By: Paul Rosenberg
The Armenian Genocide was a systematic extermination that occurred during World War One, mostly in 1915. The killers were Ottoman Turks: agents and soldiers of that government, as well as eager civilians.
The slaughter took place in two phases. First was the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and forced labor. Afterward came the deportation of women, children, the elderly and the infirm, on death marches into the Syrian Desert.
All told, perhaps 1.5 million people were killed. The vast majority of these were Armenians, but the Turks also killed large numbers of Assyrian Christians, Greeks, and other minority groups. In many ways – including that of medical experiments on victims – the Armenian Genocide was the direct forerunner of the Nazi Genocide against the Jews.
Here is one miniscule part of the slaughter – a photo taken by an American diplomat, to which he added a commentary:
Source: Wikipedia
“Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.”
The Test
The test, believe it or not, is whether people will acknowledge this as a genocide or not.
We live, as I have complained many times, in an age where institutions not only reign over money and lands, but also over men’s minds. And, as it turns out, Armenia is not big enough or threatening enough to matter. And so, the institutional line – world-over and even in some shocking places – has been that “we don’t talk about it.”
The Turkish government, desperate to protect its image, has battled long and hard to explain it all away, and to prevent the word “genocide” from being used. Many, many institutions – tossing aside truth for political expediency – have parroted the Turkish line.
A Turkish official, tormenting starving Armenian children with a piece of bread. (Wikipedia)
The Two Biggest Flunkees
Not everyone has flunked the test. Several European nations have made official statements on the Armenian Genocide, as have a few nations on every continent.
Wikipedia lists 22 nations in all (out of 200).
What I want to focus on here, however, are the two big failures… places that are supposedly dedicated to an ancient philosophy that would instantly and irrevocably condemn the Armenian Genocide as a top-tier evil.
The first failure is the United States.
In an article I wrote earlier this year, I told how my editor (I was then writing for a major publisher) was made to change history textbooks to cut coverage of this story down to just a couple of paragraphs. The US State Department told him to do so because “we need to keep the Turks happy.” My editor’s bosses sided with the government – as people with government contracts nearly always do. Thus the truth, again, became a casualty to institutions.
The one US President to use the word “genocide” was Ronald Reagan, in a speech he made on April 22, 1981. The current US President, Barack Obama, used the word while a candidate for the presidency, but has repetitively refused to use it since. Again, truth dies where institutions reign.
It is of some interest that Reagan, who was a plebeian – not of the elite – was the one exception. Whatever the man’s virtues or vices, he was far less an institution man than presidents of more recent years.
The second flunkee is Israel. That the victims of the signature genocide would fail to recognize the one just before theirs is nothing short of tragic.
Certainly many Israeli and Jewish groups do acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (such as the Union for Reform Judaism), but the Knesset (the Israeli legislature) decided that recognition of this as a genocide would jeopardize relations with the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.
The reason I call this “tragic” is that by refusing to say “genocide,” the ruling Israeli institution turned its back on the great principle that the Hebrews gifted to the world several millennia ago: The enthroning of justice above rulership.
While many individual Israelis are good and decent people, the rulership of the Israeli state has turned away from the original Jewish principle.
Never Forget
As Adolf Hitler was starting his aggression against the Poles, the London Times quoted him as saying this:
Go, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers the Armenians?
For the sake of decency and for the sake of the future, remember the Armenians.
Also remember that justice stands above institutions and rulers.
Paul Rosenberg
[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]
When my wife and I were in Istanbul about 10 years ago, we hired a taxi driver to show us the sights. While leaving a visit to a bazaar, the driver had to stop suddenly for a pedestrian who had stepped in front of the cab. The pedestrian had long crossed the street, and the cab driver just sat there staring at him as he continued to walk away. I was wondering what was going on when the cab driver turned and said to us, “That was an Armenian. They are stupid, evil people.”
I was stunned. I knew about the Armenian holocaust, yet here was a Turkish national some 90 years later STILL expressing senseless hatred for Armenians. Human beings can be so very cruel and ignorant.
Washington and Jefferson both warned us against “entangling alliances.” We keep forgetting that sage advice.
Genocides can also be slow and take decades as in the case of the Egyptian Copts – the original inhabitants of Egypt. During the time of Nassar some 20% of the population was Coptic, now it’s down to a few percent.
Islam at work.
The same thing with the Turks behavior toward the Pontic Greeks, Assyrian Christians and Armenians. They were just doing what the Koran told them to do and what they have done for the last thousand years. Even to this day it’s dangerous to be a Christian in Turkey.
Now to Israel. Those pious phonies. They make a big deal about THEIR PEOPLE getting killed by the Nazis. Yet they are quite happy to foment a genocide in Syria that will cost the lives of several million Christians and Alawites.
But lets not forget those American Christians, full of hypocrisy and stupidity as well. They have stood silent when the Iraqis butchered their brothers. They have stood silent in face of the hell inflicted upon the Copts, they have stood silent when their brothers – the descendents of the very first Christians are wiped off the planet.
It’s well worthwhile to remember all these holocausts and genocides. We all know history is written by the victors, and that is worth remembering as we proceed with our own 4T and what might come here.
Sad that human nature never changes. For all the modernity we believe we’ve achieved, humans are much the same species we’ve always been. Anyone who thinks “it can’t happen here” demonstrates pure ignorance of history. And human behavior.
Mexicans hate Americans …… not people from Iceland.
Hutu’s hate Tutu’s …… not people from Iceland.
Tibetans hate Chinese …… not people from Iceland.
Indians hate Pakis …… not people from Iceland.
On every continent, people hate their next-door neighbor, not someone far away.
That’s why I am reasonably convinced that when TSHTF someone in America will not escape genocide.
Human’s have genocided each other for a long time now. Nauseating isn’t it?
Oddly enough, some Jews gassed as Jews were not of Jewish blood.
Jews who are not Jews
It appears neither the Semitic origin theory of the Ashkenazi “Jews” nor the Khazar theory are genetically correct:
The origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe.
Overall, we estimate that most (>80%) Ashkenazi mtDNAs were assimilated within Europe. Few derive from a Near Eastern source, and despite the recent revival of the ‘Khazar hypothesis’, virtually none are likely to have ancestry in the North Caucasus. Therefore, whereas on the male side there may have been a significant Near Eastern (and possibly east European/Caucasian) component in Ashkenazi ancestry, the maternal lineages mainly trace back to prehistoric Western Europe. These results emphasize the importance of recruitment of local women and conversion in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and represent a significant step in the detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.
I thought it was interesting that Doron Behar, the scientist responsible for the claim that the four most common mitochondrial DNA lineages came from the Near East “said he disagreed with Dr. Richards’ conclusions but declined to explain his reason.” Notice that even on the male side, the most that can be said is that there “may have been” a Near Eastern connection; that’s a remarkably strong negative statement given the potential sensitivities on the subject.
The fascinating thing is that instead of being of Israelite descent, the Ashkenazis may actually be Italians, as their closest genetic match appears to be Northern Italians. Which would certainly put an interesting spin on the concept of the Third Rome in Jerusalem. It might also help explain the historical Italian affinity for Ashkenazis during WWII, as 80 percent of Italy’s Ashkenazis survived the Nazi persecution despite the German military occupation.
Labels: science
The Fletcher Memorial Home…f-you Youtube.
http://vimeo.com/47837614
Turks were Moslem,doing what the Koran tells them to do.Islam at it’s best.They were just pleasing their moon god…..all of you are right about history and human nature.Genocide will happen here sooner or later.Very important to have a way to defend yourself and
Family.
Recommended Armenian Genocide reading: “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” It is out of print but you can still find it on Used books websites, Amazon marketplace, etc.
“On every continent, people hate their next-door neighbor, not someone far away.” — Stucky
Look out Canada.