War crimes of the Armenian government
On the night of May 8-9, 1992, the Armenian military occupied the historic Azerbaijani town of Shusha. The significance of that was the fact that Shusha city, a historic capital of the Karabakh region, had a 92 percent Azerbaijani population, while the Shusha County (rayon) as a whole was 98 percent Azerbaijani, according to the last Soviet census of 1989.
This military aggression by the Armenian army exactly 23 years ago paved the way to ethnic cleansing of the supermajority Azerbaijani population from their ancestral lands in the entire Karabakh region. According to the 1989 Soviet census, the entire Karabakh region, consisting of a dozen counties, had approximately 580,000 Azerbaijanis living in it and 120,000 Armenians.
As the Armenian army occupied Shusha, it basically destroyed the historic town, which was once the centerpiece of a vibrant Azerbaijani classical music scene and home to the first opera in the Middle East. It was renowned for its musicians, composers, and singers. Now it is a ghost town, a victim of Armenian destruction, occupation, and systematic ethnic cleansing.
Unfortunately, despite four U.N. Security Council resolutions, several U.N. General Assembly resolutions, and many other official documents and resolutions that call for “immediate complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces” of all Armenian military forces from Azerbaijan’s territories, the Armenian government refuses to comply with them, does not withdraw its military, and continues to occupy some 16 percent of de jure Azerbaijani territory, including Shusha.
This week, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, who personally took part in the military aggression and occupation of Azerbaijan by Armenia, was visiting Washington, D.C., meeting with U.S. politicians and the Washington Post Editorial Board. This is part of the dysfunction of our system, where a thug with blood of innocent civilians on his hands is freely visiting the United Staes, cozying up to influential inside the Beltway media, and continuing to receive U.S. aid to the tune of nearly $3 billion since 1992, including military aid. Not bad for a war criminal who was photographed more than once rubbing shoulders with presidents of Iran and Russia. Meanwhile, victims of Armenian aggression and occupation, refugees from Shusha and other parts of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, can only look at their native lands and houses from Google Earth — for 23 years and counting.
Agshin Taghiyev
Online comment on ‘Lane: Religion and the GOP’
Thomas Jefferson, the man who in a letter to Danbury Baptist ministers coined the expression “separation of church and state,” wrote in an April 11, 1823, letter to strongly theistic John Adams:
Like Jefferson, years later Mahatma Gandhi in an exchange with his dear friend Tolstoy expressed like antipathy toward those that conspicuously parade themselves forward as a Christian: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Regardless of whose why, what has Ben Carson or any of these “Christians” Republicans done and what do they intend to meaningfully do beyond talking the game of Christianity? The greatest Republican president and likely also the nation’s greatest, Abraham Lincoln, was so reluctant to ever publicly state his own personal thoughts on religion that those that knew him best could only speculate and much of such was in shades of disagreement other than that Lincoln tried to do his human best for his fellow humans.
Sam Osborne
