I think that it is very HEALTHY to be part of the “half-minded” independents, as you put it. Better than the no-minded zombies who can just blindly support one or another character simply because they are the alpha-gorilla of the pack.

Sadly, previous authorities have given most of the nation plenty of reason to be disenchanted. It should come as no surprise that most thinking (half-minded or otherwise) poeple want to have nothing to do with Levon or Kocharian or others who have plundered the state rather than led it when they had a chance.

I think your expressed opinions do not belong to any of those “minorities”.

The fact is that 2 “minorities” are the 2 majorities that some kind of “independent minded” people do not like.

One majority is pro-authority and the second majority is opposition, led by LTP or NOT led by LTP.

I also want to mention that putting the sign of equality or fairness between authorities and opposition in the negotiation process is not fair, and even shows those “independent” minded bloggers’ super “euro-indepndence”, but in reality half-mindedness.

I personally cannot tolerate this kind of half-minded “indepndents”, who claim in responce to relase of the political prisoners the opposition should recognize the CC’s resolution.

Another bright ides of this “indepndents” is that “NOBODY knows what happened, nobody can tell who is political prisoners who are criminals”.

Hey, “independents”, in reality you are not independents, you just hate LEVON, and at the same time you cannot publicly defend SERJ, that is why you play double game, and you cannot just overcome the barrier of your “half-minded” dependence.

At any rate, even by your own figures, there are 390 questions that were completely ignored. I’m not the one who promised to answer every question, you and/or Sargsyan did that (see Onnik’s blog 3/10 article for the promises made). So let us all know when ALL the questions are answered—I’m sure we’d also appreciate seeing a short video of Mr. Sargsyan typing the answers himself, it would be fascinating to see the touch typing skills he must have to type such long paragraphs (although the Enter key would be helpful now and then). And after all, it is his own personal blog, which by definition means that everything on it is his own personal expression, right?

I have, however, enjoyed finding out more about the President’s friends and hobbies. http://serzhsargsyan.livejournal.com/friends Without the blog, I’d never have known he was a dedicated scrapbooker, into “girly glittercupcakes”, bento boxes, and Polaroids! And his only two friends, Billy the Goat (who advised Mr. Sargsyan to “nominate himself” for Livejournal board!) and Toto the toupee-wearing Chihuahua dog, are truly adorable!

Remember, you asked!

Thank you, Grigor.

I wasn’t trying to be so persuasive, just that there are good people everywhere, even in prisons or in the judge’s chambers. I think that demonizing one group or another doesn’t get us far, and barring some kind of a revolution or wholesale eviction (neither of which I think are happening), I think it behooves us to seek out such people to work together in an atmosphere of listening as opposed to one of provocation, hate, or disdain.

AH, Observer and Onnik, I am glad that you are tired of hearing about LTP, but some people are also tired of hearing any kind of criticism of LTP as well.

Gonna break my self-imposed silence as well as my personal ban on me commenting on discussions which I have no time for anymore.

If his factor is so small and he is disliked by many then why are you still talking about him.

Basically, I’m not. :-)

Ani, I don’t know about others, but I haven’t been bored at all by this little conflict you are having with Mr. Uzogh. Actually, I am somewhat surprised that no one has said anything, but hey they have been living in that twisted society for such a long time that the responses you were getting from Uzogh perhaps didn’t look strange at all to them. But anyway, I hope it is not just me who found Uzogh’s responses strange, to say the least.

First of all Ani, Uzogh is completely right, they did answer all the questions they were asked. Having said this, however, it must be noted that they put the answers out there in a completely useless and confusing way. It is hard to understand why the answers are actually answering the questions. To put it mildly, even though they answered all the questions, I think it is a pretty useless site. Moreover, the whole thing was not a very good idea either. It must be said that the questions weren’t good at all (majority of them), and the timing of the thing wasn’t good at all which partially explains why many questions were bad. I mean, common, people were angry! This is probably a much better time to organize something like that. I bet the questions would be much better now.

But the main point that I wanted to say is the following. This little exchange of words between Ani and Uzogh seems to illustrate how things are in that country. Common Uzogh, you are the guy behind Serj’s blog, how about showing some decency? Did you have to actually come back and make that comment about math? Eh, what do you even know about math to begging with? Besides, again you are the guy behind Serj’s blog, he is the president of Armenia (for your information) and you are or were behind that blog presenting his face to the outside world. Couldn’t you say something along the lines of “Dear Ani, thanks for being so concerned, and I have to apologize for not being able to satisfy you enthusiasm. Please understand that the number of the questions exceeded our expectations and we didn’t have the necessary time and resources to keep up with them”. I mean anything along these lines would have been better than “math skils” or “spreading lies”. I mean, common, spreading lies? She is just a concerned citizen, it is not like she has hijacked the internet and has been spreading lies all over the place. Or why are you so afraid of her activities, remember you are the guy behind Serj’s blog, the guy who got 52% or 53% or whatever. Hell, even not answering to her questions would have been better than accusing her in spreading lies.

Even at this level, where participants are supposedly civilized and intelligent people, disrespecting each other and slapping the opponent seems to be the common practice, even by those who actually represent the government. No wonder we had March 1st, and no wounder that we will have more of it if it goes on like this. Eh, I wish there was god who could actually come and save the people of that little country, but unfortunately we don’t live in fairy tale.

AH, Observer and Onnik, I am glad that you are tired of hearing about LTP, but some people are also tired of hearing any kind of criticism of LTP as well. If his factor is so small and he is disliked by many then why are you still talking about him. If indeed most are tired of him then one can only assume that there is a big part of the society who dislikes LTP and, nevertheless, finds something in him that they cannot get elsewhere. What exactly is that?

Also, this talk of good and bad people is such a subjective topic. I have to admit that I usually agree with AHs views, but after that Uzogh-Ani conflict, AH needs to get a bit more practical in explaining what exactly he means by good people. Yes, abstractly there are lots of good people, if by good we mean people who like to eat ice cream and watch tv before going to bad. But if you mean people who have the decency of giving respectable answers to innocent questions (ok in somewhat criticizing tone) asked by people with no apparent affiliation to any political force, then AH needs to work much harder in order to convince me, at least, that there are MANY such people in Armenia. I am willing to agree that there are some, just because there are always some.

Observer, I will not bore you and the rest with this anymore, unless Uzogh continues to call me a liar for asking him inconvenient questions.

Second, I do not think that the improvements we have today are due to ltp’s reawakening, This is like saying that the improvements in Germany in the 50s were due to Hitler.

I think there are lots of roads to improvement. It is all about choice, conviction, and values.

And as far as “killing their own”, sadly this rule has been broken during Soviet times, during LTP’s times, and once again earlier this year, where both policemen and civilians were killed because certain forces upped the ante until there was predictable clashes.

that is, let this fool bush drive forward for whatever reasons he may have (which very well might be peace on earth, btw) and stand behind him as he fights the battles that in no conceivable version of the near future would real patriots and leaders have a chance to fight (no less win!).

not a perfect situation, but a situation with a chance of succeeding versus the absurdity of letting it all play out with the current state of affairs. plus, as it turned out, it worked somewhat. if ltp didn’t do all this, the focus and impetus would NOT be here today.

no one in a million years thought an Armenian would break the rules and shoot on his own people. no one.