The Third World - Overexploited (Michael Parenti)

As we see more and more Russian investment coming into Armenia and the government claiming that there is nothing wrong with it, and that the country needs investment to develop, it is worth to look at what this investment has meant for the vast majority of country exposed to Western models of investment over the past century. I don't mean to say that I agree to the points made by this video 100%, but there is some sence in listening to an alternative viewpoint and questioning, just how much investment and in what areas of economy are appropriate.

Transcipt from the video: [...] the Third World is not "underdeveloped" but overexploited. The gap between rich and poor nations is not due to the "neglect" of the latter by the former as has been often claimed. For forty years or more we have heard how the nations of the North must help close the poverty gap between themselves and the nations of the South, devoting some portion of their technology and capital to the task. Yet the gap between rich and poor only widens because investments in the Third World are not designed to develop the capital resources of the poor nations but to enrich the Western investors.[...]

Via Suryu

Boomeritis: Post modern Culture & a View of the Future

Boomeritis, a term coined by philosopher Ken Wilber, describes a curious condition afflicting the baby boom generation. In short, "high cognitive pluralism mixed with low emotional narcissism." AKA: a smart, progressive person with a big ego. :-) It's a disease that began infecting human beings during the sixties revolution, when millions of rebellious American and European teens, took full advantage of the rights and freedoms afforded them by Western society and explored the entire spectrum of their egoic autonomy. Busting through every limitation, subverting every authority, and ingesting every psychedelic drug they could get their hands on, they each tumbled out, squinting and dazed, into the bright sunny dawn of the Age of Aquarius.

Boomeritis: a video montage of this post-modernism "disease", narrated by What Is Enlightenment? magazine's Tom Huston, from a retreat with Andrew Cohen

And although that new age, obscured by the rose-colored glasses of hippiedom, wasn't all it was cracked up to be, it did mark the birth of an actual new stage of human consciousness and culture. Historians, sociologists, and philosophers call it postmodernity, and its defining characteristic was the capacity to allow a variety of differing viewpoints, cultures, and worldviews to peacefully coexist in an egalitarian embrace. Today this multicultural consciousness is also frequently called "pluralism" for its ability to honor and respect a multidimensional plurality of perspectives, and is recognized as being the singular fuel behind the revolutionary fire of the sixties—having ignited the flames of feminism, civil rights, animal rights, gay rights, ecological activism, Vietnam war protests, sexual liberation, and even rock 'n roll. The Beatles' song "All Together Now," for example, perfectly captures the fundamental sentiments and sensitivities of the pluralistic stage of development.

But every social revolution has its downsides, and postmodernity had, and continues to have, plenty of its own. Perhaps the most obvious and unfortunate side-effect of postmodernity's noble intentions to include and embrace all worldviews and cultures—leaving no individual or social group behind to be marginalized or oppressed—is that by idealistically championing "equal rights," it ends up flattening all value judgments into an ultra-egalitarian pancake. Wilber has dubbed this postmodern landscape "flatland"—a world in which no value distinctions, no judgments, and no hierarchies are allowed, and in which it's considered "politically incorrect" to judge another person, group, or even worldview as being fundamentally better or worse than any other.

Source: sorenl

STATEMENT OF YEREVAN PRESS CLUB ON THE ADOPTION OF AMENDMENTS TO THE BROADCASTING LEGISLATION BY THE RA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

The adoption of the draft laws “On Introducing Amendments to the RA Law ‘On Television and Radio’” and “On Introducing Amendments and Addition to the RA Law ‘Regulations of the National Commission on Television and Radio’” by the National Assembly of Armenia on February 26, 2007 shows that neither the government that has authored the draft, nor the parliament is ready or willing to improve the broadcasting legislation, to bring it into compliance with the modern principles of freedom of expression and international standards. Once again, we are facing a closed, “in camera” process of developing draft laws on media and the hasty discussion and voting at NA - as during military mobilization.

The argument that the need to bring the Law into accord with the amended Constitution called for a rapid procedure does not hold water. Over a year has elapsed since the adoption of the amendments to the Constitution, and both the governmental and the parliamentary structures had enough time to hold discussions, hearings, to study the proposals submitted, to get expert evaluation. The restriction of the lawmaking process to that of stamping out legal acts, subjected to the political interests of the day, do not in any way testify to the commitment of Armenian authorities to the principles of democracy and the process of European integration that they declare.

Yerevan Press Club and partner oprganisations in 2005 have repeatedly stated that the provisions of the draft amendments to the Constitution that deal with the communications, in particular, the broadcast media, do not create favorable conditions for reforming media legislation, proposed alternative versions of amendments. But the parliamentary majority with a firmness that deserves better use advanced its own definitions. The further developments proved our fears were justified: the amended Constitution has significantly restricted the prospects of the law making on ensuring the independence of the TV and radio regulatory body.

At the same time the amendments to the broadcasting legislation, adopted on February 26, do not reflect even the positive stipulations of the amended Constitution. Firstly, the proportion of the members of the regulatory body (the National Commission on Television and Radio) appointed by the President and elected by the Parliament, as provided for by the Main Law, will, following the amendments, only be reached in 2011, after NCTR will have held a number of broadcast licensing competitions. Secondly, the amendments do not ensure the public and political diversity in NCTR composition: in accordance with the procedures proposed, the decision about the appointment of NCTR members from NA will be made by the parliamentary majority, which, as the political practice of Armenia shows, is always in the same camp with the President. In other words, the regulatory body, like before, will be formed solely by the political forcers at power, and in this regard the amended legislation does not introduce any significant novelty. Thirdly, like before, the involvement of the public in NCTR formation and the transparency of its decision-making is not ensured. Fourthly, the remaining subdivision into the paid (that is, the full-time NCTR members -the chairman and the vice chairman) and the unpaid members condition huge gap in their competence and violate the principle of collegiate decision-making. Fifthly, the expansion of the NCTR competence and inclusion of the public broadcaster into it, as stipulated by the amended Constitution, did not entail the description of the mechanisms of regulating the activities of the Public TV and Radio Company by the National Commission on Television and Radio.

Once again the opportunity of improving the Law “On Television and Radio” in general, eliminating the numerous deficiencies it had since its adoption in October 2000, without restricting oneself to the provisions that run contrary to the amended Constitution is missed.

The whole process of developing and adopting draft laws “On Introducing Amendments to the RA Law ‘On Television and Radio’” and “On Introducing Amendments and Addition to the RA Law ‘Regulations of the National Commission on Television and Radio’” by the RA National Assembly on February 26, 2007 demonstrated open and cynical negligence of the opinion of the journalistic community by the Government and the parliamentary majority. None of the proposals of public organizations, presented as expert assessment, concepts of reforming the broadcasting legislation, finally, as a ready-to-use draft law, received attention. Only individual remarks, noting the obvious technical omissions in official drafts, were taken into account. Unfortunately, the demonstrative reluctance of the authorities to discuss anything with stakeholders is becoming a tradition in the Armenian law-making practice.

The voting at NA on February 26 also ignored the appeal of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to the RA authorities to hold consultations with the CE experts before the adoption of amendments to the Law “On Television and Radio”, as well as the recommendations of the Office of OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media and its offer to make an expert assessment of the draft amendments. Formation of the broadcasting legislation in compliance with the standards of the Council of Europe was one of the commitments that Armenia undertook upon its accession to CE, and further on the need to improve it was noted in numerous documents of this international organization. However, this process remains a sign of resistance to democratic reforms in the country.

The stance on the matter, held by parliamentary factions of governing coalition, can be somehow explained by mutual political commitments - after all, the draft amendments were initiated by their coalition government. Yet the behavior of individual deputies, who call themselves “opposition” or “independent”, but who voted for the drafts and ensured their adoption is even shameful to comment. Because it is they who keep complaining of the control that authorities have over broadcast media, at the same time reinforcing the state of affairs by their vote…

What has been said here causes concern not only because of the adoption of the two drafts, but also in the context of the overall sociopolitical situation in the country before the parliamentary elections. There are too many alarming premonitions that the upcoming election campaign, instead of being a declaration of commitment to certain values by political forces, will turn into a demonstration of cynicism, reactionary sentiment and conformism cult.

February 28, 2007

Michael Parenti -- Real Patriots!

A discussion started in one of the earlier posts aroused the necessity to discuss issues like: real patriotism, real citizenship, Civil Society and Interests in a country.

In this video Parenti speaks about issues like militarism vs. patriotism, conformity vs. civil patriotism and more...

Armenian Blog Catalogue

Dear Bloggers,

I have put together this little catalogue of blog links at the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_blogs and was planning to keep it secret until putting as many entries as possible, but since Bekaisa, Followtheway and ALS Movement have discovered and made it public I officially announce the catalogue open.

From this moment on - it is yours to modify, add, delete, etc. I will be watching out at the changes and adding more entries as time goes on - but - there is a huge Armenian blogging community already - 59 entries on my catalogue alone! And I see that there is at least 100 more to add… so don’t expect me to add all of them - if you see your blog is not there - add it yourself, or at least post the URL and the description you would like about it here in the comments section.

Keep blogging, its fun!

Best,

Observer - Angry Root

Accountability Now

Great governments of great countries make great promises to their voters, and have greater and more visible failures. The small governments of the small countries make smaller promises - and have smaller failures... The government of Armenia doesn't really promise anything. They give all there is to give to the voter before the elections - and that is 1000-2000 AMD. They buy themselves out of accountability. When a voter gets paid for voting, the social responsibility of the paying side to enter into a contractual relationship, govern on behalf of the voter vanishes. That is exactly why the American people can afford to call their government to account, and we - Armenians, can't...


Accountability is perhaps one of the greatest problems in every country. Construction of a Civil Society capable of holding the government to account is an even greater problem. But maybe one day these problems will find a solution in Armenia as well? Who knows!

Michael Parenti -- Real Democracy!

Managing democracy with fear and xenofobia

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Nazi Reich Marshall Hermann Goering
at the Nuremberg War Trials

Brainwashing via Terrorizing... Armenian approach vs. US approach

In this video Naom Chomski speaks about the US technique of terrorizing the nation in order to retain power of the president. We have all seen the example of George W. Bush and his Afganistan/Iraq (probably also Iran) campaigns - so even if your connection does not allow to view the videos, that's roughly what its about.

On my side, I want to add something strange I've noticed: Armenian authorities are persuading the US, OSCE, etc. that unless they are re-elected, unless the Kocharian regime is continued, the Karabakh problem won't be solved... I mean - Kocharian is just brilliant. He has taken the well known American PR technique of retaining power by terrifying the population by various horrible threats: Communits, Nuclear Bombs, Terrorists, etc... and using it onto the inventors of the technique - the US and the OSCE! I don't even know how to react - laugh or cry!



The real reason I started this post was this article by Emil Danielyan, and especially this section from it:

[...]Yerevan may also have reason not to be worried about negative Western reaction to a repeat of serious vote irregularities, despite stern election-related warnings issued by the United States and the European Union. According to U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, Armenia and Azerbaijan are “very close” to reaching a long-awaited agreement to end the Karabakh conflict after the upcoming Armenian polls. The conflicting parties have been discussing a gradual settlement of the conflict that presumably requires policy continuity in both Baku and Yerevan. Assuming that they really see a chance for Karabakh peace this year, Western powers and Washington in particular will hardly challenge the legitimacy of a government that they hope will help to eliminate the main source of instability in the South Caucasus.[...]

Rich Media, Poor Democracy - Overview

Journalism matters - not just to journalists but to everyone

The year started up bad for journalists in Armenia - even worse than the previous year, here's a troubling list of some of the recent events:

1. "...The three-and-a-half year jail sentence handed to the editor of “Zhamanak Yerevan” - Arman Babajanian..." RFE/RL.
   
2. "...The Toyota Prado belonging to Suren Baghdasarian of the “Football Plus” weekly and parked in a garage outside his central Yerevan apartment was completely destroyed by fire..." RFE/RL.
   
3. "...Arson attack on an expensive SUV belonging to Ara Saghatelian, the owner and editor of the “Im Iravunke” weekly..." (The photo and the quotes above all taken from the web site of RFE/RL).

Without going into much discussion as to who, why and how caused all these problems for the Armenian journalists (which was my initial intention when starting this post), I want to call on everyone in the Armenian public, to protect the journalists, even the very bad ones, and especially the good ones, as the authorities are clearly not doing their job of protecting journalists - those people so much necessary to scrutinize power in a democratic system. I could suggest, that on the contrary, the state is incouraging violence against the journalists if I only had facts, but as I don't - I'm not going to say that. I am only going to limit myself to appeal to the public and say: protect the journalists - from everyone, and especially from the state, for who will ask the questions when they're gone?

PS: I visited the newsroom of the Daily Telegraph yesterday and my reaction was WOW! No wonder these journalists are so dedicated to their work - they are a power in UK - real economic, political, social power... whearas fire and jail are the best reward for the best journalists in Armenia. Guess who will be more inclined to provide quality journalism to their readers?

Decadence - Democracy

On my quest to find What Democracy Means I keep getting more questions then answers. Today is my depression day - so I'll introduce you to the other side of democracy, to the Feeling of Liberal Western Democracy from inside...

Part 1

Part 2

From anticonsumer to an anticonsumer.

Economy - in simple terms: a cow based assessement of the world economies

(Most of the economies from a closed listserver)

TRADITIONAL ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You retire on the income.

CHINESE ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity and arrest anyone reporting the actual numbers.

INDIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You worship them.

PAKISTAN ECONOMICS

You don't have any cows.
You claim that the Indian cows belong to you.
You ask the US for financial aid,
China for military aid.
Britain for warplanes.
Italy for machines,
Germany for technology.
France for submarines.
Switzerland for loans.
Russia for drugs and
Japan for equipment.
You buy the cows with all this and claim exploitation by the world.

AMERICAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You profess surprise when the cow drops dead.
You put the blame on some nation with cows & naturally that nation will be a danger to mankind.
You wage war to save the world and grab the cows.

FRENCH ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

GERMAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You reengineer them so that they live for 100 years, eat once a month and milk themselves.

BRITISH ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
They are both mad.

ITALIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You don't know where they are.
You break for lunch.

SWISS ECONOMICS

You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.

JAPANESE ECONOMICS

You have two cows
You redesign them so that they are one-tenth the size of anordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create cute cartoon cow images called Cowkimon and market them worldwide.

RUSSIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 17 cows.
You give up counting and open another bottle of vodka.

ARMENIAN ECONOMICS

You have only one cow.
So the government claims there is a shortage of cows.
The government asks for loans and grants from other countries so the country can produce more cows.
The other countries oblige.
The government divides the grants and loans among themselves, and blames the opposition for inactivity, creates anticorruption strategy and takes one of the farmers to court.
Then the government tells another farmer to distribute milk to voters and make sure they join "Bargavach Hayastan" Party.
After the elections the country still has that single cow.

Hypocracy in Action... Anti-Election Observation Campaign of RA Government

Armenian authorities undertook two important steps, obviously geared towards achieving maximum transparency at the Parliamentary Elections 2007 in Armenia, scheduled for May 12, 2007. As you can see there are only 2251 hours, or 93 days remaining till the election, so I guess it was still too early for Mr. Goran Lenmark, special envoy on Nagorno Karabakh issue at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to try and meet the Armenian President Robert Kocharian in order to discuss the OSCE observation mission to be deployed in Armenia (why does Mr. Lenmark need to see Mr. Kocharian so early for? He doesn't need to discuss any organizational details for deploying over a hundred-people strong international monitoring mission and arranging all the logistics, etc, right? It's something that can be done overnight, so there's no rush). And I guess it is still too early for Armenian NGOs to try and register as local monitoring missions to the election, isn't it? Obviously Armenian authorities thought the same, because:

a/ "It is noteworthy that Lenmark’s meeting with RA President Robert Kocharyan didn’t take place as “the president wasn’t in Yerevan” in Lenmark’s words." - as A1plus reported yesterday.
b/ Central Electoral Comission rejected the bid for the "Supreme Committee" parliamentary club NGO to register a local monitoring mission to the elections (via RL/RFE)

I don't want to analyze the details of why each of these two things happened. The fact is in an environment, where the authorities are constantly speaking of transparency of elections you just don't treat observation missions like that. The fact is transparency, unobstructed access for everybody to see, monitor and contribute to the elections is one and only way to excersize Democracy, to have, as they are saying here in the UK "Democracy in Action". What I'm seeing at this point is more like "Hypocracy in Action..."

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Via tirami su I learned about this fascinating video about the Internet, Web 2.0, etc. Highly recommended. You would say that it doesn't really connect with the main subject of my discussions on this blog, but then I would argue, that if electronic media has any role to play in contributing to the democratic debate in Armenia, an insight into what that electronic media is capable of doing is very much connected. But, let's not argue, just watch and enjoy. And thanx tirami su for posting about it.

Exporting Democracy - A Global Fiasco

Armenianow.com had an interesting article "Present and Future Power Debate: Who will be the choices in 2008?" which examines the possible scenarios of political developments, probable candidates and the effects of these decisions on the political life in the country. However, all the arguments brought to and for this or that candidate in the article are most irrelevent to see the overall picture in the country. The one and only thing that got me interested was rather this one single point made by Washington D.C./Yerevan political analyst Richard Giragosian:

Representing a western-influenced viewpoint, Giragosian says the US has learnt a clear lesson from organizing the flower and color (“Rose” in Georgia; and “Orange” in Ukraine) revolutions in some CIS republics and concludes that imposed democracies do not work in countries where there are no truly democratic oppositions.

With too many other hot spots of unrest or tension – from North Korea to Darfur – the west, says the veteran analyst, welcomes stability.

“The process of importing American democracy has exhausted itself. Today both the US and Russia want to maintain stability in Armenia and the CIS. That context would suggest the US should endorse Serge Sargsyan’s candidacy for Kocharyan’s succession, because Sargsyan will be able to continue the current political and economic path,” Giragosian says.

The point is - small nations like us should always remember, that for big nations liek US, Russia there are no such things as values, human rights or democratic principles outside of their immediate state borders. The one and only thing moving the world powers is profit: economic, political, military gains, etc. I have said previously in my blog posts, that the Armenian people can only count on themselves if they really want democracy, because nobody else is going to come round helping us - as it is not in any global power's interests. We are too small to represent a market, we have no nuclear arms to pose dangers to their security, etc, etc...
The conclusion by the analysts kills me - it is so very true, but so utterly disgusting!

For the time being perhaps Armenia needs someone like Putin – with some dictatorial way of rule and the ability to eradicate corruption and the constantly increasing criminalization in the country.

The Armenian media landscape in the pretext of Parliamentary Elections; What is The Armenian Blogosphere? New Media vs. Old Media...

As the authoritarian control of traditional media intensifies in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections, the blogs have an opportunity of filling in the vacuum of providing an “alternative viewpoint” and thus appealing to larger masses of readership. The situation, like always, is not that simple however. Although considerable progress was observed in the Armenian blogosphere during the past year, the blogs remain a niche type of media and with just a couple of exceptions, play no role whatsoever in formulating news agenda and participating in the democratic discourse in the country.

In the meanwhile, the incumbent authorities in Armenia are persistently pressurizing the traditional media, using a combination of hidden economic incentives and tax/legal pressures. The latest point can be illustrated by looking at the ownership and financing patterns of most media outlets in Armenia (some examples: Kentron TV owned by Gaguik Tsarukyan, AR TV by Hrant Vardanyan, H2 TV by Samvel Mayrapetyan), while contrasting that with recent cases against Arman Babajanyan editor of very oppositional newspaper and the newly imposed annual fee for servicing the broadcast frequency brought against Radio Companies, who enjoy a relative degree of economic freedom).

On January 23, at the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of January 22-26 in Strasbourg, the Resolution 1532 (2007) on Armenia's honoring of obligations and commitments to CE was adopted, in which PACE stated (“The Assembly expects Armenia to demonstrate its capacity to hold the parliamentary elections in 2007 and the presidential elections in 2008 in accordance with international standards, not least with regard to pluralist, impartial media coverage of the election campaign,”) the importance of holding free and fair parliamentary elections in 2007, presidential elections in 2008, and stressed the importance of ensuring pluralist, impartial media coverage of the election campaign. Further on clause 6.2 of the Resolution notes that “a few months away from forthcoming parliamentary elections, the Assembly attaches special importance to pluralism of the electronic media”, since “equitable access by all political parties” to them is “an absolute prerequisite for the holding of free and fair elections”. On the same note Anthony Godfrey, U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Armenia who "warned today[on January 23rd] in Yerevan that his government would revise the decision to allocate a hefty $236 million in extra aid to Armenia if its authorities fail to hold free and just parliamentary elections, slated for May".

A number of widely recognized organizations have recently posted reports on the state of freedom and democracy in Armenia, in which the country repeatedly ranks among partly free, oppressive towards journalists, etc. (See reports by: Freedom House; Reporters without Borders; Global Integrity).The following conclusion of the Freedom House is especially worth mentioning: “Systematic efforts to control media in countries of the former Soviet Union have intensified in 2006 indicating further erosion of civil liberties.”

In the light of all of the above, it is especially important to observe the development of a new type of media: Blogging in Armenia. The number of well established and regularly updated blogs is more then 30 at this point (see the Armenian blogs list on the right side of this web page for some links), which means that there are more blogs, then there are websites for all other media outlets in the Armenian internet, counting newspapers, news agencies, radios, TV company websites taken together. Unlike the traditional media, blogging operates on the principles of independence, voluntary contribution, and anonymity if necessary, which renders a degree of protection to the authors. It is a form of publishing which is harder to control, and hence at this moment there are no widely recognized blogs in Armenia obviously controlled either by the government or by any other political force.

It is important to note, that according to the report made on December 19, 2006 by International Telecommunication Union the total number of internet users in Armenia makes up 150,000 people and the number is growing (Armenpress, Decembe 19 newsroll). Although a very small percentage of these 150,000 uses internet as their prime source of information (I couldn’t find any statistics, but my most optimistic estimate doesn’t exceed 5%), the online media as a whole have a huge potential readership, which is several times bigger then the circulation of the biggest printed Armenian newspaper (most print newspapers have an average "tirage" of 1000-2500 (don't confuse "tirage" - number of published units with circulation, as circulation in the case of Armenian newspapers is actually much lower then their "number of published copies"), while the biggest newspapers like: Aravot, Haykakan Zhamanak printa little more then 5000 copies daily).

One of the important characteristics of the online media is also its “on-demand” nature, which means, that when there are important events happening the use of online media increases dramatically. To make justice to the traditional media we have to note, that the last feature is obvious for them as well, but for the bloggers the growth is incremental. The example of Armenian writer, journalist Hrant Dink’s murder should be considered here. On the day of Dink’s murder and the days immediately following it the usage of blogs and online newspapers in Armenia doubled and tripled in many cases. This means, that when people are really looking for information they turn to the internet. It was also important to note, that people who had something to say about the tragedy preferred to go to the blogs, as they had the possibility of instantly commenting on the issue, whereas the traditional newspapers do not provide them with such possibilities. They do provide the possibility of writing “letters to editor” type of interaction, but it is clearly not as popular as the commenting feature of blogs and forums.

The following figures are a comparison of blogs vs. traditional media websites in the Armenian internet. The most popular English Language Armenian blog: Oneworld Multimedia for example gets 500 page-views per day at times; while most other English language blogs don’t get more then 50-80 page views per day. This does not include the pages/articles viewed using RSS/Atom XML feeds, which seriously decreases the actual number of page views of the blogs. The situation is rather different in the Russian language Armenian blogs, because they are based on LiveJournal, which enables the users to view other people's blogs inline at their own blog, using the Friends feature, so tracking actual page views is even more problematic.

Although the following comparison is not really compatible, because the concepts of pageviews and visitors are vastly different, the following figures could be looked at: Armenian Rating System Circle.am the most popular Armenian online media: A1plus gets 1700 visits per day on average; ArmeniaNow gets 600 visits on averageand Panorama.am barely passes the 400 ma on average.

Having said all of the above, I seem to have more questions, then answers. So here are some questions for discussion (although my page doesn't really have visitors, so expecting a discussion would be silly, wouldn't it?):

1. What do the bloggers see as their function in the Armenian media landscape? (Perhaps they see no function at all?)

2. What are the potentials for blogging to become an alternative channel for communication and public dialogue? (At this point looks like there are none!)

3. What are obstacles for the development of blogging? (expensive and low quality internet? No money via the Google Adwords?)

4. Why am I asking all this stupid questions? J (‘cause I’m looking for solutions, you see!)