Friday 11 October 2019

Armenian News...A Topalian 5 Editorials


Panorama, Armenia
Aug 31 2019
Commemoration of Sts. James and Simon Apostles

The Armenian Apostolic Church marks today the commemoration of Sts. James and Simon Apostles. Qahana.am reports that in order to differ St. James Apostle from James, the son of Zebedee, he is named “James son of Alphaeus” and “James Junior”. The Apostle James son of Alphaeus has preached the Gospel in the Southern parts of Palestine and in Egypt, where he has been martyred.

St. Simon the Patriot Apostle is famous as “Simon of Canaan”, which also means “Zealous”. There was a grouping with that name among the Jews, who without making distinctions between means struggled against the foreign Roman yoke and for eliminating the betraying and fond of foreigners Jews. St. Simon has preached and has been martyred in Persia.



Panorama, Armenia
Aug 31 2019
Today marks William Saroyan's birth anniversary

August 31 marks the birthday anniversary of Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning Armenian-American writer William Saroyan.
At the age of three, after his father’s death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.
Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father’s writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s.

Among these was “The Broken Wheel”, written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933. Many of Saroyan’s stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from the nineteenth century song of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society.

He published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted the people he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and Charlie Chaplin. In 1952, Saroyan published The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the first of several volumes of memoirs.

Saroyan died in Fresno, of cancer at age 71. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the remainder in Armenia at Komitas Pantheon near film director Sergei Parajanov.

His work remains popular to this day. His literature is taught in schools to all ages, and his plays are produced all over the world. His Academy Award winning screenplay “The Human Comedy” has been adapted into the motion picture “Ithaca,” directed by Meg Ryan.

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.”



News.am, Armenia
Sept 1 2019
Armenian village has one first grader this year 

An Armenian village of Kalavan, which is popular among tourists for hiking routes and beautiful scenery, has one first grader this year.

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan’s adviser Robert Ghukasyan posted a photo of Liana, the only first grader in the village.


Common Dreams
Aug 30 2019
Battle for Amulsar: UK Mining Giant Using Corporate Courts to Attack Community Opposed to Massive Gold Mine

This is the sinister mechanism known as ISDS in action—holding a sovereign government to ransom until it betrays the desires and rights of its own people

by
TJ Chua

Early last week—despite popular resistance and grave environmental concerns—the Armenian government green-lit a gold mine on Amulsar Mountain in Southern Armenia.

The new Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who steered the movement that brought about Armenia’s ‘Velvet Revolution,’ appears to have bowed to pressure from mining firm Lydian International, including the threat of a $2 billion lawsuit in a ‘corporate court.’ But the grassroots resistance is determined to hold strong and continue blocking construction. Will the government remove protestors and clear the path for Lydian? The answer will show the strength of Armenia’s new democracy.

Two months ago I travelled to Amulsar to meet with and interview the communities at the center of resistance against the gold mine, which was set to open on their doorstep. The community fear that the mine will destroy their environment, landscape and their jobs. 

They’re right to be worried; the area around Amulsar is one of astounding beauty, the economy of the nearby spa town of Jermuk relies on the purity of the mountain’s mineral water, and even the start of construction activities decimated local livestock. Amulsar is at the heart of Armenia’s water supply, so any potential mining disaster would have grave repercussions far beyond the immediate area.

"Essentially Lydian is using corporate courts to bully the Armenian government into taking a more repressive approach to public protest."UK-registered mining company Lydian was given the go-ahead for the gold mine by the previous Armenian government, even though the communities most likely to be affected had expressed longstanding concerns. That government was an authoritarian administration with a track record of police violence and repression of public protest. Then in 2018, Armenia had a 'Velvet Revolution' and a new democratic government was formed. The communities around Amulsar felt they had a chance to make their voices heard. Protests began, ultimately leading to the blockade.

For an entire year, people from the town and villages next to Amulsar have blockaded the entry roads to the mine and have succeeded in completely shutting down construction. This was made possible thanks to the efforts of the entire community—from those living for months at a time at the blockade sites, to the shopkeepers sending food and supplies. Environmental activists along with the local community had been campaigning around Amulsar before this and faced police repression, but since the revolution, this peaceful protest has been allowed to continue without any violence or repression from the authorities.

However, this amazing act of resistance came under threat earlier this year when Lydian threatened to sue the government in corporate courts, also known as Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS)—a lesser known feature of modern trade deals that place an unbelievable amount of power and control into the hands of corporations. These corporate courts allow companies to sue states for decisions that reduce projected profits, so Lydian based the challenge on the government’s ‘failure’ to remove the protest blockades, using both a UK–Armenia and Canada–Armenia investment deal, asking for a pay-out equivalent to two thirds of Armenia’s annual budget. 

Essentially Lydian is using corporate courts to bully the Armenian government into taking a more repressive approach to public protest. 

Now that the Armenian government has caved to corporate pressure and given the go-ahead to the mine, there’s a real risk that it will move to remove the local protestors.

This is corporate courts in action—holding the government to ransom until it backs down. What is on the table is billions in compensation. It sounds like a kind of Kafkaesque situation, and it is. The Armenian government is right to be worried—these corporate courts have been successfully used to strip billions from the public purse of governments that could really do with that money to spend on much needed public services.  This is why campaigning against corporate courts is so important.

We need to tell Lydian to drop the corporate court case and respect the wishes of the local communities.

Note: The film War on Want produced, More precious than gold: community resistance v corporate courts, highlights the struggle of the community, and the concerns of environmental experts, showing that the case against the mine is compelling.


RFE/RL Report 
Junior Mining Network
Aug 30 2019

Lydian is Deeply Disappointed with ELARD’s Misleading Comments on Skype Call with the Government of Armenia 

Mr. Edward Sellers reports:

TORONTO, Aug. 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX: LYD) (“Lydian” or the “Company”) expressed deep disappointment today with comments made by Earth Link & Advanced Resources Development (“ELARD”) on a Skype conference call hosted by the Government of Armenia on August 29th to discuss an environmental audit of Lydian’s Amulsar Project and related environmental impact assessments.

During the conference call, ELARD made repeated references to ‘gaps’ or ‘deficiencies’ and a ‘lack of quality’ to the data and information made available to them during the audit.  Although Lydian Armenia has stated from the outset that ELARD’s engagement by the Special Investigation Committee (the “SIC”) was both unnecessary and unsupported under Armenian Law, the company cooperated fully with the SIC and ELARD in their investigation and development of their report (the “Audit Report”). 
Indeed, Lydian and its technical advisors provided the SIC and ELARD with direct access to all personnel and supporting information for over three months, including over 300 reports representing over 20,000 pages of data and materials that had been developed over an 8-year period relating to environmental aspects of the Amulsar Project.  The SIC has reported on multiple occasions that Lydian cooperated fully in connection with the audit. Indeed, the SIC reviewed the Audit Report and concluded that there was no basis on which to proceed against Lydian.

Lydian’s technical advisors included reputable international companies such as Wardell Armstrong International, Golder Associates, Environmental Resources Management, Global Resource Engineering, Treweek Environmental Consultants and others.  They assisted Lydian in meeting or exceeding rigorous and leading global standards of environmental stewardship and sustainability under an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (“ESIA”) to qualify for investment and ongoing support by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (“IFC”) and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (“EBRD”).  Moreover, Lydian’s environmental performance and the ESIA have been audited by an independent international auditor, Knight Piesold, and was found substantially compliant with all applicable international standards.

While Lydian welcomed ELARD’s rightful conclusion about the lack of impact on Lake Sevan and the Jermuk water source, yesterday’s regrettable performance by ELARD reveals more about an apparent lack of capacity to review and analyze complex details of more than 20,000 pages of professional studies provided to them by leading global experts than it does about Lydian or the Amulsar Project. 

ELARD’S comments during yesterday’s call regarding available data appear to be about a ‘wish list’ of what they would have preferred to be able to review.  When asked, ELARD did not give any reference to any industry standards that Lydian did not comply with.

Rather than acknowledge that, ELARD continued to characterize what they ‘hoped’ to obtain as part of their review but was not available to them as ‘gaps’ or ‘deficiencies’ in the available data.  ELARD simply never acknowledged or accepted that what they hoped they would be able to review was not in accord with industry practice and did not have to exist to support the EIA or ESIA processes or the grant of Lydian’s mining permits. 

Lydian has been illegally deprived of its right to access and operate the Amulsar Project since June 2018. The Government of Armenia had repeatedly stated that the restoration of the rights of the Company to operate were dependent on the results of an audit conducted by ELARD.  While Lydian believes there was no legal ground for tying the Company’s ability to exercise its legal right to operate to any further audit, Lydian cooperated fully with 3 consecutive audits over the past year.  No other mining company in Armenia has been required to undergo any such audit.

The Government of Armenia has said publicly that Lydian and the Amulsar Project have been the subject of a campaign by rival mining companies providing support to opponents of the Amulsar Project.  Armenian society has been dragged into an endless discussion around an audit which had no legal grounds to question Lydian’s rights to operate in the first place.  When will the Government of Armenia identify the rival mining companies conducting this campaign, how much has been paid to oppose the Amulsar Project and who has been paid?

About Lydian International Limited
Lydian is a gold developer focused on construction at its 100%-owned Amulsar Project, located in south-central Armenia. However, illegal blockades have prevented access to Amulsar since late June 2018. Amulsar is expected to be a large-scale, low-cost operation with production targeted to average approximately 225,000 ounces annually over an initial 10-year mine life. Estimated mineral resources contain 3.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and 1.3 million inferred gold ounces as outlined in the Q1 2017 Technical Report. Existing mineral resources beyond current reserves and open extensions provide opportunities to improve average annual production and extend the mine life. Lydian is committed to good international industry practices in all aspects of its operations including production, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. For more information and to directly contact us, please visit www.lydianinternational.co.uk.


BBC Radio 4
The Food Programme - Taste the Music and Dance - @bbcradio4

Around minute 20 is about " Manti " presented as an Istanbul dish / Anatolian dish / Ottoman Empire dish

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