Armenian News ... A Topalian... 10 editorials
Why do Armenian Names end with “IAN” ?
BBC News
The boat-shaped ravioli of the Armenian diaspora
By Bridget Gleeson & Ignacio de Barrio
1 August 2019
For thousands of Armenians who resettled in Argentina, comfort food and community were key to keeping cultural traditions alive.
Armenpress.am
31 July, 2019
ANCA hopes US will provide 85 mln USD support to Armenia this year
Armenia has received 2 billion USD support from the United States since independence, Chairperson of the Armenian National Committee of America Western Region (ANCA-WR) Nora Hovsepian told a press conference in Armenpress, stating that the Committee played a key role in this process. She informed that during these years Artsakh as well received 45 million USD support from the US.
“Artsakh is the only country that is non-recognized and receives a direct support from the US”, Hovsepian said.
Asked what is the reason that the US government cuts funding for Armenia, but plans to provide 100 million USD to Azerbaijan to implement a program on the border with Iran, the ANCA-WR Chairperson said it’s fake news, the US is not going to provide 100 million USD to Azerbaijan.
“Of course, there will be a funding, but not that much. These sums are expected to be provided for implementing a program on the Azerbaijan-Iran border. The US views Azerbaijan a key partner against Iran. As for the funding to Armenia and Artsakh, I would like to state that this is Trump’s policy, he is cutting the funding at all directions. ANCA continues working on this direction. 40 million USD will be provided for Armenia, there has also been a proposal to add another 45 million USD. We have a hope of 5 million USD for Artsakh and a 85 million USD for Armenia”, she said.
Nora Hovsepian said they are actively working to develop the Armenia-US ties.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
Trump Administration Attacks U.S. Aid Program to Artsakh
1 Augut 2019
The ANCA has issued a nationwide call to action to encourage Members of Congress to cosign the Sherman-Cox Letter in support of continued Artsakh aid
WASHINGTON—The Trump Administration—caving in to pressure from Azerbaijan’s authoritarian Aliyev regime—is targeting the humanitarian aid program in Artsakh, attempting to shut down the HALO Trust’s de-mining program that has saved countless lives across the Republic, reported the Armenian National Committee of America.
U.S. Representatives Brad Sherman (D-CA) and TJ Cox (D-CA) are leading a Congressional campaign—backed by the ANCA—encouraging USAID Administrator Mark Green to reverse course and preserve the Nagorno-Karabakh de-mining program. Administrator Green testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee on April 9 of this year that USAID was committed to completing the clearance of landmines and unexploded ordnances within the traditional boundaries of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“President Trump is wrong to bow to Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev’s reckless demand that America end U.S. humanitarian aid to Artsakh,” stated ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “A modest expenditure that represents a major investment in peace, this aid program has, since Fiscal Year 1998, delivered desperately needed maternal health care, provided families with clean drinking water, and cleared farms and villages of deadly mines. We thank each and every U.S. legislator who is seeking to advance U.S. interests and American values by continuing U.S. humanitarian aid to Artsakh in the face of foreign attempts to meddle in American decision-making.”
The ANCA has mounted a nationwide grassroots Congressional calling campaign in support of continued Artsakh aid. To participate, visit the website.
Armenpress.am
31 July, 2019
Armenia’s foreign policy is strictly Armenia-centered – FM
Armenia is not pro one direction or another in its foreign policy, Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan said in an interview to German Marshall Fund Senior Fellow Jonathan Katz, commenting on the question relating to the impact of the 2018 Velvet Revolution on Armenia’s foreign policy agenda.
“I think the most important challenge before us, the most important priority, was to make it very clear that Armenia’s Velvet Revolution was strictly about Armenia and it was a strictly a domestic affair; that this was a very important development in Armenia for Armenians; for consolidating public institutions, democratic institutions to serve the nation and economy better, to serve our national security agenda better, to serve the purposes of stability through democratic institutions”, the FM said.
According to the minister, Armenia’s foreign policy has been built in a very careful way to consolidate the national security architecture through engagements with its major partners Russia, the European Union, and the United States.
“We were not adventurous to risk rocking the boat to an extent that we could undermine the purposes of the Velvet Revolution and undermine the security of the nation. We are not pro one direction or another. We are strictly pro-Armenia and our foreign policy is strictly Armenia-centered. And within this, through a strategic approach, we have carefully built a national security architecture, of which foreign policy is an important part, and within which strong relations with each our partners have an important part to contribute to our national security, in their own way”, FM Mnatsakanyan said.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 1 2019
Moscow concerned about recent escalation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border
Moscow on Thursday voiced concern about the latest flare-ups on the border of Armenian and Azerbaijan and urged the parties involved to refrain from using force and take steps towards stabilising the situation in the region.
"Russia is concerned about the escalation of the situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border, that resulted in killing of an Armenian serviceman and reported I juries from both sides," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters at a press briefing on Thursday.
“Further escalation of the situation is unacceptable. We call on the sides to exercise restraint, refrain from the use of force and take steps towards stabilizing the,” Zakharova added.
Arminfo, Armenia
Aug 2 2019
Armenian Embassy in Russia made a statement in connection with the situation around Sochi airport
ArmInfo.The Armenian Embassy in Russia made a statement in connection with the situation around the Sochi airport.
Marianna Mkrtchyan
"The Armenian Embassy in the Russian Federation contacted various parties in connection with the situation around the Sochi airport to clarify information and get clarifications. The conversations were held with the relevant structures of Sochi, the airport management, citizens involved in the situation and representatives of the Armenian community. The embassy received explanations of the sides, including from groups of citizens, the local Armenian community and relevant structures. The above issue is in the focus of the embassy's attention, "the Armenian Ambassador's press service informed ArmInfo.
As ArmInfo wrote earlier, for several months now real ethnic cleansing has been taking place among employees at the Sochi airport,- for various reasons, employees with Armenian surnames have been dismissed. Internet resource infoteka24.ru was the first one to voice this problem. According to the report, the staff of JSC "Sochi International Airport" made the following statement. ''We, the staff of , appeal to you for help. For the second year in our enterprise, there has been a harsh cleansing of personnel on a national basis, namely, by all possible means, employees with Armenian surnames are being dismissed.
Everything started in 2018. The first was carried out in two services (Transportation Service, Aviation Security Service). They used the method of intimidation and coercion, then, the rest who refused to quit themselves, were banally dismissed by changing the structure of the service, although the size and functionality did not change and the recruitment did not stop and continues to this day. But, during the recruitment of candidates people with the Armenian names are not considered at all or denied without any reason. As a result, more than 70 people were left without work in these two services, including single mothers, the only wet breadwinners in the family, war veterans, staff members who have disabled dependents and others.
To date, the wave of layoffs on a national basis applies to all airport services. At the general service meetings with all the staff, it is announced that workers with Armenian roots (even with Russian surnames) must voluntarily resign before September 1, 2019, in case of disagreement they are intimidated with disciplinary actions and dismissal under the article, some are even offered from one to two salaries for agreeing to resign. Within a few months, the airport's employees were introduced as many disciplinary sanctions as have never been made since the first day of the airport's operation!!! All employees are simply shocked by the arbitrariness and oppression of citizens of the Russian Federation of Armenian origin.
And this is all happening in the multinational city of Sochi, where more than a hundred nationalities have lived in peace and mutual understanding for centuries. Even brother of Vladimir Nikolayevich Begiyan, who tragically died on September 1, 2018, while rescuing the passengers of the burning UTair airline that rolled out of the strip, was fired. Begiyan V.N. was posthumously awarded the , which was presented to the Begiyan family personally by the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation>. The statement posted on the site was signed by 29 people.
Armenpress.am
31 July, 2019
PM Pashinyan surprised at development pace of Kalavan community, Gegharkunik Province
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, who is still on vacation, visited Kalavan community in Gegharkunik Province and got acquainted with its development process and strategies. ARMENPRESS reports the PM toured in the village accompanied by resident of the village Robert Ghukasyan who presented the works done during the last years and future plans.
Robert Ghukasyan informed that during the last years the flow of tourists to their village has increased so much that at the moment there are not enough guesthouses. He explained that the reason of the success is that the members of the community have preserved the nature and offer ecologically clean food.
In addition to eco-torisim, cattle breeding also develops in the village. Ghukasyan said that in the village that has population less than 200 people 3 farms are being constructed at the moment.
''Now we are in Kalavan community of Gegharkunik Province. Today we decided to visit Kalavan because I think that it's one of the villages that has some ideological sense for new Armenia. I always speak about individual efforts and here we can say that individual effort leads to success'', Pashinyan said, hoping thatthe success of the village will be examplery for many other villages of Armenia.
Pashinyan also expressed conviction that the community will have solved all its problems in a period of 5 years by its own efforts, including the condition of the roads roads.
Robert Ghukasyan ephasized that each village of Armenia has some economic potential that has not been used yet, calling on people to rely on their own ideas and love towards the country and their community.
Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 1 2019
Resident of Armenia's Kalavan village to be appointed Pashinyan’s advisor
A resident of Kalavan village in Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province, Robert Ghukasyan will be appointed Advisor to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the PM himself revealed on Facebook.
“Kalavan’s resident Robert Ghukasyan and I agreed that he will end his current activities within one or two months and will be appointed Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia with a mission to share the experience of Kalavan village in other Armenian villages,” Pashinyan said.
The PM, who is currently on vacation, visited the village on Wednesday, presenting the successes achieved through Ghukasyan's personal efforts.
In a Facebook live video, the villager talked about the development of rural communities, expressing conviction there is no village which lacks resources for development.
In 2017 then Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan was also inspired by Ghukasyan's rural development program and tasked the government to assist its implementation.
Armenpress.am
1 August, 2019
Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople wants to elect new leader in December
Nearly five months since the passing of Mesrob II, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople (Istanbul) has launched its organizational work to hold an election of a new patriarch.
A new patriarch will be elected by spiritual and secular delegates, who themselves are yet to be elected. The election of these delegates will take place on December 7 and 8. The patriarchate seeks to hold the election of a patriarch on December 11, and it has applied to the Ministry of Interior of Turkey through the Government of Istanbul Province with a request to confirm the dates, the patriarchate said on its social media account.
Mesrob II Mutafyan of Constantinople was the 84th Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. He was elected patriarch in 1998, but ten years later was incapacitated due to Alzheimer’s disease. However, officially he remained patriarch.
He died in a comatose condition on March 8, 2019 in hospital at the age of 62.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
The Independent (United Kingdom)
July 31, 2019
If a no-deal Brexit happens, mega corporations could sue the government for billions in secret courts
by Jean Blaylock
The Armenian government is currently being sued by a corporation for two thirds of its entire government budget. If the UK crashes out on 31 October, it could suffer a similar fate
Imagine a world where transnational corporations don't have to follow the same laws as everyone else, but instead have their own corporate courts, where the law is tailored to their interests. Not courts where the companies are put on trial, but where corporations sue governments for huge sums of money and bully countries to get their own way.
It sounds like dystopian science fiction, but corporate courts are real. Formally known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), this shadowy legal system for transnational companies is written into the rules of many trade and investment deals.
Hardly surprising then that parliament's Trade Committee has just described these corporate courts as "highly controversial". They always have been. They have been used to challenge everything from a moratorium on fracking to the introduction of plain packaging on cigarettes to a land grab being blocked. People around the world can tell many stories about the damage corporate courts can cause.
The UK though, has perhaps been able to be a bit complacent. The UK has many investment deals with corporate court arrangements, but mainly with countries in the global south where the economic power - and the transnational corporations - have been on the UK's side. UK companies have been happy to use ISDS. Anglian Water, for instance, sued Argentina when it set a cap on consumer prices for water during a financial crisis. But on the whole, the UK has not faced corporate courts itself. That could be about to change with Brexit.
Before getting into that, it's good to look at a particular example, to understand how harmful corporate courts can be. A case that is just getting underway at the moment involves a mining company, Lydian, and a planned gold mine in Armenia.
Lydian has its main office in Colorado in the US, but it is nominally headquartered in Jersey, offshore from the UK. It wants to set up an open-cast gold mine on Amulsar mountain, in the south of Armenia, next to the spa town of Jermuk. There were longstanding concerns about the mine, and its effect on water sources in the region, but it was given the go ahead by the previous Armenian government. This government had a track record of police violence and repression of public protest. Once construction started, in addition to the environmental concerns, local people became urgently aware of the stark threats that a large open cast mine posed to existing jobs in tourism and agriculture.
Then in 2018, Armenia had a "velvet revolution" and a new democratic government came to power - one with a less repressive attitude to policing. Locals felt they had a chance to be heard, and started protesting.
For over a year now locals have blockaded the mine, with construction on the site brought to a halt.
Not long after the protests started, Lydian set up a "letterbox" subsidiary in the UK. Then a few months back, it started the process to bring a corporate court case through that subsidiary against the Armenian government, using a UK investment deal. Its grounds are that the Armenian government has "failed" to remove the protesters, and it says that whether it pursues the case or not depends on the "conduct" of the government. In effect, it is suing to bully the government into taking a more repressive attitude to public protest.
It is an effective threat, because corporate courts allow companies to sue not just for money they have already invested, but also for profit they think they could have made in future. Lydian is reportedly asking for a payout of $2bn - an amount equal to two thirds of the Armenian government budget, and many times in excess of what it has spent.
Brexit itself opens many possibilities for corporate court cases. When major changes to policies and regulations happen, that is fertile ground for ISDS. If those changes happen suddenly, by crashing out of the EU with a no-deal Brexit, even more so. The example of financial services companies suing because their base in the UK no longer provides access to the EU market is one likely area.
Lawyers disagree on whether the cases will succeed, but with such sums at stake, lawyers are one group that can make a lot of money finding out. While government decisions can be challenged in national courts, corporate courts offer much higher payouts and will consider cases on a much narrower basis, looking only at the perspective of the investor.
Post-Brexit trade deals that the current government desperately wants to do with countries like the US could be easy routes for many of the world's most powerful transnationals. Canada is one of the countries most sued by ISDS purely because it has corporate court arrangements with the US through NAFTA, the US-Canada-Mexico trade deal.
Canada's experience has led it to negotiate the removal of corporate courts from the US-Canada side of Trump's renegotiated version of NAFTA, the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement). It is not alone. Around the world, countries have been rejecting corporate courts: South Africa, India, Ecuador, Tanzania, Indonesia and New Zealand have all taken steps to review, limit or terminate existing ISDS deals and refuse to sign new ones.
The UK has an opportunity to do the same, as it sets out its new post-Brexit trade and investment policy. Yet so far it is not taking that opportunity. MPs in the Trade Committee denounced the government's failure to set out "even basic lines of policy" over investment deals, including corporate courts.
Corporate courts are fundamentally unjust and should have no place in modern trade and investment policy. Which is why we need to push the government to show vision and rule them out for good.
Jean Blaylock is a senior campaigns officer at War on Want
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