Day: March 28, 2024

Военный самолет РФ рухнул у берега аннексированного Крыма. Факт крушения подтвердил так называемый “губернатор” Севастополя Михаил Развожаев. По его словам, воздушное судно упало в море, пилот катапультировался, позднее его подобрали спасатели.

Некоторые российские провоенные… pic.twitter.com/qodPjNgwpF

— DW на русском (@dw_russian) March 28, 2024

One man’s ambition has undermined Israel’s security and consumed its politics. @AnshelPfeffer on Netanyahu, the worst leader Israel ever had https://t.co/SvLFMHWEte

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) March 28, 2024

“the Russian state has become, in essence, an organized criminal enterprise…and behavior resemble those of a criminal syndicate.” https://t.co/M3j5PVDfn9

— John Sipher (@john_sipher) March 28, 2024

Footage showing the Crash today of a Su-27 “Flanker” Fighter Aircraft with the the Russian Air Force near the City of Sevastopol in Russian-Occupied Crimea; the Pilot is reported to have Safely Ejected and Survived with Minor Injuries, with Rumors that the Aircraft was Downed by… pic.twitter.com/6NG18hSgjl

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 28, 2024

NPR News: 03-28-2024 7PM EDT

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Advocacy groups call the move “grave attack on the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

The Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region, the Armenian-American Action Network, the Pan Armenian Council Western USA, and dozens of frontline and direct constituency Armenian organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Armenian-Americans nationwide condemn the version of the Middle Eastern and North African checkbox released on Thursday by the Biden Administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

While we applaud the inclusion of a MENA checkbox after decades of historical exclusion, the erasure of Armenians in MENA represents a significant violation of Armenian-American civil rights and a grave and historic injustice that has generational consequences for the Armenian-American community. Today, hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents are denied accurate representation on the U.S. Census and its resultant funding and services.  

This move indicates the Census Bureau has ignored the calls of the Armenian-American community. The Armenian-American Census Coalition, anchored by ANCA-WR, Armenian-American Action Network, and Pan Armenian Council, united Armenian-led, Armenian-based, and Armenian-constituency-based organizations across the political spectrum in the call for Armenian classification in the MENA draft as a transnational indigenous MENA community that comprises one of the largest groups numerically in the category. Furthermore, in response to the Federal Registrar Notice of 2023, in a historic move, over 10 percent of all MENA public comments submitted called for the inclusion of Armenians in the Census in the new MENA draft.

This was the largest number of comments of any specific ethnic group in MENA. Instead of requiring the rigorous testing and research the Census Bureau must do to develop the categories to actually improve the count of all communities, these standards rely on a flawed 2015 Census Bureau National Content Test and ignore overwhelming stakeholder input and community comments resulting in the exclusion of Armenian Americans.

Thursday’s announcement indicates that public comment and the voices of thousands of Americans were not considered. The Census Bureau acted independently without input from U.S. Armenian residents, scholars, elected officials, and community members across this country. Furthermore, today’s announcement glaringly reveals the Armenian community outreach necessary for the Census Bureau to create a transparent, scholarly-backed, and data-based Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) checkbox never occurred. This happened despite the nation’s leading experts and stakeholders consistently demanding the engagement of Armenian voices. 

We maintain that over the past decade, the federal government has failed to engage Armenian organizations, scholars, and elected leaders in any step of the formation of the MENA checkbox. By not being invited to the table, the Census has produced an incomplete, inaccurate, and exclusionary MENA designation that will undercount, separate, deny funding and resources to, and fail to represent, hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents of Armenian descent. The Biden Administration and Census Bureau have failed to do their due diligence throughout the creation of the version of the category that was announced today. 

This move will have a centuries-long systemic impact. Lack of representation on the U.S. Census continues to have dire consequences for Armenian-American issues, needs, and priorities. The exclusion of Armenians from accurate federal Census classification means that millions of dollars of funding and resources are denied to Armenians each year as data drives policy SPD 15 excludes Armenian communities, so Armenians do not receive equitable protection of their voting rights. Armenian-American small businesses are the backbone of our communities. Still, business owners suffer from various cultural, linguistic, political, and spatial barriers, yet are not visible in the data. Meanwhile, Armenians are not protected by the Small Business Act. Armenian Americans continue to face hate crimes, marginalization, and discrimination. Still, they cannot fully address such realities because of a lack of classification, nor can governments and scholars demonstrate gaps in equality of opportunity. Centrally, Census classification determines federal, state, and local dollars, and lack of Census representation means Armenians are being marginalized across every level of U.S. society. The invisibilizing of Armenian communities in U.S. policy is an alarming trend that must be course-corrected immediately.

The Federal Government has cited the 2015 NCT for much of what it announced today with regard to MENA. Unlike all of the major MENA subgroups, the Armenian-American community and its dozens of representative organizations that do census outreach were not engaged but instead generally ignored in the community outreach efforts of the NCT.

Furthermore, even in the NCT, the results fail to hold water as Emraitis responded with six percent identifying as MENA and yet were included despite testing at a lower rate for MENA than communities like Armenians. Only 26 percent of those who identified as “Middle Eastern” and 31 percent of those who identified as “North African” actually checked the MENA checkbox on the NCT. An objective examination of the results of the NCT demonstrates its deep flaws with regard to the MENA category. As the coalition has maintained, the NCT had an inherent testing bias, which reflected the groups who saw themselves listed on the box. Armenians were never given that change. 

In this NCT, the code 012, for the first time, was also randomly assigned to Armenians instead of the longstanding ancestry code that historically has placed Armenians in MENA coding and is more in line with U.N. statistical classification. In the NCT, the Census Bureau racialized Armenians as non-MENA by its own arbitrary decision instead of using the ancestry code in MENA, again revealing inherent bias in the structure and methodology of the test creation itself. The Census Bureau must justify why arbitrary and seemingly preferential treatment was given to some communities over others and address the lack of transparency and consistency in its efforts, outreach, consultation of scholars, and methodology. 

“The failure to engage Armenian-Americans in the MENA checkbox process is an affront to the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Armenian descent. Armenian Americans have effectively mobilized to ensure their voice is heard in the revision process and, for years, executed culturally relevant outreach efforts for the U.S. Census,” said ANCA-WR Executive Director Sarkis Balkhian said in response to Thursday’s decision.

“Today, the Biden Administration and the Census Bureau failed Armenian-Americans!” Balkhian added. “We reject this erasure and demand that this action is immediately rectified.”

Dr. Sophia Armen, a scholar of Middle Eastern-American Studies and Executive Director of AAAN, said that this move “indicates the Census Bureau and the Biden Administration has chosen politics over the needs of a large, historic, and vital community in the U.S. The failure to engage Armenian voices, including Armenian experts of the MENA region, is a massive error and miscalculation that will affect the everyday working Armenian family for generations to come. With these standards, what the government is saying to us as Armenians is, “You do not matter’ and that is deeply concerning.” 

Furthermore, on the eve of Armenian Genocide Remembrance and Armenian-American Heritage Month, with this announcement, the Biden administration and Census Bureau have seemingly stepped into genocide denialism, perpetuating the ideological myth at the foundation of the Armenian Genocide: that Armenians are not indigenous to this region which justified their erasure and the refusal to acknowledge Armenians fully as a transnational community with ties that cross borders and modern-nation states.

By the Census’ own numbers, Armenian-Americans specifically continue to be part of their MENA definitions yet now will have their Armenian identity erased, and Armenian data rendered even more inaccurate, undercounted, and invisible than before. This announcement today particularly has grave consequences for Americans of Armenian heritage, notably from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Western Armenia, and will directly impact the future survival of the Armenian diaspora and its cultural, religious, and linguistic heritage over generations, both in the region and in the United States. 

The exclusion of Armenians as a transnational MENA community in the Census Bureau’s decision is a grave attack on the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Armenian heritage. We will not stand for our exclusion and will act to safeguard our community from erasure, discrimination, and invisibility.

In recent weeks, Nikol Pashinyan and his administration once again sent shockwaves through Armenia and the Armenian world by expressing their readiness for another unilateral concession. This time it is the Tavush Province. As a result of the detrimental policies of the current government of the Republic of Armenia, strategically important territories are being handed over to the enemy, which will result into serious security threats.

The surrender of Artsakh was only the beginning. The government of Armenia is disregarding Artsakh and the Artsakh issue in every possible way. The state bodies elected by the people of Artsakh have exclusive authority to promote and pursue the rights of Artsakh. Discrediting those bodies and hindering their activities means relinquishing those rights.

The issues of the status of Artsakh and the collective right of return of Artsakh Armenians are on the Armenian people’s agenda, and until these issues are resolved, there cannot be a dignified and real peace.
Over the past years, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation has repeatedly warned about the dangers and threats coming from the enemies of Armenia and Artsakh, to which the government of the Republic of Armenia has consciously and with conviction given in.

It is necessary to put an end to the policy of fighting against national values and structures and to focus on increasing the combat capability of the Armenian Army and strengthening it.
We are convinced that the consolidation of all healthy national forces in Armenia and the Diaspora is an urgent necessity. There is one agenda: the salvation of the Armenian statehood.

Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau
March 28, 2024

Armenia is Becoming a ‘Tool’ of the West, Moscow Says

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday said that the position of Armenia’s current leadership “does not inspire optimism” for relations between Yerevan and Moscow.

“I have already had to comment on the current situation in Armenia, it certainly does not inspire optimism. The Armenian leadership, to put it bluntly, under far-fetched pretexts, are altering the history of the last three to three and a half years, and deliberately pursuing a course that may collapse relations with the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Izvestia news agency on Thursday.

The Russian foreign minister said that Yerevan has been slandering Russian servicemen who are stationed at the 102nd military base in Gyumri, the Russian border guards and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

“Yerevan does not mention that it is the CSTO that has repeatedly defended Armenia’s interests in difficult situations and, in 2021, was ready to send its peacekeeping mission to the country to reduce the tension in its relationships with Azerbaijan,” Lavrov said.

He recalled that the mandate of this mission was fully agreed upon at a ministerial meeting in Yerevan in the autumn of 2021, after which Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared a lack of consensus and summoned a similar EU mission to the country.

It was subsequently doubled, and now troops from Norway, Canada, and the United States are being sent there, turning the EU mission into a NATO mission, Lavrov added.

Despite Lavrov’s remarks, there are currently no American observers embedded in the EU mission.

“This entire story of the past few years is being twisted by both Mr Pashinyan and his staff, the leadership of the Armenian parliament,” Lavrov said.

Meanwhile, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday voiced Moscow’s concern over an upcoming meeting between Pashinyan, the Secretary of State and the European Commission President, scheduled for April 5.

She said her country’s concerns stems from the United State and European Union overtly stating that their main objective is to counter Russia.

“Such meetings cause concern with most of the countries in the region because they are not aimed at achieving peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but rather they serve as the West’s further entry in the South Caucasus,” Zakharova said.

with its extremely destructive approaches, at the creation of new dividing lines there, at forcing the countries of the region to follow the anti-Russian agenda, at the destruction of their age-old ties with Moscow, and at the collapse of the existing mechanisms of regional security and economic cooperation.

“Right before the world’s eyes, Armenia is being turned into a tool for the implementation of the collective West’s extremely dangerous plans, which are completely different from the fundamental interests of the Armenian people” Zakharova said.

“Why is Yerevan pretending not to grasp that this is a larger issue,” she added.

Armenian Parliament Speaker says Russia deceived them many times  AzerNews.Az