Although the group that created the popular YES WE CAN song has just come up with another one endorsing Barack Obama for presidency, there are other songs that go unreported.
FlipRiotSquad, for instance, has recently posted a rap on the Democratic candidate called “Barack Obama – The People’s President.”
I have received two e-mails in regards to the article I reposted about vandalism at an Armenian Church in California. A painting of what appeared to be Turkey’s flag was deemed as a ‘hate crime’ by the local police. And while a Turkish-American who had nothing to do with the vandalism says he regrets the crime, the Armenian priest of the church says there was no vandalism and, thus, no need to apologize for it.
The first e-mail to me – the subject of which read, “i regret that your church was vandalized………..from a Turkish-American” – stated:
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I regret what happened and I hope the culprit in the church vandalism is found soon.
[…]
Another e-mail, from a member of the church that was vandalised, informed me of a blog post by the church’s priest who sees no hate in the church vandalism. Fr. Vazken writes:
It started Sunday – we noticed a child’s drawing on the wall. It was a moon and a star. I received a call later in the afternoon from an officer at the Glendale Police Department. The graffiti-art had been reported as a hate crime to the department.
Monday morning, a reporter from the Glendale Newspress came by the church looking for the evidence. Horizon (Armenian TV) sent a camera man. The Diocese (one of the priests) called and asked “What happened? Did someone paint a Swastika on your church?” By midday, a non-story was taking form and shape.
And so… this morning, it didn’t surprise me when the Daily News headlined, “Vandal spray-paints Turkish flag on Armenian church wall”
Wow! A moon and a star had now been transformed into a Turkish hate crime against the Armenians! What is it about hatred and evil that makes good copy? I guess it sells newspapers.
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Although it is amazingly kind of an Armenian priest not to see hate in the drawing, it is interesting that he refuses to call it a vandalism either.
Showing off? Perhaps, not. I have personally met Fr. Vazken and he is a very good person. This is the guy who organizes “Blood for Blood” event in April asking Armenians to donate blood in commemorating the Armenian genocide by the Turks.
The New York Times has an interesting article on the popular fear of Obama being assassinated in which it makes clear that almost everyone but Obama think of a possible attempt on the Democratic candidate’s life:
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That afternoon, Mr. Obama’s motorcade passed Dealey Plaza and the Texas Book Depository building, where the fatal shot was fired at President Kennedy in 1963. Several campaign aides looked out their windows, silently absorbing the scene.
Not so for Mr. Obama, who later said he had not realized he was passing the site. And no one in his car pointed it out.
“I’ve got to admit, that’s not what I was thinking about,” he said. “I was thinking about how I was starting to get a head cold and needed to make sure that I cleared up my nose before I got to the arena.”
Annie Totah’s e-mail, presumably sent to a Jewish audience to demonstrate the superiority of her chosen candidate (Hillary Clinton), may or may not sway its intended readers. Frankly, I don’t care. In fact I wouldn’t even care if the other candidate were targeted. That’s not the point. Totah and ARMENPAC have chosen to support Clinton. That’s actually good. This way, regardless of who wins, with the ANC’s endorsement of Obama, one faction of our community plugged in.
But resorting to sleazy, innuendo-laden tactics like using this article reflects poorly on us as a community. It certainly reflects poorly on the organizations in which Totah holds high positions. But then, in the Assembly’s case, perhaps this is to be expected. Remember, they won the “coveted” SpitRain Award last August. In case you think I’m overreacting, here’s how Ben Smith describes Totah: “a Washington society figure and Armenian-American activist who’s also a member of Clinton’s finance committee.” Those who don’t personally know any other “Armenian-American activists” might, given human nature, attribute to the rest of us a love of gutter politics.
I’m not starry-eyed, nor delusional. Politics is blood sport. Of course these kinds of things will be done. But there’s a wisdom that’s expected of those holding visible positions in organizations. They cannot be associated with this kind of activity because it reflects poorly on the organization. For all I know, the Clinton campaign may have been following exactly this line of thinking by feeding Totah Lasky’s piece to disseminate.
Please call on Annie Totah, ARCA, ARMENPAC and the Armenian Assembly to apologize for this embarrassing gaffe. If she refuses, those organizations and others she serves should remove her from any offices she holds.
If they don’t, then we the community will know how to judge and not support them in the future.
A highly-disliked Associated Press article titled “Obama may face grilling on patriotism” – rated 2.5 out of 5 stars by Yahoo! users – seems to take the somewhat xenophobic definition of “patriotism” by Red Scare-style conservatives for granted.
The Associated Press article starts off by stating:
Sen. Barack Obama‘s refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism.
Now Obama’s wife, Michelle, has drawn their ire, too, for saying recently that she’s really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.
[…]
Although the article does end up reporting factual information and interpretation that disclose the black pr against the Democratic candidate later in the article, the anti-Obama lynching campaign by some conservative and nationalist circles to label the Illinois Senator as “un-American” seems to satisfy the Associated Press to use the word “patriotism” without quotation marks in reporting the hateful attempt to make an enemy of a person millions of Americans have voted for.
And while the lynching campaign against Barack Obama by nationalist circles comes as no surprise – and will definitely become worse in the months to come – it is surprising to see the Associated Press stating that “Obama may face grilling on patriotism” suggesting that it has been somehow demonstrated that Obama is not a “patriot.” The Associated Press is the one that should face grilling… on (un)ethical journalism.
Painting of a star and crescent at Armenian place of worship is being called a hate crime.
By Ryan Vaillancourt
NORTHWEST GLENDALE — Police say vandals who spray-painted a crescent and star design on a wall at St. Peter Armenian Church on Sunday committed a hate crime by meaning to intimidate Armenians by invoking the Turkish flag.
Church congregants discovered what they described as a red crescent and star spray-painted on the wall outside the church, along Kenilworth Road. The graffiti has since been painted over.
Many Armenians harbor deep enmity for the modern Republic of Turkey for its refusal to recognize the genocide committed against Armenians between 1915 and 1918 by the former Ottoman Empire.
Depicting a Turkish flag on the side of an Armenian church would be similar to putting a swastika on a synagogue, Glendale Police Officer John Balian said.
“It’s the same significance,” he said. “This is obviously considered vandalism, but it’s also considered a hate crime if you can prove the perpetrator did it for hatred reasons.”
Police have not identified any suspects and are not pursuing any leads, he said.
“That’s why it’s imperative to get community involvement in identifying the perpetrators,” he said. “Any time you vandalize a church or a synagogue, any type of church, we won’t tolerate it, and we’ll do everything we can to find the people.”
Anoush Dekmejian, a church trustee who believes the vandalism took place during a Sunday morning service, said she immediately recognized the crescent and star shapes as those on the Turkish flag.
“My impression, immediately, was that it was a hate crime,” said Dekmejian, who reported the incident to police at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
But St. Peter’s pastor, Father Vazken Movsesian, who is well-known for his advocacy on behalf of genocide recognition — not only of the Armenian Genocide but the ongoing genocidal conflict in Darfur — downplayed the incident, saying the graffiti was more reminiscent of a child’s depiction of a star and a moon.
He compared the symbols to stationery in his office that shows golden moons and shining stars in the margins.
“You’d be hard-pressed to say it was the Turkish flag,” Movsesian said. “Really, honestly, it seems sensationalized . . . . I really saw a kid’s drawing.”
Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian said he believed the vandalism was tied to racial tensions surrounding a controversial absentee ballot application ordinance.
“I really don’t think that it’s an isolated incident,” Najarian said.
“I think it’s directly related to the attention that the absentee application issue has garnered . . . . Bottom line is, it’s just sad that it has occurred.”
Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to call the Crime Stoppers line, which allows anonymous calls, at (818) 507-7867.
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:
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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.
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.”
