Deliberately ignoring my own mention that Mehmet Sait Uluışık is careful not to use the word “genocide,” the “Worldwide Circassian Brotherhood” states that the Circassian professor is not researching the Armenian “extermination” but the general history of the Circassians in Turkey.
Although the website’s response comes as nationalistic, it, nonetheless, seems to attempt making a well-taken point that not all Circassians were involved in the Genocide:
Истории известны имена видных черкесов и даже одной черкешенки, которые в Гамидие, Карсе, Хаджине, Геклуне, Шардере, Азизие и др. пунктах не только не принимали участия в грабежах, но спасли много христиан, иногда и с опасностью для себя. Известно так же, что Каймакам Феки (Вакке), по происхождению черкес – единственное влиятельное административное лицо, в районе которого не было пролито человеческой крови.
[It is known in history the names of important Circassians – and even of one Circassian woman – who not only didn’t participate in lootings in Hamidye, Kars, Hajin, Gyoklun, Serder and Azizye but saved many Christians [Armenians] sometimes putting their own lives at risk. It is known that Kaymakam Fekki (Vakkı) – from Circassian background – was the only influential administrative official whose region wasn’t shed by human blood.]
The article is right to point out that there were Circassians who saved Armenian lives – just like there were Turks and Kurds who did the same. These Circassians must be honored and remembered for their bravery.
Nonetheless, the “Worldwide Circassian Brotherhood” shouldn’t freak out because a Circassian scholar has decided to find out the role of some of his people in the Armenian Genocide. Instead, they should be proud of him and remind the rest of us – as they already did – that there were also Circassians who helped the Armenians.
Coming to Prof. Uluışık’s particular research and his interest in the Armenian Genocide, I am not at liberty to disclose the sources of my information.
An American decided to write a book about famous churches around the world.
On his first day he was inside a church taking photographs when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read ‘$10,000 per call.’
The American, being intrigued, asked a priest who was strolling by what the telephone was used for. The priest replied that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God. The American thanked the priest and went along his way.
Next stop was in Europe. There, at a very large cathedral, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it.
A nun told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God.
‘O.K., thank you,’ said the American.
He then traveled to Africa, Australia, ….
In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same ‘$10,000 per call’ sign under it.
The American, traveled to Armenia to see if Armenia had the same phone.
He arrived in Armenia, and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it read ’40 cents per call.’
The American was surprised so he asked the priest about the sign.
‘Father, I’ve traveled all over the world and I’ve seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I’m told that it is a direct line to Heaven, but in the price was $10,000 per call.
Why is it so cheap here?’
The priest smiled and answered, ‘You’re in Armenia now, son – it’s a local call.’
THIS may be one of the biggest chocolate weeks of the year, but a shortage of bonbons isn’t likely in these parts. There are at least 15 chocolate producers in the state, from tiny artisanal boutiques to companies that started small and grew over several generations.
One of the first chocolate makers was Peter Paul Halajian, an Armenian immigrant, who began making chocolates at home in the Naugatuck Valley in the early 20th century. In 1919 he started a wholesale candy business — the Peter Paul Manufacturing Company in New Haven — and soon was producing Mounds and Almond Joy. […]
YEREVAN, Armenia – A plane carrying 21 people has crashed on takeoff from Armenia‘s capital, but there were no deaths reported, the head of the country’s civil aviation authority said.
The plane, a Canadair CRJ-100, was heading for Minsk, Belarus, when it flipped over on the runway at Zvartnots Airport and burst into flames, Avtiom Movsesian said. He said there were 18 passengers and three crew members aboard.
He did not immediately know the airline to which the plane belonged, but Russian news reports said it was a plane of Belarus‘ Belavia Airlines.
According to Earthtimes.org, the faithful in Buenos Aires don’t have to travel to Jerusalem to see the history of the world’s largest religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In a Disneyland-style attraction park, the website says, visitors can see history and beliefs recreated in front of their eyes. Every 45 minutes, for example, the “resurrection” of Christ takes place in the park that has registered 3 million visitors since 1999.
Buenos Aires offers the first multireligious theme park in the world, advertised as an escape to Jerusalem in the age of Jesus Christ. Although Christianity plays the leading role, people of other faiths, including Muslims and Jews, would also get their money’s worth at Tierra Santa, unlike in purely Christian parks, its managers said. Inside the facility, there is a mosque, a Jewish temple and even a Mahatma Gandhi statue.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, although the weather forecast had predicted rain, the stands were full before a replica of Mount Golgotha. People looked up to the sky, waiting for a mechanical interpretation of a miracle. Eventually, an 18-metre-tall statue of Jesus rose slowly from the fake rock.
[…]
Its first day was timed for historical reasons. “We wanted Argentina to contribute something special to the 2,000th jubilee of the birth of Jesus,” said Maria Antonia Ferro, director and co-founder of Tierra Santa.
So far, 3 million people have visited the park.
“Apart from what visitors learn about culture and history, the park also has a very particular mysticism,” she said. “People come back because they find inner peace here.”
At the 7-hectare facility, built for 7 million dollars, there are now more than 30 replicas of historic places aimed at giving visitors a glimpse at everyday life in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago as well as representations of biblical scenes.
With the help of more than 500 life-sized figures and scores of actors and artists, the ancient world comes alive. Restaurants offer Armenian and Lebanese food, and visitors can buy little busts of Nefertiti as souvenirs.
“I have already been here several times,” said a woman named Carla, a Catholic with her two children and mother-in-law at the park. “We are very religious, and since we are not in a position to travel to Israel, this is a good alternative.”
Florencia, 20, just wanted “to enjoy the good weather” with her friends. She complained that religion is often put forward in boring ways.
“That is not the case here,” said the woman who defines herself as religious.
Although the park director described Tierra Santa as “a sort of Disneyland,” individual religions are supportive of the enterprise.
“Without the support of the [Catholic] Church, it would have been impossible to set up the park,” Ferro said.
There, children can experience biblical history under the guidance of lay preachers. Some even have their first communion at the park.
“Muslims pray here at the mosque, and the ‘Western Wall’ is an important place for Jews,” Ferro said.
Many place pieces of paper with their wishes in the wall’s cracks. Once a year, employees of the Israeli embassy pick up the notes and send them to Jerusalem to the real Western Wall, the last remaining wall of Jerusalem’s ancient temple, which was destroyed by the Roman Empire.
A Seattle-based young Turkish lady who, as I have reported, courageously writes about the Armenian Genocide has been compelled to tell her family story after a fellow Turk indirectly but publicly questioned her “Turkishness.” The blogger’s response, as summarized in a comment, was direct:
My education, upbringing and cultural exposure has always been in Turkey and amongst Turks. My name is Turkish. My religion is Islam. My mother tongue was and still is Turkish. My beginning years and life began in Turkey. I have had little elementary exposure to much else, regarding my own ethnicity, save for my experience in the university. My parents always saw the Turkish girl in me and it was always very clear I was Turkish, it is what I feel and where I feel most comfortable defining myself. There has been no argument in regards to this. There is still none, so I am not entirely sure how else I should answer your question.
And in the actual post talking about her roots – that date back to 1345 – the Turkish blogger gives details of her ancestors. One of them, she says, was the first milk mother of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
My great great grandmother, Aziz Haydar Hanim, was a ferocious figure to be reckoned with! In Pars Tuglaci’s book, Tarih Boyunca Istanbul Adalari (found in Robinson Crusoe bookstores in Istanbul), he writes of her fiery speeches alongside Ataturk. She championed the causes of women’s rights and immigration rights for those coming into the new Republic from the Balkans and even her hometown of Selanik, that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
On the night of Ataturk’s birth, a ragged and tired Zubeyde Hanim, came to my great great grandmother. She came because she had no way to nourish her new born. Because Aziz Haydar Hanim was not only a school teacher/professor but a nurse by trade, she was the first milk mother of Ataturk. Ataturk always treated her like a second mother and until her final days, the albums my family has preserved show a smiley faced Ataturk hugging and embracing her, like one does a dear old aunt. Those old, dusty, torn photographs always brought a smile to my face.
Wow, a descendant of Ataturk’s ‘second mother’ challenging the ‘sacred’ establishment defended in the very name of Ataturk.
The story of the Turkish lady from Seattle is almost surreal. And her story is just another example of hope for lasting Armenian-Turkish friendship. Hrant Dink didn’t die for no reason; I can feel him smiling.
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.
AZERBAIJAN’S ruling elite has grown rich from oil and now it is to acquire the ultimate status symbol: a monument to the president’s father designed by one of the world’s most sought-after architects.
The Azeri government has commissioned Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born Briton best known for designing a cutting-edge plant for the carmaker BMW in Leipzig, to build a cultural centre in honour of Heydar Aliyev, the man who founded the ruling dynasty.
The undulating glass and aluminium structure will rise up alongside oil-blackened Soviet-era factories in the capital of a country that just a few years ago was in economic chaos and reeling from a war with its neighbour, Armenia.
It will also deepen the posthumous cult of personality around the former KGB officer who ran Azerbaijan for three decades before his death in 2003. His son, Ilham Aliyev, a reformed playboy, took over the presidency.
“This centre will be an example of respect for the legacy of Heydar Aliyev and become a symbol of Azerbaijan’s modern capital,” Ilham Aliyev said at a ceremony marking the start of work.
The first and last American Congressman who was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust died at the age of 80. A champion of human rights Rep. Lantos will be remembered for his courage to speak the truth.
Representative Tom Lantos of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, died on Monday. He was 80.
[…]
The congressman was known as a strong defender of human rights, an ardent supporter of Israel and an outspoken critic of Communism. He also worked for stronger protections for animals and the environment.
“Tom was a living reminder,” President Bush said in a statement Monday, “that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men.”
Mr. Bush called Mr. Lantos “a man of character and a champion of human rights,” and cited his role as a founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, created in 1983.
Mr. Lantos voted in 2002 to authorize the Bush administration to use force against Iraq. But as Foreign Affairs chairman he criticized the administration’s handling of the war and was a co-sponsor of a resolution last year opposing Mr. Bush’s buildup of troops.
It was his defense of human rights, though, that most clearly defined a Congressional career that lasted nearly three decades. That focus was an outgrowth of his experience during the Holocaust, in which much of his family, including his mother, perished.
Mr. Lantos, a Hungarian-born Jew who was 16 when the Nazis occupied his native country, once said his entire life had served as preparation for the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Though he held the post for little more than a year, the committee took a number of bold steps in that time, demanding, for instance, that the government of Japan apologize for wartime sex slavery by its military and declaring Turkey’s mass killing of Armenians in World War I an act of genocide, a move that angered the Bush administration and nearly provoked a confrontation with the Turkish government.
He was frequently critical of China, citing its record on human rights, and was arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington in 2006 during a protest against the mass killings in Darfur.
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.
