Another Victory!

[Reincarnated Am]

time Prints Full-page Letter To Rectify Turkish Dvd Flap

TIME magazine came a step closer this week to properly address a major dispute with Armenians worldwide over its distribution of a Turkish DVD denying the Armenian Genocide.

In its June 6, 2005 issue, the European edition of TIME ran a four-page ad placed by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce promoting tourism in Turkey. As part of that paid ad, the magazine included a DVD insert that had a 70-minute segment that denied and distorted the facts of the Armenian Genocide. This highly offensive material, hidden behind a couple of benign segments on tourism in the DVD, was disseminated to half a million TIME subscribers in a dozen European countries.

Initially, the editors of TIME did not seem to realize the grave error they had committed by becoming accomplices to Turkish denialists. They dismissed Armenian complaints about this hateful and hurtful Turkish DVD by simply stating that TIME did "not endorse the views of any organization or government."

However, when the Switzerland-Armenia Association wrote a letter threatening to sue TIME for violating a Swiss law against the denial of crimes against humanity and genocide, the magazine’s managing editor, James Kelly, wrote back stating that no one at TIME had "adequately reviewed" the offensive segment of the Turkish DVD. He apologized profusely and repeatedly to the Armenian community and to all its readers. Mr. Kelly said that the DVD presented a distorted view of history that did not meet the magazine’s "standards for fairness and accuracy." He added: "We would not have distributed [the DVD] had we been aware of the content."

The Swiss-Armenian group, however, was not satisfied with this response. They wrote back pointing out that the magazine had not addressed the issue of redressing the damage caused by the malicious Turkish DVD to the descendants of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Meanwhile, five French organizations hired an attorney in order to pursue their legal rights under French laws that call for the protection of "human dignity." Mémoire 2000, the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCOAF), the Armenian National Committee of France (CDCA), J’Accuse, and the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP) wrote a lengthy joint letter of complaint that was published on a whole page in the October 17 issue of TIME’s European edition.

The French organizations requested that TIME distribute free of charge an objective DVD on the Armenian Genocide and donate the income from the Turkish ad to non-profit organizations that advocate the truth about the Armenian Genocide.

In an "Editor’s note" published along with the letter, TIME restated the apology that it had expressed earlier to the Switzerland-Armenia Association. The note added that TIME was publishing this letter "pursuant to French law (‘droit de réponse’)" [right of reply].

The ANC of France (CDCA) stated in a press release that by printing the letter and expressing its apology, TIME had partially acknowledged its error. This right of reply "is the initial result of a common and long-term initiative by the associations fighting against racism, anti-Semitism and for the defense of the memory of the Armenian people" said Harout Mardirossian, Chairman of CDCA. "If TIME magazine thinks that this right of reply settles all accounts, it is sadly mistaken. TIME magazine’s response does not redress the terrible suffering of those who saw this sordid tool of denialist propaganda. Taking into account the most heinous content of this DVD, our demands for redress go far beyond this simple right of reply and we intend to attain them," said Mardirossian.

The Chairman of CDCA reiterated the demand of the five organizations for the magazine to disseminate free of charge to its European subscribers an objective DVD on the Armenian Genocide, and to have TIME donate the revenues from the Turkish ad to non-profit organizations that advocate the truth about the Armenian and all other genocides.

By acknowledging its error, apologizing for it and publishing a full-page letter, TIME magazine has begun to take responsibility for the pain and suffering it has caused to Armenians worldwide.

TIME’s executives and the representatives of French and Swiss organizations now have to sit down together and consider the proper ways to undo the damage caused by the Turkish DVD. As has been suggested previously, one such way would be for TIME to disseminate to its readers an accurate DVD on the Armenian Genocide. Another possible step would be for the magazine to donate the revenues from the Turkish DVD to non-profit organizations. It would be wrong for TIME to profit from tainted funds belonging to revisionists and denialists of genocide!

By Harut Sassounian; Publisher, The California Courier

http://www.azg.am/?lang=EN&num=2005102003

[Reincarnated Am]

Letter to TIME

View: Hold Water

I read an article by the publisher of an Armenian newspaper, Harut Sassounian, entitled “TIME Prints Full-Page Letter To Rectify Turkish DVD Flap” (http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg126350.html); it was in regards to a DVD insert within the June 6, 2005 European edition, paid for by a Turkish organization, and including a historical film about what Armenians and their supporters have classified as a genocide.

The article claims that once the threat of a lawsuit beckoned, you “apologized profusely,” criticizing the DVD’s “distorted view of history”; you were quoted as stating the magazine’s “standards for fairness and accuracy” were not met and that the DVD would have beenrejected “had we been aware of the content.”

I have not seen this DVD, but I did read (in a separate article) Harut Sassounian’s specific charges of its so-called distortions, and met each of them with historical sources that would have had no reason to be untruthful. On this basis, I believe the DVD’s presentation of the events was mostly accurate. As a long-time reader of TIME, I had to then ask myself why you — as managing editor — would go out of your way to proclaim the inaccuracy of the DVD’s claims and (by default) support the position of activists such as Sassounian.

It is a fact that the Armenians’ genocide is accepted as the common wisdom in the Western and other areas of the world. The reasons have to do with power and prejudice, not historical truth. What other lazy, irresponsible or bigoted others choose to espouse or believe is their business. But you represent a world-class newsmagazine whose duty is to represent the truth; I find it disturbing that you would be at the ready to join forces that are ignorant at best and ethically-challenged at worst.

Since you are a journalist, I don’t need to tell you truth always lies beneath the easy surface. One of our nation’s greatest thinkers and philosophers, Prof. John Dewey, was a man who went beyond what all the propaganda was near-unilaterally informing him. He summed up the nature of these events in a nutshell, in an article for The New Republic (“The Turkish Tragedy”, Nov. 12, 1928):

"Few Americans who mourn and justly, the miseries of the Armenians, are aware that till the rise of nationalistic ambitions, beginning with the seventies, the Armenians were the favored portion of the population of Turkey, or that in the Great War, they traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian invader; that they boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Turkish villages and exterminated their population."

The 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide exempts those who form political alliances. On that basis alone, the Armenian experience cannot be called a genocide.

If there was a genocide in the sense of a government plan to systematically exterminate a people, the shocking fact is that the Armenians had committed it, with the help of their Russian allies. Unfortunately, Westerners did not regard Muslim lives as valuable, and there are few sources who looked into the other side of the coin. Ottoman records that were never meant to be publicized indicate over one-half million were killed as a direct result of Armenian intent. A rare Westerner, Col. Wooley of the British Army, estimated 300,000-400,000 Ottoman Muslims died in two districts alone.

Half a million Armenians died from a population of around 1.5 million, mostly from famine and disease. These were the causes that claimed most of the lives of the 2.5 million+ Turks who died.

The 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide also requires “intent” to be proven. The British held a “Nuremberg” at the end of the war, the Malta Tribunal, and even the British could not find this proof. (Every accused was released after over two years of intensive searching.) British war propaganda, mostly in the hands of Wellington House (whose main hand, Arnold Toynbee, credited missionary testimony as the primary source) could not be used as evidence, because all the claims fell under the categories of hearsay or canards.

It was the Christian duty of missionaries — evident from the instructions in their prayers — to publicly vilify the Turks. Privately, they sometimes thought differently. One of the most zealous missionaries, Mary Louise Graffam, wrote in 1915:

"I am not in any way criticizing the government. Most of the higher officials are at their wits end to stop these abuses and carry out the orders which they have received, but this is a flood and it carries all before it."

That’s it for the “genocide.” No governmental “intent.” Government orders stressed the safety of Armenians and their properties, but the “flood” prevented effective

implementation: Chaos and corruption of war. Lack of manpower and the resources in a desperate life-or-death national struggle where superpowers England, France and Russia were threatening every front.

To give an idea of the power of Armenian propaganda: In the late 19th century, Armenians formed KKK-style groups massacring innocents, in hopes of inciting the same, and thus inviting European imperialists to intervene and give them hand-outs. These were the beginnings of massacre stories. In 1896, an American book, “Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities,” described the “carnage” in Sassun by claiming a massacre of 50,000 or more, with hundreds of thousands left without food or shelter. Yet the Armenian population of Sassun was around 10,000, and a Western consuls’ report put the dead at 265, and a British report put it at not more than 900. (With no mention, as usual, of the Muslim dead.) These were casualties resulting from an armed rebellion, which would ordinarily not be classified as “massacres” in any other nation.

(The funny thing is, enough research has been conducted by now where the fact can easily be distinguished from fiction. Yet the inclination of people in 2005 would still be to accept the claims of this 1896 American book. Isn’t that amazing?)

This is the historical reality. How much objective research have you conducted before stating the DVD did not meet the magazine’s “standards for fairness and accuracy”? The likely answer: none.

Why?

Dewey wrote in his article that “It is at least time that Americans ceased to be deceived by (Armenian) propaganda.” That was over three-quarters of a century ago, and Americans are being deceived as never before. That’s the average American, however; you, as a journalist representing an important magazine attempting objectivity, are in a position to know better. Why are you accepting this propaganda?

Of course, there is another reason why you have criticized the DVD and have supported the Armenians, and it has less to do with truth than with fear. If this is the better reason, you may be comforted in knowing that at least you are not alone.

Until the 1970s, the Turks mostly kept quiet about this matter, in the mature interest of healing wounds and festering brotherhood. But the wave of Armenian terrorism of that period finally forced some to start speaking the truth. The Armenians were losing their near-century long stranglehold on monologue, and had to do something; their precious reason-for-being, their fetishistic genocide, was becoming endangered.

What they did for one thing, with their deep pockets, was to financially support the bourgeoning “genocide institutes” of the world. Once they started getting Holocaust devotees on their side, they realized they would enact a shield of invulnerability. An attack on the Armenians’ genocide would be an attack on the Holocaust.

By the time of 1985, when sixty nine mostly American scholars signed their names to an ad questioning the merits of this alleged genocide (one being a Utah university professor sharing your name), the pro-Armenians stepped into high gear. By then, the bombs and bullets of the Armenian terrorists were getting phased out, and the time-honored smear campaign tactic was getting phased in.

A self-described “genocide scholar,” Israel Charny, charged that some of these professors were Turkish tools because they received grants from the Turkish government, in effect lying for financial gain. Never mind the two grant-giving organizations likely had nothing to do with the Turkish government (the propagandists’ tactic is to accuse their opponents of being Turkish government agents no matter what their origins); the die was cast. Message to neutral academicians: stay away from this debate, or your reputations will be destroyed.

Other highlights of this strategy, through the years:

- In 1977, the home of Prof. Stanford Shaw was bombed. His UCLA fellow faculty member, Prof. Richard Hovannisian, reportedly told his fanatical students that Shaw was a criminal, and had them disrupt Shaw’s classes. The cowed university offered little support, and Shaw was forced into early retirement.

- In 1996, Prof. Peter Balakian, the author of the weeklong bestseller “The Burning Tigris” (a status achieved through activist Armenians’ artificially boosting sales with the purchase of multiple copies) helped spearhead a smear campaign against Prof. Heath Lowry, with the help of three genocide scholar cronies, among others (including famous authors like Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, whose aid was solicited). Princeton University was cowed under the one-sided media coverage, and Lowry was given a gag order, forcing him out of the debate.

- In 1995, Prof. Bernard Lewis was taken to court by Armenian groups in France for his denial of the genocide. Three of the four cases were dismissed, the Armenians were ordered to pay court costs in one of these cases, and the professor was penalized the equivalent of twenty five cents in the last case. The decision was hailed as a victory for the Armenians, sending the message to other neutral academicians not to get involved.

- Prof. Justin McCarthy was the target of an Armenian newspaper, perhaps or like Harut Sassounian’s, where McCarthy’s university president was barraged by calls and letters to get McCarthy fired.

- In 2002, Christian Scholar Samuel Weems was falsely accused by the $2.5 million budgeted Armenian Assembly of America for being a “convicted felon,” for having written a book exposing the Armenians’ terror tactics. Weems succumbed to a heart attack, probably not helped by the many death threats he received.

- 2005: Professor and Holocaust Survivor Guenter Lewy has courageously written a book disputing the Armenians’ genocide; he could barely find a publisher, and harassment efforts are reportedly underway.

Conclusion: Pro-Armenian propagandists have maintained their stranglehold on monologue once again, for if anyone dares to do dialogue, they are branded as neo-Nazi deniers, and if the denial takes place on certain European soil, they are taken to court in freedom-of-speech and democracy-challenged nations such as France and Switzerland. Pro-Armenians have attempted to legislate their truth through cowed or bigoted politicians by enacting genocide resolutions in many states and nations. Practically, the only one in opposition these days is the Turkish government, which is bad news for the Turks (since P.R. is their weakest point, and their government is often clueless when it comes to this matter), and good news for the pro-Armenians, as they (among others) have successfully helped paint the Turkish government as a contender for the most sinister on earth... and who is going to believe what the Turkish government has to say?

The Ankara Chamber of Commerce decided to counter in some small way the avalanche of this relentless and painful propaganda by paying TIME a considerable sum for this DVD. The message has to get out somehow, and they came up with this small solution. It’s not even easy to get this message out by paid advertisements anymore; The New York Times reportedly rejected such an advertisement, not long ago. (Which is terribly sad, since what’s considered as perhaps our nation’s most prestigious newspaper was instrumental in the spreading of this propaganda; its publisher during the 1915 years was a close friend of one of the worst Turcophobes, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau.)

You can read Sassounian’s article to get an idea of how ugly and arrogant the claims and expectations of these spoiled Armenian groups are. Why is TIME apologizing? (That is, why are YOU apologizing, for TIME?) Is it because TIME is afraid of these lawsuit threats?

How ironic that by apologizing, TIME was hoping to put the matter to rest. Yet, for these spoiled Armenian groups, the apology was an admittance for guilt, and provided further means to extract greater demands. The irony is, this is a small scale parallel with what happened in the Ottoman Empire. By providing the Armenians with greater freedoms, the government hoped to appease the Armenians. But the Armenians would never be satisfied.

Why didn’t you instead ask these Armenian organizations to prove wrong the “denialist propaganda” and “most heinous content of this DVD”? The reason why they prefer deceptive labeling is because historically, they are at a loss to prove their claims.

Unwittingly, TIME Magazine provided the rare, wonderful service in what TIME is devoted to, with the distribution of this DVD: the truth. Should you not be championing the truth, Mr. Kelly? Instead of cowering before these groups and making statements to the effect that what TIME did was wrong (and implying that it will never happen again), when TIME had done nothing wrong? Quite the contrary, TIME performed a little justice in the face of these terrible and immoral forces that have a political agenda, spreading hatred and prejudice when these 19th century lies should have died out at least in the 20th century.

Assuming the reason for your statements had more to do with fear than ignorance and/or prejudice, if TIME is going to be so cowardly in this matter, with its healthy mega-corporate assets... then what hope has the little man in countering these — and let’s call them for what they are, as much as we normally need to hesitate before using the easy word — the forces of evil?

Of course, this relentless propaganda makes it easier to side with the helpless, innocent, Christian martyrs from Armenia. And thanks to “Midnight Express” and centuries of Terrible Turk representation, nobody wants to defend the Turks. But it’s not the Turks you should be defending; it’s the truth.

Journalists of integrity require courage. I wish one story TIME would consider uncovering is the hypocrisy demonstrated by these genocide scholars. On the surface, they come across as moral and just (like their counterparts from yesteryear, the missionaries), but misrepresenting the truth comes so naturally for too many of them, in the perpetuation of their selfish agendas. For example, those like Tessa Savvidis Hoffman and Sir Martin Gilbert have no compunction in declaring that 1.5 million or so Armenians were all “murdered,” when that was the entire population, when one million had survived according to the Armenians themselves, and most died for reasons everyone else was dying from during that calamitous period. Those like Rudy Rummel go so far as to claim over 2 million were all “murdered,” more Armenians than had existed — just as with the “Sassun” claims of the 1896 propaganda book from America.

Shouldn’t the time have long been past for a worthy news reporting publication like TIME to blow the lid off this hatred-propagation? (In the Sassounian article, one of five French organizations complaining to TIME was “the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples.” That should read, “Among CERTAIN PREFERRED Peoples.” The real racism lies in a different direction.)



By Hold Water
2005-10-22 19:50:39

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=21027

[Gavur]

New Revelations Contradict TIME's Claims on Turkish DVD

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg129800.html

By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

The editors of TIME recently apologized for placing a Turkish denialist DVD
in the June 6, 2005 issue of the European edition of the magazine.
In their apology, the TIME's editors stated that they erred in accepting
the Turkish DVD as a paid insert. They said that due to their failure to
review the DVD, they were not aware that it contained a "documentary"
denying the facts of the Armenian Genocide. They also said that the DVD
presented a distorted view of history and did not meet its standards for
fairness and accuracy.
TIME repeated its apology twice: once in a letter dated September 2, 2005
to the Switzerland-Armenia Association, and the second time in the Oct. 17,
2005 issue of the magazine's European edition. Here is the full text of
TIME 's apology:
"We regret distributing the [Turkish] DVD as part of TIME's European
edition and are very sorry for the offense it has caused. The so-called
'documentary' portion of the DVD presents a one-sided view of history that
does not meet our standards for fairness and accuracy, and we would not
have distributed it had we been aware of its content. Unfortunately the DVD
was not adequately reviewed by anyone at TIME because it was believed to be
a benign promotion piece. I can assure you that we have changed our review
process and will be much more vigilant in the future. We apologize to the
Armenian community, and to our readers."
There are three problems with this apology:
1) If the editors were truly apologetic for their error and sincere in
their claim that they were not aware of the content of the Turkish DVD, why
would they now, after knowing its content, mail copies of the June 6 issue
along with the DVD to those requesting a back copy?
2) Regarding the excuse that the Turkish DVD should not have been
distributed by TIME because it presented a distorted view of history, why
did TIME's European edition then accept to publish two full-page ads
denying the Armenian Genocide in its August 10, 1987 issue? A similar cast
of characters was involved in both cases: the Turkish Chamber of Commerce
was one of the sponsors of both the 1987 ad and the 2005 DVD.
3) Sinan Aygun, the Chairman of the Ankara Chamber of the Commerce and the
sponsor of the DVD, last week contradicted the assertion made by TIME's
editors that they did not know the content of the DVD. Aygun told the
Turkish media that TIME executives, despite their denials, were fully aware
of the content of the DVD. Aygun did not hide the fact that his objective
was to influence European public opinion on the Armenian Genocide, and not
to promote tourism in Turkey, as it was suggested.
Aygun disclosed last week that he had submitted a copy of the DVD to TIME
officials several months in advance of its eventual distribution by the
magazine. He said that after inspecting the DVD, Luca Rosa, the Director of
Advertising for the magazine, sent him a letter dated Feb. 21, 2005,
approving the DVD (CNN-Turk, Nov. 12, 2005). Reacting strongly to TIME's
apology and the assertion of its editors that they had no knowledge of the
content of the DVD, Aygun said: "they are lying" (www.Turknorthamerica.com
<http://www.Turknorthamerica.com>; Nov. 13, 2005).
In an earlier announcement, Aygun made the amazing disclosure that Turkey's
General Chief of Staff had approved the DVD for distribution through TIME
(Vatan newspaper, June 16, 2005). Aygun was forced to make this revelation
in order to defend himself from criticisms made against him in the Turkish
press after the EU Rapporteur for Turkey, Camiel Eurlings, had said that
the DVD would create a negative reaction against Turkey's EU membership
(http://www.atonet.org.tr). Aygun also revealed that the Turkish Ministry
of Culture and Tourism had prepared the DVD (Sabah newspaper, June 2, 2005)
and that a small group of anonymous businessmen, whom he considered
"heroes," made the DVD possible (http://www.wowturkey.com).
The three revelations outlined above raise serious questions about the
sincerity and credibility of the apology issued by TIME's editors. In order
to set the record straight, TIME must:
1) Destroy all undistributed copies of the Turkish DVD, so they cannot be
sent out to those asking for a copy of that particular issue;
2) Disclose all internal documents shedding light on the approval process
for this DVD as well as copies of all contracts and communication with
Aygun;
3) Take disciplinary action against those employees who either did not
review the DVD or reviewed it and subsequently misled their superiors by
feigning ignorance);
4) Agree to disseminate free of charge an objective DVD on the Armenian
Genocide, prepared at the expense of the magazine, in order to undo the
damage caused by the Turkish DVD;
5) Donate the payment it received from the Turkish Chamber of Commerce to a
charitable organization that actively works for the affirmation of the
Armenian Genocide.