"...Ohhhh, you don't have facebook?!!"

What really happened? It was only yesterday that Hi5 and Friendster were the latest trend on the internet used by Lebanese and worldwide internet users. (MySpace didn't get famous among the Lebanese internet users, for unknown reasons.)
Moreover, it was only yesterday that chatting was the most important feature on the internet, and it is still highly used by teenagers, specially MSN and Yahoo!Messenger. But hey! there's a new guy/girl in town... Facebook!

Now, what is this Facebook? Before I answer this question, some introduction. The latest trend on the internet has become the Social aspect called Social Networking. Hi5, MySpace and Facebook belong to this Social category. They are tools that help people socialize and meet people online. Just register, then write about yourself, add your hobbies, upload a picture, and voila! you have your own page/profile, that anyone using the social website (Hi5, MySpace, Facebook) can see.

Inspite of the negative sides that Facebook has, it is still getting more popular by the day. I even know people who have become attached to it so much, that they keep the webpage of Facebook open all the time!
You can read about Facebook online, and come across people/websites claiming that Facebook is accessed by FBI and that you are spotted and followed online. In fact, Facebook does make your real life completely visible online, and it has become really, really, very easy to use.
Some even use it to lurk and follow people whom they barely know in their real lives. This actually happened with me. A person I know a little had a Facebook. When I got my Facebook, I saw the person's profile and got to know more on-line than on real life.

But why Facebook? What does it have that the rest (Hi5, Friendster, MySpace...) do not have? Well, the best thing about it is that it's clean, simple, easy to use, and best of all it has applications that you can use without leaving Facebook. Now, this is something that the rest of its competitors lack. Facebook has many applications that you can add on your profile and they are growing by the day.

What about the Christians? How can it be used by Christians. Based on my own experience, the internet is still not taken seriously by the Lebanese. It is regarded as a game, a place to pass time, have fun, socialize and chat. It is not regarded as a tool to evangelize, to spread the good news, to work on a group project, or talk about and discuss serious issues. The ones who make use of the internet and benefit from it are very few in Lebanon. Most are online for fun.

Hi5, Friendster, and MySpace were once the trend on the internet. Today they are overtaken by Facebook. Would Facebook's fate be the same? Would it be overtaken by a newcomer?
My guess is that for the coming years, overtaking Facebook will not be an easy task.
Raffi

(Anyone who is interested in Facebook, will benefit from this after reading)

Interview with M. Ibitian about Addictions

Finally! The awaited broadcast is here.

Chanaghpouyr has launched its first program (Bottom of the Sea). You can now hear us by simply clicking the "play" button, just like you use youtube for videos, but this is for audio. You will find the player at the bottom of this post.

Note: If your connection is a dial-up or is slow, click the "pause" button, until the audio loads part of it, and then click "play".

Program Name: Ծովուն Յատակը (Bottom of the Sea)

Subject: Addiction

Interview With: M. Ibitian

The interview is conducted in Armenian.

During the interview, the following questions were answered:

  • What is addiction?
  • What are the kinds of addictions?
  • What is the difference between habit and addiction?
  • How can an addict person come out of his/her addiction problem?
  • How does the Bible guide us?
  • Does the Church and the believers accept addicts, even after an addict is cured?

*The audio is edited by M. Chilingirian.

"...No wonder the bloggers are winning."

Gutless Papers Explain why more
People are Googling than Reading
By Robert Fisk

The Independent

I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops. But here's a tale of two gutless newspapers which explains why more and more people are Googling rather than turning pages.
First the Los Angeles Times. Last year, reporter Mark Arax was assigned a routine story on the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. Arax's report focused on divisions within the local Jewish community over whether to call the genocide a genocide.
It's an old argument. The Turks insist - against all the facts and documents and eyewitness accounts, and against history - that the Armenians were victims of a civil war. The Israeli government and its new, Nobel prize-winning president, Shimon Peres - anxious to keep cosy relations with modern Turkey - have preferred to adopt Istanbul's mendacious version of events. However, many Jews, both inside and outside Israel, have bravely insisted that they do constitute a genocide, indeed the very precursor to the later Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews.
But Arax's genocide report was killed on the orders of managing editor Douglas Frantz because the reporter had a "position on the issue" and "a conflict of interest".
Readers will already have guessed that Arax is an Armenian-American. His sin, it seems, was that way back in 2005, he and five other writers wrote a formal memo to LA Times editors reminding them that the paper's style rules meant that the Armenian genocide was to be called just that - not "alleged genocide". Frantz, however, described the old memo as a "petition" and apparently accused Arax of landing the assignment by dealing with a Washington editor who was also an Armenian.
The story was reassigned to Washington reporter Rich Simon, who concentrated on Turkey's attempt to block Congress from recognising the Armenian slaughter -- and whose story ran under the headline "Genocide Resolution Still Far From Certain".
LA Times executives then went all coy, declining interviews, although Frantz admitted in a blog (of course) that he had "put a hold" on Arax's story because of concerns that the reporter "had expressed personal views about the topic in a public (sic) manner...". Ho ho.
Truth can be dangerous for the LA Times. Even more so, it seems, when the managing editor himself - Frantz, no less - once worked for The New York Times, where he referred to the Armenian massacres as, yes, an "alleged" genocide. Frantz, it turns out, joined the LA Times as its Istanbul correspondent.
Well, Arax has since left the LA Times after a settlement which forestalled a lawsuit against the paper for defamation and discrimination. His employers heaped praise upon his work while Frantz has just left the paper to become Middle East correspondent of the Wall Street Journal based in - of course, you guessed it - Istanbul.
But now let's go north of the border, to the Toronto Globe and Mail, which assigned columnist Jan Wong to investigate a college murder in Montreal last September. Wong is not a greatly loved reporter. A third-generation Canadian, she moved to China during Mao's "cultural revolution" and, in her own words, "snitched on class enemies and did my best to be a good little Maoist."
She later wrote a "Lunch With" series for the Globe in which she acted all sympathetic to interviewee guests to catch them out. "When they relax, that's when their guard is down," she told a college newspaper. "It's a trick, but it's legit." Yuk!
Wong's take on the Montreal Dawson College shooting, however, was more serious. She compared the killer to a half-Algerian Muslim who murdered 14 women in another Montreal college shooting in 1989 and to a Russian immigrant who killed four university colleagues in Montreal in 1992. "In all three cases," she wrote, "the perpetrator was not 'pure laine', the argot for a 'pure' francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial purity is repugnant. Not in Quebec."
Painfully true, I'm afraid. Parisians, who speak real French, would never use such an expression - pure laine translates literally as "pure wool" but means "authentic" - but some Montrealers do. Wong, however, had touched a red hot electric wire in "multicultural" Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper complained. "Grossly irresponsible, " said the man who enthusiastically continued the policy of sending Canadian troops on their suicidal mission to Afghanistan.
The French-Canadian newspaper Le Devoir - can you imagine a British paper selling a single copy if it called itself "Duty"? - published a cartoon of Wong with exaggerated Chinese slanted eyes. Definitely not pure laine for Le Devoir. The hate mail was even more to the point. Some contained excrement.
But then the Globe and Mail ran for cover. Its editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, wrote a cowardly column in which he claimed that the offending paragraphs "should have been removed" from her story. "We regret that we allowed these words to get into a reported (sic) article," he sniffled. There had been a breakdown in what he hilariously called "the editorial quality control process".
Now I happen to know a bit about the Globe's "quality control process". Some time ago, I discovered that the paper had reprinted an article of mine from The Independent about the Armenian genocide. But they had tampered with it, altering my word "genocide" to read "tragedy".
The Independent' s subscribers promise to make no changes to our reports. But when our syndication folk contacted the Globe, they discovered that the Canadian paper had simply stolen the article. They were made to pay a penalty fee. But as for the censorship of the word "genocide", a female executive explained to The Independent that nothing could be done because the editor responsible had "since left the Globe and Mail".
It's the same old story, isn't it? Censor then whinge, then cut and run. No wonder the bloggers are winning.

Badanegan Doun and Camp Armen (Պատանեկան Տուն) 3

Rakel [the future wife of Hrant Dink], I have brought her with a group of 20 from Silopi. Her father has arrived to take the boys to their place during their summer vacation. Rakel tells me:
- "Sir, can you give me a song book and a Bible, I will bring them back with me when I return."
- "What are you going to do with the song book and the Bible", I ask.
- "Sir, I will teach them to the kids in my country, I will lead worship there", she replies.
In one year, she has learnt to write, read and speak, as well as, many spiritual songs and Bible truths, and she wants to teach the things she learnt with those kids in her place, instead of playing house games with her friends.

Currently, from those (France) who visit Bolis, I know that she is conducting and leading meetings, where 30 people gather, and she also translates in the Gedik Pasha Evangelical Church. Rev. Jean Hagopian has told me with glee about these.

Badanegan Doun and Camp Armen, Hrant Guzelian

*Translation by R. Chil.

Kchag Cafe is Back :)

Depending solely on God, the kchag committee announced that the kchag cafe(s) will take place every Sunday at 6:00 pm, starting from July 15 till September 30.

Everyone: youngsters, elders, families, singles, chanitz, badaniatz, ladies and friends are invited to go up to kchag, where you will have a time of relaxation, fellowship, at the same time enjoying the cool weather and breeze during the night.

There will be food served and music played. There will also be special program that will be announced as planned.

Oh, and ping-pong fans, don't forget to come prepared :)

Preaching the power of forgiveness many times over

Affected by genocide, a priest and a minister deliver message of hope.

By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2007

One is an Armenian American priest who resides in Pasadena, the other a Rwandan minister who lives half a world away in Kigali. Across culture and distance, however, Father Vazken Movsesian and Benjamin Kayumba share a powerful if tragic bond: their peoples' traumatic legacy of genocide.

Movsesian lost dozens of relatives, including a grandfather, during the early 20th century massacre of about 1.2 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which became the modern republic of Turkey.

For Kayumba, the scars are more recent. He lost 152 relatives, including both parents, during the 1994 slaughter of more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu extremist militias.

The men also share a conviction: that only forgiveness can ultimately heal themselves and their communities.

Read the Full Story