After finding out that a "researcher and intellectual" from Armenia, too, is participating in a Holocaust denial conference in Iran, I decided to find out who that person is.

A phone call to Armenia's "Aryan Union," the phone number of which I got through an Armenian directory, gave me a not-so-surprising answer: the notorious anti-semite and leader of Armenian Aryans Armen Avetisyan, who was jailed in Armenia for racist comments against Jews, is one of the 67 international participants in the conference that features many denials of the Holocaust, including a Klu Klux Klan leader and a former State Representative from America. The participation of several Jewish rabbis in the event is interesting. The latter acknowledged the Holocaust at the event, but said it should not have been used to establish the current nation of Israel.

One of the 67 international participants of Holocaust denial conference in Iran (file photo from ArmeniaNow.com)

Armen Avetisyan will make a speech in the conference on the "content related topic" (aka, Holocaust denial), informed me a worker of Yerevan's Aryan group. Armen seems to have established good relationships with the Iranian Embassy. Earlier this year, according to a very reliable source of ours, he was planning a Palestinian conference in Armenia that would feature HAMAS leaders with Iran's sponsorhip. The Armenian secret services "gave Avetisyan a lesson," and the idea was dropped. But now Avetisyan's telephone receptionist thinks the Aryan leader will not get into trouble for participating in the conference.

It is surprising but yet makes one feel better to learn that some Iranian students protested the denialist conference and even burned Ahmadenijad's photo while he was giving a talk on the Holocaust. Kudos to these courageous students.

Anyhow, one would wish that the international community reacted the same way to genocide denial conferences in Turkey and in Azerbaijan. And one would wish that Israeli officials did not put themselves on the same table with Iranian officials by denying the Armenian Genocide.

But you know, the Armenian community must speak up against this denialist conference. Because when we say the Holocaust took place because the Armenian Genocide was not punished, we need to mean it.

The first ever seen satellite image of the medieval Jugha cemetery before its 2005 final destruction shows how large the cemetery was, even given the fact that it had already been vandalized several times by the Azerbaijani authorities in Nakhichevan.

When I saw the image, I could not believe how huge the cemetery was…

The eyes of this writer just saw the satellite download, which costed me several hundred dollars to obtain, that shows the cemetery in its entirety from the bird's eye.

Can't wait to see it with your eyes? Need to wait before "The New Tears of Araxes" comes out in the next two weeks.

Written by Sarah Pickman and produced by this blogger, the film will tell the tragic story of the medieval Armenian cemetery's destruction in a five minute documentary. Again, it will be the first project to show the first satellite image of the cemetery before its final destruction. And again, it will be free and available to everyone.

The Republic of Azerbaijan's PR campaign of showing off itself as a tolerant state and a "heaven" for Jews is under attack by a New York Times article that tells the story of an Azerbaijani Jewish family who are shocked with the fact that people of Jewish faith wear the star of David without fear in America.

The New York Times' December 10, 2006, article writes, "They also heard that people were being killed in Baku. More and more Jewish people were leaving to go abroad."

Azerbaijan, where being Armenian is the worst eternal crime, has been praising itself of being a tolerate state for PR reasons, as the international community seeks to establish permanent peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In particular, Azerbaijan has been proclaiming itself a heaven for Jews, and some radical Azerbaijani fractions have even said Armenians committed genocide against Azerbaijani Jews in their PR war against Armenia and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The PR campaign of tolerance started in 2003, when Azerbaijan finally opened the first Jewish school and built the biggest Jewish synagogue in Europe.

To better understand the nationalist Azerbaijani definition of tolerance, refer to a Hetq article I wrote earlier this year.

I feel good when I realize I had underestimated a young Armenian girl. She, namely 17-year-old Silva from Armenia, has won BBC’s The Next Big Thing contest, reports BBC.

Unlike other Armenian bloggers, I had not followed up on the contest. I was totally sure she would lose. And now I am glad I was wrong!

When I first saw at www.yerevannights.com an announcement to vote for the Armenian singer at BBC’s website, I did so just because she was Armenian. OK I voted twice actually. But even with that she had low votes from BBC readers.

(photos from BBC)

I watched one of her music clips at Yerevannights.com afterwards and actually turned it off. It was horribleeeeeeee and she was very unattractive. And the clip seemed to be shot in America, although she lives in Armenia. So perhaps they had found an “American looking” place in Armenia to shot the clip at. That part was disgusting actually, because why the hell somebody would find a typical American neighborhood interesting and attractive.

Now I want us to pay attention to “unattractiveness” (subjective view) of Silva. I feel bad that it was part of my judgment, but even if she was the cutest girl in the world, I would still think she sucked.

Anyhow, I am surprised but glad that the judges of the contest disagreed with me. In “BBC’s Hunt for the world’s best young band,” they “praised [Silva’s] I Like, which was composed by the singer's brother, as ‘fresh and new’ and described her performance as ‘second to none.’” It is cool that her siblings (Mane and Edgar) wrote and produced the song.

This is the second Armenian victory in BBC’s Music Contests this year. Armenian Navy Band was also a winner couple of months ago. I guess the study that Armenians are the most advanced ethnic group in England is becoming more and more true. But again, once Armenians were really successful in Romania too.

p.s. I still don't like her songs, except for the winning one which you can listen to at the BBC website.

As most Armenian last names are recognizable for their yan (ian) ending, some – I should say many – Armenians have always changed their last in all around the world to avoid discrimination in other countries.

This is how Andre Agassian became Andre Agassi, Vaghinak Aznavourian became Charles Aznavour, Mark Giragosian became Mark Giragos, Yelena Pogosyan became Yelena Abramova. If all these mentioned could have arguably changed their last names for career purposes, the same cannot be said for 19-year-old Yelena, who, Transitions Online reports, changed her last to stop being singled out as Armenian in Russia.

According to the new report, "Yelena’s story is becoming typical as more Armenians, born both in Kuban and abroad, seek to change their names. Like Yelena, most say they are tired of being singled out as foreign."

The article says that not all Armenians change their last names in Russia, but many think it is the way out of growing xenophobia from the culturally diverse country.

For a person who lives in America, I don't have the right to blame these Armenians for changing their last names. I walked the Moscow streets humiliated and dehumanized, because any time a skinhead could stop and do whatever he wanted to me while the police would watch ignorantly. Maybe it was an overfeeling, but at least the climate had forced me to feel that way, although people say I don't look typical Armenian (which offends me).

But why would Armenians change their last names in America? Why would their change it all around the world? Is anti-Armenianism so omnipresent in this world?

I don't mind that Armenians have non-Armenian last names because of having a non-Armenian father with a non-Armenian name, but to change last name is losing one's identity.

I guess the big question I have in my mind is the following: where have all the Armenians gone? I am referring to those who emigrated from Armenia starting the 11th century and before the 1890s? Where are the powerful Armenians of Romania who once built entire cities in that country? Are there any descendants of those powerful Armenians of Romania? Do we know ONE person who says that he is a descendant of Armenian immigrants that left Armenia before 1800s. The Armenians of Iran? Of course. But they are a phenomenon who need to be studied. Seriously. They were forced out of Armenia in 1604 and most of them speak better Armenian than first generation Russian Armenians. Actually I have a Russian born Armenian friend who speaks perfect Armenian, but neither of her ancestors were born in Armenia after 1604. But her parents were born in Iran. So will her children be as Armenian as she is? Maybe because Iranians don't destroy the Armenian culture (and in fact restored an Armenian church there recently)? Maybe because we consider Iranians inferior and therefore kept our "better" identity? Why isn't the same happening to the Armenians of Syria? Why is the Armenian youth there becoming more and more Syrian?

These are not questions to attack anybody. But I would like to see viewpoints and thoughts on this, because I really can't understand what happened to Romania's Armenian community. Maybe I am fearful that today's Glendale will have no single person who speaks Armenian in 100 years (if there is no more emigration from Armenian). Maybe I am fearful that in fact my race will disappear some day from the face of the Earth?

So why is the Armenian last name so undesirable. Ask this question to my Italian-American friend Andy Turpin and he will have a surprising answer for you. Andy has added Sukiasyan to the end of his last name to honor the name of the host family that he lived with in Armenia for three months. Do you know what is Andy's dream? To live in Armenia. The guy has no single Armenian blood in him, but he is a "better" Armenian, according to my responsibility theory, than average Armenians.

And there are some Armenians who will never change their last names, no matter how ironic they are. I met a 25-year-old lawyer for the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. this fall, whose last name is Gavoor. Yes, gavoor means infidel in Turkish, and this was the name that his Armenian family was referred by. And they decided to adopt it. And I bet this gavoor guy will be a big guy in the world one day, and then he will tell what his last name means.

Turkish Armenians, who have been literally forced by their government to change their last names in the last decades in Turkey, are exempt from this critique. Be who you are, and show what gavoors can do in this world.

Turkey's military has covered a newly discovered mass burial in earth. The mass burial was discovered in October in Turkey's southern Mardin region by local Kurds who assumed they had uncovered a mass burial from the Armenian Genocide.

After the news was published by a Turkish newspaper, the mass grave was sealed by the Turkish military.

Now David Gaunt, a Swedish historian interviewed for the Hetq article (inspired by a Blogian report) and other publications, has sent an e-mail saying, "I have now information from a reliable source that the massgrave in the cave near Nusaybin has been covered in earth. About the state of the remains, one can only speculate."

The same old story.

The list of people on trial in Turkey (from converted Christians to Nobel Prize winners) is growing so fast that it would take an entire blog about Article 301 to tell what is really going on.

In short, Turkey has become totally totalitarian.

Posted on Mon, Dec. 04, 2006

University suspends Turkish professor
SUZAN FRASER
Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey – A university has suspended one of its professors for remarks he made about Turkey's revered founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an official said Monday.

The suspension of professor Atilla Yayla has brought into sharp focus the country's ambivalence toward freedom of speech even as it intensifies its campaign to join the European Union.

Ankara's Gazi University suspended Yayla last week after the political scientist criticized Ataturk at a conference in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, an official at the state-run university said on condition of anonymity because civil servants are barred from speaking to reporters without prior authorization.

News reports said the professor was suspended after he referred to the late soldier-statesman as "that man," criticized the statues and pictures of Ataturk adorning government offices, and said an era of one-party rule under Ataturk had led to "regression rather than progress."

Turkey's European Union membership bid looks increasingly troubled over what European officials say is a slowdown in reforms, including in free speech, and on Turkey's refusal to open up its ports and airports to EU member Cyprus. The European Commission recommended last week that the EU freeze negotiations on eight of 35 policy areas in Turkey's membership talks, which began in October 2005.

Earlier this year, novelist Orhan Pamuk was forced to stand trial, after a group of ultra-nationalist lawyers accused him of "insulting Turkishness" for telling a Swiss newspaper that 1 million Armenians were killed on Turkish territory. The trial was dropped on a technicality under heavy pressure from the European Union. Pamuk later won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ataturk founded secular and Westward-looking Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, after saving the country from invading Western powers.

Regulations require that his portraits hang in government offices and schools, but the affection of Turks is so great toward their founder that many also hang his picture in their homes, shops and offices.

At the same time, more and more Turks are questioning his legacy and the rigid way some of his followers – hard-liners inside the military, the bureaucracy and the judiciary – are interpreting his principles to oppose liberal reforms and change.

The university's chancellor on Monday defended his decision to temporarily suspend Yayla until an investigation is completed.

A professor "does not have to like Ataturk but I cannot allow a person who is opposed to the Republic's main principles to educate students," Yamac told Vatan newspaper in an interview published Monday.

Yayla's comments have divided Turkey. A group of protesters sent Yamac a parcel containing sticky tape over the weekend, so that he may "gag professors." Others petitioned the university saying Yayla should not be allowed to teach.

Source: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/16163105.htm.

While Armenia may as well be forestfree by 2024, it is already paperfree. A Russian news agency reports, "[t]he majority of Armenian newspapers will not be released next Wednesday because of the absence of paper."

And then try to explain me why in the world Armenia would export wood.

What happens when a mortabashd Vatican Pope is afraid to utter the phrase "Armenian Genocide" in Turkey, while a Turkish scholar publishes a book called "A Shameful Act" about the Armenian Genocide and Turks' responsibility?

The Pope, at least in the eyes of Philadelphia Inquirer, becomes less righteous than the scholar, Taner Akcam. According to this American newspaper, the latter "doesn't wear pretty white vestments, but he speaks the holy truth."

Amen.

Turkey visiting Vatican Pope Benedict XVI has mentioned the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul, the Catholic World News reports.

In reality, the Catholic World News is trying to confuse its readers – perhaps in shame that the Pope was not courageous enough to utter the phrase "Armenian Genocide" in Turkey. As the same Catholic World News mentions, "Pope Benedict XVI brought up the sensitive topic of the Armenian genocide– although he did not mention it explicitly— during a November 30 meeting with the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch of Istanbul, Mesrob II." The Toronto Star summarizes the event in one short title, "One word Pope dares not speak."

His Mortabashd Mesrob Mutafyan and His Mortabashd Benedict XVI in Istanbul's Armenian church on November 29, 2006 (REUTERS/Anatolian/Erhan Elaldi)

I did not expect the Benedict to acknowledge the Genocide in Turkey as such (since he might never return back to Vatican again), let alone in a meeting with the Mesrob Mortabashd. The latter is the spiritual head of Istanbul's Armenian community. Mortabashd was asked by a reported if he acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, reports Newsday of New York. The answer was, "Uhhhh."

Mesrob Mortabashd, who has lost family members in the Armenian Genocide, is fearful of death if he pronounces the word "genocide" in Turkey. He may as well have a point. But when did the idea of truth disappear from Orthodox Christianity? When did Armenian priests stop from being ready to martyr for the truth?

– This is when they adopt the title Mortabashd – which means worshiping one's own skin.