Divesting Denialist Turkey and Genocidal Sudan

1) Divesting Denialist Turkey and Genocidal Sudan;
2) Denialists Frantz and Mango Participate in a Deceptive
Conference on "Turkish Democracy"

The world community must raise the bar in countering
the genocidal denialists and criminal governments
everywhere. It doesn't matter whether they are Turkish
or Sudanese.

The Armenians, as the victims of the first genocide of
modern times: (1915-1923), have the moral
responsibility to join other activists in stopping the
Genocide in Darfur, and help avert the future ones.

In a May 13 article in the Los Angeles Times, titled,
"How investors can help fight the Darfur genocide,"
Kathy M. Kristof wrote: "Adam Sterling wants
individual investors to know that they are a powerful
force - and they can use that power to help stop
genocide halfway across the world in the Sudanese
region of Darfur. . If American investors pull their
money from companies that fund the Sudanese
government, Sterling believes that government will be
forced to curtail atrocities by its forces and allied
militias in their fight against Darfur rebels. .
'Divestment has been the one real action that the
government of Sudan has responded to. Genocide is
expensive. The Sudanese government relies heavily on
foreign investment to fund its military and the
janjaweed militias,' said Sterling, director of the
Sudan Divestment Task Force in Washington."

Kristof added: "The Sudan divestment campaign
resembles an effort decades ago to press South Africa
to give up its practice of apartheid, which stripped
economic and legal rights from the country's black
majority. That divestment bid isolated South Africa
economically, and in 1992 the government ended
apartheid. The South African divestment effort took
about 15 years to be successful, gaining steam as some
large institutional investors in the U.S. pulled funds
from the country's economy. . Forty-two colleges and
universities and eight states, including California,
have started to sell their Sudan-related investments.
An additional 17 states are considering doing so."

A financial professional and a California resident
Michael Williams, referring to the worldwide boycott
against Turkey, recently initiated by the Boycott
Turkey Committee of America, wrote in this week's
issue of USA Armenian Life (page E3): "I agree with
your boycott of Turkey. I checked my investments and
found that two of my mutual funds owned Turkish
companies. I wrote the mutual fund companies and told
them, I did not want to invest in any fund that owned
Turkish companies. The funds were sold. Who wants to
invest in a country with this type of history and
philosophy! I will be carefully reviewing my spending
and investing to make sure that I am not supporting a
country that denies the Armenian Genocide and
continues to take lightly the murder of other
Christians today."

Speaking of the necessity of socially responsible
investments, Kristof reported that Amy Domini,
president of Domini Social Investments, said: "You are
not just an individual doing your thing; you are part
of a large group. . People are finally beginning to
realize that acting as part of a group can be really
powerful."

Almost ninety years after the Armenian Genocide of
1915-1923, students at Swarthmore College in
Pennsylvania created in 2004 The Genocide Intervention
Network.

The Genocide Intervention Network was created to give
concerned Americans the opportunity to help protect
civilians from genocide. The organization's website
(www.genocideintervention.net) says: "Sometimes it
might feel like there's not much you can do about a
genocide occurring a world away. In fact, you have the
power to help end the genocide. The world's leaders
need support and pressure from you in order to act."

The Genocide Intervention Network proposes its members
a ten-step course of action to end the Genocide in
Darfur or anywhere for that matter: "1) Join the
Genocide Intervention Network because you care deeply
about protecting civilians from genocide; 2) Support
the African Union peacekeepers in Darfur; 3) Sign up
for action alerts; 4) Investigate the actions of your
members of Congress to stop the genocide in Darfur -
thanking those who have stood against genocide, and
urging those who have not taken action to do so - with
GI-Net's Darfur scorecard; 5) If you are a student or
otherwise connected to a college/university or high
school, start a STAND chapter. STAND: A Student
Anti-Genocide Coalition is the student arm of the
Genocide Intervention Network, with 600 high school
and college chapters around the United States, as well
as international chapters; 6) Host a fundraiser and
donate the proceeds to your favorite Darfur
organization - the Genocide Intervention Network, Save
Darfur, STAND, Africa Action, UNICEF, the Darfur
Rehabilitation Project or others; 7) Join the Sudan
divestment campaign in your state; 8) Tell the
television news networks to Be A Witness and fully
cover the genocide - because you can't stop a genocide
if you don't know about it; 9) Organize a Sprint for
Darfur. The international community now faces a final
sprint in what has been a long struggle for human
security in Darfur; 10) Convince your local
municipality to approve a proclamation condemning the
genocide and calling on the United States to get
involved.

Sterling, Domini, Williams and the Genocide
Intervention Network are neither Armenian nor
Sudanese. The fact that the number of anti-genocide
activist individuals and organizations is on the rise,
is a clear indication to humanity's growing
intolerance towards genocidal governments.

The courageous and socially responsible position
adopted by Williams, Domeni, Sterling and others
should inspire many others to join them in stopping
the genocide in Darfur by bringing the Sudanese
criminal junta to their knees; and in bringing justice
to the Armenian and other victims in Turkey. Turkey is
long overdue in recognizing the genocide and in
returning the forcibly-occupied lands of Western
Armenia to their rightful owners: the Armenians.

Turkey and other criminal governments should be made
to realize:
- That the citizens of our global village have not
forgotten the Armenian Genocide and do not tolerate
the Darfur Genocide; and
- That the loot confiscated from the victims by the
criminal enterprises will not remain in their
possession.

In emulation of Williams' and Sterling's divestment of
Turkey and Sudan, many more activists and entities
should do the same and intensify the worldwide
campaign to pull out their investments from such
countries.

Companies and individuals that directly or indirectly
perpetuate the genocidal governments' stay in power
should be exposed and held accountable. Otherwise, how
could we, as humanity, eradicate atavism?

---


Denialists Frantz and Mango Participate in a Deceptive
Conference on "Turkish Democracy"

The widely criticized denialist Managing Editor of the
Los Angeles Times, Douglas Frantz just delivered
another deceptive act: On may 12-15, he moderated a
panel at a deceptive conference held in Istanbul. Of
all the names, that conference was called, "Turkey:
Sharing the Democratic Experience."

Are certain readers not fully familiar with Frantz?
Harut Sassounian, the Publisher of The California
Courier wrote an update in his recent column: "Based
on copies of the e-mails received by this writer, the
Los Angeles Times is continuing to receive a steady
stream of complaints from Armenians worldwide. They
are calling for the dismissal of Managing Editor
Douglas Frantz because of his discrimination against
Armenian-American reporter Mark Arax whose article on
the Armenian Genocide was blocked by Frantz.
Meanwhile, several Turkish websites and lobbying
groups have started an e-mail campaign in defense of
Frantz. By sending such e-mails, the Turks are
inadvertently helping to keep the Frantz fiasco alive.
It is clearly counter-productive for Turks to be
rushing to the aid of Frantz. The Turkish support of
Frantz only serves to confirm the accusations that he
is a Turkophile and not an independent journalist."

How can one label Turkey's decades-long undemocratic
behavior as a "model democracy" that "deserves to be
emulated?"

Early this year, in broad daylight, innocent and
defenseless citizens like Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink and three non-Armenian Christians have been
murdered by the same "democratic" Turkish society.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Barely forty days
after Dink's murder, was a pipe bomb thrown on an
Armenian church in Constantinople in a show of
commonplace criminality of certain circles within
Turkey's government and civil sectors.

Just a few days ago, Turkish nationalists sent a
message to "Levon Vardukhian" Armenian school in
Constantinople, shamelessly threatening the
defenseless Armenians of Turkey: "The Last Warning and
Ultimatum . .exclamations 'We are all Armenians, we
are all Hrant Dink' are examples of extreme chauvinism
and summons for revolution. Do not forget that except
Armenian citizens of Turkey, there are also Armenians
from Armenia on our land, and they count over 100
thousand. Both their addresses and their workplaces
are well known. Henceforth we hope to see our Armenian
citizens as advocates of truth [sic], concerning the
Armenian Genocide or any other matter, and as
defenders of the Turkish statehood. We shall keep an
eye on how the Armenians are playing this role.
Otherwise the Armenians shall be those to lie in the
grave and count how many Armenians and how many Turks
there were in the `ages long past'. This land has
never pardoned treachery and shall not. Who does not
stand for our paradise-homeland is against us and
shall be vanquished."

One shouldn't discount the possibility that the
so-called "pro-West" secularists did commit the
heinous Malatya Massacre of three non-Armenian
Christians in order to make the ruling Islamists of
Turkey look bad in the eyes of the International
Community.

Currently, the Turkish "nationalists" are still in
control of the government bureaucracy in Turkey. One
shouldn't be surprised that in order to perpetuate
their strangle-hold on Turkey's power infrastructure,
they are willing to undermine Turkey's fledgling
democracy by staging many more criminal acts or by
issuing threats against the minorities - Christian
Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians or Muslim Kurds, Alevi
Arabs and non-Turks. They might even carry out a coup
d'état.

In a May 6 article in Washington Post, Claire
Berlinski wrote: "In recent weeks, demonstrators have
taken to the streets in massive numbers in support of
Kemalist secularism. Westerners watching the footage
may be tempted to sigh with approval, imagining this
as an outpouring of sympathy with liberal
Enlightenment values. They would be mistaken. The
(Justice and Development Party) AKP's opponents say
they don't want Turkey turned into another Iran. But
it is not clear that the AKP has any intention of
doing that. What is clear is that it poses a threat to
the power, bureaucratic privileges and economic
interests of the secular ruling class, of which a
dismaying number are authoritarian
ultra-nationalists."

Berlinski added: "A casual observer might also expect
that because the Turkish protesters are enemies of
Islamic extremism, they are friends of the United
States. Not so. The secularists here are if anything
more hostile to the West than the AKP. (They are often
just as anti-Semitic, too.) Many secularist
legislators voted in 2003 to deny U.S. forces the
right to pass through Turkey on their way to invade
Iraq. At the recent rallies in Ankara and Istanbul,
protesters held up signs denouncing 'ABD-ullah Gul.'
This is an anti-American pun: The letters 'ABD' stand
for 'USA' in Turkish. U.S. camera crews were abused
with chants of 'Go home, CIA spies.' One particularly
lunatic nationalist, Ergun Poyraz, has just published
a book claiming that Erdogan is really an undercover
Jew who is collaborating with the Mossad to destroy
Turkish secularism."

It is against this anti-democratic backdrop that
Frantz moderated the Istanbul conference on the
so-called "Turkish Democracy."

Individuals like Frantz and Mango should stop
insulting the intelligence of the community through
their misguided efforts to mischaracterize Turkey as a
"model democracy."

What a sham!