Aubépine

The mullahs in Iran couldn't be more glad of MJ's demise. Who mentions the protests in Iran now?

They made up already. Immediately after that incident Peres personally called Erdogan to say that there was a misunderstanding and that it was nothing personal. So much for Erdogan's theatrics. The guy can't hide his Islamist tendencies and made a clown out of himself. Serves him well. Not that he could care less about the Palestinians. That was only meant as an election ploy to win over the votes of the fundementalist-minded rabble here.

You should listen to his Turkish speeches. That's his "normal" speaking voice. The way he scolds not only members of the media, but the common folk is incredible. I think the man is clearly a psychopath, who can just barely control himself. I wonder what would become of him had he lived in another time and age where he didn't face any restraints. He comes from the Islamic medrese background where any divergent thought and opinion is considered blasphemy and treason. Back when he was the mayor of Istanbul in the early ninties he made no bones to hide his rabid fundamentalist background. Today he puts on the moderate Islamist garb, but he can't avoid Freudian slips from time to time.

There's not much the Serbs in Mitrovica can do given their location. It's removed from the remaining two Serbian provinces in Northern Kosovo. They might become another Hebron and try to hold out somehow. But I don't see how they can last as a small islet in an Albanian sea.

They must be so self-confident to think they will get a return on all of their investments because of the fact that money grows on trees for them or because they are selling dreams. It's probably both.

This will have a lot of repercussions beyond Kosovo. I hope the Serbs will go ahead with their threat of splitting Republika Srpska away from Bosnia and attach it to Serbia. That would really cause a commotion in the West.

Ilnur Cevik, an ultranationalist? That's news to me. He is the biggest contractor in Northern Iraq and a close confidante to the Kurdish leadership there. But then he plays in tune with what currently suits him best.

I highly doubt that. It would be more correct to call them Islamofascists. Armenians and everyone else for that matter have no place in their worldview.

Looking For My Relative http://www.akrabamiariyorum.com/

A fine French-Canadian singer who isn't that well known outside of Quebec and France I assume. Roch Voisine "Hélène":

Schubert is excellent. Too bad that he doesn't get the recognition he deserves.

The man has more than thirty albums to his name. Ten songs are fine for now.

Obama may have more delegates, but Clinton won more states than Obama. That's not a good indicator for Obama. She has a lead in all the major states according to the polls, even though he is closing the gap. I still don't understand why he performed so miserably in Michigan, given that it's not so far from his own state. This also isn't good news: With polls showing Obama making up a considerable amount of ground in key February 5 contests, there is a growing sense that he could pull off what was unthinkable just two or three weeks ago: grab more Feb. 5 delegates than Clinton. Heck, even win California. Well, the Obama campaign just released a memo to rein in such expectations. "Senator Clinton is certainly the favorite on February 5, given the huge leads she has held in many of these contests throughout the course of the campaign and the political, historical and geographic advantages she enjoys in many of these states," Obama manager David Plouffe said in the memo. "Based on her huge head start, Hillary Clinton should still win California, but is unlikely to achieve her goal of getting a sizeable share of the delegates." Plouffe continues, "Our path to the nomination never factored in a big day for us on February 5. Rather, we always planned to stay close enough in the delegate count so that we could proceed to individually focus on the states in the next set of contests. We fully expect Senator Clinton to earn more delegates on February 5th and also to win more states. If we were to be within 100 delegates on that day and win a number of states, we will have met our threshold for success and will be best positioned to win the nomination in the coming months." http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/200.../04/636846.aspx It would be a pity if things don't turn out as he would have wished. He is a very likeable and eloquent guy and stands out from the rest.

Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russians Come From? The same place as the unglamorous assembly-line workers. By Anne Applebaum Updated Monday, Jan. 28, 2008, at 8:04 PM ET There was a particular historical moment, round about 1995 or so, when anyone entering a well-appointed drawing room, dining room, or restaurant in London was sure to encounter a beautiful Russian woman. Though the word beautiful doesn't really capture the phenomenon. The women I'm remembering were extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous. These women were half-Kazakh or half-Tartar with Mongolian ancestors and perfect skin; dressed in the most tasteful, most expensive clothes; shod in soft leather boots; and perfectly coiffed. They were usually accompanied by an older man, sometimes much older, to whom they were perhaps married, or more likely not. They spoke in low, alluringly accented voices and towered over the lesser mortals in the room. I distinctly remember gazing upon one such creature while in the company of a friend, an old Russia hand who'd spent much of the previous decade in the Soviet Union. He stared, shook his head, and whispered, "But where were they all before?" In the aftermath of the Australian Open, a tennis tournament whose final rounds featured a parade of notably stunning ex-Soviet-bloc players, it is perhaps time to make a stab at answering my friend's question. Whatever you may say about the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, it was not widely known for feminine pulchritude. Whatever you may say about women's professional tennis in the 1970s or '80s, it did not feature many players who looked like Maria Sharapova, the latest Australian Open victor. Where were they all before? Though this is a fairly frivolous question (OK, extremely frivolous), I am convinced it has an interesting answer. To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren't any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren't any ratings. There weren't many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them, and foreign men couldn't get the right sort of visa. There were a few film stars, of course, but some of the most famous—I'm thinking of Lyubov Orlova, alleged to be Stalin's favorite actress—were wholesome and cheerful rather than sultry and stunning. Unusual beauty, like unusual genius, was considered highly suspicious in the Soviet Union and its satellite people's republics. This doesn't mean there weren't any beautiful women, of course, just that they didn't have the clothes or cosmetics to enhance their looks, and, far more important, they couldn't use their faces to launch international careers. Instead of gracing London drawing rooms, they stayed in Minsk, Omsk, or Alma Ata. Instead of couture, they wore cheap polyester. They could become assembly-line forewomen, Communist Party bosses, even local femmes fatales, but not Vogue cover girls. They didn't even dream of becoming Vogue cover girls, since very few had ever seen an edition of Vogue. Instructive, in this light, is the career of a real Vogue cover girl, Natalia Vodianova. Born in Nizhny Novgorod to a single, impoverished mother, Vodianova ran away from home at 15 to run a fruit stall in the local street market (successfully, according to her official biography). At 17, she was spotted by a French scouting agent and told to learn English in three months. She did—after which she moved to Paris, married a British aristocrat, and went on to become "the face" of a Calvin Klein perfume and to earn $4 million-plus annually. The fashion world is ludicrously silly and superficial, but it did get Vodianova from Nizhny Novgorod to London, far away from her mother's abusive boyfriends, which wouldn't have happened before 1989. Though tennis was, for some, a way out in the past—remember Martina Navratilova—it's all much easier now: Sharapova and Australian Open semifinalist Jelena Jankovic both left their countries as children to train at a tennis academy in Florida, while losing finalist Ana Ivanovic moved to Switzerland at 15 where she was sponsored by a businessman who is now her manager. Ultimately, what goes for the fashion world goes for other spheres of human activity. In the past, you had to play chess or be a champion gymnast to come to international attention if you were born in the Eastern bloc—chess and competitive sports figuring among the few party-approved export industries. Nowadays, stars in fields previously unsanctioned by the party—crime novelists, conceptual artists, computer whizzes—from Russia, Hungary, or Uzbekistan have a shot at fame and fortune, too. As for talented entrepreneurs, the sky's the limit. Beauty is a matter of luck, but the same could be said of many other talents. And what open markets do for beautiful women they also do for other sorts of genius. So, cheer up next time you see a Siberian blonde dominating male attention at the far end of the table: The same mechanisms that brought her to your dinner party might one day bring you the Ukrainian doctor who cures your cancer or the Polish stockbroker who makes your fortune.

Strange that no one mentioned Elton John here. He's probably one of the most talented singer-songwriters of the last few decades. Not to forget Bernie Taupin who wrote the lyrics to almost all the songs. Elton John - Your song (1970): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTa8U0Wa0q8 Elton John - Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (1976): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1tBYV1cgU Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Ho_6C_fM4 Elton John - Daniel: Elton John - Blue Eyes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqlO2owGnXI Elton John - Rocket Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzrKlEtxTx4 Elton John - I Want Love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_u6l7EsQMc Elton John - This Train Don't Stop There Anymore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LRZsnTT1HM Elton John - Something About The Way You Look Tonight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgBzy0-7B-4 Elton John - Believe:

If your father is a poor man, It is your fate but, If your father-in-law is a poor man, it's your stupidity. .................................................................. I was born intelligent - Education ruined me. ............................................................. Practice makes perfect..... But nobody's perfect...... So why practice? .................................................................. If it's true that we are here to help others, Then what exactly are the others here for? .............................................................. Since light travels faster than sound, People appear bright until you hear them speak. .................................................................. Money is not everything. There's Mastercard & Visa. .............................................................. The wise never marry. And when they marry they become otherwise. .............................................................. Success is a relative term. It brings so many relatives. .................................................................. Never put off the work till tomorrow What you can put off today. .................................................................. 'Your future depends on your dreams' So go to sleep. .............................................................. There should be a better way to start a day Than waking up every morning. .................................................................. 'Hard work never killed anybody' But why take the risk.

I attended the vigil in front of Agos today if only for a short time. The people who gathered numbered in the thousands. The police did everything they could to prevent the crowds from spilling into the streets by putting barriers and using other scare tactics. I was too far away from the building to hear the speeches of Hrant Dink’s widow and other notables. I could only catch up at home watching the news. It was a stirring and pretty damning speech. I think she is a brilliant orator and has that spark her husband possessed. What surprised me the most during the commemoration were the many uniform banners and lollipop signs people carried. I only later found out that they printed them out at home and got them from the official commemoration site: http://www.hranticinadaleticin.com/en/downloads.html I still think that many more could have attended given it was a Saturday. The media here did everything they could not to prioritise the event. My Armenian friends were also quite apathetic to the event, which was very disappointing.

Remembering Hrant Dink by Vartan Oskanian I can confess that I have lived through two deep and unforgettable shocks during my years in office; once in 1999 when the stability of Armenia was threatened by gunmen and the second time last year, when I received the call that Hrant Dink had been assassinated. Both were attacks not on men, but on ideas and values. Hrant's murder was an assault on democratic state building -- of the Turkish state. His murderers took aim at his vision of a Turkey that allowed free speech, that tolerated open discourse and that embraced its minority citizens, like himself. We miss Hrant. He would come to Armenia a couple of times a year. In September 2006, when he spoke at the third Armenian Diaspora Conference, his message was that as members of the European family, Turkey and Armenia would have normal relations, because even the unwilling in Turkey would be induced to find a way to dialogue. That was music to our ears, echoing as it did our own wishes. He also addressed the "International Conference on the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide" we held in Yerevan in April 2005. Everyone respected his ardent, reasoned plea for dialogue, for distinguishing between today's Turkish Republic and the perpetrators of atrocities nearly 100 years ago. He recounted passionately how he had explained to Turkish authorities that Armenians are looking for their roots -- the same roots which the Ottoman Empire slashed when it attempted to completely eradicate a people and tear it away from its home, its culture and its traditions. Each time he came to Yerevan, we would find a few minutes to talk. It was important that I hear from him about the mood in Turkey. Hrant was the right person to ask because he was not just an Armenian living in Turkey, he was proud of both his identities -- Turkish and Armenian -- and was insulted and angered that while trying to reconcile them he was accused of "insulting Turkishness." When he was first charged under Article 301 for "insulting Turkishness," I asked whether it would help if I wrote a letter or spoke publicly. He responded confidently. "My thanks and gratitude, but right now, I'm all I need. So help me God, I'm going to take my struggle and my rights all the way to the end." Later, he wondered how "on the one hand, they call for dialogue with Armenia and Armenians and on the other want to condemn or neutralize their own citizens who work for dialogue." Hrant Dink was candid and courageous, but not naive. Still, he could not have predicted this kind of "neutralization." His honest and brave voice was silenced. Worse, some saw in this assassination a clear message that the danger they face lies deeper than a mere judicial conviction. This message is just one of the dividends that this killing offered those who contributed to the fanatical nationalist environment which colors Turkish politics in and out of Turkey. The brutality, the impunity, the violence of Hrant's murder serves several political ends. First, it makes Turkey less interesting for Europe, which is exactly what some in the Turkish establishment want. Second, it scares away Armenians and other minorities in Turkey from pursuing their civil and human rights. Third, it scares those bold Turks who are beginning to explore these complicated, sensitive subjects in earnest. In Armenia, we have insisted for more than a decade, that although we are the victims of historical injustice and although we are on the other side of a border that Turkey has kept closed, we are prepared at any time for dialogue with our neighbor on any subject, so long as there are normal relations between us, so long as this last closed border in Europe is opened, so long as someone on the other side wants to talk. We are ready. A year ago, we were moved by the outpouring of fundamental, human grief from all levels of Turkish society, especially from those who have been scared by the demonstration of such violence on the part of a young person, and saw it for what it is -- the continuation of hatred and enmity into the next generation. Hrant Dink's family, his colleagues at and around Agos and his friends in Armenia and in Turkey will find some comfort knowing that today and tomorrow Hrant will be remembered - by Armenians, who share his vision of understanding and harmony among peoples, and by Turks, who share his dream of living in peace with neighbors and with history. 17.01.2008

There is an Armenian museum on Avenue Foche, which I found out by coincidence. I wanted to visit the Musee National d'Ennery, which specialises in Asian art, but it was closed for renovations. For some reason the Armenian museum is also housed in the same building. It looked as if the building had been undergoing renovations for some years now and it seemed to me rather neglected with overgrown ivy leaves.

I plan to attend the vigil in front of AGOS, but there are rumours of a bomb plot going around. You can excpect anything from these mental nuts.

I would definitely recommend Spain as someone who lives there on and off. It may not be Italy, but there are so many places to discover. The northern coast from Galicia to the Basque country is exceptionally beautiful. Fortunately there aren't that many tourists either. If you haven't been to Paris before, you should make it your top priority. I was there during Christmas and it is as beautiful as it gets. It has a different charm any time of the year.

Eating bambies? What's next? Devouring cute little bunny rabbits and ponies?

BMLwalker V1.8 http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

Good point. But the first two "priorities" are imaginary only and meant for other countries to toe the line. It's also a good indication that he will continue to be his master's voice.

Ahh those Circassians... That war-like, opportunistic tribe from the Caucasus. The only Circassians I like is the chicken variety sort, best served with slices of bread or pitta.