Musings on the daily events in politics and sports as well as some local bar stops along the way in LA.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

The gist of it is to go to www.anca.org and fax your representative about the Armenian Genocide bill. Below is my analysis of the current situation out there and chances of the bill passing. If you dont care then just click on the link.

So when the Dems took over Congress all Armenians (including myself) figured that a Armenian Genocide bill would sail through and we would finally start on our road to recognition of the injustices that our families went through in the early part of the 20th century. Well it turns out that we didnt step up our efforts accordingly since we figured it was a sure thing with Speaker Pelosi and the Turks did the exact opposite. Out of nowhere the Turks all of a sudden started a grassroots campaign and sent out their lobbyists to make sure this doesnt happen. All the top officials from Ankara are slowly being sent over to the US to lobby against us. The Pentagon has dispatched Generals and other top brass to try and convince anyone who will listen that this will cause irreparable harm to US-Turkey relations and result in a negative impact in Iraq (since they were so helpful until now). A friend of mine on the hill said that his office has received dozens of faxes from Turks and less than 5 from Armenians, also apparently the Turkish lobbyists have come by 3 times while the Armenians have barely made any noise. He also said that they dropped off a book of propaganda of how it was actually the Armenians who killed the Turks. They stepped up their efforts BIG TIME and its getting dirty out there.

Other fronts- remember Congressmen will ALWAYS take the easy way out and it is our job to hold them accountable and not give them an option of an easy way out. So Bush renominated Hoagland to be ambassador to Armenia so we have to fight on that front, then Bush ridiculously lowered US aid to Armenia and once again reneged on his promise of parity in aid to Armenia and Azerbaijan so now we have to fight on that front also. Then there was the assassination to Hrant Dink in Turkey- which on its face sounds like it would help us get a genocide resolution passed since he was killed speaking for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. There is a bill being pushed through by some Armenian organizations but the problem with it is that it once again gives Congress an easy way out to condemn what happened to Dink then turn around and tell us that look we just passed a resolution condemning the Dink assassination now we cant in turn quickly pass another resolution condemning our ally Turkey.

So instead of being on the offensive we have quickly turned to the defensive and have to fight Hoagland, fight for more aid to Armenia and then the Dink bill- then we have to tell Congress we also want a Genocide bill- all without giving these Congressmen an easy way out of telling us they helped us on 2 of those so they cant help on the Genocide bill.

Conclusions- nobody is going to hand anything to us on a silver platter Democrats or Republicans. We need to step up our efforts not down and get this thing done once and for all so we can concentrate on other issues like the lowering of aid by 50%, getting a social security agreement with the US and Armenia, helping improve the democratic process over there, get a peace agreement with the Azeris and whatnot. So send your fax and tell other people- especially those not from LA to send faxes also.

SF people- you have the Speaker of the House and the chairman of the international relations committee in SF so you better at the very least send a fax which takes a total of about 35 seconds. Or if youre really lazy send me your info and i'll do it for you.

Thanks for the two of you that read this far.

And for those of you who think where the hell did I get the time to write all this crap... you've obviously never been to law school where you sit in class and surf the net. (I ran out of sites to go to so if you have any interesting ones send them over)

Kris