commission said Friday that the economy of the euro zone would shrink 0.3 percent in 2013. The commission also forecast that Cyprus’s economy would shrink 3.5 percent this year and 1.3 percent in 2014.

Marios Mavrides, a member of Parliament with Democratic Rally and a professor of economics at the European University Cyprus, predicted that as the deep budget cuts mandated by the troika began to bite, recession would last all the way into 2015.

“We need to go through a deep recession. There’s no other way,” Mr. Mavrides said. “The banking system is virtually hanging from a single thread.”

The mood is especially pessimistic among young Cypriots. “I don’t see any future for the young generation,” said Marios Georgiou, 30, a sales representative in Nicosia, who said he was saving money to emigrate, possibly to Australia or Canada.

In the meantime, property developers have started placing their hopes on Asian investors. The highway between Limassol and the resort town of Paphos is lined with billboards advertising property in Chinese characters. Christos Charalambous said that his employer, Kleanthis Savva Developers, had several dozen clients from China.

“We hope that this year things will turn around. Last year was the worst that I can remember in the real estate business,” said Mr. Charalambous, who has worked in the industry for a decade. “If 2013 is worse than 2012, many businesses will default.”

There is hope on the horizon, in the form of substantial natural gas reserves discovered in the waters between Cyprus and Israel. Recalling the difficult period four decades ago after Turkey invaded, Andreas Christou, Limassol’s mayor, said he remained optimistic. “We shall find a way to survive,” he said.

Andreas Riris contributed reporting.

Uncensored Edition of British Blue Book Sheds Light on Armenian Genocide

February 24, 2013 By administrator

http://www.gomidas.org/books/index.htm

Ames Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored Edition], edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian

In 1916 the British Parliament published a “Blue Book” that identified the events of 1915–16 as a systematic effort to exterminate the Armenian people. The Blue Book has been one of the most solid and influential sources on the Armenian Genocide. A critical, uncensored edition, edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian, has now been published by the Gomidas Institute.
Viscount James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee were commissioned to prepare the Blue Book, which is formally known as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916. Toynbee carefully compiled and verified dozens of eyewitness accounts from different parts of the Ottoman Empire. These accounts provided the basis for Bryce’s brilliant thesis on the Genocide, published while the crime was still in progress.
The book includes eyewitness accounts from United States consular and missionary sources, as well as the testimony of German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Greek, Kurdish, and Armenian witnesses.
The original publication was full of blanks: the names of many people and places were obscured in order to safeguard sources still in the Ottoman Empire. The names remain obscured in facsimile editions that have been published over the years. Now Sarafian has restored the obscured names.
In his introduction, Sarafian takes issue with the repeated assertions of Turkish nationalist authors, who claim that the Blue Book was a British propaganda fabrication. He demonstrates the intellectual pedigree of the work. He shows exactly how testimonies were collected, authenticated, and then used in the book.
Generations of official historians of Turkey, such as Enver Zia Karal (Ankara University), Salahi Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (Director of Ottoman archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy, and others have cited the Blue Book and have insisted that it lacks credibility.
Sarafian has located Toynbee’s original manuscript, Toynbee’s correspondence with his sources, and most of the original reports, which were copied and sent to London. They can still be found at the Public Record Office (Kew), Bodleian Library (Oxford), National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), and the Houghton Library (Cambridge, Mass.) He has established that the compilers were meticulous in their verification of sources.
According to the Times Literary Supplement (London), “This work emerges from Ara Sarafian’s examination as documentation of a high order. . . . Sarafian convincingly rebuts the claims that there was any falsification, or that any of the documents was one-sided British propaganda.”
Lord Avebury of the British House of Lords has welcomed the publication of this critical edition of the Blue Book. Excoriating the present-day British government for refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, “ostensibly for a lack of evidence,” Lord Avebury notes that “the British Foreign Office itself published such evidence as early as 1916. . . . Ara Sarafian should be commended for making a critical edition of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire available to the public.”
Toynbee, who went on to be a major historian in his own right, was deeply moved by his research on the Genocide. In his 1967 memoir, Acquaintances, Toynbee wrote: “My study [of the Armenian Genocide] . . . left an impression on my mind that was not effaced by the still more cold-blooded genocide, on a far larger scale, that was committed during the Second World War by the Nazi.
“Any great crime—private or public, personal or impersonal—raises a question that transcends national limits; the question goes to the heart of human nature itself. My study of the genocide that had been committed in Turkey in 1915 brought home to me the reality of Original Sin,” Toynbee concluded.
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916 complements the Gomidas Institute’s Armenian Genocide Documentation Series, which to date includes four volumes of eyewitness accounts: Days of Tragedy in Armenia (Rev. Henry Riggs, Harpoot); “Turkish Atrocities” (twenty-one reports compiled by James Barton); Marsovan 1915 (the diary of Bertha Morley); and The German, the Turk and the Devil Made a Triple Alliance (the diary of Tacy Atkinson, Harpoot).
The Uncensored Edition of the Blue Book was published with the generous support of Dr. Rostom Stepanian and the Committee for the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide (London).
For a report on the launch of this book at the House of Lords, click here.

ISBN 1-903656-51-6

(2nd edition 2005)

xxii + 677 pages, hardback, map (insert), index.

Price: UK£45.00 / US$70.00 plus shipping.

To order contact books@gomidas.org or books@garodbooks.com.

Table of contents

Turkish Airline becoming gateway for Somalis Using Fake Passports to Europe.

February 23, 2013 By administrator

By ABDI GULED Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia February 22, 2013 (AP)

Somalis aided by human traffickers are using fake passports to board the Mogadishu-to-Istanbul flight as a way to flee to Europe, a Somali official and Turkish Airlines said.

Turkish Airline last year became the first international airline to fly direct to Mogadishu after two decades of conflict isolated the East African nation. Somalia’s government said that Somali asylum seekers are using fake passports that belong to Somali-Europeans smuggling networks to get to Europe by flying out of the country on Turkish Airlines.

“After the city got some stability, human traffickers returned with scams,” said Gen. Abdullahi Gafow Mohamud, Somalia’s immigration and naturalization department chief. “The problem increased when Turkish Airlines started operating here. Somalis in Europe are increasingly using fake passports to smuggle people illegally into Europe.”

Mohamud said Somali officials caught three people using fake passports last week. He accused Somalis in Europe of being part of the scam. Residents in Somalia pay thousands of dollars for the use of the false passports.

“They look for people with similar features, so that they give their passports to them to assist the person to get to Europe unnoticed. We can’t ignore it anymore,” he said.

Mohamud showed reporters bundles of fake passports he said were used by human traffickers.

Turkish Airlines confirmed that such scams are happening. Merve Oruc, a spokesman for the airline, said in an email that the airline is experiencing “some problems” with fake passports.

“And because of it, (the) visa department of our subsidiary, Turkish Ground Services, goes to Mogadishu for each flight and works together there with Immigration Office,” Oruc wrote.

The Somali government is concerned the smuggling scams could lead to the stoppage of the Istanbul-Mogadishu flight. Oruc said the airline has no plans to discontinue the flight.

Since African Union forces ousted al-Shabab fighters from Mogadishu about 18 months ago, a relative peace has returned to the war-battered city, creating a new sense of hope and opportunity in the seaside city.

At the height of violence in Somalia thousands of Somalis fled across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen ever year and dozens perished at sea while trying to cross the Red Sea in rickety boats. Despite the new, relative peace, many Somalis are still trying to flee to Europe or North America.

Human traffickers are banking on the relatively weak Somali passport security to pass through the system unnoticed. World governments rarely grant visas to Somali passport holders, leading many Somalis to believe that an illegal human trafficking route is their only way to get to Europe.

Construction of Memorial Park in the City of Pasadena scheduled to end on the eve of Armenian Genicide 100th anniversary

February 23, 2013 By administrator

16:30, 23 February, 2013

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 23, ARMENPRESS: Construction works of Memorial Park located in USA California state, city of Pasadena are set to start in 2014 and end in 2015 on the eve of April 24. As Armenpress reports, Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee states, the Memorial will be constructed and maintained entirely with private funding. Armenian communities in the Diaspora is one of the strongest Diaspora communities. It’s important to ensure that there is a public space of reflection and remembrance for the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Last year community leaders came together and formed the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee to establish and maintain a public memorial of the Armenian Genocide within the City.

The Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee received 17 submissions for the design of the Memorial and an independent 3 judge panel unanimously selected the design by Pasadena Art Center Environmental Design student Catherine Menard.

The central feature of Menard’s memorial’s minimalist design a carved-stone basin of water straddled by a tripod arrangement of three columns leaning into one another is a single drop of water that falls from the highest point every three seconds, each tear drop representing one life lost. Over the course of one year, 1.5 million tears will fall into the pool, the estimated number of victims of the Armenian Genocide.