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Turkey president Erdogan gangs beating protesters on American soil again

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Violence erupted Thursday as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered a speech in New York City.

Erdoğan was addressing the Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC) when a few members of the audience began yelling at the president.

Also, the protesters carried signs that read “You are a terrorist” in English.

And one of these protesters yelled at the president, “You’re a terrorist! Get out of my country!”

Subsequently, men in black suits pushed toward the protesters.

As the protesters were forcibly removed from the room, one of the men escorted out was seen being punched in the face, BuzzFeed informed.

Erdoğan supporters attacked the protesters and initiated a brawl.

The US Department of State, however, noted that it has no information yet on whether the Turkish president’s bodyguards were involved in this incident.

‘The Promise’ Premieres In New York With Full Cast, Filmmakers & UN Dignitaries

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BY HOOSHERE BEZDIKIAN

NEW YORK—The highly anticipated feature film The Promise made its New York City debut on April 18th at the Paris Theater on 58th Street. The cast came out in full force as Christian Bale, Charlotte Le Bon, Oscar Isaac, Angela Sarafyan, James Cromwell and Chris Cornell made their way down the red carpet, alongside director/co-writer Terry George and several of the film’s producers, helmed by Eric Esrailian (Survival Pictures). Also in attendance was the evening’s co-host, Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations, and several other respected UN dignitaries.

Producer Eric Esrailian passionately described the mission of the film. “First of all, we wanted to tell a beautiful story and draw people in and raise awareness about the history of the Armenian people and the Armenian Genocide. We know that Armenians are not defined by genocide, but we want the genocide to be recognized and to not be forgotten.”

Set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise centers around a young Armenian woman, Ana Khesarian (Charlotte Le Bon) who leaves Paris to return to her homeland, where she gets entangled with AP journalist Chris Myers (Christian Bale) and then meets Armenian medical student, Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), with whom she unexpectedly finds common ground. The film is, at its core, a love story—intentionally designed as such to make the film more appealing and accessible to broader movie-going audiences.

As James Cromwell, who plays Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire describes, “The love story is a way of getting people to begin the process, to feel for the characters, and then understand… can we not have compassion for people who are suffering around the world today? If we can have compassion for them, we can have compassion for the Armenians. If we can have compassion for the Armenians, then we have compassion for the Native Americans, and it goes on… it’s to open the heart.”

Esrailian addressed the importance of combatting the aggressive denial of the genocide on behalf of the Turkish government, while simultaneously depicting the resilience of the Armenian people. “As long as there is deep denial,” Esrailian explains, “our identity and the awareness of our culture will be viewed through a different lens, and it’s important to have that recognition and awareness while moving forward at the same time. Armenians have not stood still and hoped for genocide recognition. This is the mission and the message from the film – the take home is not the genocide – it’s where we are today; that Armenians have persevered, have thrived, have contributed to society.”

This very survival and perseverance is why Esrailian chose to include the Armenian flag in the official movie poster, a choice that some have criticized, citing that the flag didn’t exist in 1915. Esrailian rebuts, “That’s the type of thinking that doesn’t help the Armenian people. The genocide reflects the past, and the flag represents the future. When is the next time the Armenian flag is going to be on the poster of a major motion picture?”

Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan anticipated, “There will be many judgements about the artistic value of the film” and went on to emphasize “what is important about this film is that it’s a building block in the big construction of preventing genocide. This is a reminder that atrocities are still a risk before humanity. We as Armenians have experienced it, and I think we all bear moral duty before humanity to prevent genocide.”

To that same end, Esrailian stressed “Our goal is to draw attention to the parallels of human rights abuses in the world today, the relevance to the world today, to show that Armenians also care about other people all around the world, including in Turkey, and that people need to learn the lessons from the Armenian Genocide so that we can help others in the world who are at risk.”

“We have to show that the denialists and people who are complicit in human rights abuse – and many of those people are in the same camp – are using the same tactics today to commit human rights abuses that they did to the Armenian people in 1915 and beyond. So it’s really important to draw attention to why people are denying, what are the tactics they’re using, demonstrate that what happened to the Armenian people unfortunately is not a unique situation – we’re connected to all these other groups that have suffered atrocities as well – and that we need to basically come together to once and for all say never forget and then do everything we can for the ‘never again’ component of it.”

Bringing The Promise to the big screen was no easy task. Christian Bale was drawn to the project for that very reason. “I learned about the efforts to get a major film made, and how over the decades it’s really been thwarted. Kirk Kerkorian himself, owning, running MGM was not able to do it at that time.” He went on to admit that “embarrassingly, and I think quite commonly, I learned about the Armenian Genocide really around the same time that the hundredth anniversary was happening, and it was stunning to me that such an atrocity is largely unknown. It’s this great unknown genocide, but it’s modern history. And the consequences – or lack of consequences – for this probably provoked many of the other genocides we’ve seen since.”

He found himself drawing parallels to current events: “And I was reading the script, Musa Dagh, the seizure on the mountain, and I was watching the news, and there were the Yazidis under siege being slaughtered, and it just made me realize how relevant this story was.”

Possible Second Explosive Device Found Near Site of New York Blast – Police

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ny-explosionThe NY police twitted that a possible second explosive device was found in the Chelsea neigborhood in Manhattan, which was hit by a major blast hours ago, injuring some 29 people.

The suspected explosive device was found on Saturday in New York City near the site of a blast in the Chelsea neighborhood, Harry J. Wedin, chief of the New York Police Department’s Special Operations Division, said in a message on Twitter. The police warned people to avoid the area of explosion.

The police has reportedly cordoned off the territory around the area where the second suspected bomb has been discovered.

Fox News reported that the second explosive device is made of a pressure cooker. A source told CNN that the device had wires attached and appeared to be connected to a cell phone.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said to reporters that the blast was intentional. However, he noted that it’s early to talk about the connection between the New York blast and that that occurred earlier on Saturday in New Jersey.

“There is no specific and credible threat against New York city at this point in time from any terror organization,”  he underscored.

The explosion occurred at 8:30 PM at 135 23rd St. in downtown Manhattan between 6th and 7th avenue.

The blast caused 29 injuries with none of them life threatening, the city’s Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at a press conference. The Russian consulate general in the US reported that no Russian citizens were injured in the explosion.

NY: Armenians mark centennial of Genocide in Times Square

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NY-Armenian-Genocide-marchThousands of Armenians held an action on the Armenian Genocide Centennial in Times Square of New York on Sunday.

The protesters marched from St. Vartan church to Times Square to demand the U.S. government recognize the Armenian Genocide. The protesters were waving Armenian flags and were carrying posters urging Turkey to recognize the Genocide.

Senator Charles Schumer, several Jewish leaders as well as famous Turkish scholar Taner Akcam were among rally speakers, NBC New York reported.

“I stand with you in making sure the deniers are not given any place under the sun,” Senator Schumer said.

Taner Akcam added that it is very troubling to see that the United States had still not recognized the Armenian Genocide.

Photo from ANCA Facebook

 

NY: Times Square 100th Anniversary Commemoration of Armenian Genocide April 26

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TS-2-300x200NEW YORK—The 100th anniversary commemoration of the Armenian Genocide will be held in Times Square (43rd St. and Broadway) on April 26, beginning at 1:45 p.m. This historic event will pay tribute to the 1.5 million Armenians who were massacred by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire and to the millions of victims of subsequent genocides worldwide.

The Divine Liturgy and Times Square program will begin with church services at 10 am at St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral, located at 630 Second Ave. at 34th St. His Eminence Archbishop Khajag Barsamian will serve as celebrant and His Eminence Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan as homilist. The procession to Times Square will start at 12 p.m. and the program, which will feature speakers from the political, media, and scholarly fields, will begin at 1:45 p.m. Acclaimed Armenian-American musician Sebu Simonian from the Los Angeles-based indie pop band “Capital Cities” will be a guest performer, while Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, will serve as keynote speaker. The Areni Choir will also take part in the commemoration.

For parishes organizing transportation to New York, buses should drop off passengers at 2nd Ave. and park on 35th St. (between 1st and 2nd Ave.). Buses will depart for Times Square following services and park on 42nd St. (between 6th Ave. and Broadway). Passengers will be picked up from Times Square (at 43rd St. and Broadway, between 4:30 and 5 p.m.) Sandwiches will be available after services. All events will move forward, rain or shine.

For more information, contact Edward Barsamian (procession) at (347) 556-2666; Leo Manuelian (buses) at (917) 418-3940; Sona Manuelian (buses) at (551) 427-8763; Edward Boladian (floats) at (917) 885-0221; and Tigran Sahakyan (volunteers) at (212) 444-8003.

The 2015 Genocide Commemoration in Times Square is organized by the Mid-Atlantic Knights and Daughters of Vartan in affiliation with the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of America (Eastern Region).

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.april24nyc.com.

“Responsibility 2015” international conference kicks off in New York

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Responsibility 2015 international conference

Responsibility 2015

The opening panel of “Responsibility 2015” international conference kicked off in New York on Friday.

Hannibal Travis, keynote speaker Geoffrey Robertson QC, and Antranig Kasbarian discussed 100 years of human rights violations with a special focus on justice for the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian National Committee of America said in a message on Facebook.

In his speech Geoffrey Robertson condemned the equivocation of Armenian Genocide by U.S. and UK.

“Final act of genocide is denial,” he said.

Robertson added that scars of Armenian Genocide continue till Turkey makes some sort of acknowledgment and reparations.

The conference entitled “Responsibility 2015” is being held on March 13-15, 2015 at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel.

 

Breaking News: 3 in Brooklyn Charged With Aiding Islamic State

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Three men living in Brooklyn were arrested and charged on Wednesday with providing material support to the Islamic State, a terrorist organization that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has been actively recruiting Westerners to its fight.
One of the men was arrested early Wednesday morning at Kennedy International Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul and then planned to travel to Syria, according to the authorities. Report NYT
The men were identified as Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, Akhror Saidakhmetov, and Abror Habibov – all citizens of Uzbekistan who were living in Brooklyn.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, the authorities first became suspicious about at least two of the men in August and are concerned that more individuals might have been involved.
According to the complaint, one of the men who sought to travel to Syria to fight said that if he failed to make it overseas, he would launch attacks in the United States, including planting a bomb on Coney Island and attacking President Obama.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/nyregion/3-men-in-brooklyn-charged-supporting-isis.html?emc=edit_na_20150225

 

Robertson, Fisk & Geoffrey Robertson to Speak at Genocide Centennial Conference in New York

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rob-fiskJournalist Robert Fisk (left) and jurist Geoffrey Robertson
NEW YORK (Armenian Weekly)–Jurist Geoffrey Robertson and journalist Robert Fisk are among the confirmed speakers at “Responsibility 2015,” the international conference marking the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, to be held on March 13-15, 2015, at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Geoffrey Robertson is an international jurist, human rights lawyer, and academic. His latest book is An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Remembers the Armenians? In recent years, he has been particularly prominent in the defense of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He has also represented author Salman Rushdie, and prosecuted General Augusto Pinochet. In 2008, he was appointed by United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as a “distinguished jurist” member of the UN’s Justice Council, which nominates and supervises UN judges. His memoir, The Justice Game, has sold over 150,000 copies.

Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent of the Independent newspaper. He holds numerous awards for journalism, including two Amnesty International UK Press Awards and seven British International Journalist of the Year awards. During the 30 years he has been reporting on the Middle East, he has covered every major event in the region, from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution, from the hostage crisis in Beirut to the Iran-Iraq War, from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Israel’s invasions of Lebanon, and from the Gulf War to the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq. His books include The Great War for Civilization: the Conquest of the Middle East.

The three-day conference will feature a lineup of prominent historians, policymakers, authors, and artists from around the globe. The program will consist of concurrent morning and afternoon panels and discussions focusing on justice and reparations for cases of genocide, the responsibility to protect (R2P), genocide research, activism for justice and accountability, building solidarity, and artistic responses to genocide and mass violence.

The “Responsibility 2015” conference is being organized by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Eastern U.S. Centennial Committee, under the auspices of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of America, Eastern Region.

Evening sessions bringing together policymakers, political leaders, artists, and celebrities known for their activism and humanitarian work will highlight the theme of responsibility to confront past injustices and struggle towards preventing new ones.

Photography and art exhibits with the theme of survival will be held at the same venue for the duration of the conference.

The organizing committee is comprised of the following scholars and activists: Khatchig Mouradian and Hayg Oshagan, co-chairs; George Aghjayan, Kim Hekimian, Antranig Kasbarian, and Henry Theriault.

September 11 anniversary commemorated in New York City this morning

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By Associated Press 

15818935-mmmainAn American flag is placed in an inscribed name along the edge of the North Pool during memorial observances on the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2014. In New York, family members of those killed at the World Trade Center will read the names of the victims at a ceremony at ground zero. (AP Photo/Justin Lane, Pool) (JUSTIN LANE, Associated Press)

Stephen Albert, whose father Jon died during the attacks, kicked off reading the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He said his dad was a dedicated father, husband and respected colleague.

“He will be sorely missed,” he said.

The sad roll call was to pause only four times: to mark the times when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, when the second plane struck, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell.

Thelma Stuart, whose husband Walwyn Wellington Stuart, Jr., 28, was a Port Authority Police Department officer, said the nation should pray for its leaders, “that God will grant them wisdom, knowledge and understanding on directing them on moving forward.”

Little about the annual ceremony at ground zero has changed. But so much around it has.

For the first time, the National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum — which includes gut-wrenching artifacts and graphic photos of the attacks — will be open on the anniversary. Fences around the memorial plaza have come down, integrating the sacred site more fully with the streets of Manhattan while completely opening it up to the public and camera-wielding tourists.

A new mayor is in office, Bill de Blasio, one far less linked to the attacks and their aftermath than his immediate predecessors. And finally, a nearly completed One World Trade Center has risen 1,776 feet above ground zero and will be filled with office workers by this date in 2015, another sign that a page in the city’s history may be turning.

On Thursday, New Yorkers went about their morning routines along sidewalks that were once cordoned off. Inside the plaza, families milled quietly.

Franklin Murray of New York wore a shirt with a photo of his brother, Harry Glen, and the words “our angel” above the photo and “the wind beneath our wings” below. Glen worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the companies most decimated.

He said he wanted to see the memorial for the first time, and it gave him a “funny feeling” to know there was now a memorial. He has come to the ceremony before but “before it was getting harder, so I forced myself to get down here.”

“Coming down to the area is rough,” he said.

For some who lost loved ones in the attacks, the increasing feel of a return to normalcy in the area threatens to obscure the tragedy that took place there and interfere with their grief.

“Instead of a quiet place of reflection, it’s where kids are running around,” said Nancy Nee, whose firefighter brother, George Cain, was killed in the attacks. “Some people forget this is a cemetery. I would never go to the Holocaust museum and take a selfie.”

But for others, the changes are an important part of the healing process.

“When I first saw (One World Trade Center), it really made my heart sing,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. “It does every time I see it because it’s so symbolic of what the country went through.”

“I want to see it bustling,” she said. “I want to see more housing down there; I want to see it alive and bursting with businesses.”

The memorial plaza will be closed to the public for most of the day and available only to family members. It will reopen at 6 p.m., at which point thousands of New Yorkers are expected to mark the anniversary at the twin reflecting pools where the towers once stood.

In May, when the museum opened in a ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, the fences that had surrounded the plaza for years disappeared, as did the need for visitors to obtain a timed ticket. Now, thousands of people freely visit every day, from cellphone-toting travelers to workers on a lunch break, and those crowds will only swell further this year when One World Trade Center finally opens.

The first ceremony at the site was held six months after the Twin Towers fell and was organized by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his aides. Bloomberg, who took office just three months after the attacks, remained in charge, acting as the master of ceremonies for the next decade. He attended on Thursday.

After other elected officials attempted to gain a larger role at the solemn event, in 2012, all politicians — including Bloomberg — were prohibited from speaking at the event. That remains the case now.

NY to host int’l conference marking Armenian Genocide centennial

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An international conference marking the Armenian Genocide’s centennial will take place on March 13-15, 2015 at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel, the Armenian Weekly 181982reported.

The three-day conference will feature a prominent lineup of historians, policymakers, authors, and artists from around the globe. The program will consist of concurrent morning and afternoon panels and discussions focusing on justice and reparations for cases of genocide, the responsibility to protect (R2P), genocide research, activism for justice and accountability, building solidarity, and artistic responses to genocide and mass violence.

The conference, entitled “Responsibility 2015,” is being organized by the ARF Eastern U.S. centennial committee, under the auspices of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of America, Eastern Region.

Evening sessions bringing together policymakers, political leaders, artists and celebrities known for their activism and humanitarian work will highlight the theme of responsibility to confront past injustices and struggle towards preventing new ones.

Photography and art exhibits with the theme of survival will be held at the same venue for the duration of the conference.

The organizing committee consists of the following scholars and activists: Khatchig Mouradian and Hayg Oshagan, co-chairs; George Aghjayan, Kim Hekimian, Antranig Kasbarian, and Henry Theriault.

Related links:

The Armenian Weekly. International Conference on Genocide Centennial to be Held in NY
The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, majority of U.S. states, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium and Wales, National Council of Switzerland, Chamber of Commons of Canada, Polish Sejm, Vatican, European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.