groul

Three and a half years later... Any news on this?

Barevner bolorin I believe there is no need to make another web site about famous Armenians, and there's no need to make another լացակումաց web site about genocide, etc. There are number of projects, which anyone who wants to help can join as a volunteer (e.g. armenica.org, Raffi's armeniapedia.org, artsakhwebcombat.am/forum/ - the latter is specifically created to provide info. support for for those of you involved in the information warfare over the Internet, etc.) As someone who works on or participated in creation of such projects as armenianhouse.org, sumgait.info, press.karabakh.info, genocide.ru, budapest.sumgait.info I would strongly recommend to join an existing project. The main "gaps" on the information front line that we have, are in the following areas: 1. Constant monitoring of information related to Armenian issues: news, articles, posts at popular blogs. Groong does great work, but all that information must be read, sorted, and if necessary responded (e.g. writing letters to editors when necessary, demanding corrections, even for Armenian web sites which sometimes just copy-paste info from Azerbaijani web sites). This is a 9 to 5 sort of work, which means that it will need a stable financing. 4-5 people working 9 to 5, five days a week would be able to control areas like Karabakh negotiations, Armenian Genocide, Azerbaijani and Turkish propaganda in general, anti-Armenian activities everywhere (on the net). Such a project would require also someone to coordinate the work, prepare and distribute weekly reports, research the trends, etc. 2. While we have some very serious Russian-language resources on Karabakh conflict, there is an explicite shortage of English-language information on that. Anyone knowing some Russian and having good writing skills in English are welcome to join sumgait.info to help to translate some important articles, eye-witness accounts (Baku, Sumgait, Kirovabad, etc.) So TRANSLATORS NEEDED! 3. Lack of professional staff: be that web-designers, web-developers, authors and journalists, but the most important of all: there is lack of experienced projects leaders. Those who are already involved in "internet wars" are usually overexausted and just can't afford starting work on another project. So we need to think about educating younger generations to bring in fresh forces. Turks now have Turkish colleges and universities in most of the post-USSR countries from Belarus to Russia to Central Asia. Just in Kazakhstan 15000 students are studying in Turkish colleges and universities. Their main specialization is IT and languages. 4. We need short and clear F.A.Q.'s, preferably even illustrated or put on video, on subjects ranging from the history of Armenia to Genocide to Artsakh. I am sure there are bunch of other problems but listed above are those that comes to mind most often.

There wasn't much media coverage, actually, that's why we started the site. And probably there are some copyright issues too. Anyway, we are working on adding the English translation of the second Armenian officer's interview to one of the Armenian newspapers (we have an official permission for that).

I don't have neither time nor wish to comment another piece of crap Sue wrote. But I want to comment the photo, because images are always much more powerfull than all the words. The number of people using wood to heat their apartments in winter decreases every year. Yet this year there was even sharper decrease, because natural gas is being installed in more and more Armenian regions constantly. At this moment more then a half of Yerevan and surrounding regions has natural gas supply. I am talking about what I have seen with my own eyes. So most of us have gas heaters now, almost the same I had while living in Vermont This photograph is probably taken 10 years ago, or at some wholesale wood market a which probably still exists somewhere though I personally have never seen anything like that since I moved back to Yerevan 10 months ago.

Nothing new

Look at your posts, Vigil: and the one after the next: Whose turn is it to stop?

Nope. Want me to take you for an excursion into a genealogy of Melik-Vrtanesyans? On the other hand, my answer is almost as stupid, as your question.

[offtop] Our argument was one of those neverending ones. Yep, I am fine here, thanx I miss NYC pizza though. [/offtop]

Vigil, I do not know any Armenian of German or Polish descent, but Germans who owned farms/land in Armenia are mentioned in some sources of late 19th / early 20th century. Probably those are the Germans that had lived in Russia (there was a huge German colony in Russia before the revolution) then moved to Armenia. This is not true. Eastern Armenia was never a safe place for ANY nationality. Not because the Armenians were tough (actually, when for example molokans were expelled from Russia to Caucasus there weren't much Armenians left in Eastern Armenia as far as I know), but because of endless wars. Do not forget that at some point Armenians too were a minority in Eastern Armenia. Arpa The purpose of your post was to insult me. I expect an apology. Vigil The name of the topic is "Minorities in Armenia" and the Jews are one of those minorities. Moreover as I can assume from your writings you all hardly have any idea of what is going on between Armenians and Jews in Armenia now, and how was the situation e.g. 50 or 60 years ago. However if you prefer to cook in your own juice I have no intention to bother you. Enjoy yourself. Please just mention what I am allowed to say at this forum to avoid any further misunderstanding, because I have much more interesting things to do than to spend my time on stupid "lezvakrivner".

Congratulations.

Vigil Just one example: Pushkin, the most famous Russian poet who changed the Russian literature forever, was 25% black. It is useless, IMHO, to fight mixed marriages and mistreat the kids from mixed families, rather it is much more effective to create appropriate assimilation techniques and follow them. Teutonic Knight Oh, great. I am glad my son can continue playing his favourite gnam-mer-sary-turqeric-azatem game

There is some, but nothing serious. BTW, I remember seeing lots of boshas around when I was a kid, but I do not remember seeing any for the last 10-15 years.

So you want to say that my son, whose grand-grandfather was a Jew is now a Jew? )))

There were some Jewish colonies in Armenia even in the times of Tigran the Great. They all ended up being assimilated. As for the modern days: there is no Jewish immigration into Armenia, but there is Jewish (as well as ARmenian, Greek, Russian) emigration from Armenia. And they have a sinagogue here in Yerevan. There are about 500 ppl who claim they are Jewish, but part of them are Armenians who just want to receive aid from Jewish organizations Want more info on them? PM me

No problem, take your time, Domino. And once again thanks for caring.

Vigil, It is your right I am not a liberal cosmopolitan too. Hey, I guess you got the wrong impression from my words, because... ... I do not welcome mixed marriages, but as long as they occure its OK for me if the kids are raised Armenians. We are not desperate, though we should be. But bringing in foreign immigrant will not solve the problem of Armenians becoming fewer and fewer every day. As I once said, I do not care that much for the republic but for the Armenian people (AZG). Well, me either. So just one more short remark, and I stop Yeah, I heard of this lady, but every time I think of her it makes me puke. There are many Armenian orphans and yet she adopted a "African"? These are the flat out stupid decisions Armenians make that really makes me question our future. Well actually she adopted bunch of Armenian kids too.

Vigil, Ah, white, black, yellow, I do not really care. My opinion on what makes Armenian an Armenian is the following: there is no such single component that can solely define national self identity but rather a mixture of those components. Those components in my opinion are: 1. blood (or genes) 2. land (or Hayreniq) 3. culture (of which the most important part is the language, than the feeling of being the owner of particular historical heritage) Possessing only one component usually is not enough, but having two of them in some cases can be enough. E.g.: 1. You have Armenian blood, you speak Armenian but do not live in Armenia: you are an Armenian 2. You have Armenian blood, live in Armenia, but do not speak Armenian: you are still an Armenian. 3. Now in case you do not have Armenian blood, but permanently live in Armenia and speak Armenian: the chances are you will eventually become an Armenian (there is a huge impact of language on one's mentality. So if you mostly speak Armenian, at some point you start somehow thinking as an Armenian) etc. etc. I have seen a black guy who was a real Armenian patriot. I had a feeling he is more Armenian than many of those nardi-qebab-patriots And I remember a mulato girl living in Yerevan, whose name was Gayane. She was an Armenian. Another case: there is a black kid who is adopted by an Armenian woman here in Yerevan. He speaks only ARmenian and he thinks like an Armenian (and he will go to army, I think ) I know such people. E.g. there is an Armenian guy in Artsakh, married to an Azeri woman. They have kids. The woman works in Artsakh and she renders some unique services for her new homeland. On the other hand, there are lots of cases when kids from an Armenian/Azeri marriage have become Azeries (those who live in Azeri environment). RE: Jews Mixed marriages with Jews are still OK, I think, as long as the kids are raised as Armenians. From the Jewish point of view I guess the opposite is OK. In any case Armenian-Jewish families where there is no strong feeling of belonging to one of those two nations usually do not feel comfortable neither in Armenian nor in Jewish environments. At least, this is what I have seen. =========================== Now, Vigil, we are actually saying almost the same things. The problem is that we model those situations (Armenian marrying a black, etc.) for our own environments: that means that you are thinking L.A. and I am thinking Yerevan. Marrying a non-Armenian in Armenia is less risky than in the U.S. or elsewhere outside Armenia because in the first case there is still the land component present which partially compensates for the lost of the blood component. And exactly for the same reason the "minority complex" can be something huge in L.A., but not in Armenia.

For the inter-ethnic marriages the chances are that the kids will end up being assimilated and totally cut off their Armenian roots. IMHO, there are not that many Armenians around to be so generous just for the sake of producing "nice chicks for international use" So unless Armenians somehow boost their demographic habits and make having 3-4 kids per family a minimal standard, I do not welcome any marriages which result in non-Armenian kids. And to avoid possible accusations of intolerance: if the result of the inter-ethnic marriage is Armenian, then I am totally stand for it. I do not care if he or she is black, or Chinese, or Russian, or a Turk as long as their kids are Armenians. That means that the non-Armenian parts must be assimilated by their Armenian environment.

One more thing to consider, While discussing hostile propaganda and tactical operations against it (like writing letters, etc), why don't have a closed / hidden forum, so the information will be kept confidential until everything is done?

I strongly support vava's idea of not publishing 'live' links to web pages containing hostile propaganda. The more links you post to anti-Armenian web sites the better are their positions in search engines results pages. I suggest putting URL's in the "Code" tags: http://yahoo.com

Waiting is not a problem And I will remind you in a few days so you do not forget Thanks!

In one of his articles Yves Ternon mentions that there were atrocities commited by Turkey against Greeks during the independence war (that one is more or less known), then also some persecutions of the Jews of Rodos and Damascus and Christians of Lebanon. Any information about what happened in 1840 and 1861? Any literature, bibliographical references? Thanks in advance.

We are Marsians. Well, at least according to recent Azeri studies.

Well there are those little tricks which help people make money out of nothing. Just a real-life example. An American university put some old American magazines back from 1880-1900s online. The content of those magazine is definitely not copyrighted. Can you use whatever they put online? Lets see what they write about that: When you run across a copyrighted image of Mona Lisa it's not the painting which is copyrighted but the photograph of the painting. Thus if you have a book which is published prior to 1923, it is not copyrighted, but if someone scans it, the scanned images of the pages are belong to the person who scanned it. You want to print 10000 posters with Mona Lisa's image? No problem, you have to go to Louvre, get a permission from the administration (for which they will charge you a lot), and then shoot it. Not anymore. They made it 90 a few years ago, and they will make it 100 if needed. Disney and other big guys have lot to lose in this game so they will push whatever laws they can just not to lose any profits. Well, usually printing expences are covered by grants. But still my calculations were not accurate, because they have to send some copies to state archives, then usually they send some copies to foreign libraries for free, etc. Also, they still have to pay their taxes So it will be lets say $1000 instead of $1800, and it is also shared between the coauthors. But even $300 is not little for an Armenian scholar. Well, actually for the last 8 year i have been earning my living as a graphic designer both in traditional media and on the web, and I know the printing world very well Believe me, you still can make some profit even from 350 copies. The thing is that noone in the U.S. or Europe will consider $300 as a profit.

I would not call this an equivalent. [Turkish] propaganda vs. [Armenian] stupidity - those are in no way equal.