Rocket 88.

RIP, Ike.

Need to digitize some old photos.

I posted the Earthquake photo on December 7 and realized that I need to digitize the handful of photographs that I have left. Having led a semi-nomadic life since the early 90-s has not been kind to my photographs. You simply can't carry useless pieces of paper from one place to the other. The digital ones take no physical space as they sit somewhere on a server.

The pointlessness of blogs.

What's the point of blogs but a waste of one's time?

Shame on Azg newspaper.

Usually Azg is a normal newspaper. Despite the fact that it's the unofficial paper of HRAK party, which always sides with the ruling parties of Armenia, it delivers a healthy amount of fair and balanced news items.

That was until Samvel Babayan, another representative of the Karabakh Clan and a former disgraced general of the NKR army convicted of an assassination attempt on NKR President, became a member of HRAK. Samvel Babayan first expressed his unlimited devotion to Serj Sargsian. And now there is this unsigned item in Azg that Haylur would be proud of.

Here is a small excerpt of this masterpiece:

 1992   5-       ,           ,       :

Levon's speech is on line.

Levon's speech at the rally on December 8, 2007, is now online. here is one of my favorite excerpts:

...(on the accusations that he destroyed the economy of the Soviet Union) The Soviet economy was isolated from the world markets and was a closed, prison-like, or more precisely, a concentration-camp like system. Just like prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, any isolated and closed system is capable of creating a more or less vibrant economy. From my personal experience, the best example is from my cell in Moscow's "Matrosskaya Tishina" prison. Within a short period of time, with the help of experienced prisoners, we created a wide industrial base and I became a participant in that as well. That ultra-modern industry would produce basic necessities for internal consumption:
- high quality glue for rolling cigarettes made from bread mixed with water;
- ornate and colorful playing cards made of cigarette packs;
- excellent chess pieces sculpted of bread;
- fuel, derived from plastic bags, to disinfect rotting salami;
- biscotti from bread dried on the heating panels;
- eye patch made from handkerchiefs;
- necktie made from a towel; etc.

According to my cell mates, the high security prisons had a more vibrant industry with better assortment of products.

This may sound crazy but the Soviet economy resembled the industry LTP describes.

The whole speech is available on LevonForPresident.com

19 years ago today

This picture was made not long after the earthquake of 1988 in the QimGortzaran neighborhood of Vanadzor.

More than 25,000 of my compatriots, relatives among them, perished on December 7, 1988.

RIP.

Solidarity

ltp 151, originally uploaded by onewmphoto.

The authorities in Armenia have resumed their dirty tricks of suppressing freedom of speech. The fliers informing the public about the President's rally this Saturday have been confiscated by the tax authorities. If you remember, each time there is a rally, LTP's supporters are harassed. The last time they were beaten up by the police and detained for more than half a day.

The explanation for confiscation was as bizarre as the usual explanation of abuse by the RK and SS goons:

A spokeswoman for the STS (State Tax Authority), Alina Khudoyan, essentially confirmed the information, saying that the leaflets were “temporarily” confiscated because Van Arian (the publisher) did not input the Aylentrank order into its accounts in order to evade taxes. Khudoyan said the tax collection agency fined the company, rather that Arakelian. Speaking to RFE/RL, she could not say when the leaflets will be returned to Aylentrank.

The accounting rules are that the entries in the books are made when there is a transaction or when they close the books for the accruals. So if the publisher has not received a payment for the fliers or billed the buyer (generated an accounts receivable entry) they would not have an entry in their books.

Read more about this in Onnik's election monitor blog.

Banana Republics

A recap of news items on BBC for today.

The world's largest banana republic.

The world's most powerful banana republic.

Pot calling kettle black.

Thomas Goltz

There is this guy, Thomas Goltz, who lives in Azerbaijan. He's an American guy married to a Turkish lady and ended up in Azerbaijan in the early 90-s. He has a book out called 'Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic'.

In it, he reports some interesting details about the comings and goings in Azerbaijan during the first half of the 90-s. His recollections about the war are clearly biased but if you go beyond the Armenophobe rhetoric, they show the enemy's side of the events. One of the incidents that he reports is the Yeraskhavan clashes (I believe it was the January of 1990). Goltz says that the groups that fired on Sadarak, Nakhijevan, were members of Dashnaktsutyun.

As a self proclaimed reporter, he should have known that Dashnaktsutyun did not participate in the war effort - there were a handful of Spyurkahay volunteers that came to Karabakh based on their own accord (Monte, Sefilian, et. al.). In fact, Dashnaktsutyun did not establish itself until after the independence. Even after that they were busy with petty bickering and undermining the state with outfits like the Dro band. But they were in front of the line when it was time to take credit for the independence, and for the war.

The fighters that Goltz mentions were the volunteers from AIM (Paruyr Hairikian's party). It was where Movses Gorgisian, one of the first people in the Movement, was killed.

Oh-oh, just saw a half hour infomercial about Wal-Mart.

Looks like the predictions for a mediocre X-mas shopping season are not unfounded.