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The U.S. won’t say ‘genocide’ but cares about Armenian democracy?

by Max Parry

Russian and Armenian flags, flying side-by-side.


“Did Armenia just dance its way to revolution?” Mass demonstrations that have shut down Armenia leading to the replacement of its prime minister have queued the obligatory western media push for regime change. Already dubbed a ‘Velvet Revolution’ after the 1989 protests that collapsed communist Czechoslovakia, there have been so many ‘color revolutions’ in former Soviet states that the colors are being recycled by the NGOs. The first crowds gathered in April in response to the Republican Party of Armenia’s decision to nominate outgoing leader Serzh Sargsyan as the sole candidate for Prime Minister after having already served as the country’s President since 2008. Despite its constitutional legality, this was perceived by many to be a consolidation of power as he would have retained the same authority since the country just transitioned to a prime ministerial system.
Predictably, the western media commentary has framed the protests in the context of the new Cold War by emphasizing the ruling party’s links to ‘Kremlin oligarchs’ and Armenia’s presence within Russia’s sphere of influence. However, they have been forced to admit that the stated aim of the critical mass thus far has been limited to preventing Sargsyan’s interpreted power grab. Otherwise, Putin would nefariously intervene like in Georgia and Ukraine, right? The Washington Post didn’t find it important to mention the enormous political and historical reasons Armenia maintains close ties to Moscow, because presenting an accurate account of a political crisis always takes a backseat to the priority of demonizing Russia.
The genocide of 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians, perpetrated beginning in 1915 by the “Young Turk” (Committee of Union and Progress) authorities of the Ottoman Empire, has been recognized as an indisputable fact by the vast majority of the world’s scholars and academics. There is overwhelming historical evidence both of its occurrence and premeditated planning. As a result, the governments of many countries have chosen to recognize it as a genocide. In addition to Russia and many countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America, the governments of France, Italy, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and others (a total of 29 worldwide) have all officially acknowledged that what was done to the Ottoman Armenians constitutes genocide.
Some like France have even forbidden its denial by legal prosecution with a one year jail sentence as punishment. Although many individual politicians and institutions within America have acknowledged it, the U.S. government to this day has not officially done so and has taken deliberate measures in avoidance of it. The go-to excuse has always been one of ‘realpolitik’ and the complicated dimensions of the U.S. relationship with the government of Turkey, a thinly veiled admittance of its selfish political motivations. The Ottoman Empire’s successor state is a fellow NATO member and longtime strategic ally for the U.S. in the region as the bridge between the Middle East and Europe.
Although the U.S. has failed to call it a genocide, the Republic of Turkey and the Turkic state of Azerbaijan are the sole governments in the world who explicitly reject the use of the term. Only American exceptionalism could permit the media to push for regime change in Armenia while letting its own leaders get away with not recognizing the genocide.
The remains of Armenian children, drowned in the Black sea, Trabzon, 1916 (Photo — Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute Collection)
The empire’s fourth estate has neglected to take it to task for this controversial policy despite the genocide’s universal confirmation by the world’s intellectuals and historians. A perfect example is the broken campaign promise by candidate Barack Obama in 2008 after he reversed his position on the issue once in office as President, caving into the powerful influence and millions spent by the Turkish government’s lobby.
Once the Obama administration became intimately involved in a collaborative intervention with Turkey in transforming Syria’s conflict into an Islamist proxy war, any likelihood he would ever do so vanished. WikiLeaks revealed Hillary Clinton’s email exchanges with advisors on the issue leading up to the 100th anniversary of the genocide in 2015, giving an inside look at the cynical reasoning behind Washington’s denial in the strategic importance of relations with Turkey in the region. Trump’s language has been identical thus far with the Obama administration on the issue, as he attempts to repair recently damaged relations with Turkey which has only prolonged the frustration for the Armenian-American community. To this day a U.S. President has yet to visit the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex in Yerevan.
The Armenian genocide took place during and under the cover of World War I as Russia advanced into Ottoman territory. The predominantly Christian Armenians had lived in the Caucasus of Eurasia for thousands of years and in the fourth century became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its state religion. Mount Ararat is even believed to be the supposed site of Noah’s Ark in the Book of Genesis. Armenia was then incorporated into Ottoman Turkey several centuries later at the peak of the Empire’s power when its territory spread across multiple continents.
As Christians living in a Muslim majority society, Armenians did not have full rights and liberties as a minority group. Despite their treatment as second class citizens who faced tax burdens based on religious discrimination, they were able to practice their religion with a degree of autonomy and the community persevered under their rulers. When the Ottoman Empire began to decline towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Armenians found themselves the scapegoat of Turkish nationalists both for their religious differences and their relative prosperity as a minority group. Sound familiar?
In 1908, as the Empire’s power continued to dwindle leading up to WWI, the Sultan Abdul Hamid was ousted and the Committee of Union and Progress, aka ‘the Young Turks’, a secret society turned political organization seized power. While they ushered in liberal, secular reforms that transformed Turkey into a constitutional monarchy during their ten year reign, Talat Pasha and the Young Turks were also Turkish nationalists who wished to restore the empire to its previous status on the world stage.
Its nationalism led to Turkification campaigns racially targeting minority groups, especially those perceived to be sympathetic to Russia like the Armenians. Russia had historically been protectors of Christians living within Ottoman territory, and the pretext used by the Ottoman authorities for the ethnic cleansing to construct a homogeneous state was a conspiracy that the Armenians were collaborating with them. The Young Turk authorities blamed the Armenians for the empire’s losses as its defeat in the Italo-Turkish war and the Balkan War of 1912 reduced its power significantly. This left it little choice but to side with Germany and the Central Powers once they declared war on Russia which proved to be an ill fated decision.
The Western jingoist narrative would lead you to believe the world ‘sleepwalked’ into World War I, an attempt by the victors rewriting history to claim the moral high-ground of fighting for ‘liberal values.’ In reality, the Allied and Central Powers both consisted of colonialists guilty of various genocides. Furthermore, preparations had been made for decades by the opposing sides with the buildup of their armaments and the development of naval and armed forces to eventually fight over the re-division of the world’s colonies.
The war came as no shock at all to the powers that be, but was only a surprise perhaps to the working class who were used as cannon fodder in the industrial scale slaughter of its battlefields. The Berlin Conference in 1885 partitioned the African colonies and regulated European imperial expansion, resulting in the emergence of a new German superpower that suddenly threatened its British and French rivals. This proved to be the final instance the colonial powers were able to negotiate their territorial disputes without war.
The increasingly powerful Germany wanted access to the British and French colonies and when they could no longer settle their festering differences peacefully, world war became inevitable. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo was the mere straw that broke the camel’s back — there had been many assassinations of leaders prior that didn’t lead to the outbreak of war, let alone a global conflict.
Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II had slaughtered tens of thousands from the Herero tribes leading to slave revolts — but were the British any more innocent? The Aborigines and numerous other indigenous populations that were halved under British colonies, not to mention the Irish who starved during the Great Potato Famine, would surely disagree.
Perhaps the worst crimes of all committed by one of the Allies was under King Leopold II of Belgium, with its massacres in the Congo famously inspiring Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Or maybe the most extensive slaughter would be that perpetrated by the United States with its large scale ethnic cleansing of Native American tribes and black slaves? Truth be told, the Allies were no moral superiors at all to the Germans or the Ottoman Turks. All of this is important to understand in the context of critiquing the U.S. for failing to recognize the Armenian genocide, because it still has yet to fully come to grips with its own bloody history, let alone what it is subjecting the world to today.
The Armenian genocide was also nearly a successful one in that the Ottomans virtually exterminated the entirety of its Armenian population. It began on April 24, 1915, when hundreds of Armenian political, religious, and intellectual leaders were all rounded up and mercilessly executed. The Turkish government then established Tehcir law and made ethnic cleansing a state policy, ordering the deportation of all Armenian inhabitants in “death marches” to the deserts of Syria and present-day Iraq. Women and children were forced to walk over mountains and deserts, many of them raped and purposefully starved to death by Turkish troops.
Some victims of the mass killing were even beheaded and burned alive. Those dispersed who were fortunate enough to survive fled to the Caucuses and Russia, while the refugees scattered elsewhere in the Middle East and those who emigrated to Europe and North America would form the Armenian diaspora that exists today. Any spared in Turkey were assimilated through forced conversion to Islam. Only a small remnant of the eastern-most part of Armenian territory remained to become the First Republic of Armenia.
In 1920, it was overrun by the Red Army and absorbed into the Soviet Union in a joint republic with the other caucuses, not gaining its own until the 1930s. Armenia then remained within the USSR until its dissolution whereby it became industrialized and modernized. Presently, it remains a key ally for Russia complicated by the ongoing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh with its caucus neighbor Azerbaijan where the Kremlin has played mediator.
Armenian refugees on a Black Sea beach in Novorossiysk, Russia.
The Armenian-American painter and genocide survivor Arshile Gorky famously changed his birth name Vosdanik Adoyan to one after the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky partly because he felt Russia had saved Armenia. In fact, Russia and Armenia’s enduring close ties today are based on Russia having historically given refuge to the Armenians from persecution. Armenians had suffered during all of the Russo-Turkish wars of the previous two centuries for being painted as sympathetic to Russia, but WWI brought unparalleled suffering for them in the form of systematic extermination.
During the genocide, the hundreds of thousands of Ottoman-Armenian subjects who were targeted by Turkish authorities were victims after being portrayed as a internal threat and potential traitors while Ottoman troops fought against the Imperial Russian Army on the war-front. The genocide itself had Russophobic origins and was ‘justified’ by the Turks as a militarily necessity, with losses such as the Battle of Sarikamish serving as a prelude to the genocide after Enver Pasha pinned their defeat on Armenians. The Turkish campaign to whitewash the genocide uses the existence of Armenian volunteer units who fought with the Imperial Russian Army as evidence to support their apologist narrative — discounting that the vast majority of the Armenians massacred were Ottoman citizens. Modern Armenia still stands because it was the sole province within its historical territory that was under the protection of Russia — without it, it is possible that no Armenia would remain at all.

1916 issue of ‘Excelsior’ with an illustration of a Russian soldier with an Armenian child refugee. The caption reads, ‘The Symbol of Protection of the Armenians by Russia.’


Following the war’s end, the Turkish National Movement and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who had led the Ottomans to victory in Gallipoli formed a nationalist government based in Ankara. Concurrently, Britain and France occupied Istanbul (Constantinople), resulting in the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923). In the initial stages of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, some of the Young Turk perpetrators were put to death for what they called ‘crimes against humanity’ in the Turkish courts-martial of 1919–1920 under the last Sultan, Mehmed VI.
However, many of the real culprits in the Young Turk leadership were allowed to escape and avoid any real punishment for their heinous crimes. Once the formation of the the Republic of Turkey occurred in 1923 after Atatürk and the Turkish National Movement drove out the Allies, they were given amnesty from their deeds. Denial then became official policy of the state and even the memory of the presence of Armenia was not safe from destruction. Even though the Kemalists were not the guilty parties themselves and the new republic ushered in many reforms such as secular education and socialized medicine, it excessively glorified the country’s military which still held significant power in post-Ottoman Turkey.
The former existence of Armenians was outright denied, with maps and history rewritten in schools falsely claiming that Turks had inhabited the region exclusively for centuries. Churches, monuments and all traces of Armenian culture were desecrated and renamed. Armenian children that were not killed were abducted from their parents, then renamed and raised as Turks. Recently revealed genealogy databases show the historical records that as many as 2 million Turks may have Armenian ancestry. The effects of this campaign are so widespread that even the most progressive elements of Turkish society harshly reject use of the term genocide to this day.
While the Turkish government was rewriting history, the Allied powers were preoccupied with more important things than prosecuting the Ottomans for war crimes. After all, the war had been fought for moral reasons, not over the subjugation of smaller nations — or had it? The Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France resulted in the partitioning of the former Ottoman territories for plunder and looting of their markets and raw materials with colonialism now acting under the banner of ‘mandates.’ Britain received Iraq and Palestine, while Syria and Lebanon went to France.
Though confirmation of the account is disputed, just prior to the invasion of Poland it is alleged that Hitler remarked in a 1939 speech “Who after all, remembers the Armenians?” Many have said in hindsight that perhaps if the Turks had been held to account for their crimes, the holocaust could have been prevented — but this naive view discounts the fact that the Allies were guilty of many genocides themselves.
The Armenian genocide also predates use of the word itself which was not until the 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe by holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, nor officially defined prior to the Genocide Convention of 1948. Lemkin coined the term as a hybrid of the Greek word génos (a social group of descent) and the Latin suffix -cide (an act of killing), specifically with the Armenians in mind. Genocide is also a heavily politicized term with regards to the west, which now exploits the word to justify its ‘humanitarian interventions’ abroad, often using it to mischaracterize bloody civil wars and ethnic conflicts (Rwanda, Yugoslavia) while failing to recognize its actual historical occurrences that fit its definition such as that perpetrated upon the Armenians.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia as an independent country has maintained close ties to Russia with the reduced energy prices provided by its Gazprom natural gas giant, military bases and trade relations. Since 1991, its economy has been obliterated by the ‘shock therapy’ of mass privatization by the IMF and World Bank who imposed their own demands as a pretext for their economic bailouts. According to IMF statistics, Armenia’s post-Soviet economy shrank by three quarters during the nineties and it has remained one of the poorest countries in Europe ever since.
Armenia is currently a member of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), from which the other ‘color revolutions’ in Eastern Europe keeping pushing former Soviet states into EU integration. The liberal opposition leader and parliament member who just became the country’s new Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinian, has stated he does not wish Armenia to become a client state in a geopolitical chess game between the west and east. Indeed, the protests have not become violent on any large scale nor have they been infiltrated by far right nationalists, making any comparisons with the Maidan in Ukraine seem premature. While the full outcome of the protests is yet to be determined, Pashinian is clearly a shameless opportunist who cannot be trusted. Perhaps a comparison with the Orange or Rose Revolutions is a better one.
Washington’s plan to surround Russia installing favorable puppets is part of a larger plan to recolonize Russia and contain China’s growth to maintain its global hegemony. Pashinian has hijacked the legitimate grievances of average Armenians such as rising unemployment (nearly 20%) and economic stratification within the country to advance his own interests, namely re-alignment with the EU and the U.S. plan to undermine Moscow.
Pashinian had objected to the Sargsyan government joining the EAEU in 2014, instead favoring a signing of the European Union Association Agreement which was not completed until last year, although with the negotiated term of Armenia not having to enroll as a EU member. The idea that entry into the EU will bring anything but more austerity is a scam, and is Armenia really in a position to move away from Moscow? Unlikely considering they just signed a joint military force agreement. We will have to wait and see what changes a Pashinian term will bring as he is set to meet with Putin in Sochi shortly.
While Armenia is in the grip of infighting amongst its political elites, Turkey is the midst of a power struggle between rival Islamists. The U.S. relationship with Turkey has also been in jeopardy and become increasingly strained since the failed coup d’etat attempt in July of 2016 to remove its Islamist President, Recep Tayipp Erdoğan, who glorifies the Ottoman Empire while supporting terrorism across the region. The failed ouster instantly shifted the world’s geopolitical alignment after Erdoğan responded by accusing the U.S. of involvement. This development may have consequences for any eventual U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide, as Trump balances both trying to win back Turkey’s favor while facing international pressure to condemn Erdoğan’s purges and increasing authoritarianism. While it is possible that Erdoğan staged the coup in a ‘false flag’ power grab considering its poor execution and the small amount of troops involved, the end result further sabotaged the U.S.’s plan to control key resources in the form of oil and gas pipelines from the Persian Gulf to the EU that had been the motive behind its involvement in Syria.
An elimination of Russia’s grip on more than half of Europe’s natural gas market remains the ultimate geopolitical aim of the U.S. On his first day in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade bloc designed to undermine China, but it has done little to stop what appears to be an increasingly relentless drive toward WWIII. The possibility of a potential global war continues to arise from a deepening global economic crisis and desperation on the part of the U.S. to halt the rise of China and Russia on the world stage that is occurring simultaneously.
Obama’s so-called ‘pivot to East Asia’ regional strategy, which concentrated more than half of American armed forces in the continent by taking troops to Australia, the Asian Pacific and Indonesia, had intended to build up America as a Pacific Power encircling China behind a missile defense shield. Just as its attempt to oust Bashar al-Assad was unsuccessful, Obama’s pivot to Asia proved to be a nothing short of a colossal failure.
America’s involvement in the Syrian conflict also took risks in their support for Kurdish proxies that undermined its ally Turkey, with its decision to arm the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) in Northern Syria particularly ruffling Ankara’s feathers. The YPG’s role in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces coalition was instrumental in the fight against ISIS, but the U.S. payed little regard to Turkey’s objection to their support for them over the group‘s ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK’s insurgency has been in an armed conflict with Turkey for almost forty years fighting to establish an autonomous Kurdish state.
In the aftermath, Erdoğan insisted the failed coup was supported by the U.S. and orchestrated by his former ally, the pro-American Islamic cleric, Fetullah Gülen, who is based in exile in Pennsylvania. Gülen’s large cult-like following within Turkey is believed by the government to have infiltrated institutions, banks and the military. Blame was even placed on Gülen for the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov in late 2016. Yet Turkey’s suspicion of the Gülen movement being a cover for the CIA is not implausible. It was Russian intervention that crushed the U.S. goal of ousting Assad in Syria — was the coup attempt part of a reset of U.S. policy in the region in an effort to install a preferred puppet? The souring relations between the U.S. and Turkey will likely prolong any potential recognition of ‘the other holocaust.’
The world finds itself in circumstances not unlike when Germany rose as an existential threat to the British and French leading up to WWI. As Germany challenged the already divided world, their imperial ambitions led to what was supposed to be ‘the War to End All Wars’ which facilitated the Ottoman extermination of the Armenians. More than a hundred years later, the world is now facing a similar historical moment to that which preceded the Great War which only ended after the Russian Revolution ousted the Tsar and its autocracy was replaced with socialism.
The only reason capitalism was not overthrown in the rest of Europe was the treachery of the social democrats, but despite socialism’s failure to spread west across the continent, the unrest was enough to frighten the powers that be to end the war — there was no heroic decisive victory on the part of the Allies like the west has depicted. Today, no one can claim the world is ‘sleepwalking’ into WWIII, as it has been given more than ample warning. The only thing preventing its outbreak is the dignified response of Russia to NATO’s expansion, and we can only hope the world wakes up to who the real aggressors are before its patience runs out.
It was Russia that had saved Armenia from the expanding Ottoman Empire and provided refuge to its people from the genocide. If the west hopes to drive a wedge between them, it will have a difficult task ahead of it.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in publications such as The Greanville Post, OffGuardian, CounterPunch and more. Read him on Medium. Max may be reached at [email protected]

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mohandeer
mohandeer
May 22, 2018 12:35 AM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth.

Edwige
Edwige
May 21, 2018 5:18 PM

“by the NGOs”.
It’s long past time that this particularly crass example of neuro-linguistic programming was retired and sent to a museum full of other strange beliefs people once had. If they ever were NGOs (doubtful), they haven’t been for at least three decades.
I suggest IAFs (Intelligence Agency Fronts) as an alternative.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:47 PM
Reply to  Edwige

Perhaps ‘Damnable Interfering Non-Government Organisations’, ie DINGOs would be better. Dingos in Austfailure have an undeserved reputation, so the term has come to mean a cowardly cur, to be short. An excellent summation of these arrogant Western bums.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 23, 2018 12:14 AM

Actually DRONGOs is even better-with apologies to drongos, of course.

tomiejones
tomiejones
May 21, 2018 5:08 PM

Reblogged this on circusbuoy.

Richard Wicks
Richard Wicks
May 21, 2018 4:58 PM

What is the point of pointing out American hypocrisy when it comes to foreign policy anymore?
The foreign policy of the United States is to tell any lie to justify any action. They are shameless, they don’t care if their lies are obvious, they don’t care if it’s blatantly and obviously false either.
The United States doesn’t care about democracy anywhere, they don’t care about human rights, they are perfectly willing to steal, and to lie. No point in writing yet another article on US double speak.

Jim Scott
Jim Scott
May 22, 2018 9:43 AM
Reply to  Richard Wicks

I would say that the USA does care about democracy and it does all that it can to stamp it out both at home and abroad in case it takes away privilege. The USA sends it’s armies wherever elected governments step out of line and replaced them with one they select.
I think Mark Twain had it right – God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” –Mark Twain.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 23, 2018 12:18 AM
Reply to  Jim Scott

‘War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography’. Attribution dubious-I always thought it was Ambrose Bierce.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 4:33 PM

“It was Russia that had saved Armenia from the expanding Ottoman Empire and provided refuge to its people from the genocide.”
Of course this is highly dubious as in the two decades preceding the genocide, the Bolshevik tyranny was engaged in many attacks on the Armenian Church and suppressed Armenian nationalism. The property of the Armenian Church was seized and tens of thousands of Armenians executed by the communists.
The Armenians even rose up in revolt in 1921 against the communists.
You would potentially have an argument if you diligently distinguished between the policies of the Russian Empire and the Soviets in this regard but without that line drawn the statement above is absurdly untrue.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 4:36 PM

This is even more absurd since you are actively praising the institution of communism which persecuted Armenians!

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 9:09 PM

Talking to yourself again? Your knowledge of Armenia is a total 0.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:50 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

Ukrainian Nazis REALLY hate the communists for destroying their beloved Banderastan during WW2.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 22, 2018 10:16 AM

He’s not even a real Ukrainian – just a pathetic simulacrum of a Ukrainian recruited from the Prager U Passnotes website.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 4:56 PM

Sorry that should be “after the genocide” rather than “preceding the genocide”.

bevin
bevin
May 21, 2018 8:50 PM

As you note, yourself, the burden of your post is devoid of factual content. You simply rehearse these sub-Robert Conquest ‘talking points in these intellectual limbo dances whenever the opportunity arises.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 9:05 PM
Reply to  bevin

Well that was a pathetic comeback.
Are you denying there was an Armenian revolt against the Bolsheviks in 1920?

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:51 PM

A revolt by fascists, your type.

Jen
Jen
May 21, 2018 11:35 PM

The revolt in 1921 was by Armenian nationalists, some of whom were socialist, against the Bolsheviks in a historical context when independent Armenia was beset by both Turkish and Soviet forces. Turkey had forced Armenia to cede back land granted under the Treaty of Sevres. The Soviets were attempting to secure their Transcaucasian borders: at the time, there was no way of knowing if Anatolian Turkey would succeed in preserving its own independence or would end up chopped in pieces by Britain, France and Italy. By denying the historical context, you are still trolling.
Keep going with the trolling, FF, as the more you troll, the more you reveal yourself as that other troll “Matt”.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 9:49 PM
Reply to  bevin

FF is Professor of Russophobia at Prager U, so please treat his posts with the deference they deserve. The rigorous academic standards at Prager underpin the whole exegesis.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:53 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

With Nazism on the march once more, thanks to their patron the USA, we are in for a very bad time indeed. FF is the type that infest Ukronazi death-squads like the Azov Battalion.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 22, 2018 12:57 PM

Certainly the mental approach, agreed! But whereas FF suffers from verbal diahorrea, the Azov nutters are mainly knuckledraggers who couldn’t string a sentence together – whether it’s in English, Polish, Lemkos, Ukrainian or Rusynish.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:48 PM

Feeding time in Ukronazia. Better produce some filth, or you won’t get your bowl of giblets.

Tony M
Tony M
May 21, 2018 4:28 PM

queued = cued?
Some background as to how the bankers and industrialists war was faring when this massacre took place. The events that drove Turkey into the arms of Germany, which was very much what Britain and France wanted as the Ottoman Empire was their much coveted prize, as much as the longest possible war in Europe, severest destruction of Germany, and profits thereby. Even to the extent that a significant part of French British and US industrial output, despite the sham blockade (which only took real effect when the war was over in order to further starve Germans of food) went either directly or via Norway, Sweden and Denmark to help sustain the German war effort, without which the war really would have been over (for Germany) by Christmas 1914.
https://firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/gallipoli-1-the-enduring-myth/
Russia’s interest was in seizing the Straits, Contantinople, and the choke points of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, Constantinople having been promised to Russia in very definite terms by Britiain and France, in order to induce Russia to participate in world war one, which was its only war aim, had been a goal of Russia for probably centuries past, of course Britain and France though had no intention of permitting or assisting in this whatsoever, infact did everything they could to prevent this whilst still keeping the eastern front going and peace between Germany and Russia of which there was constant danger, from breaking out.
Two newly built – on the Clyde and the Tyne – ships for Turkey, ready such that Turkish crews were waiting in Glasgow and Newcastle to sail them home and crowds in Turkey awaited their long-planned ceremonial arrival were requisitioned by Britain on outbreak of war (this move planned before war actually broke out) and to replace these and console Turkey, two German ships which were sitting ducks which if Britain so chose could have been sunk, crippled or left to flounder without fuel in the Med, were escorted into the Aegean by the Royal Navy by making sure there was no where else they could possibly go and no mishap befell them. Once in the Black Sea still crewed by Germans, but with flags changed to Turkish ones, they hamstrung the Russian Black Sea fleet from any attack on Constantinople or the Bosphorus indefinitely and bottled them up there. As well as this there was the deliberately disastrous, designed to fail suicidally inept Dardanelles campaign merely to keep Russia in the war, by again dangling the prospect of control of the straits and Constantinople being gifted to Russia afterwards, but making sure it was nothing more than a lure which enchanted Russia but always far out of reach.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 4:03 PM

The man who coined the word “Genocide” Mr. Lemkin was very concerned with bringing the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice and wrote extensively on a genocide that is no longer that well remembered.
Interesting to note as well that his work exposing other genocides has been suppressed – particularly in Putin’s Russia.
His work “Soviet genocide in Ukraine” has branded as “extremist material” by Putin’s Russia in 2015 and the distribution of which is now illegal in Russia. It’s certainly a shame that there exists governments that continually deny past genocides and punish the exposure of genocide through judicial means – Putin’s Russia is one of these governments that bears this shame of attacking highly beneficial free speech.
Source for the last paragraph: http://minjust.ru/ru/extremist-materials?field_extremist_content_value=&page=15

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 4:07 PM

School’s out early, I see?

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 4:10 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

Do you support the banning of Lemkin’s article?
Easy yes or no question.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 9:07 PM

Your understanding of Russia and modern Russian history is based on delusional crap. Any article by your Lambkin or Lemkin or whichever nutter wrote it doesn’t need bannng – because it’s so laughably idiotic that it’s discredited itself already!
Now, I seem to remember I asked you to LEAVE this messageboard and crawl back under the bridge you call home.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 9:14 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

Cool so you condemn the Putin government for attacking freedom of speech by banning the Lemkin article?
100%?
BTW Lemkin coined the term “genocide”. That’s his legacy.
Putin’s legacy seems to facilitate the denial of genocide.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 9:20 PM

Sorry, I don’t reply to trolls.
Take your Red Dawn crapola somewhere else.

Tony M
Tony M
May 21, 2018 5:00 PM

There was widespread famine in the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, but the present-day government bears no relation to or responsibility for that terrible murderous regime, which from the revolutions of 1917 onward was looked on benignly behind a facade of condemnatory rhetoric, by most western governments. The famine was not just limited to Ukraine. Administrative ineptitude as well as poor weather, lengthy winters, short summer and poor harvests may have contributed, grain prices worldwide were at an all-time high. The role of the Kulaks, cannot have helped, these wealthy commercial scale farmers who had obtained formerly peasant-owned subsistence land probably for the cost of a few bottles of gutrot spirits, were resistant to centralisation/nationalisation, were guilty of not cultivating their best fields, of hoarding, withholding or even destroying food rather than surrender it to the central government or distributing it to the locals who in some cases righly took the matter into their own hands.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 6:49 PM
Reply to  Tony M

I didn’t and am not suggesting in anyway that the current Russian government is responsible for those atrocities.
What I am criticising is the decision by the current ruling party to criminalise the distribution of articles which detail these crimes.
This policy is a crazy attack on freedom of speech that wouldn’t be tolerated in the United States or most Western countries but is also tantamount to an official stamp of approval on genocide denial.

bevin
bevin
May 21, 2018 9:06 PM

” “Soviet genocide in Ukraine” has branded as “extremist material” ”
There was no “soviet genocide” in the Ukraine or anywhere else.
The “Holodomor” was a Nazi hoax perfected at Harvard after WW11 by promoters of fascism in Ukraine.
Many regions of the Soviet Union were affected by the famine of 1932-3, Ukraine in fact suffered less than Kazakhstan and other republics.
There is no evidence, and no likelihood, that Stalin had any interest in killing Ukrainians- the charge that there was a genocide is an infamous slander against Russians.
What we do know, and is well documented, is that the fascist Ukrainian nationalists not only formed the Galician Division of the Waffen SS but killed tens of thousands of Poles, anti-fascist Ukrainians and Russians as well as volunteering to work in German Concentration Camps as guards. It is they who promote the Holodomor which the Russian government finds offensive, as an excuse for their war crimes.

Freedom Fighter
Freedom Fighter
May 21, 2018 9:17 PM
Reply to  bevin

You just discredited yourself with this crackpot garbage.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 21, 2018 9:39 PM
Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 11:02 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

That’s Fascist Fraud’s family in that photo, reiner. I bet he’s getting quite teary, thinking of those ten year old Polish boys they got to kill. Such good times!

Tony M
Tony M
May 21, 2018 9:54 PM

The Hearst newspapers were big on deliberate Ukranian famine stories, but lacking evidence were forced to misrepresent photographs of emaciated dead bodies which were later proven to have been taken in Germany during the first world war, as having been taken in Ukraine in late-1930s. I’m agnostic on alleged famine events deliberate or otherwise in Ukraine at present, there being so much disinformation around, but keep an open mind.
Turkey’s hideous treatment of the Armenians however seems very widely acknowledged, they would still have been ‘neutral’ in the war when this happended and I’m quite at a loss what their motivation was, other than blood-lust. They do infact still seem to fighting to reverse the post-ww1 treaties, Mosul (in Iraq) was very much a sticking point well into the 1920s and which they still very much consider theirs.

Tony M
Tony M
May 21, 2018 10:06 PM
Reply to  bevin

Ukranians also formed as much as 20% of the forces manning the channel coast Atlantic Wall, preferring to ‘fight’ for the Nazis as far away from their homeland as possible in what they thought would be relatively easy circumstances, certainly as far as they could possibly get from any remote chance of encountering any Russian soldiers.
However the topic is Armenia, and I’ll refrain from indulging in commenting on this O/T diversion, as I’ve noticed ‘Freedom Fighter’ has made more or less identical comments to that which started this exchange (Ukraine/Lemkin), below several other articles also today, though it isn’t so completely and utterly off-topic here.

Tony M
Tony M
May 21, 2018 10:53 PM
Reply to  Tony M

It’s not that I don’t have some sympathy for Ukranians, probably the devil himself if he existed wouldn’t be all bad. And they were like the fly trapped in a spider’s web as both Germany had newly-reinvented Poland had evil intentions towards Ukrainian territory between the world wars without the least thought or care for the people already there, except as possible slave-workers. It’s not the best of luck to live upon the fault lines of would-be empires and have had such neighbours as they have. But they’re simply being used as a cats-paw for the A-Z empire bent as ever insanely on global domination and universal enslavement of everyone no less their own already captive population. They fundamentally under-appreciate that the EU and NATO represent a far greater and real fount of purest evil in the today’s world than long-gone early Soviet-era spectres and scarecrows for don’t imagine in the latter years of Soviet rule the sun didn’t shine, laughter could not be heard and compared with what had passed, relatively good times were had by some.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 11:09 PM
Reply to  Tony M

Of course there were good and decent Ukrainians-they fought with the Red Army to destroy the fascist Ukrainians and their Nazi allies and bosses. And the Ukrainians lived peacefully and amicably with their Russian and other Soviet brethren, until Yeltsin’s Evil treachery destroyed the Soviet Union, in direct contradiction of a national referendum, and the fascist filth, that had been given refuge in the West, returned to infest the new country, and, within twenty years, turn back to full fascism and death-squad murder. A real triumph of Western Moral Values.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 11:05 PM
Reply to  Tony M

Ukrainians were preferred as guards in the extermination camps, being such vicious Jew and Roma etc haters. No doubt Fascist Fraud’s ancestors were busy in that endeavour. Who would have thought that the USA would be so Evil as to re-vitalise WW2 Nazism and fascism to attack Russia? Well, me, for one.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 11:00 PM
Reply to  bevin

Well said bevin, and our fascist foe replied in so very poor a fashion that I think we can say, ‘A palpable hit, sir!’.

Jim Scott
Jim Scott
May 22, 2018 1:37 PM

Speech is free in the West but going by the MSM it tends to avoid the truth. To use another Mark Twain quote – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” –Mark Twain

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 21, 2018 10:57 PM

The fraudulent ‘Holomodor’ (how difficult it must have been for a PR company to invent a term so like ‘Holocaust’) is a fascist hate-mongering invention. A real genocide is like the massacre of Poles in western Ukraine by FF’s ancestors in 1943-4, and, of course, their busy slaughter of Jews and Russians.

bevin
bevin
May 21, 2018 3:38 PM

No comment necessary, spellcheck in action: “in a joint republic with the other caucuses,”
Armenia was one of three parts of the Trans Caucasian Republic, I believe, which was ruled by Mensheviks and sponsored by the Foreign Office.