Let’s for a minute think about the American administration and the issue of officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide. America is in a tough position. It has never denied the Armenian Genocide, and has lately insisted that Turkey should be the first to recognize the Armenian Genocide as such, not America.

This policy was first revealed in an unnamed interview to the Los Angeles Times that I reported a month ago. An official U.S. press release from February 8, 2007, now quotes Asst. Secretary of State Daniel Fried stating the same idea:

I’ve always been of the view that democratic countries need to take a hard look at the dark spots in their own history. And by the way, I start with my own country. We do have dark spots in the United States. Our past includes a past in which slavery was an institution that existed in this country for centuries. We fought a civil war to end it and still its affects linger to the present day. That is a dark spot and we had to confront it honestly.

Our treatment in the 20^th Century of Japanese-Americans in World War II; our treatment of American Indians were dark spots in our history. We had to deal with this honestly and painfully.

Our view is that Turkey is going through a process of looking at its own history with Armenians. The killings in 1915 were horrific. They need to be looked at honestly and without taboos, but not because Americans say Turkey should look at this. It should be looked at because Turks in the process of building a democracy and deepening a democracy are looking at these issues for their own reasons.

I think this process is going on in Turkey. It is painful, it is emotional. There are nationalist forces and it was an extreme nationalist, it seems, who murdered Hrant Dink and there are millions of Turks who reject this dark legacy of nationalism including the hundreds of thousands of Turks who marched in the streets of Istanbul at the Hrant Dink funeral saying things like we are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink, which I interpret as Turkey’s rejection of nationalism.

So my argument to the Congress will be that this natural, painful process in Turkey needs to be allowed to unfold with encouragement and support, but not pressure from the outside. That will be my argument.

Now I don’t expect that everyone will accept it, but I will make the case as best I can. And it won’t be just me. There will be more senior people than I making the case and pointing out that Turkish-U.S. relations should not be damaged for no good purpose.

But this is obviously a very emotional issue and I believe it is in Turkey’s interest for its own reasons to take steps to examine its past and to reach out to Armenians worldwide and to Armenia despite the fact that Turks don’t like all of the things that Armenian communities say.

What Fried is saying is actually rational, if you insist on the idea of “Turkey reaching out to Armenia.” The 1919 court martials in Turkey to punish the perpetrators of the Armenian massacres were pushed by Britain, which occupied what would be Istanbul at that time. When the first criminal, Kemal Bey, was hanged in the Bayazkirt square as a result of the trial, many Muslims marched in the streets calling the executed murderer a Turk victim of foreign occupation. They would not accept punishment of their compatriot criminals when the British were the ones who pushe. (this is from Taner Akcam’s A SHAMEFUL ACT book that I am almost finished reading) .

What the U.S. administration is saying is that look, if we pass a resolutin acknowledging the Armenian Genocide we will end up promoting Turkish nationalism and maybe lose the hope for Turkey ever recognizing the Genocide. The claims is basically that they want the best for Armenians (as always).

This new argumentation seems very reasonable and even compelling, although Mr. Fried would not be qualified as the most honest politician (you figure out why).

If we agree with Mr. Fried’s compelling argumentation, the theory still lacks in answering how and if ever Turkey will come to acknowledge its crime against the Armenian nation. If the American adminisration finds that Turks need to recognize the genocide before America does so, why is America ignoring the growth of denialist institutions established by the Republic of Turkey in major American universities? Freedom of Speech? Perhaps. But these are institutions established by foreign governments to spread a particular agenda and fabricate history. The same rhetoric was not used by America not to to fire its ambassador John Evans when he acknowledged the Genocide saying though his statement did not reflect the American foreign policy. On the other hand, it is also true that the Bush administration did not prevent Andew Goldberg’s “The Armenian Genocide” from airing on PBS last year.

Can’t the administration still tolerate the passage of the resolution in Congress and tell Turkey that it doesn’t reflect the administration’s position? Congress represents the people of America, and if the people want to have an official proclamation acknowledging the Armenian Genocide as such, the administration can disagree and tell Turkey they are still cool.

The other question is whether the people of Turkey will ever recognize the Genocide. There are few, if any, countries that have voluntarily addmitted of being guilty of genocide. Germany was not the organizer of the Nuremberg trials. Cambodia’s perpetrators are still unpunished and say they still “do not see a reason” why they would “have killed our own people.” Rwandan history is not told in Rwanda. The Sudanese president denies the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and even “open minded” America, in the words of Asst. Secretary State Daniel Fried himself, finds the genocide against the Native Americans a “treatment” that was a “dark spot.”

Again, I still find Mr. Fried’s arguments reasonable. But as the case of Hastert turned out to have been, there are things that we may not know at this point. After all, Fried said he would be lobbying the Congress not to pass the resolution:

Later today I am going up to meet with key figures in the Congress about this bill and I expect our efforts will continue.

It is not clear who the “key figures” are, especially when Mr. Fried said in the official interview transcript that a meeting between the Turkish foreign minister with the House Speaker Pelosi did not take place (apparently she refused to mee with Gul), because

The Speaker, let me put it this way, does not always listen to all the advice from the administration.

Being asked about the resolution again, Mr. Fried finally gets to the point as close as he can get. He says he wants more people – like the only Turk who has won the Nobel Prize and been tried for “insulting Turkishness” after referring to one-million Armenian deaths – in Turkey to approach the subject themselves and be honest about history by taking America’s example:

The debate in Turkey about its history, the position of writers such as Orhan Pamuk, the position of intellectuals, the participation of Turkish scholars in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission some six years ago is all the result not of any outside pressure. Orhan Pamuk doesn’t care at all what the Americans think. It’s the result of internal Turkish processes. I applaud these, and I hope that Turkey for its own reasons will do everything it can to reach out to Armenia and Armenians.

Great nations are not afraid to confront the dark spots of their past. The United States had to do so and we were not our best selves, we were not true to our best traditions until we had done so.

Ken Davitian, aka Azamat for Borat, has told andPOP his original audition tape for Borat is supposed to be included in the DVD bonus (coming out in a month!). Why? Ken Davitian had apparently acted during entering the room and fooled the real producer of Borat and Sasha Cohen, aka Borat, himself. Wow, wow, wiyaaaaaaaa.

From the time he entered the room, Davitian was Azamat. He knew they were looking for someone to play a frumpy, fish-out-of-water, Eastern European, and they didn’t realize he was acting. He handed them a wrinkled 8×10 photo of himself that he had folded in his pocket. Davitian realized that he had the room fooled and had to reveal his true identity.

Funnily enough, Davitian has fooled the interviewer of andPOP too.

However, Davitian reveals, that [nude fighting] scene had one deception in the form of a strategically placed black bar.

“I can tell you,” he says, “that the black bar that you saw while he [Borat] was running was an exaggeration and not necessary.”

See the full size by clicking here.

Mehmet Demirkol (this professor?) has sent the above map to foreign correspondents in Turkey saying,

Do not try to play with the borders of this country! If you do this then we would also start to play with the borders of our neighbors. Do not force us to use power against you.

The map says the “Armenian problem” will be eliminated by “taking control” of the Armenian Republic. It also calles for the “conquer” of Syria and other territories.

The message was sent on February 7, 2007 to the press and forwarded to an Armenian-Turkish workshop by one of the journalists who got it.

AP via Yahoo. Turkish youths hold a banner that reads: ‘We are from Trabzon. We are Turkish. We are all Mustafa Kemal’ as a reaction of the killing of the ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Trabzon, Turkey, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007, during a Turkish Super League soccer match between Trabzonspor and Kayserispor.

First, the youths fantasized about killing. Then they carried out the crimes, emboldened by their violent imaginations. Eight suspects from Trabzon, including the alleged teenage triggerman, are under arrest in the Jan. 19 killing of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul.

The slaying prompted international condemnation as well as debate within Turkey about free speech, and whether state institutions were tolerant of militant nationalists.

Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk, is the founder of modern Turkey. (AP Photo/Tekin Atay)

America’s so-called president George aBush has introduced his glorious budget, that like last year’s, gives reduced economic and military aid to Armenia and much more aid to Armenia’s friendly neighbor and the most tolerant country in the world – Oilzerbaijan. Moreover, the Bushdickcandy administration is apparently cutting humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Here is why and how, according to Blogian (this is also what exactly happened last year).

1. Bush hates the “Armenian lobby,” which even being not so-powerful (to say the least), can have Congress to keep the aid parity for Armenia and Oilzerbaijan (because it is retarded otherwise).

2. The Turkish foreign minister is in America gulling candy to convince bush to stop the Congress from passing the Armenian genocide resolution. They need something to entertain the loshtak.
3. Bush will swap his own daughter with Borat before recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Bush wants both Armenians and Turks be happy. So he will make Armenians angry as Gull in Bulling in America, but will later let the glorious Armenian lobby convince the Congress to give more aid to Armenia and some aid to Nagorno-Karabakh (by making Turks and Azeris angry). As Armenians will celebrate their unbelievable glory of conquering the Congress (and the Turkish media will condemn The Protocols of Ararat) and convincing them that it is wrong to give more economic and military aid to the most tolerant country in the world than to democratic Armenia, they will find out that the genocide recognition resolution was killed. But hey, they still changed the budget!

In the words of George W. Bush himself, “More and more of our [oil] imports come from overseas.” He was referring to Canada and Mexico.

(WARNING: PLEASE NOTE THE ABOVE PHOTOGRAPH DEPICTS NUDE WOMEN – DO NOT CLICK ON THE PHOTO – WHICH WILL MAKE IT LARGER – IF YOU WILL BE OFFENDED)

I always thought that the “Jerusalem Pride Parade” was for advocating for gay rights in Israel, but apparently it has another message too.

I came across to the above photograph through a Colorado blog, Fire Witch Rising.  It depicts women from the Parade with Palestianian-style scarfs and nude breasts.  Actually, most of them are not Palestinian but are in fact Israeli women.

The Hebrew writing on their nude bodies reads, “I have sex with Palestinian women.”

Although controversial and provocative, the photograph seems to have a message for reconciliation and reminds of the American “make love, no war” slogan.

Interestingly, I never read/listened in the mainstream media that the pride parade had a reconciliation theme.  I remember a 2005 New York Times frontpage photograph that depicted Jerusalem’s Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian spiritual leaders condemning the parade.

Maybe it does take taking some prejudice off for establishing peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

Reading Katia Peltekian’s research about the six Armenians of the ship Titanic, most of whom died, I remembered now-gone TV show Hamaynkapatker (Hamainqapatker) from Armenia that once asked how many Armenians were on Titanic. The “right” answer was two, but as it turns out from Peltekian’s entry, Hamaynkapatker’s conspiracy theory that Armenians always find their way around was, unfortunately, wrong.

The photograph of the survived Armenian who did not have a ticket to Titanic. From Encylopedia Titanica

All of the Armenians were third-class passengers, and one of them, who actually survived, did not even have a ticket. That survivor, according to one newspaper headline, “Dressed in Women’s Clothes to Get off Titanic.” But witnesses said “he actually used a rope to leap into lifeboat #10 and save himself.”

Lifeboat #10: the boat with the Armenian. Although most sources say Krekorian, the unticket Armenian was saved by this boat, Euronet says the other Armenian survivor, David Vartunian was on it. Either way, this boat saved an Armenian passenget of Titanic. Photo from Euronet.

One could also add that the first movie to be shown in a movie theater in eastern Armenia was the few-minute-long old Titanic movie from 1910s. That is why there is an engraving of that movie either on Armenia’s history museum (in Yerevan) or the Moscow theatre also in Yerevan (both are on the Abovian street within a 5 minute walking distance from each other- I can’t recall which exact building it was) .

The Armenians who died on Titanic, had left wives and children in Turkish Armenia… in 1912.

UPDATE: What Reuters reports as a nationalist demonstration, was actually an anti-Armenian gathering in the Armenian populated district of Istanbul, where Turkish nationalists chanted things like “Armenians should know their limits.” According to a group e-mail I received from a Turk in Istanbul, “Yesterday a crowd of people gathered in the center of Samatya (an area, mostly inhabited by Armenians) and shouted anti-Armenian slogans like ‘Armenians should know their limits.’ Police came and dispersed them.”
Photographs distributed by Reuters via YahooNews show a group of nationalist Turk “protesters carrying a banner that reads, ‘We all are Mustafa Kemal. We all are Turks’ during a demonstration in Istanbul February 4, 2007. A group of nationalist protesters on Sunday demonstrated in reaction to banners that read ‘We all are Armenians’ carried by those who attended the funeral ceremony of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink last month.”

Several Turkish children were wrapped in Turkish flags and placed in the front of the demonstration. As always, Reuters “forgot” to mention that there was also, at least, one Azerbaijani flag during the apparent anti-Armenian protest.

Why are nationalists using Turkish children again and again? Wasn’t the 17-year-old kid enough?

TIME magazine has posted an entry on February 2, 2007, telling of a five-century-old fresco by Giorgio Vasari that some Italian researchers believe is the code to the location of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting.

Vasari’s fresco has a famous phrase – Cerca Trova, that means seek and you shall find it, or փնտրիր եվ կգտնես:

Writes TIME:

Maurizio Seracini is a serious man, with a seriously square jaw and dark tweed jacket. And he is being taken more seriously than ever now that Italy’s Culture Ministry has committed the nation to a full-fledged pursuit of the so-called Lost Leonardo. Seracini, a forensic expert in Renaissance art and architecture, is trying to prove that The Battle of Anghiari–the mural once considered the greatest of all of Leonardo’s masterpieces–lies buried in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, behind a wall covered by a mural–a vision of the Battle of Marciano–that was painted in the 16th century. LINK

The article made me laugh, not because I find these researchers’ quest unwise or something, but because it reminded me of an incident that happened at the Colorado State Capitol earlier this week. As I pointed to the “picture” of George Washington in rose onyx (the Capitol wainscoting material that is not found anywhere else in the world) done by nature during a tour for a 4th grade class, one of the kids shouted, “The Da Vinci Code!”

He was making a reference to my question in which I had asked which U.S. president would not brash his teeth when he was a kid. It leads to the discussion of Washington’s fake teeth and big chin, which is clearly seen in the Capitol rose onyx stone. There was another reason that the kid thought Mr. Simon had just solved the Da Vinci Code. Right next to George Washington’s “picture,” there is a picture of a turkey (the bird), which is “running” after George Washington because the latter did not select turkey as the national bird of America.

Since I cannot locate a photograph of Da Vinci’s coloradode, aka the running turkey after big-chin George Washington, I decided to post a photo of another code (*caugh*) found in the State Capitol. Pictured is Amanda and cerca trova.

The Hollywoodization – a cultural aspect of Globalization – has long established itself in the world. In Armenia, for example, you can already get an illegal copy of “Night At The Museum” with a Russian translation, while it is not even out on DVD in America yet.

Yet ask an average resident of Armenia about “Vodka Lemon,” and they will ask, “What?” Tell them it was the winner of the San Marco Prize at the 2003 Venice Film Festival in Italy and they may get interested, especially if they find out the movie was filmed in Armenia and features Armenian as one of the languages.

“Oh, that movie about Kurds?”

Yes, yes. That movie about Kurds (it is actually about every post Soviet resident) is far better than 100 Hollywood movies placed together, and will actually make you think, laugh and cry. Those of you who have not watched it yet, Simon says, do it before you die (there is a semi-rape in the movie if it is the price to make some of you interested).

Why wouldn’t they show Vodka Lemon on Armenian TV stations?