John Marshall Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia who was fired for referring to the Armenian Genocide as such, is still  America’s de jure Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia.

According to the State Department website, Evans is Ambassador from “08/11/2004 to present.”

Plastic surgery was apparently not created to fix breasts but to get wounded soldiers look the way they used to before fighting in World War I.

A book by H.M. Deranian tells the story of “Varaztad H. Kazanjian, who helped invent modern plastic surgery by finding creative ways to restore the faces of soldiers injured on the battlefields of World War I.”

An e-mail from NAASR has more:

Kazanjian was smuggled out of Ottoman Armenia in the 1890s and found his way to Worcester, Massachusetts, then one of the most ethnically diverse cities of its size in the United States. For several years, he worked at the Washburn & Moen wire mill that employed nearly one-third of the city’s Armenian community.

By the time World War I broke out, Kazanjian was chief of Harvard’s Prosthetic Dentistry Department, and had built both a thriving practice and a reputation for treating the most difficult cases. In 1915, Kazanjian accepted a three-month assignment with the Harvard Medical Unit to treat the wounded on the battlefields of France. Drawing on the dexterity with wire he had acquired as a teenager, his prosthetic work in Harvard’s dental lab, and his penchant for innovation, he devised new ways to reconstruct the faces of soldiers with horrendous facial injuries.

The publication of this book marks the 60th anniversary of the occasion when Martin Deranian, then a young dental student, introduced himself to Kazanjian. No matter how busy Deranian was-with his family, dental practice, teaching assignments, and community activities-he never stopped collecting stories, information, and artifacts about the life and career of the “miracle man.”

The author will talk about his book at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at the NAASR Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.

As 79-year-old “Dr. Death” Jack Kevorkian – a campaigner of assisted suicide – is set to leave prison coming Friday, the question of “right to die” will perhaps become a hot topic as the celebrity pathologist says he will “work to have it legalized.”

But I believe the fight to legalize assisted suicide needs to address the fundamental question first – is there a fundamental right to suicide? At the end of this entry I try to give an answer.

An article by the Associated Press at ABC News says, “as he prepares to leave prison June 1 after serving more than eight years of a 10- to 25-year sentence in the death of a Michigan man, Kevorkian will find that there’s still only one state that has a law allowing physician-assisted suicide Oregon.”

The only son of Armenian Genocide survivors, Kevorkian has been quoted as saying that as an Armenian he knows what pain and suffering is. But, I think, he may not see his struggle succeed during his lifetime because the root of the question – whether somebody has a right to die – has not been established; not even debated much.

This semester I took my first introductory class to law – Constitutional Law II with Denver Attorney Charles Norton who teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver. One of the students initiated a debate on “right to die” and continued arguing – with intuition – that is should be recognized in the Constitution. The debate was quite long but did not seem very academic. The professor discouraged the off topic and I was silent all the time. On my way to home something in me also said that a person should have the right to decide their fait, and I came up with a constitutional argument.

Several weeks after the first debate the topic was again brought up by the same student. After not talking for an hour, I finally presented my thesis and ended up including it in my final paper as a final thought (it was not part of the questions though). I guess if I end up feeling stronger about the issue and take time a PhD thesis could be written on this, but right now I just want to present the thought to those of you who have background in constitutional law. And by the way, please don’t plagiarize my thesis below.

Death is universally inevitable. One cannot have right to something that is already absolutely unavoidable. Yet voluntary conscience decision to end one’s own life is an extreme application of one’s right to pursue happiness (which can be established with the Palko formula of a fundamental right).

In short, there is no right to die but there is right to happiness which, in an extreme situation, may mean to end life.

With the Palko test (a Supreme Court case that established the precedential definition of a fundamental right with the following criteria: 1.”principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental;” 2. liberty and justice would not exist if the fundamental right was sacrificed), the United States Supreme Court will never recognize a right to suicide because it is not rooted in the traditions of the American people.

Quit contrary, America’s major religious [Judeo-Christian] tradition holds it a crime to commit suicide. In addition to the tradition, death is universally inevitable. One, I would think, cannot have a right to something that is already absolutely unavoidable.  

Fifth-century historian Yeghishe has said, “Unconscious death is death, conscious death is immortality.” Voluntary conscious decision to end one’s own life could be an extreme application of one’s right to pursue happiness.

Although a right to “pursue happiness” is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. constitution, it is mentioned in America’s birth certificate – the Declaration of Independence – which is a written document (if not THE written document) of America’s collective conscience.

If the Palko test is impartially applied, I think it would be an objective and valid argument to say that right to pursue happiness is a fundamental one and liberty and justice cannot exist without recognizing it. It may take a long time before the Court, if ever, recognizes such a right and only after its establishment it would be possible to argue that voluntary conscious decision to suicide is part of the fundamental right to pursue happiness.

So Dr. Kevorkian’s struggle may be a long one, and it may be wise to consider the Constitutional issues involved with it. I will charge only $15,000 an hour to present this argument to the United States Supreme Court. 😉

One of my acquaintances in Armenia – only 19 years old – has been acquitted from the army after having a heart attack. This was after several months of service during which he was apparently tortured. The army has forbidden him from being treated in a hospital perhaps fearing that could initiate a charge against his superiors. I have never heard of a teenager having heart attack, especially that the particular person used to be a hard worker and did everything to support his single mother and two sisters from a young age. Oppressed people are often triple persecuted almost anywhere (this is why you have poor kids from America fighting in Iraq)…

Media violence and real life tragedies – such as the ongoing genocide in Darfur – may have desensitized us all. I remember telling my class earlier this year that I felt horrible for having become desensitized.

I guess stories like the following have “contributed” to my desensitization (after having heard this one, I became “immune” to other stories):

During the genocide in Rwanda, one way of killing women was throwing them down the toilet. How? Well, the “toilets” were actually wells in the rural areas used as restrooms. There was no sanitary or water system at some places. Some Tutsi women, after they saw their family killed, were thrown down these wells. But before that, there fingers were chopped off so that they could not climb up and would drown in the toilet. This particular incident has really stayed in my mind from my 2005 genocide studies course where one of the witnesses to the Genocide shared the story with us.

Yesterday, nevertheless, I was told of another particular crime against humanity that shocked my conscience. An American colleague told me that her step-grandfather had participated in Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam war and used small Vietnamese children as protection. I was not sure what she meant so I had her to explain it to me again. Apparently, the American soldier tied live Vietnamese children to his chest so that when he was shot at the kids would get shot instead and he would survive. I was too disgusted to ask more particulars (such as how many kids he had killed this way), but I managed to find out that he has not been charged for these crimes against humanity.

No wonder why the U.S. did not sign on to the 1948 U.N. genocide convention until the late 1980s. I also remember that America refused to sign it until it was guaranteed that no American would be charged under that! What the…

Anyhow, I had changed my mind and was not planning to share this story at Blogian until a few minutes ago until I heard of a similarly disgusting and largely unreported crime that happened in Armenia a few days ago.

A young soldier of the Armenian army was shot to death on his forehead after laughing at one of his superiors in Karabakh. The teen was from the Republic of Armenia and was transferred to serve in the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh – a de jure part of Azerbaijan and a de facto part of Armenia. In case you didn’t know, largely sons of poor families in the Republic of Armenia get to serve in Karabakh because their parents cannot bribe the officials to have their children assigned to nearby bases.

This particular family is even poorer – to the extent that they cannot travel to Karabakh for the trial. Having left with no choice, now they are saying that their son is not a citizen of Karabakh and he should not have been taken to Karabakh in the first place. This is an argument used by the Azerbaijani government and they will most likely take a note of this incident to their propaganda. Unfortunately, Azerbaijani soldiers are treated no better – if not worse – in their own army to the extent that some of them choose to stay in Armenian prisons (after being captured for crossing the border) than to go back to the Azerbaijani army. One reason is perhaps Azerbaijani soldiers tend to get a long jail time after being turned back to Azerbaijan from Armenia. The xenophobic conspiracy theory says they must have cooperated with Armenians otherwise they wouldn’t be arrested in the first place. An Azerbaijani journalist was similarly placed to jail for traveling Karabakh and talking to Armenians.

I guess the bottom line is that both Azeri and Armenian soldiers are facing torture in their own armies. This is really scary and sad and makes one wondering of the crimes they would commit against each other if the war restarted.

This is a poorly organized entry with few transformations… I guess I just tried to share feelings and thoughts that had been bothering me in the last few days.

My grandpa used to say politics is the biggest prostitution. Via ANCA.

WASHINGTON, DC – Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, who recently closed a major deal to serve as a foreign agent for the Turkish government, has already begun lobbying on behalf of his new client against the very same Armenian Genocide Resolution that he once vigorously supported while a Member of Congress, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Gephardt’s sharp departure from his principled stand for Armenian Genocide recognition was highlighted this week in a Dear Colleague letter circulated to all Members of Congress by Representatives Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the Co-Chairman of the Armenian Caucus, Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lead sponsor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the only Armenian American serving in the U.S. Congress. In their letter, they wrote: “Former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) is now employed by the Turkish government to dissuade Members of Congress from supporting H.Res.106, the Armenian Genocide Resolution. But in 2000, as a Member of Congress, he wrote to Speaker Hastert urging immediate floor consideration of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, claiming ‘this issue requires little if any additional deliberation by the House.’”

A documentary about Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish-American born in Iran and a former FBI translator who was fired after accussing FBI for cooperating with America’s enemies, is now available online at http://www.veoh.com/videos/v354689MGcbpamf&source=embedVideo.

This documentary reveals how a foreign spy ring with links to “Al-Qaeda” has been discovered working within the FBI. Sibel Edmonds began work … more » This documentary reveals how a foreign spy ring with links to “Al-Qaeda” has been discovered working within the FBI. Sibel Edmonds began work at the FBI translating wire taps in an investigation into a foreign spy ring operating in the US. She became suspicious of her colleagues after discovering some mistranslations and was then invited to join the spy ring which had evidently infiltrated the FBI itself. She went straight to her bosses and rather than being hailed as a hero she was promptly sacked. After going public on 60 Minutes she has been officially gagged.

Edmonds, being a Turkish woman, also reported nationalist Turkish groups had bribed the House Speaker Hastert to kill a bill recognizing the Armenian Genocide, a taboo subject in Turkey.

via Rastibini

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

In July 2006 an Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks reported to the police that she had been raped by a non-Native man. She gave a description of the alleged perpetrator and city police officers told her that they were going to look for him. She waited for the police to return and when they failed to do so, she went to the emergency room for treatment. A support worker told Amnesty International that the woman had bruises all over her body and was so traumatized that she was talking very quickly. She said that, although the woman was not drunk, the Sexual Assault Response Team nevertheless “treated her like a drunk Native woman first and a rape victim second”. The support worker described how the woman was given some painkillers and some money to go to a non-Native shelter, which turned her away because they also assumed that she was drunk: “This is why Native women don’t report. It’s creating a breeding ground for sexual predators.”

The paragraph above is from a study by Amnesty International, released on April 24, 2007, that has concluded, “One in three Native American or Alaska Native women will be raped at some point in their lives. Most do not seek justice because they know they will be met with inaction or indifference.”

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

According to the report, Native American women are about 3 times more likely to be raped in America than other women.  Moreover,

According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men. (This is in the case when most rapes in America are perpetrated by the same racial group – Blogian.)

The violation against Native American women is shocking and reminds of all the trouble and suffering that these people have been going through for hundreds of years.  Reading Lakota Woman earlier this year – a book by Mary Crow Dog about her experience as a Native American woman – I could not believe that even in the 1970s there was cultural genocide going on against the Natives.   But it turns out it is going on today, in 2007.

© Blogian 2007 – Pow Wow Native American Festival in Denver

I think the rape of Native American women is continuation of the cultural genocide.  But whatever you name it, it is happening and needs immediate reaction, especially given the Amnesty International charge that the US government is to blame for not protecting these women and children.

Interestingly, I brought similar topic up with my Native American studies professor Glenn Morris two weeks ago when I asked him what was the situation with human trafficking among Native American reservations (having found out about domestic human trafficking in the US, I had figured out that most vulnerable of US communities – the “Indian” reservations – would be a source for violating women and children).  Prof. Morris didn’t know whether there was human trafficking, but he said there were lots of rape.

The full study is available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510352007.

The ‘apology’ quoting America’s Ambassador to Armenia John Evans for saying he shouldn’t have referred to the Armenian genocide as such, turns out, was a fabrication by the State Department.

As the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, and a career diplomat, Evans knew the uses of circumlocution. Some words, he understood, must be avoided. But then, speaking in Fresno, Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif., two years ago, Evans violated U.S. policy by declaring that Armenians were the victims of a genocide from 1915 to 1923.  

When his comments became widely known, the State Department issued apologies. The statements included made-up quotes that Evans now says others crafted and attributed to him.

“Let’s put it this way: I had no role in it,” he said of the statements.

LINK

According to the Russian-language “Real Azerbaijan,” Iranian citizens are fleeing to bordering Azerbaijan with a fear of U.S. attack against the Islamic Republic.

The report says local Azerbaijani authorities in the Nakhichevan region have searched the basements of multi-story buildings where Iranian escapees find refuge.  After confirming that there are Iranian citizens in these basements, local authorities have decided to help refugees by making the basements more “comfortable.”

If you think you have the best arguments to convince the U.S. Department of State that, for example, the war in Iraq is wrong or the Armenian genocide should be recognized by America, you may me correct.   But policy is policy, and not even the best argument can bring any change in the Bush administration.

Click at this Hairenik video to see Rep. Schiff vs. Secretary Rice.