man

By Florence Avakian The opening of any event is a cause for festivity, but when It involves a benefit to children, it becomes a special celebration. On Friday, September 20, in Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri, the opening of the Octet Music School in Gyumri took place to great fanfare. Attending this auspicious event were the President of Armenia Serge Sarkisian, the Primate of the Armenian Diocese (eastern) Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, and noted philanthropists Edward and Janet Mardigian and son Grant who with the Fund for Armenian Relief (FAR) were the major contributors to this project. Also present were members of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Armenian Relief, (FAR), and renowned musician Ian Gillan. But it was the group of students and teachers of this sparkling new school built with Armenia’s famed tuff stone, who visibly were the most ecstatic.

11 October Friday 2013. Armenia 2-Bulgaria 1 http://youtu.be/D54okX_yQCI

Woe to those Christians who have deserted Me in favour of new age paganismTuesday, September 24th, 2013 My dearly beloved daughter, every living soul has a powerful instinct to seek out God in their lives. Those who find the Love of God in its most pure form are given this Gift because of their humility and acceptance of the fact that all Glory belongs to God. Pagans, on the other hand, in their quest for spiritual peace, seek out the Creation of the 'True' God, rather than their Creator. Instead of laying themselves before God, My Father, the Almighty, Creator of all things, they lie prostrate before false idols, including the wonders He created for the world – the Earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. They idolize these great wonders and then believe that by doing so, this gives them great powers. What they are seeking is a form of spiritual enlightenment, which they hope will bring them pleasure and peace. Many then, through meditation and yoga, open their minds and souls to allow the spirit of evil to corrupt them. They mistakenly believe that some other power, other than that which comes from God the Most High, can bring them the peace, which they crave. Know now that there is only one God. Any other form of adulation amounts to paganism. It does not matter what they say or how they justify their actions, they are inviting Satan to invade their souls and once he gains access, he and the demons he sends will not leave those souls alone. They will torment these souls, fill them with lies and have them believe that they possess a gift. Some believe they can heal others, through practices such as Reiki, when what they do instead is infest others including the innocent. When pagans chant, to attract spiritual gifts, they say that this brings them peace. While many believe this, know that within a short period of time – once the spirit of evil has entered their minds – they will become agitated and no respite will they find. Every pleasure of the senses is constantly sought out by them and all they will receive in return will be a darkness of the soul. Paganism brings a terrible disquiet and, in lands where the heathen cry out to the false gods, they incur the Wrath of My Father. Many such souls do not understand what they are doing, but recognise them by the ways in which they will adorn their bodies, as they consider themselves sacred vessels in the eyes of the false idols they claim to worship. Love, humility or personal sacrifice for the good of others, will be lacking, for they only worship the senses. They do not understand that their souls are a Gift from God and so they give them away in the pursuit of perfection, which can never be theirs. During The Warning, I will awaken within these souls the Truth as to Who they belong to. Pray that they will accept My Hand of Mercy. Woe to those Christians who have deserted Me in favour of new age paganism. They are the ones who do not want My Mercy and would prefer to dabble in nonsense, because it feeds their egos when they believe that they have the power to control matters of spirituality. While they seek personal perfection in this way, they cut themselves completely from God. By doing so, they open the door to the evil one, who will seduce and hypnotise them through the appeal of superstitious promises, which lead to their souls becoming barren where the Love of God cannot thrive. Your Jesus

This is a photo taken by Levon of the beautiful natural waterfall of Yermuk: http://forum.openarmenia.com/uploads//post-13-1136409347.jpg Soon the area below may be converted to recreation and tourist rest with chilling in the fresh cool waters like this: http://youngadventuress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IMG_1667-640x426.jpg http://youngadventuress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IMG_1674-640x426.jpg

From reading this book we see that the Founding Fathers of America were not Christians, Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of this planet earth (after all he created this planet and the mankind on it) and all the rest are false and coming from religious imagination and wisdom of the human kind and not coming from God. A New Book: "Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders" By Denise A. Spellberg 416 pages. Knopf. Ranged against separation was a view of church-state relations teaching that government could accommodate religion and need not be neutral between the cause of religion in general and that of irreligion or atheism. Adherents of this view included Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, and Patrick Henry. The ongoing struggle between these two points of view has shaped and continues to shape American religious history and the law of church and state under the U.S. Constitution. Spellberg adds to this familiar story well a valuable and unfamiliar twist, introducing Islam as a focal-point of American thought and argument. Were Muslims to be excluded from America? Was Islam antithetical to American ideas of religious freedom and openness of citizenship? Spellberg begins her answers to these questions by analyzing Europeans’ and Americans’ negative and positive images of Islam between the mid-sixteenth century and the eighteenth century. For example, the French jurist and philosophe Charles Louis Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, made Muslim diplomats the viewpoint characters of his pathbreaking satirical novel The Persian Letters, which presented European laws, institutions, manners, and morals from an “outsider” Muslim perspective. Yet many Europeans and Americans, seeing Muslims as perennial adversaries of Christianity from the Crusades, insisted that Muslims had no claim to religious liberty because of their supposed hostility to the idea of liberty. Turning from a general overview to focus on Jefferson, Spellberg devotes the core of her book to examining his seemingly antithetical views with regard to Islam and its believers. Though Jefferson was a harsh critic of Islam as a religion (as he was of all Abrahamic religions) and of the hostage-taking and ransom-seeking practices of Muslim states in the Mediterranean (the “Barbary Pirates,” against whom he unsuccessfully tried to organize a Euro-American naval alliance), he also was a staunch advocate of religious freedom even for those falling outside the conventional spectrum of Protestant Christian believers, including Catholics, Jews,and Muslims. Jefferson’s views differed from those of his friend and diplomatic colleague John Adams, who dismissed Jefferson’s quest for an alliance against the Barbary states as unrealistic and who rejected the inclusion of Muslims within an evolving American definition of religious freedom. Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: How Islam Shaped the Founders by R.B. Bernstein http://www.opinion-maker.org/2013/10/thomas-jeffersons-quran/ What role did Islam have in shaping the Founders’ views on religion? A new book argues that to understand the debate over church and state, we need to look to their views on Muslims, writes R.B. Bernstein. One of the nastiest aspects of modern culture wars is the controversy raging over the place of Islam and Muslims in Western society. Too many Americans say things about Islam and Muslims that would horrify and offend them if they heard such things said about Christianity or Judaism, Christians or Jews. Unfortunately, those people won’t open Denise A. Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders. This enlightening book might cause them to rethink what they’re saying. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an examines the intersection during the nation’s founding era of two contentious themes in the culture wars—the relationship of Islam to America, and the proper relationship between church and state. The story that it tells ought to be familiar to most Americans, and is familiar to historians of the nation’s founding. And yet, by using Islam as her book’s touchstone, Spellberg brings illuminating freshness to an oft-told tale. Spellberg, associate professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, seeks to understand the role of Islam in the American struggle to protect religious liberty. She asks how Muslims and their religion fit into eighteenth-century Americans’ models of religious freedom. While conceding that many Americans in that era viewed Islam with suspicion, classifying Muslims as dangerous and unworthy of inclusion within the American experiment, she also shows that such leading figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington spurned exclusionary arguments, arguing that America should be open to Muslim citizens, office-holders, and even presidents. Spellberg’s point is that, contrary to those today who would dismiss Islam and Muslims as essentially and irretrievably alien to the American experiment and its religious mix, key figures in the era of the nation’s founding argued that that American church-state calculus both could and should make room for Islam and for believing Muslims. As Spellberg argues with compelling force, the conventional understanding of defining religion’s role in the nation’s public life has at its core a sharp divide between acceptable beliefs (members of most Protestant Christian denominations) and the unacceptable “other.” Many Protestant Americans, for example, disdained the Roman Catholic Church because of their memories of the bitter religious wars of the Protestant Reformation. Further, Pennsylvania’s constitution and laws allowed voting, sitting on juries, and holding office only to those who professed a belief in the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. By contrast, Thomas Jefferson, a central figure in Spellberg’s book, had a strong, lifelong commitment to religious liberty. Jefferson rejected toleration, the alternative perspective and one embraced by John Locke and John Adams, as grounded on the idea that a religious majority has a right to impose its will on a religious minority, but chooses to be tolerant for reasons of benevolence. Religious liberty, Jefferson argued, denies the majority any right to coerce a dissenting minority, even one hostile to religion. Jefferson rejected using government power to coerce religious belief and practice because it would create a nation of tyrants and hypocrites, as it is impossible to force someone to believe against the promptings of his conscience. Jefferson embraced religious liberty and separation of church and state to protect the individual human mind and the secular political realm from the corrupting alliance of church and state. His political ally James Madison, echoing Roger Williams, the seventeenth-century Baptist religious leader and founder of Rhode Island, added that separation of church and state also would protect the garden of the church from a corrupting alliance with the wilderness of the secular world. http://www.opinion-maker.org/2013/10/thomas-jeffersons-quran/

New drugs 'can cure skin cancer', experts say September 29, 2013 SKIN cancer suffers could be cured of the disease with new breakthrough drugs, experts claimed, as they hailed the "beginning of a new era". Seriously ill patients are said to have seen "spectacular effects" after receiving the medication, which could eventually be used to combat other forms of the condition. It is the first time scientists have come this close to providing a remedy for advanced melanoma. The development will bring hope to thousands of people who are diagnosed with skin cancer in Britain each year. Until now the prognosis for advanced melanoma has been very poor and many patients die within months of diagnosis. Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, said: "We're just at the beginning of a new era of cancer treatments using the immune system. "These drugs that can turn the body's own defences against a tumour are starting to show real promise for melanoma and other types of cancer. "It's only through research that we can gain the insights needed to develop new treatments for cancer patients." The new cure contains two types of drug — ipilimumab (known as ipi) and anti-PD1s, which break down the defences of cancer cells and are still in clinical trials. Doctors can effectively reboot a patient's immune system by combining the two. One in six patients are already being saved by the groundbreaking treatment, the European Cancer Congress has been told. A new combination of drugs could mean more than half are cured of the deadly condition. Professor Alexander Eggermont of the Institut Gustave Roussy in France said: "Advanced melanoma could become a curable disease for perhaps more than 50 per cent of patients within five to 10 years." "If I'd made this bizarre prediction five years ago, people would have said I was mad," he told The Mail on Sunday. "But it now looks like we are going to have control of advanced melanoma for years, in a substantial proportion of patients." Advanced melanoma is diagnosed when the disease has spread and can no longer be surgically removed. Advice on the Cancer Research UK website currently warns patients that this form of skin cancer "can't be cured". It states: "Treatments are available that can shrink the melanoma or stop it growing. It may be possible to control it for quite a while."

"No one is more a slave than he who thinks he is free without being free." In the West there is an illusion of freedom and democracy (like free elections & debates & rights) so they think they are free but in reality are slaves to money lenders and big corporations. In communist countries they do not think they are free and accept their fate in submission to the state. The danger is when to think to be being free without actually being free.

October 11, 2013 The Vatican has withdrawn from sale 6,000 copies of a new papal medal, for sale to collectors, after finding that the inscriptions on them were spelled not Jesus, but Lesus. Was this a coincidence or deliberty done? If we consider that "L" stands for lucifer, the fallen angel, we can imagine how deeply the satanists have infiltrated Vatican. Medals and coins depicting Pope Francis and Jesus Christ are minted for sale to collectors around the world. Such items are made for every new pontiff and serve as a source of extra income for the Vatican. On the medal is encrafted an image of Jesus standing saying to a sited (would be apostle) Matthew, at a tax collection table: "Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, ‘follow me.’" This phrase is circling the rim of the medallion and is written in Latin But the word Jesus was rendered as Lesus. The gaffe made someone tweet: “Let us pray to Lesus!” On the other hand that phrase is the motto of Pope Francis. It can be someone from inside the Vatican wanted to point/reveal that Francis is serving Lucifer and not Jesus.

The Nobel Peace Prize was given to an agency, The Netherlands-based OPCW, which is overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, as the award committee's chairman emphasized the importance of disarmament in the pursuit of world peace. The OPCW "has become an instrument for solving the Syrian crisis" according to him. Norwegian Nobel Committee had OPCW as a front-runner for Nobel Peace Prize since April of this year. Russians were disappointed for not awarding the Prize to the Russian leader Putin for coming up with the plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons and persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to agree to it, rather than OPCW who would be overseeing the elimination of the Syrian arsenal of chemical weapons. Putin was once appointed as TIME's Man-of-the-Year so Lavrov-Kerry, both are likely to be appointed this time.

Russian-Lebanese Ties Strengthen Ahead of Disputed Gas Fields Tender11 Oct. 2013 MOSCOW, October 11 (Howard Amos, RIA Novosti) – Russia and Lebanon announced closer ties Thursday as four of Russia’s biggest energy companies jostle for deals to develop Lebanese gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean which could draw them into a long-running territorial dispute with Israel. Oil giant Rosneft, state-owned gas giant Gazprom, and privately-owned Novatek and LUKoil have all expressed interest in 10 hydrocarbon-rich blocks off the Lebanese coast for which Beirut is expected to award much-delayed licenses in early 2014. At the end of a visit to Moscow, Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil said that Russia and Lebanon had signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the energy sphere. “It is the first step towards a complete relationship between Russia and Lebanon,” he told reporters Thursday, after meeting with Russian energy companies and investors. “We have seen a real, authentic desire [to be involved in Lebanese gas field development],” he added. Technically at war with Israel, Lebanon warned in July that Israel has the technical capacity to draw gas from Beirut’s offshore fields, Reuters reported. The two countries have turned to the United Nations in an attempt to resolve an ownership dispute over about 500 square kilometers along their Mediterranean maritime border. A total of 46 companies, including US oil and gas majors ExxonMobil and Chevron, are taking part in the initial stages of the tender for the Lebanese gas fields. The interested companies have spent $127 million on requests for information from Beirut, Bassil said. LUKoil was the first Russian company to announce its interest, just a few days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Lebanese counterpart in Moscow on January 23. Gazprom’s interest in the area is more longstanding, as it wants to bolster its access to its European customers. The Russian gas giant lost a key tender last year to take a stake in Israel’s giant Leviathan gas field, where production is expected to begin in 2016. Lebanon is lagging behind other Eastern Mediterranean states, including Israel and Turkey, in developing its offshore energy reserves. Decision-making is currently hamstrung by a domestic political impasse, and the license-granting process has already been delayed several times. It may be difficult for Beirut to award the contracts solely to Russian companies, and it is more likely that licenses will be granted to consortiums from a variety of countries that could include both the US and Russia, Ildar Davletshin, oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, told RIA Novosti Thursday. “Politically, it’s a very sensitive area, and just relying on Russian companies might be too risky,” he said.

http://youtu.be/GRu4PpIruFE

After the Vard-Marta highway is finished Armenians of Armenia (and Alebbu) will have two options or ways for coming to Artsakh. The currant regular southern way by Goris and the northern way from Yerevan to Sevan to Kapan to Martuni to Vardenis and then into Stepanakert the capital of Artsakh. Then of course the flight rout will be inaugurated soon.

The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund’s upcoming Telethon will be dedicated to raising financial support for the construction of the Vardenis-Martakert Highway. The third project of its kind to be carried out by the fund. The Vardenis-Martakert Highway is expected to be a boon to the further socio-economic development of Artsakh and Armenia alike. More: http://www.armradio.am/en/2013/10/10/funds-raised-through-telethon-2013-to-launch-construction-of-vardenis-martakert-highway/ http://www.armradio.am/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Vardenis_Martakert_Highway-620x300.jpg This would be the most scenic rout or highway ever. At the border of Artsakh and Armenia the highway starts rising high crossing the mountains, then it passes near wild scenery through villages and monasteries (Dadivank), and mineral waters boiling in ponds or cascading like the American Yellowstone park. Plus it will be a boon for hikers who can now walk from Verdenis to Stepanakert easily, resting each night in a village lodging without having to camp in tents. Or from Stepanakert to Vardenis located at the souther part of lake Sevan. Finish it soon, here I come hiking, make way please!

Borussia Dortmund required extra time to advance to the third round of the German Cup on Tuesday as they won 2-0 away to 10-man 1860 Munich. 24 September 2013

When the pope was in Brazil this Summer, it was noticed that he was holding a somewhat modified cross. Now this cross may not be the one Jesus, on His April 30 message, as "a new form of the Cross will be introduced. The new atrocity will not be based on the simple cross. Instead it will feature, discreetly, the head of the beast"; but let us be on watch and see what is coming. Take note even the below photo can be a fake one as with "IT-Photoshopping" any kind of photo can be faked and changed. http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/upload/238056/images/analysis-of-new-cross-francis.jpg

A new form of the Cross will be introducedTuesday, April 30th, 2013 @ 15:40 My dearly beloved daughter, My Authority will never diminish, and like a light, will fade amidst the thick fog, but it will always be visible, even though it may be reduced to but just a faint glimmer. When the world changes again, as the spirit of evil creates division upon division, it will only be the Light of God which will sustain you. My Presence will be felt by those who come to Me for help, for I will never desert you, especially when you feel that all is hopeless. Nothing but the Truth will help you to cope, when the lack of charity which is evident in the world today increases, as men’s hearts turn to stone. The Truth is contained in the Holy Bible. It is the food by which man can live now and in the future. Very soon it will become impossible to buy a Bible, as many nations will adhere to the new laws, especially in Europe, which will ban all books which promote the Word of God. The letter is being written now to beckon all those in the service of the Catholic Church. Soon, all of My sacred servants will be informed of the changes, which they will be told are for the good of the Church. The new rules, which will see amendments made to prayers during the Holy Mass, will seem innocent. To many, they won’t notice the significance, but it will relate to the Holy Eucharist and My Presence within It. The word ‘commemorate’ will be used and all churches will soon be stripped bare of their treasures. The taking of treasures, including gold Tabernacles – which will be replaced by those made of wood and stone – will be one of the signs that they are being gathered for the New World Religion. Churches will be changed within their walls and this will involve the desecration of altars. The Monstrance, holding the Holy Eucharist, will begin to disappear and the days when My Holy Host is exposed will come to an end. Cast scorn upon My Word now, and you will weep tears when these acts are brought before you. Soon, not long afterwards, the garments worn by My sacred servants, will be altered and a new form of the Cross will be introduced. The new atrocity will not be based on the simple cross. Instead it will feature, discreetly, the head of the beast. I ask you to gather My holy Crosses now and keep them in your homes, along with Holy Water. I urge all of you to hold onto the Truth of what I have told you. Then I want you to trust in Me completely. Never believe that I Am leaving you at the mercy of the evil one. I will remain close to you at all times. I will pour special blessings on the heads of My beloved, loyal sacred servants to keep them entwined with My Sacred Heart. Keep your hearts close to Me and to each other. Comfort and strengthen each other, for you must love each other, more than ever, before and during the times ahead. I Am your family. You are Mine. We will remain united, until the time when the trumpets peal out and the announcement is made that I Am to reveal Myself, finally, in My Second Coming. Then you will feel the joy and peace which I have promised you. Then all suffering will end. Your Jesus

"The officials of Armenia's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs are not hiding the demographic plight in Armenia. Deputy Minister Petrosyan announced during the conference that the rate of poverty is at 35%, unemployment is high, the country is facing grave problems with territorial development and health. According to the deputy minister, the index of birth is very low, so it does not enable simple growth. According to the deputy minister, the causes are the devastating earthquake in 1988 that was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Karabakh war and the transport blockade imposed by Azerbaijan and Turkey." as reported in a recent article. And when it comes to RUSSIA, that country also has a low birth and other problems as outlined in the below article by Landolt: (Russia, Armenia, USA, Canada are suffering from low births because in ALL abortion is legal and they are killing millions children before even they leave the wombs of their mothers. US & Canada are filling up the shortfall by immigration but nobody wants to immigrates to Russia and Armenia so they have either to ban abortion and make it illegal and severely punished or make their countries attractive to immigration from the West) The Russian Law on FamilyPosted on 11 September 2013. by C. Gwendolyn Landolt. September 11, 2013. http://www.realwomenofcanada.ca/the-russian-law-on-family/ In June, 2013, the Russian Parliament (Duma) unanimously passed a law, by liberals, conservatives and socialists, which law reflected an 86% consensus by the Russian people. It was not borne out of hostility towards persons with same-sex orientation as claimed by some. Rather, it was drafted with the intent of protecting the well-being of Russian children. It is in line with the European Convention on Human Rights standards and European jurisprudence. The law was an amendment to a previous law, passed in December, 2010, aimed at protecting children and family life in Russia. The law prohibits the propagation (not the behaviour) of any activity aimed at harming the psychological or physical well-being of minors and prohibits propaganda promoting alternative sexual lifestyles, such as the promotion of the use of intoxicating drugs, alcohol, gambling and the use of offensive language. The word propagation is carefully defined and limited by the legislation. The law is administrative, not criminal. (Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993.) The law does not permit any interference in the private lives of homosexuals or authorize the arbitrary detention or arrests of homosexuals as so loudly proclaimed by gay lobbyists. According to contacts in Moscow, there are both openly gay bars in Moscow and gays and lesbians on TV each day. This law has been endorsed by 103 human rights organizations from 33 countries which have signed a statement in support of it. Reason for the Law This law is in accordance with other recent initiatives taken by the Russian government to protect the family, which is in deep crisis. About a third of Russian children are born out of wedlock; more than half of marriages fail; alcoholism is rampant; Russia has the highest rate of abortion in the world (officially, over one million abortions each year). More than two million children are “civil orphans”, living adrift from their families. Russia has passed this most recent legislation because its leaders are deeply concerned about the demographic winter in Russia. In recent years, Russia is burying more citizens than are being born. President Vladimir Putin has stated, “Without exaggeration, the central problem of contemporary Russia is demography, strengthening the family, [and] increasing the birth rate”. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has stated, “The overall decline in population, reducing its density to the parameters of almost three times less than the global average would result in weakening of political, economic and military influence of Russia in the world, and the possibility of additional claims to the territory of Russia”. Among Russia’s concerns are the vast numbers of Chinese on its south-eastern border, and its unsettled southern borders where many of Russia’s former satellite countries are located. Today, the only real source for Russia to sustain itself economically is its oil exports. Russia is in need of a larger population to sustain itself economically by way of taxation, and increased productivity. Hard-headed pragmatism was required. Although REAL Women does not support all of Russia’s decisions, we do support its family initiatives. The abortion law in Russia was restricted last year for the first time since the fall of communism. More such abortion legislation is expected this fall. Pregnancy centres have been established in every major centre in Russia, and generous funding is provided to pregnant women (single and married), both prior to and subsequent to giving birth. The President of the pro-life movement in Russia is Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of the Prime Minister. In June, 2011, Russia held its first Demographic Summit at the Russian State Social University, attended by more than 500 demographers, economists, sociologists, religious figures and societal leaders, such as Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russia’s National Railways. During the discussions, it was agreed that the breakdown of the family in Russia is a large contributing factor to the current demographic problem. The World Congress of Families will be meeting in the Kremlin in September, 2014. The conference is called “Large Families – Future of Humanity”. Not everyone will agree with the Russian solutions to its very serious societal problems. However, the amendment to this law and other family initiatives are directed at protecting children and restoring family life in Russia. This is contrary to the prevailing characterization of these initiatives as being anti-gay. The latter is both a misleading and inaccurate assessment of the situation. Source: REAL Women of Canada ---- Comment by mr.Daniel in which he claims United States and Canada also are having low birth: Back in the 1920's when Lenin and Trotsky dissolved marriage, and decriminalized homosexuality, the timing was lousy. Russia needed to catch up with the Industrial Revolution, and there was another world war looming only two decades ahead. It was no time to be screwing around with 'sexual revolution'. That was a primary reason that Stalin drove Trotsky out of Russia and purged his followers when he got the chance. Today Russia's population is plummeting, just as C. Gwendolyn Landolt writes. Frankly, the same thing is happening in the USA and Canada, but it's hidden underneath the massive importing of immigrant labor. Here, it's actually a routine of replacing the last generations of American workers with hungrier ones who'll work for less and are used to less freedom. Russia isn't following that pattern. I think for them it would be a nightmare to go that direction. They have to restore the social value of families and traditional, respectable role models for boys and girls to follow. Make no mistake, the middle class Americans and Canadians that go back half a century and more are being 'pruned' off the tree. --- There is another facade in Armenia, as reported in: http://massispost.com/archives/9730 "According to the survey, emigration is boosted by systemic issues such as centralization of business and monopolies, issues in education and judicial sectors. The report states that the business sector is handled by a group of people who are also directly involved in public administration, supervising specific areas or sector of economy. This makes smaller competitors vulnerable, causes unemployment, unequal distribution of funds over the society, the report holds. The report also touches upon relations with the Diaspora. The authors of the report think it is necessary to draft a clear strategy and action plan for repatriation and admission of Diaspora Armenians returning to the homeland."

http://www.trt.net.tr/medya3/resim/2013/03/22/345b96a1-7080-4e00-9f7d-81ece7a6e434-444x333.jpg Oct 08, 2013 Erdogan Urges Cabinet to Hide News on Ties with Israel by Fars News http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13920716000546 TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the senior political and security members of his cabinet to keep secret any news about Ankara's relations and cooperation with Tel Aviv on different issues, including Syria, sources said. "Erdogan had a very important meeting with his cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Interior Minister Muammar Guler, National Defense Minister Ismat Yilmaz, Security Chief Hakan Fydan, Head of the IHH (Turkish Islamic charity known as the Freedom Flotilla) Fahmy Bulent Ildirim and a number of his advisors on September 21," one of the aides present at the meeting told FNA on Tuesday. The source who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information added that during the meeting, "Erdogan voiced extreme displeasure with the leak of information about different aspects of Turkey's relations with Israel, and called on all the relevant governmental bodies to keep such news secret and punish those who disobey the order even if they are close people to Erdogan". Other officials attending the meeting also raised the issues which are being pursued by the Turkish and Israeli officials, to be further discussed, the source said, adding that the issues included: --"cooperation between Israel and Turkey on the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), --the Syrian issue, --peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel --and foiling Armenian lobby's attempts in the US against Turkey --as well as consultations between Tel Aviv and Ankara to persuade Washington to wage military attack on Syria".

http://www.reporter.am/images/StandardImage/Vahan-Zanoyan.jpg Earlier this year, Armenian-American author Vahan Zanoyan released "A Place Far Away" (Create Space Books, $16.95), a crime novel about sex trafficking in Armenia. While the storyline reads like a sordid suspense saga, the situations are largely based on actual events, the result of on-the-ground research by the author. Details: http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2013-10-08-women-exploited-vahan-zanoyan-spotlights-sex-trafficking

8 US Foods Even The Experts Won't Eat in USA October 08, 2013 http://www.naturalblaze.com/2013/10/8-foods-even-experts-wont-eat.html 1. The Endocrinologist Won't Eat: Canned Tomatoes 2. The Farmer Won't Eat: Corn-Fed Beef 3. The Toxicologist Won't Eat: Microwave Popcorn 4. The Farm Director Won't Eat: Non-organic Potatoes 5. The Fisheries Expert Won't Eat: Farmed Salmon 6. The Cancer Researcher Won't Drink: Milk Produced With Artificial Hormones 7. The Biotech Specialist Who Won't Eat Conventional Soy: GMO Unfermented Soy 8. The Organic-Foods Expert Won't Eat: Conventional Apples Details at: http://www.naturalblaze.com/2013/10/8-foods-even-experts-wont-eat.html#sthash.sFQWP5tB.dpuf

Genomic Loopholes and Other Weapons Turning bacteria against each other can help fight antibiotic resistance By Jeneen Interlandi http://nautil.us/issue/6/secret-codes/genomic-loopholes-and-other-weapons Back in 2000, before MRSA—Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—had become a household word, Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote in the journal Science that “the future of humanity and microbes [would] likely unfold as episodes of a suspense thriller that could be titled Our Wits Versus Their Genes.” Thirteen years later, it is “their genes” that seem to be winning out. In the United States alone, roughly 2 million people suffer from drug-resistant infections each year; according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, about 23,000 of them die. While the microbes have cracked almost all of our codes—rapidly evolving around one drug after another—we have yet to fully crack many of theirs. Scientists have a growing understanding of the molecular wizardry by which bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, but they have yet to circumvent it. In the meantime, doctors and patients are forced to fight these drug-resistant infections with alternatives that harken back to the medical stone age (think toxic chemicals and surgical removal of whole organs to stop bacterial infections). And even those solutions are failing. Ten years ago, experts worried about our eventual return to the pre-antibiotic era of medicine, when common bacterial infections were the stuff of life and death. Today, scientists say that return is now upon us. “We’re on the brink of a medical catastrophe,” Dr. Thomas G. Slama said in a 2012 press release, when he was president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. If we could observe that brink through the lens of a high-powered microscope, we’d see the latest round of a molecular code-based war that humans and microbes have been fighting for as long as both have occupied the same planet. But while we may be losing the battle, we may still win the war. Our latest salvo is a clever one, exploiting a genetic code called CRISPR that is tucked into the bacteria’s own genome. Antibiotics are, by far, the greatest weapon we humans have had in this contest. Most of them work by interfering with the production of proteins and other molecules that are crucial for bacteria—for their function, metabolism, or replication—but play no role in human cells. For example, Penicillin impedes the cross-linking of peptidoglycan, a polymer that bacteria use to build their cell walls. When the units of peptidoglycan can’t link together, the bacteria end up with very fragile walls, which easily break open, causing death. It’s a neat trick because human bodies don’t need peptidoglycan to function, so antibiotics can kill the microbes without killing us. Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic used to treat everything from urinary tract infections to anthrax, blocks the enzyme that enables bacterial DNA to coil and uncoil as needed. But bacteria are experts at survival. When a bacterium is under stress, for example when it is exposed to antibiotic drugs, it snatches up whatever bits of genetic material it can grab from its external environment. It does this mainly by picking up plasmid DNA—autonomous DNA molecules which carry only a few genes—from other bacteria, including those of vastly different species, and even those that have died. The process, known as horizontal gene transfer, occurs through bacteria’s cell walls and is much faster than human evolution, which takes place gradually over many generations. It enables bacteria to acquire whole genes in one exchange, and to pass those genes on to its neighbors with remarkable speed and efficiency. In the human-microbe war, horizontal gene transfer is the equivalent of intelligence sharing between allies. Bacteria exchange secret codes through which they conspire to overthrow us. “Under hostile conditions, they start incorporating whatever genes they can find into their chromosomes in the hopes that one of those genes will give them an advantage,” says Luciano Marraffini, a microbiologist at The Rockefeller University on Manhattan’s east side. It turns out that while they lay waste to us humans, bacteria are also fighting another battle, against viruses called bacteriophages—or phages for short—that would otherwise lay waste to them. And as they challenge our immunity, they fight off phages with a cryptic and powerful immune system of their own. When Marraffini was still a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Rodolphe Barrangou, a food scientist at North Carolina State University, made the first major breakthrough into what purpose the CRISPR code serves. The paper explained that CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a distinctive genome feature of many bacterial species which they use to fight phages. Scientists had already determined that some bacteria possessed long stretches of repeating DNA sequences, but had no proof as to what purpose these sequences served. Barrangou showed that each time bacteria are invaded by a phage virus, they claim a snippet of that virus’s DNA and incorporate it into their own genome. But they don’t stick that viral DNA just anywhere; they tuck it into the CRISPR sequences, so that the palindromic repeats are interspersed with non-repeating “spacers” of phage DNA. The spacer sequences then serve as a memory of past phage infections, essentially functioning as a bacterial immune system. When the bacteria are attacked again by the same virus, they match the invader DNA to the spacer DNA. This identification then sets in motion a molecular machine that ultimately tears the phage virus to shreds. Marraffini, who at the time was studying spore-formation in Bacillus anthracis (the process by which this anthrax-causing bacteria forms the tough protective spores that enable them to survive for decades) was captivated by Barrangou’s findings. He began studying the phenomenon in his spare time, looking at CRISPR systems in Staphylococcus epidermidis. It took him about a year to make a discovery of his own, one with huge implications for antibiotic resistance. It turned out that not all CRISPR sequences contained phage DNA. Some of them, in fact, many of them, contained plasmid DNA from other bacteria. This meant that the CRISPR destroying system works against all forms of foreign DNA—it assimilates gene snippets that originate both from viruses and other bacteria. A positive identification of a phage or bacterial plasmid would destroy either one, together with the genes it carried. Marraffini wondered what would happen if CRISPR incorporated some beneficial genes into its seek-and-destroy list—even if by accident. Would it then detect and eliminate plasmids carrying such genes? It would prevent bacteria from incorporating antibiotic resistance genes into the genome and passing them on to future generations, which would be against the bacteria’s own best interests, but like any other system, the CRISPR code could have a glitch. To test this hypothesis, Marraffini injected a mouse with two different versions of pneumococci, the bacteria that cause pneumonia. The first injection contained a live but avirulent strain of pneumococci, which didn’t have a gene that codes for the sugar capsule that normally encases pneumococci and enables them to slip into and infect a host cell. That avirulent strain also contained a CRISPR sequence that held snippets of that gene. Then Marraffini injected the same mouse with heat-killed pneumococci that still possessed the sugar capsule gene. Normally the live avirulent pneumococci would have saddled up to its dead cousins and grabbed the capsule genes through their walls. Then they would have used those genes to make the capsule, transform themselves into a virulent strain, and proceed to infect the mice with deadly pneumonia. Marraffini’s mice should’ve been dead soon after injection. But days later, they were perfectly healthy. The CRISPR system had prevented the plasmid carrying the capsule gene from being transferred between the two bacterial strains or destroyed it upon arrival. And without that gene, the live bacteria hadn’t been able to invade the mice’s lungs. It looked like the CRISPR code did indeed have a loophole that could prevent infectious bacteria from acquiring antibiotic resistance genes. Marraffini describes it as a byproduct of how the system evolved. If CRISPR were to incorporate genes coding for antibiotic resistance, bacteria could essentially be turned against themselves. And scientists would turn the tide against one of humanity’s greatest modern scourges. Marraffini’s findings made a splash in the scientific community. When his first CRISPR study was published in the journal Science in 2008, Marraffini had barely begun his post-doctoral fellowship; but by 2010, he had secured his own lab at The Rockefeller University in Manhattan. And by 2012, he had won the New Innovator Award, a prestigious and competitive grant from the National Institutes of Health. Since CRISPR behaves this way both in the lab and in nature, Marraffini’s research raises an interesting question: How can bacteria possess a defensive system that, when manipulated, as in Marraffini’s study, will destroy the plasmid carrying the same antibiotic resistance genes it routinely manages to acquire, use, and pass on? So far, the answer seems to be that they can’t. Several studies have found a negative correlation between the presence of CRISPR and the presence of antibiotic resistance genes. In other words, a given bacteria can have one or the other, but not both. Marraffini thinks bacteria have the ability to somehow rid themselves of CRISPR when the situation calls for it. “The bacteria make use of CRISPR when confronted with a phage, and then shut down CRISPR when they need to try and acquire antibiotic resistance genes,” he says. “It should be possible to disrupt that cycle at various points, or even to turn it against the bacteria.” Designing CRISPR sequences that block specific genes—as Marraffini did in his mouse study—is easy enough. “It’s basic molecular biology to target a gene sequence and insert it into a bacterial genome,” Marraffini says. “And you can insert as many gene slices as you want into CRISPR.” But getting those CRISPR sequences into the bacteria while they’re attacking a human being involves myriad puzzles and potential complications that, so far, no gene therapy efforts have been able to surmount. “It’s the kind of thing that looks great on the drawing board,” says Erik Sontheimer, a CRISPR researcher at Northwestern University. “But in reality, it’s going to be a tough nut to crack, because drug delivery is going to be a real challenge.” Most scientists agree that any practical CRISPR-based therapies are still far in the future, but some are already researching possible solutions to the drug delivery challenge, including nanoparticle delivery, and “phagemids”—hybrids that encapsulate bacterial DNA, replete with antibiotic resistance genes, inside a phage virus capable of invading bacteria. In theory at least, if you had a phagemid that contained a CRISPR sequence with resistance genes, you could spray it on various surfaces where bacteria congregate. The bacteria would take up the phagemids, and incorporate the DNA contained therein. This would prevent them from acquiring or expressing those resistance genes. But while these things work pretty well in the lab, making them work in a hospital is a different story. For one thing, FDA approval of live phage spray is expected to be hugely problematic. Still, CRISPR remains immensely promising. In the past few years there has been an explosion of research into this curious code and its mysteries. “When we held the first conference, back in 2007, there were so few CRISPR studies, I joked that you could read the entire literature in a day,” says Barrangou. “Now, there are literally hundreds of publications out there.” And even if some potential CRISPR uses sound far-fetched, they shouldn’t be disregarded, Marraffini says. “There are many things we have today, that seemed like science fiction just a few decades ago,” he observes. “Including antibiotics.” Jeneen Interlandi is a science writer based in New York. She was a 2013 Nieman Fellow and writes for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American.

"Clock is ticking", says Chinese minister, as US fails to break deadlock over government shutdown and fast-approaching ‘debt ceiling’ deadline. But there is still a week in which the government certainly will solve the the debt-ceiling by raising it since in the event of default the whole US administration with both houses will not get paid (as if congressmen & senators need their salaries since most are very rich and can do away without their salaries). But the problem would be China, which is the biggest foreign creditor of the United States, and it already has waded into the American budget crisis, warning on Monday that Congress must resolve the political impasse over the debt ceiling without further delay. Or else what? One solution being considered is to give China all the national parks of America (they are already closed now because of the crisis) in return of $1.3 trillion Chinese investment in US or in return of $1.4 trillion of American debt to China. Overcrowded China then would bring its citizens to populate those lands of national parks and build their houses there. This would be overtaking a country partially and peacefully, without firing a shot. The Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Zhu Guangyao, told America’s deadlocked politicians on Monday October 7 that “the clock is ticking” and called on them to approve an extension of the national borrowing limit before the federal government is projected to run out of cash on 17 October. “We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way the political issues around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure the safety of Chinese investments in the United States,” Mr Zhu told reporters in Beijing. “This is the United States’ responsibility,” he added. In a diplomatic way, the FM did NOT refer to American lands to be given to them in return for cancellation of America's debt to China. And this is understandable since the Americans would have started hanging-high any Chinese they could get their hands on.. I should have put this one in the HUMOR section

It was August, heat&heat of Yerevan. Went to old Pak Shuka at Masdost Ave late afternoon; dirty, smelly, full of flies, and vacant stands; lost my appetite and came out empty handed. Yesterday, after closer of 2 years, the same Pak-Shuka has reopened after renovations: clean, shiny and modern with a parking lot under it. I hope they do have air-condition this time for the Summer. More photos in the link: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/photoset/4982

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hgA9j-4dB0#t=1386 Russian RT is interviewing for some 30 minutes an American ugly-duckling lady by the name of Karen Hudes who used to work in some kind of a bank or banks but she was fired from her job when she became conspiracy minded. In this interview she is taking her revenge on the banks with conspiratorial talks. For mature audience only!

House Speaker John Boehner has said he won’t let the government default on its debt by October 17th. "I don't want the United States to default on its debt," Boehner said. "But I'm not going to raise the debt limit without a serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up. It would be irresponsible of me to do this." On Oct 17 US runs out of ability to borrow. On Sunday Boehner told ABC's "This Week," that there were not enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass a "clean" debt limit bill, without any conditions attached. Asked if that meant the United States was headed towards a default if President Barack Obama did not negotiate ahead of an October 17 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, Boehner said: "That's the path we're on." (US debt is raised by mostly issuing bonds) US debt is presently $16.7 trillion in bonds. The second biggest holder of Treasuries (at about 12% of the total) is the Federal Reserve, which has 91% of its assets backed by US government debt. (Eleven-percent of all US debt is owned by the Chinese, 1.4 trillion) A plunge in Treasuries would also devalue the dollar, which would instantly make everything we buy more expensive, and in turn destabilize countries and economies all over the world. Reuter is reporting that: Republicans are looking for three things before raising the debt ceiling --a significant structural plan to reduce government spending, no new taxes, and measures to "mitigate the harm from Obamacare." Democrats vow not to negotiate on the funding bill or the debt ceiling, arguing that it is the job of Congress to pay its bills. Consequences of a US Default Explained Posted on October 7, 2013 by Soren Dreier http://sorendreier.com/consequences-of-a-us-default-explained/ As we close out the first week of the government shutdown, a bigger and even more toxic disaster is creeping into the fray that could make the contentious budget battle look like a slap fight. The Treasury Department said Uncle Sam will be broke by October 17th unless something is done. Treasury secretary Jack Lew hammered home that point Thursday by releasing an unusually ominous statement that warned of catastrophic risks to the economy. House Speaker John Boehner has said he won’t let the government default on its debt, but until steps are taken to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, the possibility of default is still theoretically alive. “If they seriously default on the debt, what we’re really talking about is a depression,” says veteran financial sector analyst Richard Bove, VP of research at Rafferty Capital Markets. “The first thing you have to do is look at who holds the debt,” Bove says of the $16.7 trillion of bonds the US currently has outstanding. “The first, biggest owner (of US debt) is the social security fund, so you’d have all of these people who are receiving social security payments who now have to question whether they’ll get their payments.” Clearly, that would cause a huge disruption to millions of Americans. But Bove says that is only the beginning since the second biggest holder of Treasuries (at about 12% of the total) is the Federal Reserve, which has “91% of its assets backed by US government debt.” If the value of those assets were to decline, which they indisputably would in a default, Bove says the net effect would be that “we have nothing of value backing the dollar.” They’re actually “Federal Reserve Notes” as well as the number one asset of choice held in the reserves of governments and businesses all over the world. A plunge in Treasuries would also devalue the dollar, which would instantly make everything we buy more expensive, and in turn destabilize countries and economies all over the world. [plunging most of the world into depression] “Eleven-percent of all US debt is owned by the Chinese,” he says. “That $1.4 trillion represents about a third of the reserves of the People’s Bank of China, so what we’ve now said to the PBOC is, ‘Watch out, we may hit the value of a third of your assets and you can’t do anything about it.’” And this isn’t even half of it. As Bove explains, money market funds, which are used by virtually every person with a savings or investment account, are also “heavily loaded with Treasuries.” So are most bond funds and so-called balanced funds (growth and income funds). A default on US debt would not only cause money funds to “break the buck” — not be able to pay 100-cents for each dollar invested) — but would also cause forced selling by countless other funds that are mandated to immediately sell any asset that has defaulted. “That could easily put $750 billion of Treasuries on to the market” Bove says, inferring that rates interest rates would also spike, and normal borrowing/lending transactions would end. Speaking of banks, the US banking industry holds over a trillion dollars worth of Treasuries and another trillion dollars of government issued mortgage-backed securities, Bove says. If those bonds were to go down in value, he says the banks would also have to “write down the value of those assets and, in essence, wipe out their equity.” It would make the banks insolvent. To summarize, Bove asserts that a default is unthinkable because it would trigger a huge reduction in the value of US debt, which would go beyond disrupting social security payments. A default would upend money markets, destroy bond funds, slam the brakes on lending, cause interest rates to spiral, make our banks insolvent, and deal a blow to our foreign trading partners and creditors around the globe; all of which would throw the US and the world into economic disarray.