WORLD NEWS
Never Forget The Armenian Genocide
April 24, 2013
By: Ani Vahradyan and Janet Gukasyan
By: Ani Vahradyan and Janet Gukasyan
On the 24th of April, Armenians around the world will gather to remember the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide. It was on this day in 1915 that the genocide began; the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire arrested approximately 250 Armenian community leaders and intellectuals and murdered them in Istanbul. They “enlisted” every able-bodied man into the army, and called him away from his home, his family, under the pretense of helping with the WWI effort. These men were mercilessly executed or worked to death. The Ottoman military then set forth to uproot the remaining Armenian women, children, and elderly from their homes and force them to march for hundreds of miles through the Syrian Desert, depriving them of food, water, and shelter. Kidnapped, starved, dehydrated, raped, beaten, they were left to die. Corpses were strewn across the Syrian dessert; they were thrown into the Euphrates River. Massacres, indiscriminate of age or gender, took place. Massacres of 1.5 million Armenians, took place. These massacres, known as the Armenian Genocide, were the Ottoman government’s systematic killings of the Armenian people in their historic homeland, the territory constituting present-day Republic of Turkey.
The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged as the first modern genocide; scholars recognize the fact that the killings were organized and systematic, with the goal of eliminating the Armenian people. It is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. However, Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, continues to deny the events, and the word “genocide,” claiming that the large number of deaths were simply war casualties. However, they cannot hide the incontrovertible evidence, they cannot erase the horrors from the memory of the survivors. |
Twenty countries around the world have officially recognized the events of this period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. It is important for more countries to identify the Armenian Genocide so the Armenian people can have their justice served and their reparations paid. “Never forget,” the mantra on this day, shows that we, as human beings, must not stop until the guilty admit their guilt and the wronged receive closure.
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Government Shutdown
By Jacob Lee
On October 1st, our nation suffered from the consequences of the disputes and disparities between the Senate and the House of Representatives, regarding the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. On that night, the United States government underwent a shutdown, which lasted more than two weeks. This 16-day shutdown brought chaos and confusion to not only the people, but also to the government, where these series of unfortunate events derived from.
Every year, the Congress needs to approve the budget for the next fiscal year – October 1st to September 30th - proposed by the president. With the approval of the budget, the president can spend money according to the spending bill, but unlike other years, Congress was unable to come to an agreement. The House of Representatives, consisted widely of Republicans, who are also known as members of the Grand Old Party (GOP), was strongly against the new Obamacare law. Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, was the first attempt since the 1960s to reform the struggling health care industry. The plan of the new act is to provide all Americans with “affordable quality” health care and by 2014, you are required to purchase your own “government-approved” health insurance, if health insurance is not offered by your employer, or pay a tax penalty. The problem that the GOP had was that it was just too expensive for the government to provide this affordable healthcare for the whole nation, who sought to use government money on other programs that the GOP favored. Every budget sent in by Senate, who is dominantly run by Democrats, was rejected due to its focus on funding Obamacare. Due to these disagreements and inability to come to an ultimatum, the government officially shut down on October 1st. Due to the shutdown, services which the government deemed ‘unessential’ were shutdown, with thousands of jobs being furloughed, which brought chaos to many employees affected by the government shutdown. The nation of United States was in turmoil, and its people confused and scared, but there was a sliver of hope for the nation.
On October 17th, President Obama signed a bill to reopen the government. On the previous night, The Senate voted 81 to 18 Wednesday night to reopen the federal government and raise the nation's borrowing limit, and the House of Representatives soon followed, voting 285-144 to end the latest damaging battle of divided government in a polarized Congress. After 16 long days, the government shutdown finally came to an end. Hundreds of thousands of public servants were relieved from the fact that they could return to work and that critical programs protecting our health and the environment would fully function once again. But any sense of reassurance is tempered by two simple facts: we never should have been there in the first place, and we could easily be in the same position again in January. Although the government did reopen, members of the GOP agreed to fund the government only until mid-January. "The sad truth is, we ended up where we started," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "We achieved our goal, but at a cost. It never should have been this way."
Obama promised to keep his pledge to negotiate once the crisis ended, and focused on the budget conference as the opportunity. Obama said, "We now have an opportunity to focus on a sensible budget that is responsible, that is fair, and that helps hardworking people all across this country.”