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**Tongue** · 10-31-2005, 04:46 PM

Yeah I read about this a couple of days ago. These people are pathetic. Imagine someone suing the board of education for teaching about the Holocaust! It's just sad. However, there is no way in helll they're winning the lawsuit so no worries. I just feel sorry for Mr. David Driscoll and others who have to go through with it.

**Gavur** · 10-31-2005, 07:56 PM

Attorney for NAMBLA represents the Turks

Hold on to your hats.. lol!

cilicia.com

http://www.cilicia.com/armo_spiurk-log.html

**imported_anoush** · 10-31-2005, 08:50 PM

HA HA HA HA, very good. It figures.

**Reincarnated Am** · 11-01-2005, 05:27 AM

Armenian Genocide debate lands in court

By Brad Harrison
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

The debate about what happened to 1.5 million Christian Armenians between 1915 and 1923 continues, this time in U.S. District Court in Boston.

The issue is now at the center of a lawsuit over how students in Massachusetts should be taught in public schools.

"When I heard about this lawsuit, I turned a little scarlet," said Mary Foley, of Peabody.

Foley, the sister of the late mayor Peter Torigian and the daughter of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide, grew up hearing about the aggression toward the Armenians by the Turks.

"I don't know who these people are who filed the lawsuit, but they didn't have any relatives go through what my parents did."

Foley's mother had lost both parents and lived in orphanages throughout the Mediterranean with her sisters; Foley's father had lost his first wife, his young son, and his brother during that time.

"I grew up hearing about it and seeing the pain and anguish that my parents suffered," she said.

But the people who filed the lawsuit argue that whether the Armenian killings constitute genocide has not been firmly settled by history.

Students, they say, should also be exposed to a "contra-genocide" version of events espoused by Turkish groups who claim the Armenian deaths were one of the tragic offshoots of the war.

The lawsuit about how to present in the classroom what had happened during that eight-year period was filed last Wednesday by two high school teachers and a student and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.

They are suing state education officials in federal court, challenging a law that set guidelines for teaching students about human rights violations.

The law, which went into effect in 1999, specifically lists the Holocaust, the Mussolini fascist regime, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the Armenian Genocide.

"We are not taking sides on the ultimate issue of whether there was an Armenian Genocide. We are simply insisting that both sides be allowed to have a place at the table," said Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil rights lawyer who represents the plaintiffs.

"That is so students can look at historical resources and make their own decisions. That's what we call education," he said.

"I don't see any lawsuits being filed about any other genocides," said Richard Yagjian of Peabody. Yagjian is the son of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide. "I think it's an effort to try to eradicate the historical references to it."

In 1915, Turkish Ottoman authorities began arresting and deporting Armenian leaders. Armenians say that over the next eight years, up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Turks.

At that time, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morganthau reported back to Washington, D.C. stories that parallel much of what Armenians who had escaped were telling.

Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died, but says the 1.5 million figure is inflated and that the deaths occurred in civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Armenians sided with invading Russian forces during the war.

The lawsuit, filed last Wednesday, alleges that the state is violating the free-speech rights of the plaintiffs by excluding the Turkish point of view.

The lawsuit claims that education officials bowed to political pressure from Armenian groups who called the Turkish resources "racist," including one organization they said had engaged in a "disgraceful denial of mass murder and genocide."

But James Peyser, chairman of the state Board of Education, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said that the resources and Web sites suggested by the Turkish groups "are not academic sites."

"If there were intelligent, credible works of history that provide independent and academically sound treatment of these events that did not necessarily characterize them as genocide, I would certainly be willing to include them in the guidelines, but I haven't received any such material at this point, and the Web sites don't qualify," Peyser said.

Bill Schechter, a history teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury High School, said he does not know enough to know which side is correct in the genocide debate. He said he became a plaintiff in the lawsuit because he believes students should have access to all points of view.

"I want the freedom to study different perspectives and to be able to teach different perspectives and to offer them to students in my classroom," he said.

Narguiz Abbaszade, executive director of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, said the lawsuit is not meant to decide the genocide question.

"The courts in Massachusetts do not have the jurisdiction or the expertise to settle it," she said. "This is us saying the students in school should have access to both sides of the story, to have access to the full picture."

U.S. Rep. John Tierney says there is no question that the Armenian Genocide occurred.

"The human rights violations resulting in the mass killings of Armenians on and after 1915 in Turkey are well documented and that is presumably why the Massachusetts law lists the Armenian genocide alongside other examples of man's inhumanity to man," he said.

However, the U.S. government, which considers Turkey an important ally and military partner, does not use the term "genocide" to describe the Armenian deaths. Last month, the Bush administration disavowed two resolutions passed by a Congressional committee to classify the 1915-1923 killings as genocide.

http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/news/view.bg?articleid=10468

**Tongue** · 11-01-2005, 08:22 AM

Originally posted by Gavur

Hold on to your hats.. lol!
http://www.cilicia.com/armo_spiurk-log.html

LOL... so no one else wanted to represent them? hahaha

That's why we need the United States' official recognition ASAP. So ridiculous things like this won't happen again. All I can say is, if the same lawsuit was brought by Germans about the Holocaust the world would end. It shouldn't be any different in our case. At all. I wonder if the Armenians or Armenian organizations are gonna protest the lawsuit or something? The sad thing is, these Turks probably really believe their "both sides" story. I guess after you lie to yourself for a while, you start believing your lies.

**Gavur** · 11-10-2005, 02:25 AM

Paybe: The strange case of history

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http://www2.townonline.com/sudbury/opinion/view.bg?articleid=365124&format=&page=1

By Richard Payne/ Contrary Indicators
Thursday, November 10, 2005

A suit was filed last month in federal court on behalf of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) against the Massachusetts Department of Education challenging the department's curriculum guidelines as they apply to the historical event known as the Armenian Genocide. The case reported in theBoston Globe and theTown Crier also made national headlines.

The suit is supposedly about the constitutional guarantee of free speech but it raises issues far beyond the scope of the First Amendment. It also casts some doubt on the judgment of the teacher and the student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School who together with a teacher from Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School have entered the suit as co-plaintiffs in the suit.

The ATAA is upset with the DOE for implementing the law passed by the Massachusetts Legislature requiring the DOE to create guidelines within the history curriculum on genocide and human rights. The academic curriculum has thereby been plunged into the realm of international politics. The ATAA wants "other points of view" to be explicitly brought out in the guidelines. Kind of like mandating the teaching of creationism, or as it is now called "intelligent design," as a counter to the theory of evolution.

The Turkish Government's position that while something may have happened in 1915 in the midst of the First World War it falls short of the descriptor "genocide." At one point the DOE had changed that to "slaughter," which from the victims' point of view may have seemed like a distinction without a difference. But the term genocide has its own special aura. One can apparently indulge in slaughter without its reaching the quality of a full-blown genocide, which seems to apply to people who are killed deliberately and for who they are rather than just for the heck of it.

The dissenting views of the assembly and others were initially included in the guidelines but later deleted when the sponsor of the bill that mandated the genocide guidelines, Senator Steven Tolman, filed a written protest with the DOE. In response to the suit Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll has reminded the plaintiffs that they need to take up the issue with the legislature not the DOE. Quite so.
The historical fact of the massacre of Armenian men, women and children in 1915 seems well established. Photographs published on the Internet are reminiscent of the pictures taken by the British Army at Bergen-Belsen in 1945: piles of emaciated bodies, skulls on sticks, public hangings with Turkish soldiers conspicuously in attendance. But history is notoriously subject to interpretation and falsification. The Turkish Government and the ATAA say that the 1915 event, while it occurred, did not constitute a "genocide," whatever that means. These unfortunate people were caught up in a war, all 1.5 million of them. War is hell. Nice people die in wars.

Well, sure. If you are hoping that your country, which may not have always enjoyed the best of records for human rights, will qualify to enter the European Community will be very anxious to downplay such embarrassments. But the preponderance of the historical evidence is that the Armenian Genocide happened and that it was what it appeared to be, an exercise in racial hatred or ethnic cleansing as it is known in the modern vernacular.

But the plaintiffs in the suit feel that all sides need to be heard - the First Amendment right to free speech demands it. Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School history teacher Bill Schechter who is on record as being against curriculum guides of any kind now believes that balance in the guidelines is required. Co-plaintiff Lawrence Aaronson who teaches a constitutional law course at Rindge and Latin High believes that "students need to know multiple perspectives when learning history so they can sort out the truth." But how on earth are they going to do that? Even history scholars have the hardest time "sorting out the truth."
History is a strange discipline. It purports to recount events that typically happened many years ago beyond the experience or memory of anyone presently alive. Narrative history supposedly chronicles the events that happened, when they happened, in an objective manner based on primary sources, primarily documents and contemporaneous records. One can reasonably assume that the people who generated such documents and records would have had no axe to grind and hence the material will be a reliable guide to the facts.

But the primary sources provide no information on historical context or meaning. That is provided by the historian who, working from the primary sources, then becomes a secondary source for his subject. The historian provides context as well as interpretation and analysis of the facts. However, the authenticity and impartiality of what the historian does can scarcely be taken for granted. Other historians working with the same facts may come to different conclusions. Consequently if Schechter, Aronson and their students are interested in the objective truth they had better be prepared to go back to the primary sources. They are not otherwise likely to find the objective truth if that is what they are seeking.

The Turkish Government and those Turkish-Americans of the ATAA have an understandable if not entirely admirable reason for slanting the truth of what happened 90 years ago. But there are others who have much less admirable motives. The Armenian Genocide like the Jewish Holocaust of World War II has its world-wide cadre of deniers who are motivated not by embarrassment or even simple patriotism but by racial hatred. They deny these events ever happened despite the incontrovertible evidence that they did. Moreover, for them it would have been okay if they did. Such people admire the perpetrators of such crimes against humanity.

By involving themselves on the side of the revisionists and deniers Bill Schechter et al. provide succor and encouragement to such people. One might want to think very hard about taking such a position. This is more than a freedom of speech thing. It's about distorting history and telling lies to children. And it's about people who see nothing wrong with fascism and in truth deplore its demise and would like to see it restored. Didn't we fight a world war to put an end to all of that?

Richard Payne is a research laboratory manager and a longtime resident of Sudbury. He can be reached at [email protected].

**Gavur** · 11-16-2005, 12:07 AM

ANCA Letter on Massachusetts Genocide Curriculum Court Case Appears in Wall Street Jo

ANCA Letter on Massachusetts Genocide Curriculum Court Case Appears in Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON, DC--The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on November 12 published a letter from the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) along with several others in response to Kara Scannells' October 27 article "Turk-Armenian Fight Over WWI History Goes to a US Court." The letters addressed the efforts of the Turkish groups to misuse the US legal system to inject Armenian genocide denial into the Massachusetts state educational curriculum.

The lawsuit, brought by two teachers, a student, and a parent, is trying to include the Turkish embassy website and other non-academic sources that deny the Armenian genocide, in the state's guide to teaching about the Genocide. The plaintiffs are arguing that exclusion of these sources constitutes a breach of their first amendment right to free speech.

In his letter to the WSJ, ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian writes: "This lawsuit is not about free speech, but about a massive Turkish state-sponsored campaign to cover up the Genocide. Not satisfied with repression at home, Turkish affiliates are working to prevent the teaching of the Armenian genocide here in the US."

Among other respondents was University of Michigan Professor Fatma Muge Gocek, who wrote, "As a Turkish American scholar who is working on the dynamics of the Turkish state's denial of the Armenian massacres of 1915, I wish to state that I don't concur with what I regard as the highly political stand of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations on this issue, and I find this lawsuit extremely offensive."

Scannell's article angered many readers of the WSJ, Armenian and non-Armenian alike, because it presented the fact of the Genocide as an ongoing debate between Armenians and Turks, overlooking the vast amount of scholarly research conducted about the topic.
2005 ASBAREZ ONLINE. All Rights Reserved.
ASBAREZ provides this news service for academic research or personal use only and may not be reproduced in or through mass media outlets.
URL:www.asbarez.com

**Hovik** · 11-17-2005, 06:48 AM

Educators, Not Lawmakers Should Decide Curriculum

EDUCATORS, NOT LAWMAKERS SHOULD DECIDE CURRICULUM

Bloomington Pantagraph, Illinois
Nov 17 2005

Let's hope a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts challenging a state law
that requires schools to teach students about "the Armenian genocide"
will slow the trend toward lawmakers dictating what should be taught
in school.

No, the courts aren't the best place to decide how high school classes
should be taught.

But the Legislature isn't the best place either -- especially when
lawmakers are influenced by special interest groups.

These are decisions that should be made by educators looking at
the overall curriculum and how such material fits into the needs of
students and their preparation as contributing members of society.

Massachusetts law requires the curriculum guidelines developed by its
Education Department to include slavery, the Irish potato famine, the
Holocaust and "the Armenian genocide," among other human-rights issues.

Turkish groups dispute whether the deaths of Armenians in World War I
can be called "genocide." The Assembly of Turkish American Associations
is among the plaintiffs in a suit that claims the constitution is being
violated because the Turkish view is excluded from the curriculum.

Massachusetts isn't the only state with such a law.

Illinois requires schools to teach lessons on the Holocaust and
black history. Under a law that took effect in July, the lessons in
black history must include "the history of the African slave trade,
slavery in America and the vestiges of slavery in this country."

California has a Cesar Chavez Day, requiring schools to teach about
the farm labor activist. New York requires lessons on the Underground
Railroad. Indians lessons are required in New Mexico.

These all may be important topics about which students should be well
informed. But state lawmakers shouldn't be deciding that question.

As more ethnic groups lobby successfully to have lawmakers mandate
lessons on their favorite topics, who will decide how those lessons
are taught and when will teachers find time for other subjects,
such as math and reading?

**Reincarnated Am** · 11-23-2005, 06:50 AM

Christelis: If it looks like a duck

By Doris Christelis/ Coffee Talk
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

My whole life I've been aware of the actions that were taken towards the Armenians a century ago. My own family suffered at the hands of the Turks in those days, but it was the Armenians that ultimately paid a greater price than the Greeks, mostly due to their geographic distance from the West and anyone who cared.

TheTown Crier states that a "teacher and student at L-S hope to change the way students learn about a controversial event in history known as the Armenian genocide." Apparently they want the curriculum guidelines in this area to provide both sides of the Armenian genocide issue to students.

This whole lawsuit filed by an L-S teacher and a student sat in my throat for a while after I first read about it. At face value it seemed fair that two sides of a story be presented. But a lot of things bugged me about the lawsuit. As I read more and thought more, I realized that I had to speak my part on this, from the lay perspective that it is.

First off, that the student didn't' even take the disputed course and was asked to join in the suit by the teacher annoyed me. I am shocked and disturbed that a teacher at our schools willfully drew a student into a lawsuit simply to add to his case. In my opinion, it is not his business to do this; his business is to teach.

Secondly, Mr. Schechter has stated that a Massachusetts state legislator asked for the opposing side of the curriculum to be dropped. I don't know whether this is true or not, but we owe it to the "defense" in this case to have their side of the story captured in all these countless news articles on the lawsuit, don't we? Odd that this is the issue about the curriculum itself -- that the two sides are not presented -- but no one has interviewed this supposed legislator yet that brought about the supposed demise of the curriculum to begin with.

Then I finally read the missing piece of the pie that really ticked me off. It seems that the original suit was brought by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. This lawsuit is not at all as pure as it seems but is tainted by a truly partisan group. This to me is particularly offensive. The Turkish government has yet to apologize for their role in the extermination of millions of Armenians and here we are trying to support their cause in our schools. I ask you to just imagine what your reaction would be if a Neo-Nazi group put together a petition on the Holocaust to have their side of the story beefed up in school curriculums.

Next, a minor thorn in my side, but a valid one, I certainly hope that Mr. Schechter is not using school time or school supplies to pursue this suit. Enough said on that.

And last and most significantly, when are these unnecessary lawsuits going to end in America. We are the most litigious society in the world. Perhaps we should teach a course entitled "The American Way - 101 Easy Ways to Find A Cause and Sue."

Mr. Schechter claims that he teaches both perspectives on this genocide but that other teachers probably do not because it is not in the curriculum. I find this a bit naive. It would be hard to teach a course on genocides and not provide any historical context which would include what the Turks felt towards the Armenians. Do we really need a lawsuit to make this happen? What next? Are we going to sue the school because we don't particularly care for the way they teach math? When does this nonsense end?

There is no question as to whether the Turks killed the Armenians. The issue being debated by Turkish groups is that it wasn't a genocide. But really, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck. Millions of Armenians were systematically slaughtered. They didn't kill the Turks that were their neighbors - just the Armenians. And for many of the same reasons that the Jews were killed by Hitler. Ethnic hatreds. Jealousies. Undeniable.

I end with a comment on what Ben Smith wrote in last week's Crier. He said that his high school teacher said that "There are three sides to every event, and then there is the truth. Our job is to find that truth." I disagree. It is not a teacher's job to uncover the truth - it is to teach. Teachers cannot be the arbiters of what is right or wrong, nor researchers. That is why curriculums are established for in the first place.

Doris Christelis has enjoyed coffee with friends and living in Sudbury with her family for eight years. She welcomes your comments at [email protected].

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