MJ

Don't worry, Arpa. It is coming quickly. Within a year or so, Russia would have all the bones sucked out of Armenia's body. Then she would not need Armenia any more and overnight will become the best friend of Azerbaijan, as always, and especially that Azerbaijan has much more to offer to Russia than Armenia.

First off, dear Khazar, welcome. "-iants/-yants" ending. Yes. It is true. In the old days it has been indicative of nobility or that an ancestor has been a priest. But on the other hand, in the old days, any Armenian who has had a last name was pretty much nobility or from priests.

Due to shortage of time, I will address the issue only briefly – I have an early morning flight. Upon my return, as my time allows, I might add few more facts. It is true that Sahak Bartev has made pronunciations (being the first one in the Armenian Church history to do so) on the subject of celibacy. However, as a matter of practice, celibacy has been enforced at much later stage in Armenian Church (I will try to verify my sources at my convenience.) One has to remember that at the times of Sahak Bartev, the Catholicos has had no executive power and has been considered simply as an honorable title – something that is supposed to be made clear even in our days. That is what the Charter of the Armenian Church says. To understand correctly the issues surrounding the marriage of Catholicaos Khrimian Hairik, among others, one has to read, first, the New Testiment: “It behoveth, therefore, a bishop to be blameless, married once only, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher, not given to wine, no striker, but gentle, pacific, disinterested, but one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity — for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he govern the Church of God? — not a neophyte, lest, being puffed up with pride, he fall into judgment of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony of them who are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” (1 Timothy 3:3-7) The issue here is not the fact that higher-ranking priest could not have married. The issue is that he could not have married more than once and could not have married after receiving their rank. But if they were arriving to the rank while already being married, it was accepted at t he will of the decision maker. Even to this day, there are Vardabeds of Armenian Church who are married with the special permission of Catholicos. I personally know one of them, at least. As I said, I may revisit the issue when I can allocate time for checking my sources.

I think this time he is more to the point than he has been before.

One fundamental difference between Armenia and Georgia, rather than the low esteemed activities of the Armenian opposition (which would undoubtedly be a true characterization), is the fact that as with the change of regime in 1998 in Armenia, this time in Georgia, too, the Army has been the deciding force in swinging the pendulum one or another way. It is not surprising that the Armenian Army leadership has stood up for the status quo. The sad fact is that from the day of the inception of the Armenian paramilitary forces, and the Armenian Army on their foundation, this entity has been the primary party plundering Armenia, perpetuating corruption, crime, economic fraud, etc. So if we are to look at the root of the issues, and also understand why Armenia has not been able to bring together a viable opposition, we have to analyze the process leading to the formation of the Armenian military forces. True, what was opposition once and is the leading political party of Armenia today, with a significant likelihood may become opposition once again.

As to the history department of YSU, or its ilk in the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, it definitely has lately lived up to the standards advocated and set by the History Department of the Communist Party of USSR, on the foundations of which it has been built. And if the times had not changed, the same people who so passionately "uphold the dignity and honor of the Armenian history and academic integrity," would have been on the forefront of the crusade to “defeat the propagandists of imperialism" on behalf of the Communist Party of USSR or, at least, "proletariat." What else can be added to these thoughts is the incredible resemblance of this segment of "Armenian ideological shakeup" to the one where the Russian neo-communists and neo-Nazis have been declared as the "healthy forces of Russia." Edit: clean up done/ Sasun

I love when one gets to the main point so fast... <_<

Well MJ 4 years is a long time who knows you could change your mined In general, yes. But if I have to run for presdient, I'd rather do it in Iraq...

MJ you have to wait 4 more years..... JP, You have misunderstood me. I am not running for president...

One out, one to go yet...

While lacking adequate credentials for making professional and academic judgments on the academic subject of Urartu, Hittites, etc, I’d like to make some comments about some late methods and methodologies used in this thread. On one hand we have a very well known and recognized professional (Ronald Suny), who has allegedly written something “on 44 pages.” There is also another known professional historian (Armen Aivazyan) whom he has “rebuttaled.” The readers of this forum know neither what Aivazyan has written about nor what Suny has argued. We also have a new and anonymous member in this forum of with credentials on the subject no one knows about (I presume), who makes some claims which constitute nothing but character assassination. Furthermore, he provides no arguments to support his point of view but makes basically charges on a pseudo-political level, such as Dyakonov has taken a pro-Azeri stance “on some other issues,” which may or may not have any relevance to the subject of current discussion. Then, someone else is alleged to have done something (which we don’t know anything about) for being a “politically motivated” scholar or a “careerist,” basically a “sell-out.” Furthermore, whenever I hear criticism about “revisionism” in history, it raises some red flags with me. Are we to understand that subjecting a particular narration of a specific historic topic written by someone in the past cannot be subjected to revisionism? How is it that even in more precise sciences people renew their views on established theories and update them as they learn more, but in the discipline of history such an “ism” is abomination? Why cannot certain views on history be revised, if I may ask?

Thank you MJ for calling me Arab But an ARMENIAN is not an ARAB it is a different race.....yes And i want to stop hear no more responds from me to america-hye If Armenians are a different "race" than Arabs (which obviously is true despite the inappropriate usage of the term race) and, obviously, Armenians have never had anything to share with Jews nor have had any confrontations or hostility with them, why are you fighting Arab's war here?

Because he is Arab and is expressing the thus implied grudge.

No. Actually he was the shadow president of USA...

I think the assessments on Caucasus are right on the mark and anyone not seeing the accuracy of these assessments on the basis of merits is as corrupt as the leadership of the Caucasian Republics. It is unfortunate that the US government has not taken a principle stance in Caucasus, and thus, implicitly has sent a wrong message. Partially, it can be explained by the fact that their plate is full. However, and unfortunately, the failed Clintonian legacy of the US foreign policy towards Caucasus as a landscape to be portrayed with one brush continues. Only I don't know when has US supported Bin Laden.

Georgia election results confirmed TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) -- Two political blocs loyal to President Eduard Shevardnadze won first and second places in Georgia's November 2 parliamentary poll, the Central Election Commission said Thursday. The country's main opposition party took third place, the commission said, approving the final results of an election that took place almost three weeks ago. The commission said the pro-Shevardnadze For a New Georgia! bloc won with 21.32 percent, ahead of Revival Union, led by an ally of the veteran leader, with 18.84 percent. The opposition bloc led by Mikhail Saakashvili won 18.08 percent. The parliamentary election triggered mass protests organized by opposition leaders who accuse the authorities of stealing the poll from them. Shevardnadze, respected in the West for his role in ending the Cold War as Soviet foreign minister, has expressed hope that publication of the official results would bring an end to the protests and has pledged to convene parliament soon after. Saakashvili has said if the two pro-presidential blocs won first and second place in the election, more people could take to the streets to end what he calls a "corrupt regime." http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11/20...reut/index.html

The problem with blind date is that it is very hard to find a date who would be blind...

While we have your attention, Mr. President... It's not often that we get the chance to speak directly to the most powerful man in the world. So as George Bush lands in Britain for his first state visit, we asked 60 Brits and Americans to make the most of it. Dear Mr President, Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome. You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable. I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second. Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time. Frederick Forsyth Novelist November 18th, 2003 EDIT: Just realised that I had forgotten to provide the link. Here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,...1087583,00.html

The South Caucasus: After Elections 2003 Richard Giragosian Russia and Eurasia Program Caucasus Election Watch Series Wednesday, November 12, 2003 Presentation Notes Introduction The Southern Caucasus, with its geography as a strategic crossroads, is an instructive case of small weak states struggling to maintain their sovereignty amid the competing pressures of larger more powerful neighbors. Historically, the region has always been an arena for competing regional and global powers. This legacy of external influence is compounded by the internal vulnerabilities of the region’s three states. The three states of the region, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, have each been engaged in a decade-long course of economic and political reform, systemic transition and nation building, with a wide variance in success and consistency. The region also continues to struggle to overcome the legacy of constraints and challenges stemming from seven decades of Soviet rule. The transition process well underway in the region has revealed several important trends. The South Caucasus as a Subset of Broader Trends 1. Shifts in U.S. Policy Western policies in the region over the past decade has largely been driven by considerations related to the development of their energy reserves and the challenges of securing export routes amid the competing interests of the regional powers. There has been a deeper shift in U.S. policy in the region underway for sometime, however, as his long-standing energy focus has now been superseded by a pursuit of security and stability within the prism of a global fight against terrorism in the new post-September 11th geopolitical landscape. But the region also faces more fundamental internal challenges, ranging from an overall deficit of democracy, and the related predominance of “strongmen over statesmen,” to economic mismanagement and widespread corruption. These factors significantly impede the reform efforts of these states in transition, further contributing to a significant loss in state power. It is this set of internal factors that presents the most daunting challenge, however, as the core fragility of these states cannot be effectively overcome simply through policies relying on enhancing their security or military capabilities. 2. Shifting Geopolitics: The U.S.-Russian Strategic Partnership The foundation for current U.S. policy in the region lies firmly within the parameters of the new strategic partnership between the United States and Russia. But if these two regions should be seen through the lens of the US-Russian strategic partnership, it is equally valid to note that they are also hostage to the fate of this US-Russian relationship. In fact, the Caucasus, even more than Central Asia, may well become the first casualty of any breakdown in US-Russian relations. And as Russia reasserts itself in the face of a broadening U.S. presence in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus, the Southern Caucasus may very well emerge as the next arena of great power competition between Moscow and Washington, making the quest for stability and self-sufficiency among the already vulnerable states in the region even more vital. Most importantly for President Putin, this new post-9-11 world elevated Russia to a position of enhanced strategic importance to the US. Putin sees this avenue as the surest way to regain “great power status.” And for Russia, this partnership with the West has resulted in one serious gain: a much freer hand in the “Near Abroad” (and especially in Chechnya), following the Primakov concept. In the Caucasus, Russian influence is exercised in two forms: energy and economic leverage, and the military. Energy/economic leverage: culminated in the acquisition of dominant control (both overt and covert) of much of the region’s energy infrastructure and economic base. With the recent visit of Anotalii Chubais, the chairman of Russia's state-run Unified Energy Systems (UES), Russia now controls more than 80 percent of the Armenian energy sector (ranging from its one nuclear power plant to most of its hydroelectric power stations). Ironically, Chubais intends to use this Armenian energy platform to project Russian power by exporting electricity from Armenia to Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia. With this latest move, Armenia will soon be incorporated into a Russian-led single energy supplies network that comprises ten ex-Soviet states, including Azerbaijan and Georgia. The power scheme is seen by many as a key instrument in Moscow's drive to reassert its influence. Military: Russia maintains two bases in Georgia, one each in Azerbaijan and Armenia and has significantly bolstered its naval capabilities within the Caspian Sea. Shared Challenges The region is plagued by four fundamental challenges: 1. a virtual state of war, with full economic and transport blockades and a severe disruption or normal trade and energy links, which distorts natural economic development based on comparative advantage. Note the Armenian-Turkish border as “the last Cold War border,” sealed by the Turkish-Azeri blockade. 2. the fact that the most significant threat to these states’ national security comes not from each other, but from within, in the form of systemic corruption, which both impedes real reform and fosters conflict continuation over conflict resolution. 3. the dominance of “strongmen over statesmen,” thwarting democratic reform and hindering the region’s graduation from conflict to cooperation. 4. weak or failing states: a loss of legitimacy from tainted elections (deficit of democracy), corruption and manifesting in serious disparities of income and wealth. Analyzing the Transition: A Personification of Power: One-Man, One-State The entirety of the changes now underway represents a profound transition from the political legacies of Soviet rule. For both Azerbaijan and Georgia, the graduation from the Aliev and Shevardnadze periods is an important break from the past, ending a decade of dominant rule by two very accomplished products of the Soviet system of power-politics. In Armenia, this process has been underway longer, with a more pronounced (though subtle) shift to a firmly post-Soviet period. The impressive resilience of these former Soviet leaders, Aliev and Shevardnadze, is not simply rooted in the power of their personalities. Firstly, the reforms of the first post-Soviet decade were painful and, in most instances, unpopular. The infant states of the region saw the rise of strong leaders, often seen as best equipped to handle the painful period of early reform. Both leaders were also able to convince their people, and much of the West, that they personified stability and that their leadership offered the only hope for stability and security. Throughout the region (and also Central Asia), the first years of the transition from Soviet politics were marked by a trend toward authoritarian leadership. The reign of these authoritarian strongmen has drained democracy of some of its meaning. In the case of Azerbaijan and Georgia, it stunted overall democratic and economic reform, with the elite choosing instead to pursue power and profit. These reformed or recast Communist leaders were often legitimized by a lack of real alternatives. They posed as leaders more capable of managing the reform effort than the dangerous populists, flagrant fascists, and hard-line ultra-nationalists that strode onto the stage to challenge them--and most in the Caucasus accepted the old school's claim was right. The second source of their staying-power springs from a political culture fairly unique to these former Soviet states. While the maxim that "all politics is local" may apply in the United States, in the southern Caucasus (and in Central Asia), it is more accurate to say that "all politics is personal." Former Communist leaders have appealed to personality rather than platform--and the ploy has succeeded. In most of the southern Caucasus and Central Asia, they rule by constructing one-man, one-party systems of governance, supported by a clan-based network of patronage and complicity. Although Armenia lacks the one-man, one-party rule, it too suffers from its own form of clan-based patronage politics. Generational Shift The legacy of the old generation is etched deeply onto the new. Armenia has the longest record of democratization, untainted by either civil war or coup d'etat--although it did suffer from a short-lived but very significant burst of political violence in 1999, when its prime minister and other leading politicians were gunned down in parliament. In contrast to its two troubled neighbors, Armenian democracy continues to improve (albeit too slowly), and it was the first in the region to elect a new generation of leaders. Armenian President Robert Kocharian is less marked by the Soviet past than his elder Azeri and Georgian counterparts, whose rise to power in the post-Soviet independence era relied on the power they built up in the Soviet system. But such a generational shift has not meant stability or peace, and Armenia's democracy continues to hobble. Its clannish elite still governs for self-interest rather than national interest.

He is just trying to cheat you or has been cheated himself. This issue has been discussed in the Religion section in the past.

TFC, With all due respect, your message totally lacks any merit. Regardless of what I think of the Worldwide Armenian Organization, Armenians in Moscow constitute Diaspora as much as those in Montreal and no one has given you the upper hand in this issue. Second, speaking of Western Armenia ... it is such a superficial category, especially when you speak of its "survival." What survival? When has it exist so that now it has to survive? As to your grandparents speaking Western Armenian, I suspect that they spoke Turkish rather Armenian. If they did speak Armenian, they must be a minority among Western Armenian. As to whose grandparents got slaughtered and whose grandparents survived, apparently you know nothing about the subject. Why don't you start learning about it beyond grandma stories? The rest of your message about "odars" and "passport" also indicate that you have entered a subject which you practically nothing about. In such cases, the best remedy is to listen, read and think a lot, before expressing opinions. I am suggesting this out of good intentions and have no desire to offend you.

I have no idea. But I would still enjoy if the you know what gets out of my face.

Get out of my face.

I am sure. I can guarantee you that you would remember your utility bills for long time to come...

No, I don't think so.