90 Million Questions
By Paul Chaderjian (Fresno) – Friendly banter about public toilets in Armenia and argumentative exchanges about the semantics of the word 'Genocide' marked the extreme range of reaction US Ambassador to Armenia received during his four days of non-stop meetings with Central California Armenians. Ambassador John Ordway and Keith Simmons, Mission Director for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), visited Fresno, Fowler and Yettem as part of their national outreach tour. The goal of the visit was to establish stronger ties between the US Embassy to Armenia and the American-Armenians, whose political activism resulted in Congress setting aside nearly 90 million dollars of support for Armenia last year. "We discovered that the knowledge of what was going on in Armenia, how that 90 million dollars-a-year that Congress voted -- thanks to all of your efforts -- the knowledge of those programs stopped at the water's edge. It never passed beyo...