Onnik Krikorian at OneWorld Multimedia reports that Armenian-American repatriate Raffi Hovhannisian, a politician seen as uncorrupted by many, has endorsed presidential candidate and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan (LTP), under who Hovhannisian worked in the early 1990s.
In the most important news of recent weeks so far, it was today announced that the Heritage Party of U.S.-born former foreign minister, Raffi Hovannisian, has decided to back former president Levon Ter-Petrossian in the presidential election next week. Such support was considered vital for Ter-Petrossian by some observers and certainly makes the 19 February vote more likely to be held in two rounds.
Although Heritage only polled 81,048 votes during last year’s parliamentary election, some believe it actually attracted twice as much. However, more importantly for Ter-Petrossian, perhaps, is that Heritage’s support affords him a certain amount of credibility with a significant number of voters who were confused, undecided or wavering before.
Although Hovhannisian’s support will undoubtedly help the former president in the elections, the same support may harm Hovhannisian’s credibility in the eyes of many Armenians who see LTP accountable for the extreme poverty and violence that swept newly independent Armenia in the 1990s.
My two cents to LTP’s campaign – not that I am going to vote for their candidate – is to have someone else write LTP’s speeches. I mean “speeches” and not academic lectures with luxurious terminology some of which are coined by the former president.
Here is an outline that may be of help (all candidates invited to use).
Start you speech with an attention getter – a quote or even a joke (being funny may help to).
Smile sometimes when you talk – not in a way that it shows like you are happy or laugh at the people but that you are smiling because you enjoy talking to the people who have gathered to listen to you.
After the attention getter hit to the topic and review what you will be talking about.
Each paragraph should make sense and support one main point which will itself support the very main point hinted to in the introduction.
Don’t use academic terms – use words that ordinary people will understand but talk politely and grammatically.
Talk to the people who you are talking to. Giving an academic lecture in the Liberty Square is ignorant and arrogant and shows disrespect. Now, most people won’t complain about the lectures (and some will be surprised and happy that they didn’t understand any word – so they are voting for a smart guy!) but something in them will make uncomfortable about the speech.
Armenian-American activist Annie Totah – a member of Hillary Clinton’s finance committee – has sent an e-mail to Jewish circles citing a classic anti-Obama article that says the Illinois senator’s “full name alone conveys the biographical fact that he has some elements of a Muslim background.”
Ben Smith at Politico, who has received a copy of Totah’s e-mail, writes on his blog:
[…]
I’ve obtained a copy of an e-mail from Annie Totah, a Washington society figure and Armenian-American activist who’s also a member of Clinton’s finance committee. The e-mail, titled “Barack Obama’s Poor Record on Israel,” went to a list that includes Anne Ayalon, wife of the former Israeli ambassador.
“Please read the attached important and very disturbing article on Barak [sic] Obama. Please vote wisely in the Primaries,” the e-mail read, attaching a long piece from the American Thinker blog that’s become central to the sub-rosa anti-Obama chatter.
The American Thinker calls speculation that Obama is actually a Muslim “overheated” (!) and “unfair,” and never crosses the line into the more outlandish stuff you can find elsewhere on the Web. But it does go well beyond anything the Clinton campaign has touched (and more obvious elements of Obama’s position, like his words and votes), and draws together a long litany of items from his church (which it says Obama joined out of expedience) to the fact that former Knick Allan Houston raised money for him to make the case that he’s a “disquieting” candidate when it comes to Israel.
Annie Totah is the Co-chair of ARMENPAC, a recently-formed Armenian-American lobbying group that is yet to catch up with the mother organization it broke from, AAA, and especially ANCA.
February 11, 2008 — SEN. Hillary Clinton has gotten cozy with a Turkish-born businessman whom some have described as anti-Semitic. Clinton’s campaign Web site identifies Mehmet Celebi as one of her “HillRaisers” – someone who has raised at least $100,000 for her presidential bid. This despite Celebi’s controversial producing credit on “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq” – a 2006 movie that depicted a Jewish doctor removing the vital organs of civilian prisoners to sell to wealthy transplant patients overseas. “In accordance with the old anti-Semitic canard, the movie portrays Jewish-American doctors as forcibly harvesting organs from Muslims to give them to Jews,” noted Detroit lawyer and columnist Debbie Schlussel observes on her blog. Clinton spokesman Jay Carson didn’t get back to us for comment.
According to Debbie Sclussel’s blog, who is quoted in the New York Post article, the story was broken by Gateway Pundit who wrote about the story on February 6, 2008. The latter blog’s reference to the story was The Kurdish Media that wrote about the Clinton affair hours after my original post.
Not that I want to become a breaker of a Clinton scandal… Anyhow, the actual credit should go to the people who made the YouTube video that was my source when I first wrote of the affair.
“Bill Clinton lashed out at Barack Obama yesterday, he accused him of running a fairy tale campaign. It’s a fairy tale in which a horny king tries to get his queen elected to the White House so he can go out and fornicate with maidens, and then a handsome black prince comes along and screws the whole thing up for him. So, you can see why he’s very upset.” –Jimmy Kimmel
“Well, congratulations to Barack Obama, the big winner of the Democratic caucus. Stunning victory. He got 57% of the youth vote, 35% of the female vote, and 100% of Iowa’s black vote, a guy named Larry.” –Jay Leno
“Isn’t that amazing, Obama and Cheney related? Dick Cheney now has more blacks and gays in his own family than in the entire Republican Party.” –Jay Leno
“During an interview, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife said that Vice President Cheney and Barack Obama are actually distant cousins. When Dick Cheney found out, he said, ‘I knew there was something creepy about that guy.'” –Conan O’Brien
“Senator Barack Obama was in Los Angeles last night for a huge campaign fundraiser. That shows you what a great country this is — when an African-American with a Kansas mother and a Kenyan father, who spent time growing up in Indonesia and is running for president, spending time in a state where Spanish-speaking people have elected an Austrian governor.” –Jay Leno
“Senator Hillary Clinton is back from her fact-finding trip to Iraq. She had to cut the trip short because she had to address a growing threat here at home — Barack Obama.” –Jay Leno
“Barack Obama said today that politics has become too gummed up by money and influence … and then he had to leave to attend a fundraiser.” –Jay Leno
While caucusing in a small Midwestern town, some Obama supporters changed their mind.
“Clinton has more experience than Obama,” said one. “I think Clinton deserves a 3rd term.”
Another one suggested that voting for Hillary will be like killing two stones with one bird (well, democrats like birds) or something like, “Vote one, get one free.”
EU officials touring the South Caucasus this week were confronted by heated words from President Ilham Aliyev, who told them Azerbaijan is ready to “wage war” with neighboring Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s recent windfall of oil and gas revenues appears to have persuaded Aliyev that he could turn the tables on Armenia, which has long held the military upper hand in the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic-Armenian territory located within Azerbaijan.
In talks on February 4 with Slovenian Foreign Minister Dmitrij Rupel, who was representing the current EU Presidency, Aliyev indicated Baku was contemplating waging war for control of the disputed territory, which together with a strip of adjacent Azerbaijani territory has been under Yerevan’s control since a 1988-94 war between the two countries.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external relations commissioner, tells RFE/RL that Brussels firmly rejected Baku’s “inflammatory” rhetoric. “I clearly said, not only to the authorities, but also at the press conference, that I think it is highly important that they avoid any inflammatory speech at the moment of presidential elections,” she says.
Both countries are holding a presidential vote this year — Armenia on February 19, and Azerbaijan in October. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has spent more than 15 years mediating talks between the two sides, has indicated an election year is not likely to see major progress on the issue.
Baku, however, appears impatient. The Azerbaijani leadership, Rupel said, appears to feel that “time is not on Armenia’s side.” Nor is money. Azerbaijan’s defense budget this year will exceed $1 billion; Armenia’s is just one-third of that figure.
Azerbaijan has enjoyed spectacular economic growth over the past few years. The country’s GDP grew by 25 percent in 2007, almost exclusively on the strength of oil and gas exports.
Azerbaijan’s minister for economic development, Heydar Babayev, says he expects his government to generate upward of $150 billion in oil and gas revenues by 2015.
Armenia, meanwhile, has no lucrative natural resources. It is landlocked, blockaded by neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan, and — at Baku’s behest — bypassed by oil and gas pipelines, as well as rail and road projects, which originate in Azerbaijan.
’Winning The Peace’
But, as Rupel notes, Armenia has “alliances that speak for it.” This is a reference to Russian backing. Throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia is rumored to have given Armenia military equipment worth $1 billion. Russia provides for most of Armenia’s energy needs and has bought up most of its energy infrastructure.
The Armenian government did not appeared cowed by Baku’s fighting words. Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian tells RFE/RL that Armenia is confident of its military capability. “No matter how strong the Azeris will be in the next 15 years, even with this kind of spending, even [if it] doubled every year, to catch up with Armenia’s commitment to defend itself and Karabakh, that will require [as a] minimum 15-20 years,” he says.
Oskanian says that Armenia would not be intimidated in any event. More importantly, he adds, he does not believe there can be a military solution to Nagorno-Karabakh. “We fought twice with the Azeris, we prevailed, but we never claimed that we won the war,” he says. “Unless we win the peace, we will never claim that we won the war.”
Harvard professor and genocide scholar Samantha Power has made a video, posted at ANCA.org and YouTube.com, specifically appealing to Armenian-Americans and asking for their support for Barack Obama in the presidential elections. Power identifies herself as a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama. I wonder whether, if Obama gets elected, Samantha Power will become the Secretary of State.
Aram Hamparian
Executive Director
Armenian National Committee of America
1711 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Thank you for contacting me regarding my views on issues of special concern to the Armenian-American community – a community which has contributed richly to the American fabric and has been instrumental in ensuring that one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century is never forgotten.
It is fair to say that this tragedy, the brutal murder of as many as one and a half million Armenians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, has also been one of the most neglected. The suffering endured by the Armenian people during that period represented the prologue to what has come to be known as humanity’s bloodiest century.
Therefore, the rise of independent Armenia from such painful experiences is extremely inspirational, as is the vibrancy of the Armenian diaspora. In particular, I deeply admire both Armenia’s support of coalition operations in Iraq and NATO peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo, as well as the Armenian-American community’s great contributions to our nation. In my visits to Armenia, I have been deeply impressed by the tremendous progress made in very difficult circumstances.
I greatly appreciate this opportunity and look forward to working with the Armenian-American community in my campaign and as the next President of the United States.
Although presidential canidadate Barack Obama has received the earliest protection by the Secret Service in the history of the United States, many in the States still believe the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other hate groups will do their best to harm the Illinois senator.
While physical harm is what people are concerned about, KKK sympathisers are using the Internet to spread their position on the black candidate.
In order to fight the xenophobic charge of being a Muslim, the Obama campaign has even sponsored a Google link that states “Barack Obama is a Christian. Get the facts at his official site.” Although there is nothing wrong about being a proud Christian, it is somewhat saddening to see that a Christian candidate has to repeat over and over again that he is not Muslim. Saddening, because it is shows nothing but the high level of prejudice against Muslim people in the United States.
But even being a good Christian doesn’t keep haters from hating Obama. The Associated Content says that many threats against the Obama campaigned in the country go unreported.
The media is not reporting on the “N”-word and hate-laced letters, emails and phonecalls the Obama campaign has received. No one is reporting on how Obama had to add more members to his security team on two occasions. The F.B.I. reported, in 2007, that membership in the Ku Klux Klan and covert militia groups is steadily rising, and it only takes one loyalist to put a bullet in Obama’s heart and annihilate what many Americans believe is the greatest symbol of hope and change for this country.
The publication also posts a statement by a national Ku Klax Klan leader hinting that Obama’s possible victory may trigger racist whites to “ship” blacks to Africa for the “benefit” of the latter:
“I had several people call me today regarding their concern about the growing support for Obama. The fact is that there probably would not be a measurable difference between an Obama, Clinton or even a McCain or Huckabee presidency, as they are all globalists at their core and backpedal away from a firm commitment to uphold the Constitution. It is the opinion of many in the White Nationalist movement that the electionof Obama as president may go a long way to awaken people from their stupor. There is a sleeping giant lying in the heart of our people. This giant has been tranquilized and appears lifeless and dead – but is only sleeping. Surprisingly, an awakened white populous would not only allow us to regain our racial integrity and survival, but it would also provide greater safety and a brighter future for Negroes as well. Those who may be confused by the above statement need only to look at the quality of life that American Negroes have been able to enjoy under white dominated rule, compared with the quality of life that their counterparts have in African nations dominated by African leadership. Still, another illustration can be seen through the calm, peace and safety blacks had in their own communities before the so-called civil rights movement and the debasement of the police, compared to the unsafe and violent black neighborhoods of today.”
It is time to be thinking ahead to having our own political-party. When the post-Obama day arrives, the American people will have to repair the damage and a political-party would be the ideal vehicle for us to wield our power. Remember, the Reds gained power over us through the Communist Party and its various “front” groups. Organization is our key to retaking power from our oppressors.
In Germany, for example, there is the National Democratic Party, which is the “nationalist movement” over there. […] We are, quite frankly, long overdue.
A reader of this blog, commenting on a previous post, has brought to my attention to a YouTube videothat claims U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has received large contributions from a nationalist Turkish filmmaker.
