International Genocide Recognition

[RUDO]

Rudo - at this point in your education concerning these issue I think it might be advisable to do more reading and absorbing of information rather then commenting/thinking aloud on the forum. I would suggest that unless you have a specific question or think that something you might be posting here be of specific value that you refrain from posting just to raise your post count and such. I offer you this advice in all seriousness and with no malice.

I only want to learn something about AG here my friend.Isn't it the aim of this forum?I am learning a lot of things in Turkey but only from turkish side but here ı can learn information from armenian side.I am young you are right but I am here because I want to improve myself in these topics.ok?

[1.5 million]

Rudo - at this point in your education concerning these issue I think it might be advisable to do more reading and absorbing of information rather then commenting/thinking aloud on the forum. I would suggest that unless you have a specific question or think that something you might be posting here be of specific value that you refrain from posting just to raise your post count and such. I offer you this advice in all seriousness and with no malice.

[RUDO]

But of course there are other ways.

[RUDO]

I don' understand.If all world recognise AG what will happen?I think even if it happens Turkey won't recognise AG .

[Hovik]

Lombardia Italian Region Adopted Armenian Genocide Resolution

Pan Armenian

Lombardia Italian Region Adopted Armenian Genocide Resolution

28.01.2006 18:46 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ January 24 the Parliament of Lombardia region, Italy
passed a resolution, according to which the Genocide of a million and a half
Armenians, which is considered the first ever genocide, should also be
mentioned on the Genocide Commemoration Day. Earlier Lombardia recognized
the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, reported the Yerkir
newspaper.

[Hovik]

'Infuriated bystander' Robert Fisk weighs in

Daily Yomiuri, Japan
Jan 15 2006


'Infuriated bystander' Robert Fisk weighs in
By James Hardy / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


The Great War for Civilisation:
The Conquest of the Middle East
By Robert Fisk
Knopf, 1,107 pp, 40 dollars


"Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a
punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, a be-all and end-all
of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and
occupation and murder on a mass scale."

Pulling no punches, The Great War for Civilisation is a 1,000-page
tome that showcases Robert Fisk's brand of reportage with a
conscience.

A foreign correspondent, first for the The Times of London and then
The Independent, who has received more awards than any other
journalist, Fisk has 30 years of material to draw on and an archive
of clippings and pieces that would put the news sections of most
major newspapers to shame.

Unsurprisingly, the book opens with Fisk's three interviews with
Osama bin Laden--interviews that clearly explain the background to
bin Laden's war against the West.

Close up, bin Laden comes across as a more complex figure than the
Bush administration would like to admit, while Fisk identifies a
character trait that suggests the defeat of Al-Qaida is far from
assured. "He was alarming because he was possessed of that quality
which leads men to war: total self-conviction. In the years to come,
I would see others manifest this dangerous characteristic--[U.S.]
President George W. Bush and [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair come
to mind--but never the fatal self-resolve of Osama bin Laden."

Moving on to Fisk's own experiences of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, the story becomes more cloak-and-dagger, as our intrepid
reporter takes on the local security apparatus and gets the scoop.
Throughout this Cold War drama, Fisk provides historical context,
whether it is the British Empire's 19th-century defeat in Afghanistan
or its early 20th-century failure in Iraq, to the latest failed
imperial adventures being played out before his eyes.

The main point of the book--that the West's imperial failures will
forever repeat themselves at the expense of the populations of the
countries they are trying to control--will resonate with a younger
audience who have no truck with realpolitik or regime change that is
brought about to keep the price of gasoline below 2 dollars a gallon.


Fisk notes from the start that the role of journalism is not--as he
has sometimes thought--to "write the first pages of history." It is
more important than that. "Our job," he quotes Israeli journalist
Amira Hass as saying, "is to monitor the centres of power."

Some of these "centres of power" are dotted around the Middle East,
whether they be Algiers, Damascus, Baghdad or Tehran. But inevitably,
it is the "centres of power" that are not in the region--but which
Fisk contends have decided its fate since the post-World War I
treaties--that come in for the most withering criticism.

Washington's unquestioning support for Israel in defiance of U.N.
resolutions and, Fisk argues, common humanity, comes in for
particularly savage treatment, most notably in a chapter on the use
of a U.S. Marine Corps Hellfire antiarmor missile, which had been
handed over to the Israelis, in the destruction of a Palestinian
ambulance, killing four women and two children who were traveling in
it.

Fisk has been pilloried in some reviews for being too shrill in his
criticism of Western policy in the Middle East--his status as a
self-described "ever more infuriated bystander" leaves some
commentators turned off by what they see as self-righteousness. What
he has over his detractors, and why this reviewer thinks he is being
unfairly criticized, is firsthand experience of the results of the
policies he condemns.

Indeed, the strongest parts of this book are the straightforward
reportage, whether it is from the front line of the Iran-Iraq War,
the occupied Palestinian territories or the civil war in Algeria.

There are many sections that are worth the cover price many times
over. Fisk devotes a particularly harrowing chapter to the 1915-20
Armenian Holocaust, in which 1.5 million Armenians were
systematically slaughtered by the Turkish government--an event it
continues to deny, even to the point of jailing those who dare to say
otherwise.

He does a similar job with an investigation into the effects of
depleted uranium on children in southern Iraq--a massive increase in
leukemia cases that doctors believe to be caused by shrapnel from
U.S. and British shells. Both chapters leave readers wanting to know
more, which is surely the point of good journalism.

But the weaker sections of The Great War for Civilisation make an
already long book unwieldy. Threading his father's minor role in
World War I into the history of the Middle East is an unconvincing
and unnecessary narrative device that does little to enlighten and
much to irritate, while the latter chapters of the book substitute
reporting for conjecture and finger wagging.

While asides at the incompetence of subeditors and the uselessness of
editors in general appear more than once, The Great War for
Civilisation could have done with an aggressive edit, partly to cut
it to a more manageable size, partly to cut out the portentousness
that sometimes afflicts the prose, and partly to cut out Fisk's
grandstanding, which mars the last chapters and weakens an otherwise
fine addition to the West's understanding of its role in the
continuing destruction and upheaval in the Middle East.

(Jan. 15, 2006)

[Hovik]

History Lessons?

TPMCafe, NY
Jan 14 2006

History Lessons?

By Kate Cambor
From: Culture Table

Poor Jacques Chirac!

While George Bush and Angela Merkel have been laying the groundwork
for stronger future ties between Washington and Berlin, presenting a
united front in opposition to Iran's nuclear program after their
first meeting on Friday since Merkel became chancellor, poor Jacques
Chirac has been stuck struggling with the past.


Jan 14, 2006 -- 04:30:58 PM EST

A historical debate has been brewing in France, one that actually
began last February, when a law was passed that included this
passage: "School programs are to recognize in particular the positive
role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, and
give an eminent place to the history and sacrifices of fighters for
the French army raised in these territories." The clause was
inserted to please veterans and former colonists and, unsurprisingly,
ended up displeasing just about everyone else, including the
president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and a host of educational
and civic organizations. Eventually, even French prime minister,
Dominique de Villepin, came out against it, telling France Inter
radio: "It is not up to parliament to write history. There is no
official history in France." Opponents of the law have petitioned
for it to be repealed on the grounds that it "imposes an official lie
about the crimes, the massacres that sometimes went as far as
genocide, the slavery, the racism that has been inherited from this
past."
In the light of the recent urban and ethnic violence in Paris and
other major cities ignited by the deaths two teenage boys, concern
about the legacies of colonialism are no longer academic. And at a
press conference last week, French president Jacques Chirac, sounding
his most avuncular and expansive, announced that the law would be
revisited and that the clause in question needed to be "rewritten."

End of story? Hardly. Because there's been a lot of talk about
rewriting history in la belle France recently. In December, Claude
Ribbe, a respected black academic, published a new book about
Napoleon, just in time for the 200th anniversary of the epic battle
of Austerlitz. You only need to glance at the cover--the accusing
title "Napoleon's Crime" is set against a photo of Hitler visiting
Napoleon's tomb in 1940--to know this isn't going to be another
celebration of Napoleon's military genius. In the book, Ribbe charges
Napoleon with setting off a bloodbath in the Caribbean when he
revived slavery in the French Empire in 1802 and furthering certain
racist and pseudo-scientific theories that would later be taken up by
the Nazis. He also protests against the "historical revisionism"
that has allowed this darker side of Napoleon to remain largely
overlooked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, French celebration of the
anniversary of Austerlitz was decidedly muted, with politicians
suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from the formerly great
general now plagued with a nasty case of bad PR.

The tricky thing in France is that certain versions of history have
become the law of the land--literally. One French historian, Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau, recently found this out when, during an
interview, he made statements implying that the slave trade was not a
crime against humanity. (He actually said it did not constitute
genocide). An organization of intellectuals from overseas regions
(Guyana, the Caribbean, Réunion, etc) has accused him of breaking a
2001 law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity; and, if
found guilty, he could lose his academic appointment.

There are currently four such laws of memorialization--the 2001 law
about slavery, a 1990 law punishing the denial of the Holocaust, a
2001 law recognizing the Armenian genocide, and the February 2005 law
affirming the "positive role" of colonialism--and some of the
best-known historians have recently demanded that any such laws
"restraining a historian's freedom, telling him on pain of punishment
what he should ... find" should be struck down.

At first glance all this may seem like mere Gallic posturing over
long-dead issues. But from Bush's 2003 denunciation of critics of the
war in Iraq as "historical revisionists" to new challenges to
Darwinism and science, haven't we been weathering similar storms on
this side of the pond? Of course, revisionism doesn't have to be a
bad thing, as Princeton University professor and former American
Historical Association President James McPherson eloquently explained
in this essay responding to Bush's accusations. I only hope
historians in the future, looking back on these times, will be able
to tell the good revisionists from the bad. In the meantime, with his
nation seemingly in a rut and the right-wing eternal candidate
Jean-Marie Le Pen hoping to translate up post-riots frustrations into
votes for his presidential candidacy, Jacques Chirac will certainly
have his hands full in 2006.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/14/163058/427

[Hovik]

Armenia And Germany: 90 Years After Genocide Conference Held In Germany

ARMENIA AND GERMANY: 90 YEARS AFTER GENOCIDE CONFERENCE HELD IN GERMANY

Pan Armenian
11.01.2006 21:32 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A scientific conference titled Armenia and Germany:
90 Years after Genocide was held in Wittenberg German city at the
turn of 2005.

The event started with a funeral prayer in an Armenian church in
Germany.

Martin Luter University professor, director of the Mesrop Center for
Armenian Studies Hermann Goltz made an opening speech. Stages of
creation and development of resolutions on the Armenian Genocide,
introduced before the Bundestag April 21 and June 16, as well as
expected developments were discussed during the conference. Bundestag
Deputy representing the Christian-Democratic and Social Democratic
Parties Christoph Bergner, Green party Deputy Marialuis Bek, Second
Secretary of the Armenian Embassy in Germany Victor Biagov and others
delivered speeches. Hermann Goltz made a report on activities of
Johannes Lepsius favorable for Armenians. Hermann Goltz simultaneously
acquainted those present with documented details of the Armenian
Genocide.

[Hovik]

2005 Was Important For International Recognition Of Armenian Genocide

2005 WAS IMPORTANT FOR INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Pan Armenian
10.01.2006 22:13 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In 2005 Lithuania, Holland, Venezuela and Poland
joined the countries, which recognized the Armenian Genocide, Armenian
FM Vartan Oskanian stated at today's news conference on the results
of the MFA activities in 2005. In his words, Russian State Duma again
reaffirmed the resolution on recognition of the Armenian Genocide
adopted earlier.

Argentinean Senate passed two statements denouncing the Armenian
Genocide, German Bundestag adopted a special resolution on the events
in 1915 and Germany's involvement in these. US State of Kansas also
passed a respective decision. According to the Armenian FM, the problem
of the Armenian Genocide being withdrawn from the topics "banned"
in Turkey was a direct consequence of the process of international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide in 2005. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip
Erdogan proposed forming a commission of historians at a Turkish
Parliament session past year, while a conference scientists recognizing
the Armenian Genocide was organized at Bilgi University in Turkey.

In V. Oskanian's words, the need to properly acknowledge the Armenian
Genocide is becoming more specified in the course of Turkey's accession
to the EU as a demand "to put up with own history." The provision
was mentioned in the European Parliament Report on Turkey's Progress
dated 28 September 2005. The Armenian FM remarked the 90th anniversary
of the Armenian Genocide was marked at the international level in
2005. V. Oskanian highlighted the scientific conference Ultimate
Crime, Ultimate Challenge: Human Rights and Genocide in Yerevan in
April. Scholars, experts and political scientists from 20 countries,
including Turkey, took part in it.

[Hovik]

France Considers Opportunity To Review Law On Armenian Genocide

FRANCE CONSIDERS OPPORTUNITY TO REVIEW LAW ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Pan Armenian
09.01.2006 19:41 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Debate has started in France over a number of laws
touching the history, including those censuring crimes against humanity
and making denial of historical facts a penal action. As reported by
CNN-Turk TV Channel, there is an opportunity to pass new legal acts
that will in fact deny the laws adopted earlier that censured the
Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey early past century and Jewish
Holocaust in World War II.

Specifically, according to French Parliamentary Speaker Jean-Louis
Debre, a special commission is formed to eliminate the connection
between legal acts and historical events. Earlier a group of 19
historian scholars proposed withdrawing the article condemning the
Armenian Genocide in Turkey from legislation. They consider that
"articles of the law in question limit scientific discussion."

French President Jacques Chirac has also presented his viewpoint on
the occasion. In his words, France has to transform its legislation
to promote creation of a positive image of the colonial past of the
country in the text-books." It should be noted that in 2001 the French
Parliament adopted a law qualifying the events in Turkey in 1915 as
a Genocide of Armenians. The French Parliament also passed another
law, which qualified the transatlantic slave-trade as a crime against
humanity, reported IA Regnum.