פֿרײלעך זײַן

הײַנט איז אַ גוטער טאָג

First things first. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs took up the issue of H.Res. 106, which calls, "...upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes." (link for the comeplete text of the bill: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_10_08_armenia.pdf ). The House has debated the recognition of the ruthless genocide carried out against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Turks many times before, without result. This year is looking better though. In an extremely dramatic congressional committee meeting that I actually cried while watching, the committee voted in favour of the resolution by a vote of 27-21. Instead of dying in committee, the bill will now make its way to the House floor for further debate. 1,500,000 Armenians were killed in the Genocide, however the Turkish government to this day refuses to recognize the genocide as such (and it wasn't even this current democratic state that was responsible for the Genocide, it was the Ottomans. Such backwardness would be comparable to today's modern German government denying that the Nazi government orchestrated a Genocide.) I encourage you to research this story a little on your own, for you'll quickly learn of the ridiculous political maneuvering and threats that have come out of the Turkish government do to the "spectre" of HRES 106 passing the House (Bush will undoubtedly veto the bill if it were to pass the Congress as the man lacks a moral compass.) This issue indeed inspired me this morning to start scripting my first set of rubber ducks for the rubber duck project. On the ducks i included info about the genocide, the resolution, and the phone number of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Following the announcement of the committee's vote, i let out a "tekiah gadola" (i hate transliteration, but i couldnt find the hebrew) from the window of the third floor of my dormitory.

In addition to the aforementioned vote being a reason for today being a good day, i had my first international Yiddish communication (via e-mail) with a dude living in Warsaw. I am really ecstatic about this development, and would much rather spend the rest of today studying Yiddish than doing Anthropology homework, but at least i have a three day weekend!

Also, going down the list of importance, I received my book of Yiddish Proverbs today. I had bought it on ebay a few weeks ago and i am having a good time going through it. I will be posting proverbs sporadically from henceforth.

Finally, I received two t-shirt i designed and bought off of cafepress several weeks ago. One is red and features an army of cartoon Zhitlovskys, with one highlighted in red. The other is yellow (replacing my unfortunately ink stained "I'm dead" Reagan t-shirt) featuring the טשײַניק האַקער pictured at the top of this blog.

Hooray!