Monday, April 24, 2017

Did Armenia really have a genocide? (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; XII. Loki; factcheckarmenia.com; SOAD, Benny Lambaba; Glink; Burning Red


Now we're not saying the mass murdering and ethnic cleansing was not a "genocide." But genocide has a very specific definition on the world stage -- so why has no court recognized it as such?

Is Turkey really so powerful and influential in Europe today? The fact is we live next to Armenia II (Glendale, California), so we have grown up with hearing one side of the story. And we love System of a Down, who also only give us one side of the story. Just because Hitler offhandedly referred to it, allegedly referred to it, as a "genocide" does not make it so.

We have to question it because we're progressives -- and that means listening to all sides. Any sensible person has to question why mainstream politicians and media outlets are so eager to label it a "genocide" without a court agreeing or with 173 countries saying it wasn't or at least not saying.



Thoughtless sentimentality = propaganda (AP)
No Turk -- what city do they live in? -- ever stands up and gets a say. Last year while taking the side of Armenia yet again, we had Turkish scholars saying it was a genocide. Sell outs trying to get ahead in academia because the gatekeepers do not allow some discourse but fund and encourage other points of view they like.

It happens, of course, with Israel. It happens with everything when people dictate what's PC (politically correct) to say, question, so much as think.

For example, recently UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was telling us all what to think. Gruesome and grizzly images of Syrian atrocities are allowed. They pull our heartstrings and get massive coverage. People are up in arms demanding WAR! Let's attack! Let's bomb! Let's kill! Revenge! Justice! American superiority!

Hey, numb-numb, no. Can we see we're being set up? Whoever rules the mainstream press rules the conversation and manufactures consent. Let's get the other side. Let's constantly listen to the other side even when someone says, "It's lies," it's "fake news," it's "not worth listening to." Yes it is.

There's no doubt there was killing, atrocities, crimes against humanity. But did Armenia really have a genocide?




Here is the truth [as interpreted by the pro-Turk side]
The events of 1915
were far more complex than what has been reported in the past and it is important that we recognize this was not as simple a scenario as the Armenian lobby would have us believe.
Despite the propaganda being pushed by a powerful and well-funded Armenian diaspora, the series of events in 1915 and beyond resulted in losses of life on both sides of the conflict. We cannot diminish the suffering that the Armenians faced, but we must acknowledge that millions of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs were also killed during this conflict.
 
For nearly a century, the Armenian lobby has attempted to portray these actions as a willful, deliberate attempt to commit genocide of the Armenian people -- a specific crime that is defined by international law. Nothing could be further from the truth, and a detailed examination of the broader context of history paints a vastly different picture.
 
Furthermore, and as a result, international courts have never designated these tragic events as genocide. There is no legal consensus on the tragedy of 1915 because even though the Armenian lobby has been misrepresenting the facts for nearly a century, history -- and the law -- tells us otherwise. It’s time to cut through the propaganda and get the facts straight. More

And now for an opposing point of view saying it was genocide: System of a Down

(Benny Lambaba) Rare footage of Armenian mistreatment to be screened and called a genocide.
(The Burning Red) Our beloved newscaster crush, Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks, has a melt down over the question of an Armenian genocide.



(Glink) This is a response to The Young Turks and Ana Kasperian involving recent events concerning the [alleged] Armenian genocide. Where does the name "The Young Turks" comes from, and has founder Cenk Uygur denied it in the past? There are many parallels between the Armenian genocide and Dragon Ball Z, oddly enough. Connections are made throughout the video.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Atom, this post is beyond ridiculous and cites pseudohistorical arguments paid by the nationalist wing of the Turkish government. As a fellow buddhist, I can't help but condemn these falsehoods. Firstly, the Armenian genocide issue was not first advocated by Armenian. Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the legal term genocide based his definition on what happened to the Armenians in the first world war and what happened to the Jews in the second. You do understand 375% of all Armenians living in Anatolia were killed and almost every single Armenian village in Anatolia (sans 1) was wiped out. Moreover, Armenians had been massacred numerous times in the 19th century before the genocide in the 20th century in punishment of them asking for greater legal rights and reforms to their lower position in Ottoman society (tanzimat reforms). There are Turkish citizens today, like the Grey Wolves, that celebrate the mass ethnic cleaning of the inferior "races" [Armenians] from their lands by their ancestors. There are Turks who recognize the genocide and apologize but are punished by their government, thrown in jail or fined. And it was not just the Armenians who were killed - this genocide also targeted other ethnoreligious minorities such as the Assyrians and Anatolian Greeks without mercy and impunity. If you do research into Ottoman history, you will find there were many high ranking Ottoman officials who opposed Talaat Pasha's solution to the "Armenian problem". Some remark as saying that Talaat used the activity of a small percent of Armenian revolutionaries as pretext for deporting and massacring all Armenians living within the empire's borders. Others refused to follow deportation orders after finding out Armenians were being sent to concentration camps in the deserts of Northern Syria. And there is logically no way a small percent of a small minority in the Ottoman empire could be responsible for the scale of paramilitary activity your post claims is responsible for the Kurds, Turks, and Arabs who died in world war 1. They lacked the economic and military training and ability to do so. Turkish death tolls are not the result of a fabricated internal civil war, but rather the world war Turkey was fighting on a variety of fronts and the starvation and disease Turkish villages faced when their crops were confiscated for the war effort. Turks and Armenians suffered due to the actions of the CUP Ottoman government. Turkish deaths were not intended by the Ottoman government but occurred due to negligence. Armenian and other minority deaths were planned, executed and intended. But does it really matter. After all, pan-Turkists got what they wanted. A turkish state devoid of infidels and non-Turk minorities except for the troublesome kurds.