June 5 is the date of the California Primary Election. U.S. presidential hopefuls grace the top of the ballot, so you’d think I’d start off with that race.

The title is my first thought when I heard the message from my mother, left this morning, about the death of one of my grand-aunts. Those morning calls always seem to bear ill tidings.

BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
Last weekend, someone paid me quite a compliment! As I was hiking down the mountainside, I said hello to a hiker going uphill, who then responded, but also asked if I was Armenian, if I wrote for Asbarez… I had been recognized because of my picture online. This was one of my readers! [...]

It’s good to see May 1st making a comeback in the United States as a day of labor and related rights. It’s sad that the post WWII efforts by the political right in the country have succeeded in largely erasing the origins and importance of that date from popular memory.

The sensibilities in question are those of the blood suckers, the people who care naught for others, especially others upon whom they’ve visited all kinds of discomfort and pain, yet iare “shocked” when others return the favor.

This week we have three instances of disgusting gall garnished with insufferable temerity, to rub our (Armenian) and all of humanity’s face in the mire of human shamelessness— one hails from Turkey, the second from Armenia, and the third, from Los Angeles.

Here I sit, just hours from the absolute deadline for getting this piece in to Asbarez. My editor rightly hates me when I do this. But for a change, I’m actually glad I delayed so much to write my weekly article, else, all the pieces would not have come together.

Everyone has seen those statues of Lady Justice (derived from various Egyptian, Greek, and Roman deities), with the scale in one hand, a sword in the other, and a blindfold over her eyes.

I have intentionally used Western Armenian pronunciation and an otherwise differing spelling of a very threatened forest’s name. I have to address a minor point that’s a major irritant to me. It’s one thing to use Eastern Armenian pronunciation to transliterate Armenian words to English.

The last few weeks have not looked kindly on Armenians for the most part- court rulings, Azeri-oil-funded propaganda misrepresenting what happened in Khojaluh two decades ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s idiotic and embarrassing comments about the Genocide, etc.

By now you know we took a couple of good thwacks in the judicial sphere over the last fortnight. Both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and France’s Constitutional Council handed down decisions inimical Armenian interests. But, as if that’s not bad enough, both decisions don’t even make sense!

By node I mean one of our human structures, be it state based in the two existing Armenian Republics or organizationally based in the Diaspora.

Friday started out with a hike to scout a route from Burbank to Griffith Park (in Los Angeles) for a future outing with one of Burbank’s city council members.

Did you read about the goings-on in the small Arizona town of San Luis, abutting the Mexican border? A new technology of disenfranchisement seems to have been discovered. And, it seems the Latinos have pulled a page from the Armenian book of undercutting one another.