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Armenia
The March 2004 issue of the National Geographic has an excellent feature article about"The Rebirth of Armenia", Once a great empire stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, it became the first officially Christian nation when St. Gregory the Illuminator baptized King Tiridates III in 391 AD. Pope John Paul II was among the 37 church leaders who attended the 2001 ceremonies marking the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity as a state religion. Do not confuse Gregory the Illuminator with Gregory the Great who founded the medieval papacy, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop of Constantinople, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory Thaumaturgos, i.e. the wondermaker, or Saint Gregrory of Tours. Which saints are recognized by which churches is a complicated matter. Another venerated saint is Saint Mesrob Mashtots, who invented the Armenian alphabet.
Greatly shrunk in size, Armenia almost disappeared when the Ottoman Empire tried to liquidate it completely in 1915. The Turkish government rejects the word "genocide", which the article correctly says was coined in 1944, The Oxford English Dictionary says "Genocide: The deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group. 1944 R. Lemkin Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79 By genocide we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. 1945 Sunday Times 21 Oct. 7 The United Nations' indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders has brought a new word into the language: genocide. It occurs in Count 3, where it is stated that all the defendants conducted deliberate and systematic genocide namely, the extermination of racial and national groups". Does the Turkish government simply reject the word, which originally referred to the Jews in Nazi-controlled territory, but which is now given a more general meaning?. The Jews would like to restrict the word to its original meaning to stress the allegedly unique character of their case, but the case was not unique, and the word is applied more widely. When in the Old Testament the Jews exterminated a people it was genocide. In any case, there is in Yerevan a Genocide Memorial.. While we are happy that Armenia is enjoying a rebirth, I can think of no other nation which has suffered such a loss of territory.
I have never been to Armenia. When
I was touring the URSS under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
we arrived in Georgia on a Saturday. The Academician who was accompanying me
said Sunday was a holiday and that there would be no program. I expressed my
displeasure at wasting a day. I thought of going to Yerevan, the capital of
Armenia, for the day. However, when I tried to buy a ticket, the airline clerk
asked if I had a Soviet passport. No. Then I could not go to Yerevan. At that
point my Academy companion rushed up. Clearly stung by my reproach about wasting
a day, he had arranged a program to see the Stalin museum in Gori. There I was
regaled with a fulsome eulogy of Stalin. When I asked about Beria, the reply
was "Stalin did not know him". I wish I had been able to go to Yerevan
and Etchmiadzin, 12 miles west, the mother see of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
I shall never see Armenia. Oh dear.
France
RH: "Chirac boasts that "le
peuple français est bon", which I don't think they especially are".
Christopher Jones, who lives in southern France, comments: "The French
people are "bon," the Parisians are not". RH: The goodness of
man is a major theological and philosophical problem. However, there are degrees,
I do not like big cities and what they do to people, so I accept Christopher's
statement with reservations.
The Globalist (2720/04) has posted a speech by French Foreign Minister Dominique
de Villepin on the astounding growth of service industries in India. We excerpt
the section on France-India ties as evidence that France still views itself
as a global actor: "Despite the big differences inherited from our respective
histories, France and India both have the same hopes for today's world and support
the same principles to guide them. In 1998, we launched a strategic partnership.
This is a great asset to help us meet the challenges of the world that we intend
to build together. Today, all subjects of concern are dealt with in this framework:
proliferation, the strengthening of the fight against terrorists, regional crises.
We are also striving to meet the expectation of India in areas of technological
development and autonomy in the field of energy.
Closest allies: India is a continent
in itself that has, for example, to supply electricity to over a billion inhabitants.
It is therefore quite natural that its closest partners assist it in meeting
this challenge. India and France, together, defend the same principles of organization
of the international community".
Haiti
The Council On Hemispheric Affairs
has issued this memorandum on Haiti (2/17/04): Washington Must Dramatically
Raise its Profile Regarding Haiti or Await the Deluge; New French initiative
vital for bringing peace to the island:
New Washington Latin American policymaking team is needed: replace such radical
extremist political appointees like Otto Reich and Roger Noriega with career
Foreign Service officers; Haiti opposition should be told to negotiate with
government or be considered irrelevant. Outside police force, now likely to
include French units, needed to immediately pacify the country.
Unlike his U.S. counterpart, French
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has said that his government is considering
dispatching French troops to Haiti as part of an international police force
to put down the present violence in the country. Meanwhile, Secretary of State
Colin Powell must do more than simply say that he is disappointed with the
quality of leadership that Jean Bertrand Aristide has afforded Haiti. In response
to Powells statement, many Haitians could respond that despite Aristides many
shortcomings, his level of performance compares favorably to the Bush administrations
failed strategy towards the island, which has been based on freezing all aid
to Aristide and waiting for the inevitable chaos to descend. Throughout Aristides
three-year exile in Washington and after his restoration to the presidency in
1994 (after a U.S.-led regional force landed in Haiti), Washington has treated
the Haitian president as a potentially dangerous figure who must be curbed in
order to fence off his radical politics and messianic tendencies. Instead, all
along Aristide should have been viewed as Haitis most precious political asset,
regardless of his personal failings. Yet, even from a narrowly defined perspective
of serving U.S. national interests and Bush administration reelection concerns
centered on the negative impact that hordes of Haitian refugees sailing to south
Florida would have on the presidents campaign, Washington, beginning with the
Clinton administration, has maintained an indefensible policy towards Aristide
since he came into office upon winning two-thirds of the vote in the 1990 election.
Similarly, throughout Haitis history, Washington has treated the island with
a mixture of low expectations, unrelieved disrespect and a policy devoid of
any desire for constructive engagement or democratic advancement.
The Council On Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) issued a memorandum on Haiti (2/17/04).
Tim Brown comments: "COHA always actively supports radical left activists
and causes, especially revolutionary movements of the hard left, from the Montoneros
and Tupamaros to the Faribundo Marti, Sandinistas, Zapatistas, and always the
Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro. So its endorsement of Aristide warns me that
there is a hidden ideological agenda here, much deeper than what has reached
the public eye. That said, two decades ago when I was Consul General in Martinique
during another round of Haitian violence, France offered to send troops and
gendarmes and also to help rebuild Haiti's schools and public administration
systems at its own expense. But when they asked us for help with things they
could not do alone. we refused. I thought it was a foolish decision then and
believe it remains foolish not to support the French in this one if they want
to act. But what does disturb me is COHA's involvement, which suggests there
is a hidden agenda here that would not favor US interests". RH: I had not
noticed the bias of COHA, but I will keep my eyes open. The report on Haiti
was good.
The Council On Hemispheric Affairs
(COHA) has issued (2/20/04) this memorandum on Haiti; Canadian Foreign Affairs
Minister must Lead as well as follow on Haiti. Bill Graham’s recent remarks
yesterday on Haiti indicates that he is depending upon U.S. policymakers to
orient Canada while not having a clue as to what is really happening there.
Foreign Minister Graham is outdoing even his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of
State Powell, who he is otherwise closely aping, in subscribing to a confused
and tough, if not hostile line towards Haiti’s President Aristide. In
doing so, he seriously distorts reality. In following such a surprisingly one-sided
and prejudicial approach on the cause of the conflict there, Graham is in danger
of rendering Canada irrelevant to any eventual solution on the crisis-ridden
island. In contrast to French diplomacy, which at least is exhibiting some spunk
and creativity on the issue, Mr. Graham is dragging Canada back to its tradition
roost of me-toism when it comes to U.S.-sponsored initiatives. The Foreign Affairs
Minister would be well served if he recalled the independent regional policy
that was engaged in by two of his predecessors, Joe Clark and, in particular,
Loyd Axworthy, which brought Canada great lustre when they held office.
The tone and language which the Canadian Foreign Minister has been using in
recent days regarding the current situation in Haiti is very unfortunate. Graham
argues that Aristide must live up to “his obligations,” suggesting
that the Haitian president hasn’t. In fact Aristide has accepted every
condition pressed upon him by CARICOM, the U.S. and the OAS. The bedrock problem
regarding Haiti is that the country’s opposition refuses to negotiate
with Aristide and will not consider taking up their seat on the Provisional
Electoral Council, without which no elections can be held. How can a new prime
minister be jointly appointed by the opposition and the government, when the
former refuses to participate in the process? While Graham recognizes that “Obviously,
we can’t allow this [the violence] to continue to develop…”
it is equally obvious that the Haitian government is attempting to pacify the
country through repeated offers of negotiation and conciliation. Meanwhile the
opposition---now increasingly controlled by the discredited former members of
the country’s brutal military and paramilitary forces that terrorized
the country from 1991-94, has obdurately refused in any way to join in a process
of reconciliation. Pacification has failed to occur up to now because at the
root of the opposition’s strategy is the need to create the very chaos
that Mr. Graham somehow appears to attribute to Aristide, the peacemaker, rather
than the country’s increasingly violent opposition. There is where Mr.
Graham’s outrage appropriately belongs.
One could also add the thought that if Canada and the U.S. had done a more effective
job in carrying out their responsibility to professionalize the Haitian police
force and establish a reliable court system, maybe the island’s security
authorities would have been able to have done a better job in upholding a system
of law and order after the U.S.-led intervention in 1994, which was aimed at
overthrowing the military and FRAPH.
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) issued (2/18/04) this statement by
its director Larry Birns
"Secretary Powells Non-Policy towards Haiti: Secretary of State Colin
Powells current policy toward Haiti can be described at best as irrelevant,
and at worst as a covert effort to stand by as a coup de main comes down on
Haitian democracy as a result of the forcible removal of President Aristide
from office. Secretary Powells position is that dispatching a peace force to
the island at this time is premature and that the proper procedure instead would
be for the Aristide government to achieve a political settlement with the opposition
prior to any decision about the introduction of outside forces". RH: Birns
spoke about Haiti on C-Span. He impressed me as being very well-informed and
reasonable. One reason the US hesitates to send troops to Haiti is that the
last such venture under Kennedy was not too successful.
Italy
Adriana Pena modifies the condemnation of Mussolini by Christian Leitz: "Not that I want to carry a brief for Mussolini, but as to his using ghastly methods, including gas in war, let us remember that before Mussolini, Winston Churchill had approved the used of poison gas in the 20's against Kurds, because, as he said, he would not have the Empire defied by "savages". I think it is hypocritical of us to condemn Mussolini and forget his predecessor".
Ronald Hilton - 01.25.04
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