Two U.S. Assistant Secretaries of State were asked about America’s reaction (I mean non-reaction) in regards to the destruction of the world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery in March of 2006. One said he has not heard about the particular vandalism, yet it is America’s universal policy to follow up on that, the other said he has heard about the vandalism but it is not in America’s policy to follow up on that.

One of them, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Daniel Fried, according to Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s March 27, 2006, report (accessible through subscription databases), was asked on March 27, 2006, “How with the U.S. deal with Azerbaijan regarding, or how will it take to task, regarding the issue of the Armenian historical landmarks of the Cemetery of Djulfa that was destroyed by the Azerbaijanis?”

According to the script, Daniel Fried answered, “When I go to Baku and when U.S. officials go to Baku, we always raise issue of living – Not just issues of Nagorno-Karabakh, but issues of long-term peace in the south provinces. Now I would be happy to raise issue of Armenian historical sites in Azerbaijan. These historical sites, regardless of differences of Nagorno-Karabakh, need to be respected and need to be protected. This is a universal policy of the United States, and I look forward to hearing from you about some of these sites so that we can raise it with the Azerbaijani government.”

Just twenty days before Asst. Secretary Fried’s comments, according to the website of the U.S. Embassy in Armenia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza visited Armenia’s capital Yerevan and was asked the following, “My question refers to the fact that cross stones in Old Jugha were destroyed. Are any steps being taken by the United States Government to stop this destruction of cultural heritage?”

According to the U.S. Embassy website, Bryza answered, “That is tragedy. It is a horrible thing that has happened in Jugha. It’s not really up to the United States to take steps to stop it. I mean, this is happening in a foreign country. But of course we are in repeated contact with the Government of Azerbaijan at the very highest level. There is no question in my mind, since I have been doing a lot of the contact, that the senior leaders in Azerbaijan know how serious we take this matter. And all I can say is I hope those who did it will be held responsible, but most importantly, let’s make sure this never happens again, anywhere, in the Caucasus, where there are so many vital cultural heritage sites and spiritually important sites that are threatened in all three countries, frankly, in the Caucasus.”

This is what the humanity gets from American foreign policy.

While many in the Armenian Diaspora are burning their behinds off to prevent the Genocide in Sudan (one of the ways of doing so is to pass legislation to abolish trade with Sudan), Armenia is discussing trade and economic cooperation with the Sudanese Talaat, aka Omar Hasan Al-Bashir.

Accordking to ARKA News agency, "President of Sudan Omar Hasan Al-Bashir and Armenian Ambassador to Egypt Ruben Karapetyan discussed the issues of trade and economic cooperation, particularly in the spheres of agriculture, high technologies, science, education and culture, the RA Foregin Ministry press service reported."

The visiting Armenian Ambassador also visited the Armenian Church in Sudan; I wonder how the community, that was created as a result of the Armenian Genocide, reacted to his visit.

While Armenian's cooperation with Holocaust denier Iran is totally understandable and justifiable for many-many reasons, there is no single reason that I can see as an argument to cooperate with a government that carries out a genocide. Especially, given the fact that many say the Sudanese genocide reminds of the Armenian one in terms of its technics.

Speak of Famous Armenians. The Bangkok Post reports, "an Armenian-American born in Lebanon takes the helm of the International Women's Club (IWC) of Thailand for 2007." Eugenie Shamlian-Aroyan is "fluent in English, Arabic, Armenian, French, Turkish and Thai."

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a reader in Iran saying the YouTube.com link of "The New Tears of Araxes" was not working. I immediately realized that the idiotic Ahmadinejad had banned YouTube.com in Iran; ABC News confirms my speculation with a report from last week.

So my task was to screw Ahmadinejad. Having posted the film at Google Video, I forwarded the information to the reader in Iran. He replied back saying the link did work!

So all of you out there who got worried about Ahmadinejad banning your videos at YouTube.com: post them at Video Google and share with your pals in Iran. If that one gets banned too, there are so many other ways to screw his idiotness, aka Ahmadinejad. Just continue reading Blogian.

By the way, did you know that Iran's post office will not deliver media items (DVDs, CDs, VHSs) out of Iran?

In short, internet users in Iran should check this link for "The New Tears of Araxes."

Dear Blogian readers,

I am so sorry that the server was down yesterday. Hayastan.com was doing some updates, and I am sorry that many of you saw "offline" messages while checking the website over and over again.

I had some great news to share yesterday; I will do so today.

Time Magazine has named me the person of the year. I do share the honor with six billion more people and every Blogian reader, but I am still glad they honored me. But I still like the honor by USA TODAY more. Although the latter said I was the vice-president of the honor society, when I was the president, it published my photo.

Now about serious stuff. Sylvester Stallone announced to The Denver Post yesterday that he would retire as an actor and make his dream come true: direct Frantz Werfel's "The Forty Days of Musa Dag" – the epic about the Armenian self-defense during the Genocide. My comment is still available on The Denver Post website. The funny part is that another reader thanks me in his comment for a CD I made a few years ago.

Hope you are watching "The New Tears of Araxes" and sharing the info with others. A DVD version with much better quality and professional finish is available for free upon request. Just shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] and explain me why you would need one.

USA TODAY is considering a review of the film, but I don't think they will write on this.

"Who would have thought that the governments of
Britain, Israel and Iran had so much in common?" asks
Robert Fisk in his new, December 16, 2006, column
published by the Independent (UK):

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2079304.ece

December 15, 2006, is the first anniversary of Jugha’s destruction. After posting dozens of articles on the vandalism, I have now produced a film about it. Remember, remember the fifteenth of December…

via http://www.huliq.com/1816/the-new-tears-of…d-at-youtub-com

Featuring a never-seen-before satellite image of a vandalized medieval cemetery at the Iranian-Azerbaijani border, “The New Tears of Araxes,” a five-minute film, tells the tragic story of thousands of ancient Armenian headstones flattened to the ground by the Azerbaijani authorities in Djulfa (Jugha), Nakhichevan.

On December 15, 2005, eyewitnesses across the River Araxes videotaped Azeri soldiers destroying Armenian burial monuments – khachkars (cross stones) – some as old as 1,500 years. Azerbaijani officials denied the vandalism, but banned European Parliament members from visiting the site in March of 2006. Only a few outside news sources tried to publicize the tragedy.

“The New Tears of Araxes” is written by Sarah Pickman, a University of Chicago student, who was the only American reporter to cover the tragedy when she interned for Archaeology Magazine. Producer and narrator Simon Maghakyan, who is among America’s top 20 college students according to USA TODAY (April 24, 2006), hopes the film will break a year of ignorance and silence. When asked why others should care, Maghakyan quotes Martin Luther King Jr. as saying, “Injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere.”

“The New Tears of Araxes” is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZu2zqFE_gI for free viewing.

Music by Djivan Gasparian (Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ, Munich, Syriana); Digital sound track production by Transtar Entertainment Group; Photographs by Research on Armenian Architecture, and Argam Ayvazian; Footage of 2005 destruction by Tabriz’s Armenian Church, Iran; Satellite image by Digital Globe; Map by The Times, London. © Simon Maghakyan 2006.

If you are wondering what are the developments of the newly-discovered possible Armenian genocide mass grave in Turkey's Mardin region after it was burried in soil by the Turkish military, here you go.

Dear All,

An update about the mass grave-related developments. According to today's Toplumsal Demokrasi (a replacement for Ulkede Ozgur Gundem which is closed down for 15 days under a court ruling after Chief of General Staff fingered it out as the publication of the outlawed PKK) Yusuf Halacoglu, Head of the Turkish Historical Society, issued a written statement yesterday in response to Ulkede Ozgur Gundem's "allegations" in connection with the mass grave found in Mardin. "The mass grave belongs to the Roman and early Byzantian period," says the statement. "However if this assertion is found unsatisfactory we are ready to start an investigation to reveal the truth in cooperation with an international research degelation. It is unfortunate that the issue is presented as a discovery of a mass grave belonging to Armenians. In order to show how unfounded and inconsistent are the allegations that Armenians were subjected to a genocide and how everything is exaggerated and turned into a scheme of propaganda we are ready to investigate the case with experts from any country including Sweden or even Armenia. If it is found that the allegations (about this grave) is unfounded then the publications publishing the news item, and the scientist and the parlamentarians will have to apologise." It is not clear who is the "scientist" and who are the "parliamentarians" he is referring to but we can guess that the "scientist" might be David Gaunt quoted by Gundem and the "parliamentarians" the Swedish.

Best regards,

Ayse

By the way, my own extensive family's possible mass grave was discovered in front of Urfa's Armenian Church and also announced a "Roman site" by notorious Turkish historians in the early 1990s.

A photo of Ourfa's Armenian church by Dick Osseman, taken by my request, in fall of 2005

After one year of our report that Dr. Kevorkian is dying, AP informs that he will be paroled in June, 2007. The question is whether he will survive until then.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061213/ap_on_…evorkian_parole

Kevorkian to be paroled in June By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer
25 minutes ago

LANSING, Mich. – After more than eight years in prison, a frail Dr. Jack Kevorkian will be paroled in June with a promise that he won't assist in any more suicides, a prison spokesman said Wednesday.

Leo Lalonde, the corrections spokesman, would not provide further details.

Kevorkian, once the nation's most vocal advocate of assisted suicide for the terminally ill, is serving a 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder in the 1998 poisoning of Thomas Youk, 52, Oakland County man with Lou Gehrig's disease. Michigan banned assisted suicide in 1998.

Youk's death was videotaped and shown on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Kevorkian, who claimed to have assisted in at least 130 deaths in the 1990s, called it a mercy killing.

Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney, said this summer that Kevorkian, now 78, was suffering from hepatitis C and diabetes, that his weight had dropped to 113 pounds and that he had less than a year to live.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm ordered corrections authorities to carry out an independent medical evaluation of Kevorkian, but did not commute the retired pathologist's sentence, as Morganroth had hoped.

Kevorkian has always been eligible for parole on June 1, 2007, and will now be released on that date, Lalonde said. He directed calls seeking further comment to Russ Marlan, another state corrections spokesman who did not immediately return calls Wednesday.

If Kevorkian is released on June 1, he will have spent close to 3,000 days in prison since being sentenced in April 1999.

He has promised he would not assist in a suicide if he was released from prison.

If you have ever gotten scared from fiction, consider this real and unthinkable news from the Denver Post, reported 13 minutes ago. I can say now, I am for death penalty.

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_4826419

Mom pleads not guilty in microwave baby case
By James Hannah
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated:12/12/2006 02:49:28 PM MST

Dayton, Ohio – A woman suspected of killing her month-old daughter in a microwave oven pleaded not guilty to murder Tuesday.

China Arnold, 26, remained in the Montgomery County Jail for the video arraignment. Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge John Kessler kept her bond at $1 million.

Prosecutors, who plan to seek the death penalty if Arnold is convicted, had asked Kessler to hold her without bond, saying she has a criminal record and is a flight risk. Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion argued that the bond should be reduced, saying Arnold is a loving mother who has cooperated with police.

Arnold stood with her hands behind her back, slowly shaking her head during the arraignment. She winced when Kessler announced her bond.

The baby, Paris Talley, died Aug. 30, 2005. Arnold has three other children, boys ages 9, 7 and 4.

The coroner concluded that the injuries could have only been caused by the baby being cooked in a microwave oven, according to Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck Jr. Investigators have said evidence that includes high-heat internal injuries and the absence of external burn marks on the baby.