As we are about to enter 2008, Blogian is transforming to the 21st century with a professionally-designed theme (courtesy of Hayastan.com), merged archives and new plans.

A few months ago, when I was upset with constant hacks by Azeri and/or Turkish hackers against Blogian, the webmaster of Hayastan.com offered to hire a designer for Blogian (I guess Armen wanted to cheer me up).  As part of the design, the archives from Blogian’s good old days – available at another Hayastan.com link – were merged to the current website so that it is all in once place.

The design is perhaps obvious to most Armenians – mount Ararat, the national symbol, on the top and Blogian written with a pomegranate, another Armenian symbol.  

At the very bottom of the website you will find two separated “animals” – an actual design from a Djulfa tombstone that is now forever gone.  Hence, the name of the new theme – Djulfa.

I have become a sort of self-proclaimed ambassador of the vanished Djulfa cemetery and after the recent article in History Today and widely featured at Britannica Encyclopedia I have not stop – and NEVER WILL – the awareness work for the largest Armenian historic artifact that was reduced to dust two years ago. 

I can’t tell you the latest project at this time but I will announce it very soon. 

 THANK YOU to Hayastan.com and A_Mina for the wonderful design.

One wouldn’t expect the webmasters of Yahoo.com’s homepage be academics, but being blatant racists isn’t too helpful either.

Linking to an Associated Press article about business controversy of two Romani “clans,” Yahoo! summarized the news on its homepage several hours ago as “Gypsies’ fortunetelling feud” and that “Gypsy feud gives rare look at hidden culture.” 

From the first look, there is nothing wrong with the title, but consider how we’d feel if it said “Jews’ fortunetelling feud” or for that matter “Jews’ jewelry feud” or “Armenians’ jewelry feud.”  This is in lines with popular stereotype and racism against the Romani people, most of who prefer not to be called Gypsy (one reason the omnipresent racism against them), as seen in American TV icon Judge Judy’s racist comments and her usage of the word “Gypsy” as a derogatory term.

The Associated Press article itself is not free of stereotype; the whole style of the article is somewhat arrogant and presents Gypsies as an essentialist entity.  Although it takes a note that Gypsies faced persecution in Europe after migrating there in the 1300s, there is no reference to the Gypsy Genocide – part of the Holocaust – in which about half million Gypsies were mass murdered, a fact hardly mentioned in the context of Holocaust studies within the popular culture in the United States.  And more importantly, no reference to the unchallenged, blatant, dehumanizing and delegitimazing racism against the “Gypsies” in the United States.

I think Yahoo! the ®acists owe an apology to the Roma people.

According to 168 Hours (Oct. 18, 2007),

“USA Today”, an American daily will be published in Armenia too. According to radio “Liberty”, the owner of the paper has decided to issue a weekly consisting of the publications covered during the week. The weekly will be called “USA Today Abroad”. It is supposed that the first outlet of this paper will be published on Friday.

I asked one of the editors of USA TODAY about the news and she said,

I have not heard about this. Frnakly we are going through some cost-cutting so it sort of surprises me.

What’s going on?

In an interview to Reuters, Borat says he would like “Barak Obamas to be Premier” of the United States.  He says it would be dangerous for a woman to be a president given the experience of the 2003 Astana Zoo Massacre.

Q: Who do you favor for President in the United States?

A: “I cannot believe that it possible a woman can become Premier of US and A – in Kazakhstan, we say that to give a woman power, is like to give a monkey a gun – very dangerous. We do not give monkeys guns any more in Kazakhstan ever since the Astana Zoo massacre of 2003 when Torkin the orang-utan shoot 17 schoolchildrens. I personal would like the basketball player, Barak Obamas to be Premier.”

The “boss of bosses” of the Sicilian mafia, arrested today, doesn’t look a mafia head people usually picture in their heads at all.   He more looks like confused Columbus (imaginary) arrested by American Indian Movement security guards before starting the Native genocides.

The head of ADL Armenian Defamation League Abraham Foxman has posted a press release on the ADL website condemning the Yerevan State University for honoring Iran’s president Ahmadenijadiad with a degree.

Despite the fact that Iran’s president really needed a degree, I also find the State University’s honor to a person who denies the Holocaust to be a wrong deed.

But for Foxman, a devoted friend of Turkish officials who deny the Armenian Genocide and a genocide denier himself, to condemn the University is pretty ironic, isn’t it? Oh, and why doesn’t Foxman support Armenia’s Jewish community when it comes to the latter’s call for a formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. Congress?

ADL Supports Armenian Jewish Community In Condemnation Of Yerevan State University
New York, NY, October 30, 2007 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed support for the Armenian Jewish Community in their condemnation of Yerevan State University, which recently honored Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an honorary doctorate and a medal.

“It is disgraceful for a reputable institution of higher learning to honor a man who routinely compromises the rights of Iranian citizens, and especially students and academics,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  “We commend the Armenian Jewish Community for speaking out against this poor judgment on the part of Yerevan State University.

“It is one thing to provide a forum to speak, as universities are environments where freedom of speech should be promoted and encouraged,” said Mr. Foxman.  “However, it is quite another to confer degrees and awards on a dictator who denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.  Such tributes should be reserved for those academics and world leaders who rightfully deserve them.”

UPDATE: Just noticed that our friends at Jewcy.com have a similar entry on Foxman, titled “More Foxman Irony.”

It is rare for an international organization such as OSCE – The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – to post news on its website that are entirely made up. I must say, my bet.

At least until October 25, 2007, OSCE’s Combating Human Trafficking website – http://www.osce.org/cthb/ – listed the Huliq.com article that tells of Armenia’s new law aiming at identifying and saving human trafficking victims on airplanes before take off. I must say, I had written the article and had made it up. Armenia, unfortunately, has no such a law.

But Armenia has way over a hundred legislators, so I decided to make up a law for them and quote at least one parliamentarian, who seems most progressive, as the co-sponsor of a law that would require distributing information about human trafficking to all passengers leaving/connecting in Armenia’s Zvartnots International Airport.

I posted it at Blogian, then submitted to Huliq. The news went to many around the world through www.news.google.com and got republished through Groong.com, AraManoogian.blogspot.com and others. Ironically, the made-up article wrote about something similar tha was supposebly made up by me months ago. It was ALL made up.

But what was not made up was my helplessness and depression in fighting human trafficking. What was not made up was and is my anger at Armenia’s total ignorance and neglect of thousands of women and children who are being stolen out of Armenia for forced sexual oppression.

And what is still true is that no politician in Armenia – left or right, in power or in prison – cares about human trafficking. And even the widely perceived progressive legislator didn’t comment on his fabricated co-sponsorship of a bill that never existed. I guess it was a good PR for Armenia’s government in the eyes of OSCE and others – something totally different from my intention.

So, no, dear OSCE, Armenia has no law fighting human trafficking. Armenia gives nothing but fuck for the brutalized and oppressed women and children suffering in Dubai, Turkey and who knows where. 

Where is the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenians from Human Trafficking anyways?

LINK (cashed by Google): http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:MZQ9oA1VU6sJ:www.osce.org/cthb/+%22Armenian+parliament+passes+act+on+human+trafficking%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

“Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians,” writes Paul Belien for rhw Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2588).

Apparently, “On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life.”

The United States Postal Service has issued two stamps commemorating the Armenian Genocide and urging Recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic…NOT!

But YOU CAN. I just created the above stamps from http://www.yourstamps.com, ordered 40 copies of the Genocide stamp and 20 copies of the Artsakh stamp. These stamps are as valid as the ones with the American flag.  There are other options of creating your own stamps that you can find about at http://www.usps.com/postagesolutions/customizedpostage.htm (for US residents only).

Takuhi Ghasapian (later Maghakian) is my great-grandmother, and if you wonder who is she looking at – the answer is me. This is the one and only photograph with me and my great-grandma (taken in 1986) who survived the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire with the help of a kind Turkish woman. 

If you live in Canada, you can do the same by visiting https://www.picturepostage.ca/picpostageprod/DispatcherServlet?op=welcome_public&lang=ENGLISH; if in France, visit http://tpp.laposte.fr/accueil.pgi?cmd=afficher; and if in UK, visit http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content2?mediaId=3800008&catId=5200022.

If you want to use my designed stamps, send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I will send you the contents for free.

Here is a true ghost story for Halloween, based on facts and a bit of superstition…

On a cold December day soldiers in the Djulfa region of a remote area in the mountainous region of the Caucasus were told they had to travel to the Iranian border where an old cemetery of their enemy existed. 

When the Muslim soldiers said they were not going to walk in the cold just to see an old Christian cemetery of their enemies, the head of the Djulfa army said, “You will be the last people to see the cemetery; don’t worry.”

As the soldiers reached the remote cemetery, they were given sledgehammers and told to smash every single gravestone to dust. It was December 14, 2005. They had to come beck the next day, because there were too many graves there.

On their second visit to the cemetery soldiers saw some men in the Iranian border taping what they were doing. The soldiers were reluctant to continue, and although some didn’t touch one gravestone, most of them followed the orders and there was no more cemetery left in the next few days.

When the police chief of Djulfa, Asif Guliyev, read in newspapers that their enemies had videotaped the destruction of the cemetery and showed it to the world, he got angry at the reports.  He had given approval for the destruction of the cemetery and had promised to cover it up.

On the night of December 24, 2005, Guliyev – a Muslim – could not sleep. He knew it was the day for a Christian holiday, and he was fearful that the ghosts of the Christian cemetery destroyed in his region wound hunt him.  This was because his grandfather had told him that if anyone touched the graveyard of any person they would die.  And the gravestones in this case that had been destroyed were not of one person – but of about 10,000 medieval Armenians.

Guliyev heard knocks on his door.  He reluctantly opened the door and saw a thousand white spirits looking at him with blood dropping from their eyes as tears. He shook his head up and the ghosts had disappeared.

The next day Guliyev saw the same dream, and also someone who might have been the prophet Muhammed telling Guliyev he should arrest those who destroyed the cemetery. But instead, Guliyev decided to leave his region for a vacation to the city of Nakhichevan with a friend visiting from Baku.

TREND news agency tells the rest:

In the night for 8 January [2006] the head of the Djulfa district police department Asif Guliyev and his family members died at the result of the fire which had broken out in his apartment in Nakhchevan, the press service of the Interior Ministry told Trend.

The cause of the fire was malfunction in the “Aygaz” type heater in the apartment of the people died. After the fire had been distinguished the corpses of Guliyev, his wife and two daughters, as well as the Baku resident Faig Imanguliyev have been found.   

Whether “Aygaz” (an Armenian male’s name otherwise spelled as Haygaz) or any of the 10,000 Armenian ghosts of the Djulfa cemetery had killed Guliyev was not known.  But since his bosses and no one in his country were going to punish him or be punished for the destruction, people say that he burnt his apartment down after being visited by the Djulfa ghosts every single day.

And it is said that whoever reads this story and denies or glorifies the destruction of Djulfa will be visited by the ghosts of the ancient cemetery who are roaming across the world to find a place where they can rest with no fear of being disturbed again.