The California Courier Online, April 25, 2019
1 – By Denying the Armenian Genocide,
Turkish Leaders Publicize it Even More
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Armenian Billionaire donating money for Notre Dame
3 – The Kardashian Clan Is Backing UCLA’s Newest Medical Center
4- Armenia becomes the first partner in St. Jude’s global
pediatric cancer fight
5- Course examines truth of medieval history depicted in hit
series Game of Thrones
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1 – By Denying the Armenian Genocide,
Turkish Leaders Publicize it Even More
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
More than a century after the mass crime of Genocide against
Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, most Turks still feel self-conscious
as April 24 approaches and whenever someone refers to their Crime
Against Humanity.
Many Turkish officials and journalists feel compelled to defend their
country’s tarnished reputation by trying to cover up the Genocide
committed by their ancestors. By doing so, they automatically
associate themselves with the guilt of their forefathers and in turn
become guilty themselves for denying one of the most heinous crimes in
the history of mankind.
Why would Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, on April 15,
2019, falsely claim that Turkey “has not committed any genocide” in
its history? How many leaders of other countries have made such a
statement? Cavusoglu knows well that the Ottoman Turks did commit
Genocide as he is desperately trying to conceal their crimes.
Cavusoglu and his fellow denialists do not seem to realize that the
more they proclaim their innocence, the more they affiliate themselves
with the Genocide and become accessories to that barbaric crime.
Each time Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his underlings
talk about the Genocide, even in a dismissive manner, they are
actually publicizing worldwide the facts of the Genocide and informing
everyone that Turks are accused of committing Genocide.
Interestingly, Cavusoglu warned that “the Turkish government will not
stay silent against some countries trying to lecture Turkey on
history.” This is exactly what Armenians want him to do. The more he
talks about the Genocide, the more he exposes the Turkish crime to the
world. Cavusoglu and other Turkish denialists find themselves in the
ironic situation of “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” In
other words, if they remain silent against the accusations of
Genocide, they would be acknowledging it, and if they deny it, they
would be spreading the news about their historic crime. There is no
positive outcome for them. They are caught in the horns of a serious
dilemma.
In early April, at a NATO meeting in Antalya, Turkey, Cavusoglu
criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for declaring April 24 as
a National Day in France for the commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide. By lashing out at Pres. Macron, the Turkish Foreign Minister
made the situation even worse for his own country. In protest, a
French Parliamentarian walked out of the NATO meeting, which was
covered by the worldwide media, further publicizing the Armenian
Genocide.
This incident caused some hateful Turks to threaten the life of the
French Parliamentarian, which further disseminated the true facts of
the Armenian Genocide.
Another example of Turkish self-consciousness is the article by
commentator Ozan Ceyhun in the Daily Sabah newspaper. He correctly
wrote that “April 24 is used as a day for ‘getting even,’ by those who
do not wish to see Turkey as an EU member due to various reasons,
those who do not wish to see it become stronger in the region, or
countries like the U.S. that want to see Turkey as a dependent state.”
My response is that no one wants to see a brutal and unrepentant
country as a member of international military and economic alliances.
Turkish leaders are the ones forcing themselves out of such alliances
by behaving in an uncivilized and undemocratic manner. They have no
one else to blame but themselves.
Ceyhun wonders why no one cares about the opinions of “Armenians
living in Turkey.” The answer is very simple. Armenians in Turkey,
having survived the Genocide and many other repressions since then,
know all too well that if they dared to say anything negative about
Turkey’s oppressive regime, they will be locked up, if not killed.
The Turkish commentator then shamelessly mentions Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink who was assassinated by a Turk for expressing himself on
Turkish-Armenian relations. Ceyhun selectively quotes from Dink as
stating that outsiders should not meddle in the “events” that happened
in the past and that this issue should be resolved between Armenians
and Turks. Dink had made many statements which were often
contradictory depending on whether he made them while he was inside or
outside Turkey.
It suits Turkish denialists to quote statements that third parties
should not meddle in the Armenian-Turkish issue. If it were not for
the Armenian Diaspora lobbying the international community for
decades, the Armenian Genocide would have been forgotten long ago.
Furthermore, Ceyhun prefers that outsiders listen to the views of
Turkish Armenians who are suppressed and are unable to express their
honest opinions on the Armenian Genocide. As immediate descendants of
the Genocide, they know exactly what happened to their ancestors, but
they cannot talk about it openly, fearing for their lives.
Just as irritating are the Azerbaijani denials of the Armenian
Genocide. Fortunately, it is easier to deal with the Azeris as they
are not as powerful as Turkey and Armenians have already shown their
power by recovering their historic territory of Artsakh from
Azerbaijan. If Azeris do not behave and continue to insult Armenians
by their denials of the Armenian Genocide, Armenia’s leaders may halt
the negotiations with Azerbaijan and incorporate Artsakh in the
Republic of Armenia.
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2- Armenian Billionaire donating money for Notre Dame
(PanArmenian.net)—Russian billionaire of Armenian descent Andrey
Andreev (Andrei Vagnerovich Ogandjanyants), founder of the social
discovery and dating network Badoo, will give part of the company’s
revenues to the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral after the
devastating fire in Paris.
The fire that engulfed the Notre Dame, the 850-year-old Unesco world
heritage landmark in Paris, was brought under control on the morning
of April 16, while the Cathedral’s main structure as well as its two
towers were saved.
“In light of the terrible tragedy that befell the Cathedral of Notre
Dame, I allocate a significant donation for its restoration. I pledge
to transfer 100 percent of the revenue that Badoo will receive from
its 22 million users in April to France. My heart goes to the people
of France,” he said.
Andreev said he learnt about the tragedy in Paris from social networks
and immediately turned on the TV.
“This whole situation was a huge shock to me,” Forbes cited him as saying.
The businessman did not specify the amount of money he is going to
donate to the cause.
Notre Dame was set to host a liturgy for Armenian Genocide victims on April 22.
France marked April 24 as a commemoration day of the Armenian
Genocide, with the relevant decree signed by President Emmanuel Macron
on April 10.
According to the document, a ceremony paying tribute to the genocide
victims will be held in Paris on this day every year. Similar events
may also be held in every city at the initiative of the local
governments.
Macron announced his decision to make April 24 as a national day of
commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at the Coordinating Council of
Armenian Organizations (CCAF) gala in Paris on February 5.
The French leader’s move drew strong criticism from Turkey, which
accused Paris of “manipulating history.”
Representatives of the Armenian community in France and French
politicians visit the Komitas Monument and Armenian Genocide Memorial
in Paris on 24 April every year to pay homage to the Armenian Genocide
victims.
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3 – The Kardashian Clan Is Backing UCLA’s Newest Medical Center
By Brittany Martin
Robert G. Kardashian—the prominent L.A. attorney who defended O.J.
Simpson and sired Kim, Khloé, Kim, and Rob—died of esophageal cancer
in 2003, just two months after being diagnosed with the illness. Now,
to honor his memory and help prevent the cancer that killed him from
claiming more lives, the Kardashian-Jenner family has partnered with
UCLA to establish the Robert G. Kardashian Center for Esophageal
Health.
The new center, part of the university’s David Geffen School of
Medicine, will treat patients with an integrative approach that
combines cutting-edge cancer treatments with preventive care including
nutrition and wellness-based approaches. Recently, the number of
people diagnosed with esophageal cancer each year has risen, according
to a statement by UCLA announcing the new center. Cases may be
triggered by diet, lifestyle, or gastroesophageal reflux disease; many
patients don’t even notice symptoms during the early stages when the
cancer can most effectively be treated.
“Our family is proud to pay tribute to our father by partnering with
UCLA Health to establish the Robert G. Kardashian Center for
Esophageal Health,” Kim Kardashian West said at a ceremony on Tuesday.
“We hope to save lives and help the community for many years to come
in honor of our father.”
In addition to lending the Kardashian name to the center, the family
will be leading on-going fundraising efforts to support the
initiative. Kardashian West is also honoring her father’s legacy in
another way of late, with the recent announcement that she’ll be
following in his footsteps pursuing a new career as an attorney.
This article appeared in Los Angeles Magazine on April 17, 2019.
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4- Armenia becomes the first partner in St. Jude’s global
pediatric cancer fight
By Michelle Corbet
Camera shutters rapidly clicked Friday morning as the First Lady of
Armenia picked up a pen to formalize a memorandum of understanding
between the former Soviet nation and St. Jude Children’s Research
Hospital.
Armenia became the first country to join the St. Jude Global Alliance,
a multimillion-dollar effort launched last year to improve treatment
for children with cancer in low- and middle-income countries by 30
percent over the next decade.
One year ago this month, Anna Hakobyan was leading a political
revolution with husband Nikol Pashinyan, whose peaceful protests
forced then Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan to step down. The people of
Armenia elected Pashinyan prime minister a few days later.
Before the protests that led to Pashinyan being elected, Hakobyan was
a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Armenian Times.
“I was not involved in the health care, rather more in politics,” the
now First Lady said, who served an active role in the revolution.
“After the revolution, we had a big crisis in our country with the
hospital that treated children with cancer because the previous
foundations that helped raise money for the children stopped,”
Hakobyan said. “I had no choice but to answer to this work and try to
find solutions. “
Shortly after the election, Hakobyan founded City of Smile, a
foundation to support the development of pediatric oncology and
hematology in Armenia. Similar to ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness
organization for St. Jude, the City of Smile fully covers the cost of
care of pediatric cancer patients and their families. To date, City of
Smile has raised enough funding to fully support the care of 120
children.
“Childhood cancer is quite expensive. Support from the foundations is
really essential,” said Dr. Gevorg Tamamyan, a pediatric
hematologist/oncologist at the Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders
Center of Armenia. “These foundations are trying to help the kids
receive appropriate care regardless of their ability to pay, so every
child receives appropriate care and no one is left out if they don’t
have the resources.”
As a middle-income country, Armenia has limited resources for treating
pediatric cancer.
“When you work in a limited-resource setting, you have a lot of
challenges you need to overcome — the drugs, the personnel, the
research capacity, education opportunities, lack of awareness and so
on,” Tamamyan said.
By joining the St. Jude Global Alliance, Armenia will join other
countries all working to solve the challenges of treating pediatric
oncology and make treatment and diagnosis available to all children,
regardless of nationality or geographic location.
“It’s a way to develop our capacity, improve our results, to learn and
to exchange our ideas and to make more kids healthier,” Tamamyan said.
Armenia is a critical region for St. Jude’s global effort, including
the eastern Mediterranean and Eurasian regions.
“They have been critical in helping organize and provide support,”
said Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, chair of St. Jude’s Department of
Global Pediatric Medicine.
Neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan are anticipated to follow Armenia’s
lead to join the St. Jude Global Alliance, as well as many other
regions not only in the caucuses, but in the former Soviet Republic
areas.
Rodriguez-Galindo classified the 2018 Armenian revolution as critical
to the success of the partnership.
“Whenever you see the will of the people to create a better country, a
better world, a better life for every one of their citizens, things
start changing, and that’s what happened in Armenia,” he said.
Tamamyan was among the St. Jude national outreach participants who
came to St. Jude in 2012. Since that time, he has been closely
collaborating with St. Jude, which in February resulted in the opening
of the Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Armenia.
In the U.S., the cure rate for children with cancer is 80 percent, but
that is not the reality for the rest of the world.
“More than 400,000 children develop cancer each year. Less than 30
percent are cured, and most die without diagnosis. They die in agony
and pain and most are forgotten,” Rodriguez-Galindo said.
Taking care of not only America’s children, but every single child in
the world is the second chapter of founder Danny Thomas’ vision “that
no child should die in the dawn of life,” Rodriguez-Galindo said.
This article appeared in The Daily Memphian on April 12, 2019.
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5- Course examines truth of medieval history depicted in hit
series Game of Thrones
By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite
When the much-anticipated final season of “Game of Thrones” premieres
Sunday on HBO, fans around the world will see some resolutions to the
themes of war, romance, and family loyalty that have marked the hit
show for the past eight years.
The epic battle for Winterfell, a reunion of the surviving Stark
children, and the fallout from the union of Jon Snow and Daenerys
Targaryen and subsequent discoveries about their lineage will be at
the top of the minds of many viewers, including Racha Kirakosian, an
associate professor of German and the study of religion.
For Kirakosian, this last season of “Game of Thrones” is an
opportunity for both entertainment and scholarship. She has been
teaching “The Real ‘Game of Thrones’: Culture, Society, and Religion
in the Middle Ages” since 2017, using “Thrones” and other famous works
of fantasy to engage students’ love of the genre while dispelling
myths about medieval life and its depiction in popular culture.
“‘Game of Thrones’ takes tremendous inspiration from the medieval
world,” Kirakosian said, pointing to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” as
one of the first books to make medieval Europe the default world of
fantasy storytelling. “It’s important to understand how that fantasy
creation got so entangled with the history of medieval Europe, and in
order to get there we need to know something about medieval Europe.”
In one class, on the theme of “Learning and Philosophy,” students
watch a clip from the show illustrating the lack of literacy and
access to knowledge in Westeros, especially for women.
Using the clip as a guide, Kirakosian explains the realities of
literacy and education for medieval men and women and highlights the
advent of the university system during the medieval period — a
departure from the world of knowledge depicted in “Game of Thrones.”
“Students are able to see something they know from the show and then
look at the actual historical sources that we have from medieval
Europe,” said Kirakosian. “They can then realize how complex the image
actually is and get a sense for historical depth and analysis.”
Ingrid Goetz ‘19 credited Kirakosian and the course with helping her
challenge her assumptions about the Middle Ages.
“The course readings were well thought-out and encouraged me to look
at both the world of fantasy and the environment around us in a new
light,” said Goetz, who is concentrating in the history of art and
architecture. Learning about the developments in architecture and
civic society in medieval Europe “definitely encouraged me to look
deeper and examine how modern life works.”
At the same time that students learn about the medieval history that
informs the fictional world of Westeros, they also learn how to
dissect the themes and tropes of “Game of Thrones” and view them in
the context of the fantasy genre over the centuries.
To do this, Kirakosian focused the latter portion of the course on the
humanist and romantic traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries,
during which nationalism, Orientalism, and patriarchy became ingrained
in popular interpretations of medieval life.
“This period was a time of reimagining a past infused with magic,
together with an imagining of ‘the East’ in contrast to forming
Western nations,” said Kirakosian. Understanding how these themes
developed and how they continue to manifest in current pop culture is
necessary, she added, if we are to become “reflective consumers” of
popular culture.
“There is such a cultural mythology built up around the Middle Ages,
from chivalry and the knights in shining armor tropes to the idea of
the ‘Dark Ages’ as a time of plague and suffering,” said Goetz. “How
can these exist at the same time? I’ve always wanted to interrogate
and investigate that.”
While students are anticipating a climactic end for “Game of Thrones,”
Kirakosian hopes that more of them channel their curiosity about
fantasy stories into study about the medieval period.
“One reason I teach this class is to bring the Middle Ages alive, and
I want to show that terms like the ‘Dark Ages’ are pejorative and
incorrect,” said Kirakosian, who will teach the course in fall 2020 as
part of the new General Education program. “There is an ongoing
relevance of the study of the past for our ability to understand our
world today, to understand ourselves and how we position ourselves to
what we see happening around us and to us.”
This article appeared in The Harvard Daily Gazette on April 11, 2019.
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