khodja

Thanks Arpa, and where is Garmir Blur? As for the Khodja nickname, I do not understand why this is so offensive to you. It is the title which the Turks gave my great-grandfather. You should only know who his brother was, which I will not tell out of fear of the homicidal Turks who lurk here. Their hatred runs so deep that they are killing today defenseless old Armenian women both in Turkey and yes, even in the US. The title meant little during the Genocide, as the Turks killed my great-grandfather's four sons and the majority of their families. Please explain to me why this term is so offensive.

Arpa, Please take hold of your senses here. Do you realize that the Chinese government has been helping Armenia with business help? Today's Anatolian Turks are more genetically Anatolian than East Asian. The problem is one of differing cultures, not genetics. We also have Mongolian genes in us. You can fight that idea all you want, but it is a fact. Your racist blather only gives strength to the unholy Turkish regime in Ankara.

Yeah, that is the place. Thanks, MosJan for the photograph. I forgot the name of the upscale street in Yerevan. Is it Sayat Nova?

The Turkish ruling elite has clearly spoken. They will not admit to the Genocide under any circumstances. They have stated that dialogue will NEVER lead to any admission. THEREFORE, there is no reason to discuss with them that which is documented in libraries all over the world. They are toying with us, attempting to gain advantage. Using their geo-political and economic power to distort the truth. Their overtures toward internal civil rights are for external consumption. They want EU membership. We have our allies, Greece et.al. Let us work toward our interests and ignore the Turks.

Get on your phones and computers and bombard the Whittier Daily News for using the term "so-called Armenian Genocide" in an article today. Are they the mouthpiece for the Turkish government?

Bush Adminstration pressures Supreme Court to hand down rejection (today) of Holocaust Insurance Law of California. European Jews as well as Armenian Genocide survivors and their famlies will suffer. Bush only concerned with fat-cat insurance companies and their $$$$$ multi-million dollar CEOs.

CORRECTION: Arlen, Jr. wrote book "PASSAGE TO ARARAT"

Hovsep jan, I have this phenomenon in my own family. I have very prominent cousins who deny their Armenian heritage and claim that they are French. Not Armenians from France, but French. It is not uncommon, A young woman from California wrote a book about her family where the same phenomenon occurred. Dickran Kouyoumjian, the famous English writer went by the name Michael Arlen, and stated, "Who would claim to be Armenian if he were not?" It took his son years to rediscover his Armenian heritage about which he wrote a book titled, "Return to Ararat." Just because the parent may have this problem, does not mean that the children will. This is the story on Peck: Very little was known about the paternal grandfather of Peck, an immigrant from England known as Samuel Peck. Peck's paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe Peck Gilpin, was an immigrant from Ireland who became a successful businesswoman in Upstate New York. In 1886 she married this Samuel Peck in Rochester, New York. One year later, in 1886, Gregory Perl Peck was born. In 1887, the elder Peck died of pneumonia. Catherine Peck subsequently remarried to a man named Gilpin. Gregory Perl Peck learned little of his father's family overseas. Catherine Ashe Peck sent her only son to pharmacy school. She later set him up in a business in La Jolla, California. Gregory Perl Peck married a young woman, Bunny Ayres from St. Lpouis Missouri. The marriage and the pharmacy business both soon failed. Young Eldred Gregory Peck was raised by his maternal Ayres grandmother while his mother earned a living for herself. Years later she married an Italian fom San Francisco named Massucci, who had Anglisized his name to Maysuch. Gregory Perl also remarried and had another son, David by his second marriage. The Armenian link surfaced only after the actor Eldred Gregory Peck, now known as Gregory Peck, married his second wife Veronique Passani. Ancestry is more important to the Europeans. She had his ancestry traced and, lo and behold, there were the Armenian roots. She urged him to learn about his partial heritage. He even took classes in Armenian. But by then his public persona was fixed and he didn't want to tamper with it. This is not uncommon in the industry he worked in. Cher passed herself off for years as a half-breed Cherokee Indian, never mentioning that her father was Armenian. She was from the younger generation where things changed after the movie "Roots" and there as more interest in one's heritage in America. Peck was from another era, saw what Arlene Francis Kazanjian had endured and decided to keep quiet. The perception of Armenians in California at the time was of arch-conservative Fresnans, so alien to his politics and anethema in the "industry."

Gamavor, The Turks clearly see the value of all that and are therefore fighting it on all fronts. Your myopia astounds me.

Gamavor, You still insist on calling me Moshe or Mehmet. I am as Armenian as you are. You have been imbued with a Soviet mentality. I have been imbued with a JFK liberal American mentality. Just because I do not agree with you does not make me less Armenian. As for money, there are Armenians who are as well off as some Jews. The wealthy American Jews are just greater in number, more politically involved and with more allies that they have nurtured. This is changing as we Armenians are coming out of our shell.

Bravo gamvor, Now lets get on with the business of righting the wrong done to our people. How much longer is Turkey going to play this charade of words with what happened 1915-1923? Are there insurance companies who have not paid deceased Turks families? Are there Turks who were dispossesed from ancestral lands? Perhaps a few in tiny Karabagh, but not the millions of Armenian, Greeks and Assyrian dispossesed.

Gamavor, It is called FMF, Familial Mediterranean Fever. The highest percentages of the gene for it are found among Armenians and Oriental (Middle East Origin Jews), approximately 20%,with much less percentages, approimately 5% of the population, found in Arabs and Anatolian Turks.

Artaxias, I never had any doubt that Gamavor was a "fellow-traveller" of yours. Speaking of meeting of the minds, neither of you would have to go far for a mental convergence.

I KNOW exactly where my ancestors game from. My aunt spent a large sum to have our geneology traced. We knew that we were descended from the Giligian nobility, but we knew little else. For a minimal extra fee, the geneologist also threw in a study of my mother's family. So my ancestors hail from everywhere from the France/Germany to China, to what is presently Southern Iraq and yet I am 7/8 Armenian. This is probably the case for many more Armenians. There are few peoples on ths earth not of mixed blood, so lets throw out any discussion of race. Recent DNA studies showed that race is immaterial as an African tribe can be closer gentically to a Norse village than to the neighboring African tribe.

Artaxias, I have NEVER claimed that WE are Mongolian. It is just that we are of mixed race. Just look around you closely in an Armenian crowd and you immediately realize this. Even the pictures you posted of Armenians in "Armenian Aryan" will confirm this. Did you see that one Armenian girl with the Star of David hanging around her neck. I suppose that she is "ges oo ges" like Kasparov and the College President son of Arlene Francis.