The California Courier Online, February 1, 2018
1 – Commentary
New Biography Portrays Kirk Kerkorian,
Not Trump, as ‘the Greatest Deal Maker’
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2 – Dr.
Yektan Türkyılmaz to Give Lecture
Feb.
6 at Fresno State on ‘Van Vaspurakan’
3 – Book Review:
Kirk
Kerkorian, ‘The Gambler’
By
Marc Levinson
4 – Sen. Portantino Urges Colleagues to
Oppose
Increased Azerbaijan
Lobbying Efforts
5 – Mike Sarian Donates $10 Million
Of Medical Equipment to
Armenian Defense Ministry
6 – Shant Sahakian Appointed Chairman of
Glendale Arts &
Culture Commission
7- $2.9
Million Plot of Land Donated
To
Armenian Church of San Diego
8 – Armenian
Genocide: How Valley Prosecutor Missed
His
Chance to be ‘Immortal Symbol of Justice’
9- Armenian
Brand Shabeeg Going
To New York Fashion Week
10- Kerkorian
Estate Executor Refuses
To
Grant Former Wife $10 Million
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1 – Commentary
New Biography Portrays Kirk Kerkorian,
Not Trump, as ‘the Greatest Deal Maker’
By Harut
Sassounian
Publisher,
The California
Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
William Rempel,
a veteran investigative reporter, just wrote a comprehensive biography of
industrialist and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian published by Harper Collins.
The book is titled, “The Gambler: How Penniless dropout Kirk Kerkorian became
the greatest deal maker in capitalist history.”
Rempel
has meticulously pieced together the details of Kerkorian’s phenomenal and
extremely private life through war records, business archives, court documents,
recollections and recorded memories of longtime friends and associates.
Although
both are Billionaires and casino owners, Kerkorian and Donald Trump had very
little in common. Rempel wrote: “Fellow casino owner Donald Trump called Kirk
‘the king’ and told friends: ‘I love that guy.’ However, Kirk was Trump’s polar
opposite in style and temperament. Kirk was soft-spoken and understated with a
paralyzing fear of public speaking. He wished, he said, that he ‘could talk
like Trump.’ Kirk also wanted his name on nothing — not on buildings, not on
street signs, not even on his personal parking spot at MGM Studios. And Kirk
never defaulted on a loan and always regarded his handshake as a binding
contract.”
When
Kerkorian’s new multi-billion dollar ‘CityCenter’ hotel-casino complex at the
heart of Las Vegas
ran into financial trouble in 2009, Rempel wrote that Trump initially expressed
some sympathy: “I love Kirk and hope it works out for them.” Trump then turned
around and called the ‘CityCenter’ project “an absolute catastrophe” during an
interview on CNN’s Larry King Show. Trump later stated: “It will be the biggest
bust in the history of real estate…too bad.” Of course, Trump was wrong in his
prediction. Kerkorian, once again, bounced back on his feet and ‘CityCenter’
became a great financial success!
While
Kerkorian was on the Forbes magazine’s billionaires list in 1989, Trump was
also initially on that list. However, soon after, Forbes dumped Trump from its
list of billionaires explaining that “they had been misled by incomplete
information provided by Trump…. The future U.S. president’s net worth was
then, said the editors, ‘within hailing distance of zero.’”
A press
release issued by Harper Collins described Rempel’s biography of Kerkorian as
the “rags-to-riches story of one of America’s wealthiest and least-known financial
giants, self-made billionaire Kirk Kerkorian — the daring aviator, movie
mogul, risk taker, and business tycoon who transformed Las Vegas and Hollywood
to become one of the leading financiers in American business.”
One of
the key advantages of this biography is the extensive coverage of Kerkorian’s
philanthropy for the Armenian-American community and the Republic of Armenia.
In the past two years, I spent several hours with author William Rempel to
brief him about Kerkorian’s contributions to American-Armenian charitable
organizations and major projects in Armenia. Rempel described me in the
book as: “Publisher of the California Courier, an English-language Armenian
weekly based in Glendale, California, was also president of the United
Armenian Fund [now Armenia Artsakh Fund] and the driving force behind Kirk’s
Armenian charity efforts.” In reality, Kerkorian himself was the driving force
behind his charitable giving! He really cared about the Armenian community’s
well-being and Armenia’s
prosperity.”
Although
Kerkorian remains a very well-known and highly respected name among Armenians
worldwide, many non-Armenians are unaware that he was an Armenian-American.
Fortunately, Rempel’s biography devotes three chapters to Kerkorian’s Armenian
heritage and philanthropy.
Chapter
12 of the book is titled: “The Armenian Connection.” It describes Kerkorian’s
chance meeting in Las Vegas with Manny Agassi in
1963, a waiter at Tropicana hotel and a fellow Armenian originally from Tehran, Iran.
Manny became a close friend of Kerkorian and named his future son, Andre Kirk
Agassi, who became a famous tennis player. Rempel also described Kerkorian’s
business dealings with George Mason (Elmassian), his longtime stockbroker, and
the founder of the California Courier newspaper in 1958.
In
chapter 31, Rempel described the tragic earthquake of December 7, 1988, in
Northern Armenia and how Kerkorian agreed to join the United Armenian Fund in
sending over 150 airlifts for the next 25 years to transport $700 million of
humanitarian aid initially to the survivors of the earthquake, and subsequently
to the entire population of Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno Karabagh). The
biographer Rempel also described how the United Armenian Fund was founded, a
coalition of the seven largest Armenian-American charitable and religious
organizations, including Kerkorian’s Lincy Foundation. Alex Yemenidjian was
Chairman of the United Armenian Fund and Harut Sassounian was its President.
Chapter
36 is titled: “Genocide and Generosity.” It described Kerkorian’s first-ever
visit to Armenia
in 1998 on his private jet accompanied by Harut Sassounian. The chapter relates
conversations about Turkey
and the occupied Armenian lands during the flight to Armenia and discussions to fund new
projects by Kerkorian’s Lincy Foundation. I was subsequently appointed Vice
Chairman of the Lincy Foundation to oversee $242 million of infrastructure
projects in Armenia
and some in Artsakh. This revealing book also includes amusing anecdotes about
Kerkorian’s uncomfortable stay in an old Soviet-style mansion which forced him
to switch to the Marriott Hotel, and his traumatic visit to the Armenian Genocide
Museum in Yerevan!
Kirk
Kerkorian’s biography is the fascinating story of a unique human being. He was a
brilliant businessman, an extremely modest philanthropist, a true American as
well as a true Armenian. As a last indication of his kindness and generosity,
he departed this world in 2015 at the age of 98, leaving his entire fortune of
$2 billion to charity, in addition to the $1 billion he had already donated to
American and Armenian charitable causes through the Lincy Foundation.
I
recommend that every Armenian buy a copy of Kirk’s biography and suggest it to
their non-Armenian neighbors, friends and colleagues. Kerkorian’s incredible
accomplishments bestow a great honor upon Armenians worldwide!
**************************************************************************************************
2- Dr.
Yektan Türkyılmaz to Give Lecture
Feb.
6 at Fresno State on ‘Van Vaspurakan’
FRESNO – “Van Vaspurakan Armenians: From Renaissance to Resistance and
Genocide” will be the topic of Dr. Yektan Türkyılmaz’s presentation at 7:30PM
on February
6, 2018, in the University Business Center, Alice Peters Auditorium,
Room 191 on the Fresno State campus.
The presentation is part of the Spring Lecture
Series of the Armenian Studies Program. A welcoming hors d’oeuvres reception
will be held from 6:30-7:30PM immediately preceding the lecture in the
University Business Center Gallery.
Dr. Türkyılmaz was appointed the 14th Henry S.
Khanzadian Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies for the Spring 2018
semester.
Through a brief overview of the turbulent
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of Van/Vaspurakan Armenians, this
lecture will underscore the ways in which studying this particular location
challenges the conventional understandings regarding Armenian modernization,
inter and intra-communal relations in the late Ottoman period and, particularly
the Genocide. It will also try to suggest potential ways of opening up new
horizons in rewriting the story of Van in various contexts.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
indisputably marked the most crucial span of time for Van/Vaspurakan Armenians.
The period witnessed rapid economic growth, increased social diversification
and mobilization, and cultural burgeoning. Yet, it was also a time when the
most brutal massacres, systematic persecution and finally the catastrophic
total destruction of social life in the area took place.
Van/Vaspurakan is particularly salient for the
study of the Genocide. Between August 1914 and April 1915 the political
barometer in the province measured the growing tensions along the fault line
that stretched from the Russian Southern Caucasus and Northern Iran to Istanbul through
Van.
Drawing on Armenian, Ottoman and Russian
archival documents, periodicals, memoirs, photographic and cartographic
materials and secondary sources this lecture will explore the rise and the
tragic death of Van in century up to the Genocide.
Dr. Türkyılmaz received his PhD from the
Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.
He taught courses at the University of Cyprus,
Sabancı, Bilgi and Duke
Universities addressing
the debates around the notions of collective violence, memory making, and
reconciliation. Türkyılmaz is currently a research fellow at the Forum
Transregionale Studien in Berlin,
Germany.
Meanwhile, he is working on his book manuscript based on his
dissertation, Rethinking Genocide: Violence and Victimhood in Eastern Anatolia,
1913-1915, concerns the conflict in Eastern Anatolia
in the early 20th century and the memory politics around it.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Free
parking is available in Fresno State Lots P5 and P6, near the University Business
Center, Fresno State.
A parking code, 273825, must be used at a kiosk to receive the free permit.
For more information about the lecture please
contact the Armenian Studies Program at 278-2669, visit our website at
www.fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies or visit our Facebook page at
@ArmenianStudiesFresnoState.
***************************************************************************************************
3 – Book Review:
Kirk
Kerkorian, ‘The Gambler’
By
Marc Levinson
The long subtitle of “The Gambler” includes the
claim that Kirk Kerkorian was “The Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History.”
It is certainly true that the California
billionaire, who died in 2015 at the age of 98, had a hand in a lot of major
deals over his long and busy career, and William C. Rempel’s breezy biography
offers an entertaining look at Kerkorian’s outsize life, but the question of
his historical stature is still open to debate.
Mr. Rempel has come up with information that the
secretive Kerkorian would no doubt have preferred to keep under wraps, and the
investigative work couldn’t have been easy. Kerkorian apparently left no public
papers, and his main lawyer bluntly told the author, “No one is going to help
you.” Mr. Rempel’s research yields a portrait of a guy who took big risks that
made him very rich but who had an unhappy personal life, including an on-again,
off-again relationship with a professional tennis player who contrived a plot
to persuade him that, at age 81, he had fathered her child. In his prime, he
was accused of consorting with the mobsters who financed casinos when banks
would not; in his extended old age, he was desperate for companionship and
vulnerable to people who wanted his money. You might have liked to have
Kerkorian’s wealth, but most reasonably balanced human beings wouldn’t have
liked to be him.
The son of illiterate Armenian immigrants whose
business ventures ended badly, Kerkorian grew up in California and dropped out of school in
eighth grade. After stints in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the used-car
business and the boxing ring, in 1940 he talked his way into flight school at
the Happy Bottom Ranch and Riding Club, an establishment in the Mojave Desert
run by a colorful Hollywood stunt pilot named
Florence Barnes, and paid his tuition by milking cows and slopping hogs. To
improve his career prospects, he obtained a bogus official letter stating that
he was the graduate of a Los Angeles
high school. The letter was unneeded: Amid wartime pilot shortages, the
military was desperate for instructors with cockpit experience, and he was soon
training pilots for the Army Air Force. Ferrying planes across the North
Atlantic seemed more challenging and paid better, so he spent the balance of
the war flying Mosquito fighter-bombers from Canada
to Scotland.
Unemployed at war’s end, Kerkorian opened a
flight school in a Los Angeles
suburb, then bought a five-seat Cessna and launched a charter service. That
business was soon dealt off to finance a batch of used airplanes, which in turn
were sold to acquire a small charter airline. He turned his modest Los Angeles
Air Service into the ambitiously named Trans International Airlines, sold it,
repurchased it, sold it again. Deal making became a habit, or perhaps an
addiction.
Much of Kerkorian’s charter business had
involved flying gamblers between Los Angeles and
Las Vegas.
Himself an avid gambler, he took aim at Sin City.
His first small investment lost money. By 1968, he owned the Flamingo and
Bonanza hotels, the land beneath Caesars
Palace, and a second
mortgage on the new Circus Circus. He began construction of the immense
International Hotel and Casino without the cash to finish the job; that problem
was solved by taking International Leisure Corp. public—and requiring investors
to buy a $1,000 bond for every 20 shares of stock. At the same time, an
unsolicited tender offer won him 28% of Western Airlines, the better to
transport gamblers to the desert.
Anyone could see that Las Vegas was burgeoning, but Kerkorian was
among the few who could grasp the possibilities beyond the casino floor. “I
thought it was going to become an adult Disneyland,”
Mr. Rempel quotes him saying. When he paid Barbra Streisand more than $100,000
a week to open the International in 1969 and then signed Elvis Presley to a
five-year contract, he transformed the town.
In 1969, with no advance notice, Kerkorian made
a tender offer for MGM, the venerable movie studio. He had little interest in
the risky and unpredictable business of making movies. “What Kirk saw in a
tired old MGM with its run of box office losers was something beyond the view
of most investors,” Mr. Rempel writes. “He saw hidden value.” Specifically, he
saw gold in MGM’s rights to a vast library of old films and to the esteemed
corporate name. He redefined MGM as a leisure company and attached its name to
the biggest hotel in Vegas, the MGM Grand, which would open in 1973.
This was only the beginning. Over the ensuing
decades, Kerkorian sold International Leisure to Hilton, made a run at Columbia
Pictures, bought United Artists, sold MGM’s film library to Ted Turner, made
passes at Chrysler (very profitably), Ford (at a loss), and General Motors, and
acquired still more properties in Las Vegas. At one point, according to Mr.
Rempel, he owned nearly half the hotel rooms and casino floor space on the
Strip. He often skated close to the edge, urgently restructuring his holdings
to avoid default on his enormous debts.
Mr. Rempel paints a picture of a man who lived
to do deals. Many interesting characters, from Bugsy Siegel to Lee Iacocca,
crossed his path, and his philanthropy, undertaken late in life and mostly in
secret, was substantial, featuring donations to Armenian causes and to UCLA. It
adds up to an interesting portrait of a billionaire so shy that he rarely spoke
in public, so secretive that when he applied for a credit card in 1996, at age
79, he was rejected for lack of a personal credit history.
But that bold subtitle notwithstanding, Mr.
Rempel doesn’t have much to say about Kerkorian’s legacy. His wheeling and
dealing appears to have left few traces. Three years after his death, Kirk
Kerkorian is all but forgotten. Perhaps the problem is that making deals isn’t
quite the same thing as making history.
*************************************************************************************************
4 – Sen.
Portantino Urges Colleagues to
Oppose
Increased Azerbaijan
Lobbying Efforts
SACRAMENTO– Last week, Senator Anthony J.
Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) sent out a letter to his Senate and
Assembly colleagues in the Capitol urging them to resist increased lobby
efforts put forth by the Government of Azerbaijan. Portantino became
alarmed by the increasing presence of the Azeri Government in Sacramento
and in Los Angeles.
Recently the California Azerbaijan Friendship Association
(CAFA) has begun outreach to political and academic leaders in a significant
public relations and lobbying effort. And, last year Azerbaijan
opposed Portantino’s initiative to create a formal State Senate Select
Committee on California,
Armenia & Artsakh cooperation. Senator Portantino has been at the
forefront of promoting efforts in Sacramento to
advance economic relations between California
and Nagorno-Karabakh which is also known as Artsakh. Given Azeri
aggression toward the people of Artsakh, Portantino felt it necessary to share
his strong views and give Senators and Assemblymembers a complete picture of
events in the region. Portantino represents the 25th State
Senate District which is home to many Armenians who trace their heritage back to
Artsakh.
“As the proud representative of the largest
Armenian community in the country, I have become quite alarmed by Azeri
lobbying efforts in Sacramento.
I feel it is important to proactively guard against its influence. As a
legislative body, we must unite and fight against attacks on human rights and
unprovoked aggression against a peaceful and sovereign country,” commented
Senator Portantino.
The 25th Senate District has
the largest Armenian American community in any legislative district in the country.
Senator Portantino is the Chair of the Select Committee on California Armenia
& Artsakh Trade Art and Culture Exchange. He has a long history fighting
for the civil rights of the Armenian Community.
“The Legislature must strongly condemn civil rights
abuses and attacks by foreign governments on innocent people. Accordingly, it
must refuse to cooperate with such governments until there is a demonstrated
effort toward reconciliation. Joining the California Azerbaijan Friendship
Association would in effect condone the Azeri government’s acts of violence
against the Armenian people of Artsakh,” concluded Portantino.5 –
*****************************************************************************************************
5 – Mike Sarian Donates $10 Million
Of Medical Equipment to
Armenian Defense Ministry
YEREVAN
(News.am) – Armenian Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan visited the Central base
of medicines and medical property of Defense Ministry on January 25. The
minister got acquainted with the medical equipment donated to Armenian Armed
Forces by Californian Armenian benefactor Mike Sarian.
The donation, which included 100 items of
medical equipment, was transferred through the scientific, educational and
cultural foundation “Luys”.
The total value of transferred equipment,
property, hygiene items and medical products is $10 million.
*****************************************************************************************************
6 – Shant
Sahakian Appointed Chairman of
Glendale Arts &
Culture Commission
GLENDALE
– Glendale School Board Member Shant Sahakian was appointed as the new Chairman
of the City of Glendale Arts & Culture Commission with the vote of his
colleagues at the first Commission meeting of 2018.
“I am grateful to have been entrusted as
the Chairman of the Glendale Arts & Culture Commission,” stated Shant
Sahakian. “I am looking forward to our Commission’s exciting year ahead
and continuing our important work of supporting, promoting, and advancing arts
and culture in Glendale.”
Sahakian was appointed to the Glendale Arts
& Culture Commission in July 2015 with the nomination of Councilmember
Vartan Gharpetian and approval of the Glendale City Council. The mission of the
five-member Commission is to enrich the human experience, reinforce Glendale’s identity and
civic pride through arts and culture, and to recognize the importance of arts
to our quality of life and to the local economy.
During his tenure, the Arts & Culture
Commission has initiated Glendale’s first Public
Art Master Plan to help shape the future of public art in the city, expanded
the Beyond the Box program to over one hundred utility box murals painted from South Glendale to Montrose, and sponsored arts and
culture events, exhibitions, programs, and performances throughout the
community. Most recently, Shant successfully advocated for the fair and
equitable compensation of every artist hired by the Commission, leading to the
adoption of artist stipends for the Adams Square Mini Park Gas Station
exhibition series.
Sahakian is an Elected Member of the Glendale
Unified School District Board of Education representing District D. He was
elected in April 2017, becoming the first Millennial and youngest School Board
Member elected in Glendale
history.
A product of Glendale
public schools and a lifelong resident of Glendale,
Shant has deep roots in the community. He is a longtime community leader who
has championed Glendale’s
youth, advocated for the underserved, and served the community through a
distinguished record of public service. He is a graduate of CSUN and UCLA
Extension. Shant and his wife, Suzanna, reside in Glendale with their son, Raffi Sebastian.
*************************************************************************************************
7- $2.9 Million Plot of Land Donated
To
Armenian Church of San Diego
LOS
ANGELES (Asbarez) – An anonymous donor has decided to donate a
$2.9 million parcel of land to the St.
John Garabed Armenian Church which is currently under
construction in San Diego,
Calif., Very Rev. Fr. Pakrad Berjekian
and the Board of Trustees of the church have revealed,.
The donor has expressed a wish that an elder
care center be constructed on the territory, with all the proceeds set to go to
the church.
After a lengthy battle, the project of the St. John
Garabed Armenian Church of San Diego was finally approved for construction near
the beach city of Del
Mar.
The complex will host a new church, a special
hall for meetings, a youth center, a sports center, a library, classrooms, an
open-air gathering venue and a spacious parking lot.
************************************************************************************************
8 – Armenian
Genocide: How Valley Prosecutor Missed
His
Chance to be ‘Immortal Symbol of Justice’
By David Minier
FRESNO
(Valley Voices) – Twice each year, my thoughts turn to the Armenian Genocide.
On April 24, the anniversary date of the 1915 massacres orchestrated by the
Turkish government. And on Jan. 27, when 45 years ago Gourgen Yanikian
assassinated two Turkish diplomats in Santa
Barbara to avenge the genocide.
Yanikian, age 78 and a former Fresno resident, was charged with murder, and
I was his prosecutor.
The aging Armenian had lured the diplomats to a
cottage at Santa Barbara’s
exclusive Biltmore Hotel, promising gifts of art treasures for their
government. Instead, he pulled a Luger pistol from a hollowed out book and
emptied it at them. He then called the reception desk, announced he had killed
“two evils,” and sat calmly on the patio awaiting arrest.
Yanikian’s purpose was to create an “Armenian
Nuremberg” – a show trial to call world attention to the genocide, as the Nuremberg trial had done
with Nazi war crimes. And perhaps to be acquitted. Yanikian’s hope was not
unreasonable.
In 1921, a German jury had acquitted Soghoman Tehlirian of
murdering Talaat Pasha, the Turkish official most responsible for the genocide.
Tehlirian later settled in Fresno, and his tomb
is the centerpiece of Fresno’s Masis Ararat
Cemetery.
Talaat had been sentenced in absentia to death
for “crimes against humanity,” and had fled to Germany. Tehlirian found Talaat and
shot him to death on a Berlin
street. As planned, Tehlirian pled not guilty, and his trial was reported
worldwide.
‘They Simply Had to Let Him Go’
Tehlirian testified about the rape and murder of
his sisters, the beheading of his mother, and the killings of his brothers. It
took a jury less than two hours to find Tehlirian not guilty. The New York
Times headline read, “They Simply Had To Let Him Go.”
Fifty-two years later, in a Santa Barbara courtroom, Yanikian sought his
“Armenian Nuremberg,” and an acquittal. As prosecutor, it was my duty to
convict him.
The trial proceeded without personal rancor. I have
a photograph of Yanikian, his attorneys and me, standing together, smiling,
during a court recess. And another, with the inscription “to our admired and
respected District Attorney and friend.”
Yanikian’s attorneys told the judge they wanted
to call as witnesses eminent historians and elderly Armenians who had survived
the genocide. And survivors were available. Bused daily from Southern
California, they sat silently in the courtroom among family
members, ready to recount unspeakable horrors.
One of Yanikian’s attorneys, Vasken Minasian,
asked me to allow the testimony. He gave me a copy of “The Cross and the
Crescent,” about the Tehlirian trial. In it he wrote: “The tragedy in Santa Barbara has brought
destiny and God to your doorstep,” and he urged me to “bring forth an
indictment against genocide.” He added, “You stand to become an immortal symbol
of justice around the world.”
This was heady stuff, and I faced a dilemma: to allow
a parade of eye-witnesses to the genocide, risking an acquittal, or to block
the evidence to obtain a conviction. I knew such evidence would likely lead to
“jury nullification,” where a jury disregards the law and acquits for a
perceived greater justice, as the Tehlirian jury had done.
I took the safer path, and the judge sustained
my objection to the witnesses. But I could not in good conscience block the
testimony of Yanikian himself, no matter how it inflamed the jury. He
commanded the witness stand for six days and described in detail, without
objection, the Armenian genocide.
Turks slaughter 27 family members
Yanikian told how, as a boy of 8, he watched
marauding Turks slit his brother’s throat, and of the slaughter of 26 other
family members. He testified in Armenian, translated by Aram Saroyan, former Fresno grape shipper, San Francisco attorney, and uncle of author
William Saroyan.
Jurors were moved to tears by Yanikian’s
testimony, but they were denied the corroborating testimony the defense hoped
would sway their decision. The Yanikian jury, unlike the Tehlirian jury,
followed the law and gave me what I asked: two first-degree murder verdicts.
There would be no nullification. Yanikian was sentenced to life in prison. He
was granted compassionate release to a care home in 1984, over objections of
the Turkish government, and died of cancer two months later.
Yanikian failed to get his Armenian Nuremberg,
and “The Forgotten Genocide,” denied to this day by the Turkish government, was
never proved in a court of law by the testimony of eyewitness survivors.
Looking back, I regret I hadn’t the courage
to allow such evidence, and trust the jury to follow the law. And attorney
Minasian’s words still haunt me: “… bring forth an indictment against
genocide.” History’s darkest chapters – its genocides – should be fully
exposed, so their horrors are less likely to be repeated.
Notwithstanding Turkish denials, the historical
evidence of the Armenian genocide is so abundant that 48 American states, and
at least 25 nations, have memorialized and condemned it.
Valadao pushes resolution on genocide
Not so the American government. For years,
Congressional Resolutions condemning the genocide have been defeated after
intense pressure from Turkey,
where American military bases exist at Turkish pleasure.
Passage of the current version, House Resolution
220, “would be a critical step towards ensuring an event like the Armenian
genocide never takes place again,” says Hanford Congressman David Valadao, a
co-sponsor.
But H.R. 220 has languished in the Foreign
Affairs Committee for 10 months, and chances for passage are remote. The House
will doubtless take the safer path, as I did in the Yanikian trial.
And once again, truth will fall victim to
expedience.
David
Minier of Fresno is a former district attorney of both Madera and Santa Barbara
counties, and a retired Superior Court judge who sits frequently by assignment
in Valley courtrooms.
*****************************************************************************************************
9 – Armenian Brand Shabeeg Going
To New York Fashion Week
YEREVAN (PanArmenian.net) – A newly-created
Armenian brand,
Shabeeg will participate in the New
York Fashion Week, slated for February 8-16, the brand’s
founder Mary Sukiasyan told PanARMENIAN.Net
Held in
February and September each year, the semi-annual series of events is one of
four major fashion weeks in the world, collectively known as the “Big
4,” along with those in Paris, London and Milan.
According to Sukiasyan, the Armenian brand will
unveil their designs at a showroom on February 7-10, alongside collections of
new and not-so-famous brands from around the world.
“We are planning to invite New York-based
Armenians and will introduce Shabeeg to the representatives of the fashion
industry on February 10,” Sukiasyan said.
Also, she said the new collection features
elements and patterns of taraz – the Armenian national costumes – but with a
modern twist and street fashion components.
Shabeeg will thus become the only Armenian brand
to participate in the New York Fashion Week.
***************************************************************************************************
10- Kerkorian
Estate Executor Refuses
To
Grant Former Wife $10 Million
LOS ANGELES (Metropolitan News) – The Court of
Appeal has upheld a Los Angeles Superior Court order allowing the executor of
the estate of multi-billionaire businessman Kirk Kerkorian to oppose an
“omitted spouse” petition by the decedent’s widow, who expressly waived the
power to bring such a petition in a prenuptial agreement.
The opinion, by Justice Lamar Baker of Div.
Five, was filed late Friday. It affirms an order by Judge Maria E. Stratton
granting the petition of executor Anthony Mandekic, to “assist the court” by
participating in litigation over Una Davis’s bid to acquire a third of the
estate, as the surviving spouse.
That portion is estimated at more than $600
million.
Davis and Kerkorian were wed March 30, 2014. He
was 96; the Wall Street Journal had earlier described her as “much younger”
than he.
They separated two months after the wedding.
Kerkorian died June 15, 2015, at age 98.
Davis
maintains that she is entitled to take the same share of the estate she would
have received had Kerkorian died intestate. But he did have a will, executed in
2013, and she was not included in it.
$10 Million Payment
However, executor Mandekic maintains that that Davis waived any right.
Two days before the marriage, Kerkorian gave
Mandekic, chief executive of his private holding company, $10 million to confer
on Davis after
the wedding. This was to be the totality of what she would receive from him.
Davis
signed a prenuptial agreement under which she agreed that in exchange for the
$10 million payment, she would receive nothing from her husband’s estate. The
terms included a disavowal of entitlement to seek a share as an “omitted
spouse.”
Davis’s
petition, in which she does seek a share of the estate, includes her
declaration in which she attempts to minimize the significance of the
prenuptial agreement.
She contends that she signed the prenuptial
agreement “under duress,” that her husband was too infirm to understand what he
was doing, and that the instrument was, in any event, ineffectual because it
bears only her signature, not his.
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