April 8, 2010 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) Take Action: Call Your Senators to Support the Boxer Letter Urging President Obama to Recognize the Armenian Genocide Sample phone script and contact information provided. ANCA Calls on Obama to Honor Armenian Genocide Recognition Pledge | Read | Commentary: "Shut Up About Armenians or We'll Hurt Them Again" - Christopher Hitchens comments on the Armenian Genocide Resolution and Erdogan's threats | Read | "The Starving Armenians" - Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Greenberg's editorial in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Read | Video: Check out the latest installment of the ANCA on Horizon TV half-hour program on the ANCA's Vimeo channel ANCA Asks Senators to Call on Obama to Recognize Genocide Senators Urged to Co-sign Boxer Letter Calling on President to Properly Characterize the Armenian Genocide in his April 24th Remarks WASHINGTON, DC - Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) chapters and activists across the United States are encouraging their Senators to sign the Boxer Letter, urging President Obama to properly recognize the Armenian Genocide in his April 24th remarks. The letter, initiated by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), has been circulated to each of her ninety-nine Senate colleagues. In her cover letter, the Golden State Senator urges her Democratic and Republican colleagues to co-sign the Congressional letter and go on record in support of proper Presidential commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. "We join with Armenian Americans throughout California and across the United States in thanking Senator Boxer for her leadership in helping to ensure full and formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. government," said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA. "Allowing Turkey to impose a "gag rule" on the U.S. not only dishonors the victims of the Armenian Genocide, but also sends a very dangerous signal that foreign countries can bribe or bully America into inaction on matters of genocide." The ANCA has launched a Call-In campaign to Senator offices in support of the Boxer Letter. This alert, and an accompanying phone script, can be viewed here. ANCA Calls Obama to Honor Armenian Genocide Recognition Pledge Letter to White House Calls for a U.S. Stand that is “Truthful, Just, and Worthy of the American People” WASHINGTON, DC - The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) today went on record, once again, asking President Obama to honor his campaign promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The one-page letter, signed by ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian and sent in the days leading up to President Obama's second April 24th in office, asks, simply, that President Obama keep his commitment and "stand for a policy that is truthful, just, and worthy of the American people.” Hachikian also addressed two points of special concern that have further compounded the anger and outrage felt by Armenian American voters over the President's broken promise; his pressure on Armenia to accept the one-sided, pro-Ankara Protocols; his support for Turkey's "historical commission" denial tactic; and his attacks on the Armenian Genocide Resolution. The first dealt with the unfortunate and inappropriate practice by the current and previous presidents to use April 24th, a day of solemn remembrance, as a platform to offer policy statements about Armenia, Turkey, and the surrounding region. The second concerned the fact that the President, despite devoting considerable attention to Armenian issues, has yet to agree, consistent with his campaign promise, to meet with the broad-based leadership of the Armenian American community. Read the ANCA letter to Obama Shut Up About Armenians or We'll Hurt Them Again Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's latest sinister threat. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, April 5, 2010, at 10:43 AM ET April is the cruelest month for the people of Armenia, who every year at this season have to suffer a continuing tragedy and a humiliation. The tragedy is that of commemorating the huge number of their ancestors who were exterminated by the Ottoman Muslim caliphate in a campaign of state-planned mass murder that began in April 1915. The humiliation is of hearing, year after year, that the Turkish authorities simply deny that these appalling events ever occurred or that the killings constituted "genocide." In a technical and pedantic sense, the word genocide does not, in fact, apply, since it only entered our vocabulary in 1943. (It was coined by a scholar named Raphael Lemkin, who for rather self-evident reasons in that even more awful year wanted a legal term for the intersection between racism and bloodlust and saw Armenia as the precedent for what was then happening in Poland.) I still rather prefer the phrase used by America's then-ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau. Reporting to Washington about what his consular agents were telling him of the foul doings in the Ottoman provinces of Harput and Van in particular, he employed the striking words "race extermination." (See the imperishable book The Slaughterhouse Province for some of the cold diplomatic dispatches of that period.) Terrible enough in itself, Morgenthau's expression did not quite comprehend the later erasure of all traces of Armenian life, from the destruction of their churches and libraries and institutes to the crude altering of official Turkish maps and schoolbooks to deny that there had ever been an Armenia in the first place. Read the complete article. . . THE STARVING ARMENIANS Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock) April 7, 2010 Wednesday They were the first victims of one genocide among so many in the 20th Century, but it's not diplomatic to say so. The Turkish government might be offended. So the Obama administration pulled out the usual stops the other day, urging the House Foreign Affairs Committee to shelve a resolution taking note of the Armenian massacres during the First World War. Yes, Barack Obama had promised to recognize the Armenian genocide when he was running for president, but he's president now. He's in power, and with great power come great responsibilities, prominent among them not speaking truth. Truth can be impolitic. The secretary of state dutifully echoed her boss. "Both President Obama and I have made clear, both last year and again this year," said Hillary Clinton, "that we do not believe any action by the Congress is appropriate, and we oppose it." What's fealty to history compared to the demands of Realpolitik? In the end, the House committee did decide to call genocide genocide. By one vote. The final tally was Truth 23, Silence in the Face of Evil, 22. Read the complete article. . . Search the web with www.goodsearch.com and money from Yahoo advertisers will go to the ANCA without you spending a dime. A penny per search! Use www.goodshop.com for online purchases from hundreds of popular sites and a percentage comes back to the ANCA. When you GoodSearch & GoodShop - Choose the ANCA ! 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