Internet speed in Armenia continues to grow at a mind-blowing pace. A direct indicator of this comes from the statistics provided by YouTube, according to which average download speed of videos from Armenia has reached about 3.2 mbps in March 2012.
Hovhannes Hakobian, a brilliant filmmaker judging from this YouTube video, is seeking funding (according to @khurshud) to make a series of documentaries on Armenia’s nature. Continue reading
Posted in Armenia, Environment
Tagged Armenia, Documentaries, Environment, Nature, Yerevan, youtube
@hpNYR, a young NY based activist is trying to single-handedly spark a social media-driven revolution in Armenia. The key word is ‘single-handedly’ here, because looking at the statistics he’s getting, you know the guy hasn’t got either much help, or support.
Continue reading
Posted in Armenia, Politics, Tech
Tagged Armenia, Egypt, Facebook, Social media, Social network, Twitter, youtube
U.S. - Screenshot from YouTube video allegedly showing U.S. Vice President Joe Biden talking to representatives of Armenian community, 26Oct2010
Armenian President’s Office effectively said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was lying, when saying that Serzh Sargsian had called him to ask not to push Armenian Genocide recognition while Armenia-Turkey talks were in progress. Continue reading
Posted in Armenia, Politics, Society, Tech
Tagged Armenia, Armenian American, Joe Biden, White House, youtube
A controversial video, entitled “The real face of the Army”, which showed an unidentified male humiliating two young boys dressed in military uniforms, was swiftly taken down from YouTube as soon as it became viral. Continue reading
Posted in Armenia
Tagged Armenia, Armenian, Armenian army, Azerbaijan, Caucasian, Facebook, National security, Soviet Union, youtube
E-channel has a detailed update on yesterday’s opposition rally – Reporter_Arm stayed till the end of the rally to give you the objective picture. Bored with all the rallies of the year, I left at around 19:30, when it became evident, that the maximum number of supporters will peak at around 5-6,000 – which is the smallest rally with the participation of Levon Ter-Petrossian that I’ve seen this year yet. It is, however, too early to speak of final breakdown of the opposition. On the contrary, it seems the opposition has finally decided to move away from rallies and revolutionism, and start actually engaging in politics.
Postponing the rally of September 5th not to hinder the Turkish president’s visit is one sign of this, participation in elections of Yerevan District Mayors is another. And accounts of yesterday’s rally also ring positive bells, albeit with silly distractions like the speech of Armenia’s cheif Marxist.
David Shahnazarian, for example, has said, “We have to understand, that it is not time for abrupt actions by the Movement at the moment”, noting, that the opposition movement should be careful not to become a tool in the hands of foreign powers.
Levon Zurabyan has set the future agenda of the Movement, saying the logic and rules of the game have now changed, and the opposition will avoid direct confrontations and engage in the sphere of ideology instead.
Speaking for around half an hour, Levon Ter-Petrossian has analyzed the geopolitical situation around armenia, and noted, that these are hard times for Armenia’s foreign politics. The Movement should take care not to harm the Country and the people, opposition leader has said.
No march in the streets of Yerevan has followed the rally. Although the opposition has explained it with the desire not to undertake illegal actions (as the march would have been unsanctioned), it is more likely, that the decision was taken because of small number of rally attenders, which would have made an embarrassing sight if stretched in a march.
In the evening of March 2, the Internet Society of Armenia (ISOC) has ILLEGALLY stopped the maintenance of several domains, including A1+ – www.a1plus.am, Haykakan Zhamanak – www.azatutyun.am, E-channel – www.echannel.am. In the database of ISOC- https://www.amnic.net/whois/ , they are registered as “on hold.”
With that step, A1+ has been deprived not only of his site but also if its mail service.
The domains have been “frozen” without the decision of the ISOC board – either by the instruction on behalf of the presidential office, or the National Security Service.
In the decree of president Kocharyan, there was nothing about freezing the domains, closing web sites and the media.
We would like to provide some help to those, who still want to access the above mentioned websites. Firstly, Echannel.am and Azatutyun.am have their backup DNS records. You can access Echannel.am also at E-channel.am (e-channel with a -) and Azatutyun.am at armenialiberty.am. At the moment we are negotiating with the ISOC board to urge them to stop this illegal blocking of our domain names. However, there is a possibility, that the backup domain names (E-channel.am and armenialiberty.am) will also be blocked. For that case, I will be posting a list of IP names for the servers, where these and other blocked information websites are located, and you can access them by clicking the links in the list below (I’ll update the list as soon as colleagues let me know the relevant IP addresses):
Let me remind everybody, that A1plus YouTube channel and Asplus blog are still functional. There is also an Armenian Newspaper Electronic Archive, where you can find Archived publications from some of the blocked newspaper websites.
As for bloggers – I would strongly recommend, that all of you access your email addresses and blog accounts using one of the anonymous web browsing suggestions, and change your email and blog account passwords. Make sure they’re strong, contain figures and letters.
