It is like the administration’s immoral stance on the Armenian Genocide resolution wasn’t echoed by much of America’s “independent” media that the U.S. State Department had to release this shameless piece of propaganda called an article.

Had the article appeared on the State Department website a week or so ago I would dare to see a conspiracy between the anti-Armenianaism in the American media and propaganda articles on the State Department website. 

This piece of garbage is not only clearly anti-Armenian in nature but specifically tries to show that Armenians controll the Congress:

Nonbinding resolutions are not sent to the president following congressional approval, said Ornstein, who appears frequently on American television as an expert commentator on politics, Congress and elections.  Rather, the resolutions are used as a “symbol” of congressional opinion or sentiment on a matter, he said. 

But symbolism is “not meaningless,” Ornstein said.  The Armenian resolution, he said, was a “cheap and easy way” for members of Congress “to express their solidarity with the Armenian people and especially with the Armenian-American population.”

Ornstein said the resolution “has been around for a long time,” because of the “significant population” of Armenian Americans in the United States.

Armenian Americans are an “extremely affluent and articulate population,” and “they care passionately” about the killing of their people during the Ottoman Empire, he said.

History Today, world’s premier and perhaps oldest history magazine, has my article about the Djulfa destruction in the November 2007 issue.

The printed magazine, that includes three more photographs, should be available in most western libraries and many bookstores.  The online version features the entire article with one photograph, but you have to pay to view the article in full. 

When, in the summer of 2005, Scottish researcher Steven Sim visited the region of Nakhichevan, an exclave of the South Caucasus republic of Azerbaijan, in order to study medieval Armenian monuments, he found out his trip was in vain – there was nothing there for him to research. After being detained and questioned by security police, Sim was asked why he expected Armenian Christian churches in a region where only Muslims lived. A villager, too, told him Armenians had never lived in Nakhichevan. When the researcher explained that a book had directed him to the ancient Armenian church in the village, an old man blasted out words in what Sim thought was German. The translator explained that the man was talking to him in Armenian, apparently to see if Sim was an Armenian spy. Knowing Armenian in a place where no Armenians ever lived seemed too awkward.
But Sim did not confront Azeris in Nakhichevan about history. Neither did he resist orders to put his camera away in a military zone at the Azerbaijani-Iranian border when his train was passing by world’s largest surviving Armenian medieval cemetery – Djulfa (Jugha in Armenian). Sim might have done otherwise if he knew back then he was going to be the last known outsider in this remote area – on the border with Iran – to glance at the thousands of sacred and beautifully ….

Via ArmeniaNow.com from Boston.com

Pelosi: Armenian genocide vote in doubt

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the prospects of a vote on Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several members pulled their support amid fears it would cripple U.S. relations with Turkey.

“Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains to be seen,” Pelosi told reporters.

The House proposal, which would label as genocide the killing of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, has inflamed U.S. tensions with Turkey, which says the death toll has been inflated and was the result of civil unrest, not genocide. Support for the nonbinding resolution deteriorated this week after Turkey recalled its U.S. ambassador to Ankara and several lawmakers spoke out against it.

A member of NATO, Turkey also is considered a rare Muslim ally to the United States in its war on terrorism. A U.S.-run air base there has facilitated the flow of most cargo to American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat considered influential on military affairs, said his party’s leadership miscalculated support for the resolution. He predicted that such a vote would easily fail.

“If it came to the floor today, it would not pass,” with some 55 to 60 Democrats opposing the measure, Murtha told reporters. As of Thursday, House Democrats will hold a 233-200 majority.

Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to hold off on a vote at least until she gets a better idea of how many House members will support it — a task assumed behind the scenes by the resolution’s primary co-sponsors, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

“While a few members have withdrawn their support for the resolution, the truth is on our side, and support for the resolution remains high,” Schiff said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. “As with almost all legislation in Congress, there are many members who are not listed as co-sponsors of the resolution but support the measure.”

In a White House news conference on Wednesday, Bush warned lawmakers against further inflaming U.S. relations with Turkey. On the same day, Turkey’s parliament approved a possible offensive in northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels known as the PKK; Bush said he opposes such military action.

With all the pressing responsibilities facing the nation, “one thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire,” Bush said.

Said Murtha: “We don’t have the number of allies we used to have. We’ve lost so much credibility worldwide.”

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said there have been two to three battalions of Turkish forces just across the border in Iraq, in a valley south of the mountains where the PKK is known to operate. That presence, he said, goes back to the late 1990s, and has been widely known by the U.S. and the Iraqis. A battalion is generally about 800 soldiers.

Morrell said the Turkish troops are limited to information gathering, and are largely confined to their base with only limited travel. Their movements, he said, are coordinated with the U.S. and the Iraqis.

___

Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Over a dozen democrats have dropped their support for the Armenian Genocide resolution in the last 24 hours, reports the New York Times.

If you are not seeing many of this week’s posts it’s because we just experienced hatehack by Azeri and/or Turkish nationalists.

For your information:  

Blogian, as part of Hayastan.com, was hacked by Azeris/Turks.  Many of the archival photographs are not available for that reason.

via iArarat, Radio Free Europe reports:

A large number of Armenian nationals have been arrested in Turkey in recent days for violating the country’s immigration rules, an Istanbul-based Armenian diplomat said on Monday.

The Irish Times daily reported last week that about 100 Armenians illegally residing in Istanbul and other Turkish cities were rounded up by police and are facing deportation to Armenia. The paper suggested that the Turkish authorities ordered the crackdown in retaliation for the anticipated adoption by the U.S. House of Representatives of a resolution recognizing as genocide the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Just past Sunday, Turkish professor Kemal Cicek – a co-author of a book denying the Armenian Genocide called Armenians: Deportation and Migration and published by the Turkish Historical Society – wrote a Turkish article in the Zaman newspaper suggesting deportation of Armenian citizens in Turkey as a response to the U.S. Congress’ Armenian Genocide resolution.

Dr. Cicek was not the first or the only one suggesting deportation of Armenian workers from Turkey. Past Friday, the English-language Turkish Daily news published an article by another ultra-nationalist writer – Vural Cengiz, president of Azerbaijani American Institute, stating:

Actually, House Resolution 106 does not make much sense for Armenians themselves. What if Turks say “Okay, we understand Armenian animosity here; we accept the challenge. We are ending all diplomatic relations with Armenia and canceling all flights for Armenians in and out of Turkey and over Turkey. No more use of Turkish ports until Armenia demolishes all genocide statues in Armenia?” What will Armenian-Americans do to stop Turkey? Ask Congress to stop giving billions of dollars as foreign aid, which does not exist?  What else could Turks do? How about deporting all 70,000 illegal Armenian workers from Turkey? […] Armenian-Americans had one shot only and they fired it. Who is going to be hit is unknown now. If Turks make sure it is Armenians to be hit, that shot will be the one Armenian-Americans fired in their own foot.

So, as always, Armenians are at guilt for the deportation, I meant RELOCATION, of Armenian workers from Turkey.

Even some (self-perceived) liberals in Turkey, who will go an extra mile to oppose Turkey’s anti-Armenian sentiment, will often find blame in the Armenian blood.  A Kurdish Parliamentarian of the Turkish legislature, Ibrahim Aksoy, wrote an unnoticed article last year (“Armenian Turks,” August 2006, in Turkish) claiming that none of the “original Turks” (the Turkmens that came from central Anatolia) are claiming “Turkishness” (Türkçülük) – the idea-turned-to-law (Article 301) under which recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a crime in Turkey.

Aksoy gave names of some prominent politicians – many of who anti-Armenian ultra-nationalists – allegedely of Armenian origin:

Hafize Özal…
Recai Kutan…
Oguzhan Asiltürk…
Devlet Bahçeli…

Hasan Celal Güzel…
Mehmet Agar…
Mehmet Keçeciler…
Mesut Yilmaz…
Murat Karayalçin…

Aksoy’s conclusion was:

We have nothing against people who have had to deny their origins to continue living. We appreciate their condition. But what we do not get is how can some others while they fully know that they are of Armenian origin and continue the Turkish racism and Turk-Islam ideas? Especially it is impossible to understand their animosity against the non-Moslems and Kurds in Turkey.

Although he also claims that his mentioned politicians have no choice but to be ultra-nationalists, the generalization that Aksoy suggests resonates with Turkey’s anti-Armenian sentiment that the reason for every problem in the country are the Armenians. 

And the idea to “relocate” new Armenians seems very logical to solve the problem.  After all, it has always been the fault of the Armenians – from the Dinosaurs to the Genocide.

Armenia’s parliament adopted a bill on Thursday aiming at identifying and saving human trafficking victims on airplanes before take off

The National Assembly of Armenia passed the Anti-Human Trafficking on Air Act on Thursday requiring notification to all air passengers about the threatening high number of women and children being transported from/through Armenia by traffickers for sexual exploitation purposes without the passengers’ knowledge or consent before airplanes take off.

The notification process will include distribution of brochures in three languages (Armenian, Russian and English) to all passengers shortly describing human trafficking and asking passengers to let the attendant know they are in danger at any time during/before the flight and they will be guaranteed safe evacuation and persecution of their traffickers.

Before the airplane takes off, a video-recording or an attendant will announce in three languages (Armenian, Russian and English) that if there are any children on the airplane who are traveling with somebody else’s passport they are at high risk of being raped and abused in the countries of their destination. They will be also given additional two-minutes of presentation about how to identify human trafficking. The passengers will be told if they have a slight doubt they may be a victim of human trafficking they will be in safe protection after notifying an attendant. Two unidentified enforcement agents, trained to combat human trafficking, will be on the flight to help the victims before the plane takes off or after it arrives or to interfere during the flight if absolutely needed.

“Even if this Act saves one life it will serve its purpose,” said Raffi Hovhannisyan, an American-born Armenian legislator who sponsored the bill. “It is time to fight the horrible abuse of already oppressed women and children from poor and unprotected families who are treated like animals after being tricked into human trafficking.”

Armenia is not only a resource for human traffickers, experts say, but also a transit country for other victims of eastern European and central Asian origin. The victims, often from single-mother families, are told they will be working in restaurants and cafes in rich Middle Eastern or European countries. Once they get to their destinations, they are beaten and forced into prostitution serving dozens of men every day against their wills.

A handful legislators who voted against the bill expressed concerns for the funding of the project. But several Armenian NGOs and charity organizations vowed to contribute to the project. “We will do everything in our power to support the fight against human trafficking in Armenia,” said a spokesperson for the U.S.-based Cafesjian Foundation.

Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan signed the bill into law the following day, expressing his admiration for the legislature’s readiness to combat modern day human slavery. “The Armenian leadership can have no moral leadership in the fight for Genocide recognition if it ignores the sexual exploitations and physical and psychological tortures of women and children at the hands of human traffickers.”

The sponsors of the Act still expressed concerns about a fabricated news item posted on Blogian.net and republished by other websites several months ago announcing the passage of a “bill combating human trafficking” claiming Armenian parliament’s official website as the source. The webmaster of Blogian.net, an Armenian-American student, had deliberately fabricated the story with hopes that Armenia’s leadership and parliamentarians would finally start thinking about ways to fight human trafficking.

“I am glad Blogian.net brought the inevitability of this issue to our attention ,” Hovhannisyan said, “But I thought I was dreaming when I read the news attributing statements to me I had never made – not that I didn’t wish I had made them in the first place.”

Several Armenian-American groups also denounced Blogian.net for “misleading tactics” and “spreading lies in uncivilized ways.”

Source: http://www.parliament.am/

A friend has received the following e-mail and excerpt from another friend and I thought our readers may want to read it.  

I thought I would share an excerpt from “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” By Henry Morgenthau American Ambassador to Turkey during the Genocide. I found it to be eerily prophetic and certainly apropos.

————————————————————————————————–

 

This is from Chapter 25

After this exchange of compliments we settled down to the business in hand. “I have asked you to come to-day,” began Talaat, “so that I can explain our position on the whole Armenian subject. We base our objections to the Armenians on three distinct grounds. In the first place, they have enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks. In the second place, they are determined to domineer over us and to establish a separate state. In the third place, they have openly encouraged our enemies. They have assisted the Russians in the Caucasus and our failure there is largely explained by their actions. We have therefore come to the irrevocable decision that we shall make them powerless before this war is ended.”

On every one of these points I had plenty of arguments in rebuttal. Talaat’s first objection was merely an admission that the Armenians were more industrious and more able than the dull-witted and lazy Turks. Massacre as a means of destroying business competition was certainly an original conception! His general charge that the Armenians were “conspiring” against Turkey and that they openly sympathized with Turkey’s enemies merely meant, when reduced to its original elements, that the Armenians were constantly appealing to the European Powers to protect them against robbery, murder, and outrage. The Armenian problem, like most race problems, was the result of centuries of ill-treatment and injustice. There could be only one solution for it, the creation of an orderly system of government, in which all citizens were to be treated upon an equality, and in which all offenses were to be punished as the acts of individuals and not as of peoples. I argued for a long time along these and similar lines.

“It is no use for you to argue,” Talaat answered, “we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians; there are none at all left in Bitlis, Van, and Erzeroum. The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish with them. If we don’t, they will plan their revenge.”

“If you are not influenced by humane considerations,” I replied, “think of the material loss. These people are your business men. They control many of your industries. They are very large tax-payers. What would become of you commercially without them?“

“We care nothing about the commercial loss,” replied Talaat. “We have figured all that out and we know that it will not exceed five million pounds. We don’t worry about that. I have asked you to come here so as to let you know that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.“

I still attempted to persuade Talaat that the treatment of the Armenians was destroying Turkey in the eyes of the world, and that his country would never be able to recover from this infamy.

“You are making a terrible mistake,” I said, and I repeated the statement three times.

“Yes, we may make mistakes,” he replied, “but” —and he firmly closed his lips and shook his head—“we never regret.”