Rudy Brueggemann

A photographer by the name of Rudy Brueggemann operates a web site that appears to criticize several different genocides, but I inferred he had a special love affair with the Armenian "Genocide." He relates, on a somewhat entertaining page, of a trip to Turkey, going from one site of "genocidal" note to the next. He gives us a picture of "Midnight Express," a man on a mission who is very afraid if the Turks should happen to catch him. (I guess he was afraid he was going to be hung upside-down by that film's "Bluto," get whacked on the soles of his feet and then be sodomized.) His aim: "To document historic evidence of the attempted extermination of the Armenian people in the early 1900s," hopefully telling of "a little-known story of enormous human evil. At another level, I hoped they would provide additional evidence against what my Armenian journalist friend called the 'big lie,' or Turkey's denial that Armenians were victims of a government-run, systematic mass murder." (Ah! He's got an Armenian tale whose version of events he has totally accepted, and he goes on to classify the Armenian "Genocide" as ... a "little-known story?" Brother, there are many genocides that are barely spoken of, but the Armenian "Genocide" is definitely not one of them. In addition... excuse me, but what is there on his web page that documents historic "evidence"?)

He goes from site to site, especially to the memorials of Young Turks (photographs of which he has plastered his big old copyright notice upon... hey, they're only unremarkable shots of scenery with the purpose of documentation that any tourist could have mustered)... with the outrage that the Turks would be despicable enough to honor the memory of these men. (Opinion on Talat Pasha: "I knew exactly who 'this fucker' was — a man whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and Stalin." Hoo-boy! Good going, fella, doing your thorough homework on the subject.)

Actually, the man has done his homework... he just rejects flat out of hand what the "Turkish government says." Even to the extent of saying, "The Turkish... government links Armenians to the Nazis by claiming an Armenian battalion served under the Nazi Wehrmacht and that Armenians published Anti-Semitic propaganda during the second world war." CLAIMING! In other words, to his closed-up little Armenian-loving mind, the fact that Armenians were at one with the Nazis is a lie, like everything else.

(Of course, I am only assuming Mr. Brueggermann is not an Armenian... his web site pays lip service to other genocides, but as is a commonly deceptive Armenian practice, his is only one of many web sites that masquerade as general genocide sites, but actually serve as fronts to hurl hated and defamatory mud against the Turks. For a non-Armenian or non-Greek to be motivated to construct a site for this purpose would either take passionate anti-Turkish bigotry, or perhaps the ethnic background of the site's creator is not quite what visitors are led to believe.)

He travels east, and an Armenian-Turk suspects the man is not on the up and up, and refuses to have his photograph taken. (Previously, Mr. Brueggermann himself refuses to "trust this kind, elderly Armenian man." Isn't that carrying paranoia too far? Probably that's why the man refused to allow his photo to be taken... his senses told him there was something really fishy about Mr. Brueggermann.) The Armenian-Turk's senses were on the mark...  Mr. Brueggemann takes every opportunity to lie about who he is, and what he's up to.

At the end of the story, when he's finally "free" of the Land from Hell, he breathes a sigh of relief that he no longer has to misrepresent himself... and yet, on the boat that is taking him safely away from being hung upside down and getting his bare feet beaten (a la the cinematic Billy Hayes), he STILL misrepresents himself to two female Australian tourists who ask what he did during his "vacation." (As of this writing, March 2003.) A real man of honor.

Curiously, a Turkish cab driver somehow DID figure out what Mr. Brueggemann was up to (along with a Turkish restaurateur who strongly suspected the man was not whom he claimed he was), and Mr. Brueggemann began to quake in his dishonest boots. Yet, the Turks were cool about the back-stabbing nature of their country's guest (the Turks didn't go to the "Gestapo" with the information), and very friendly... as were, evidently, every other Turk Mr. Brueggemann came across. You would think that in itself would have opened up the man's blindly prejudiced eyes. Some people who have been brainwashed are clearly beyond hope.

This man's irresponsibility in considering only one side of a story and callously preparing a biased web site based on his distorted views clearly makes him guilty of murder... in the form of "Rufmord."

ADDENDUM: This page was among the first prepared for the site, where I had a tendency to write with greater fire and brimstone. Subsequently, Mr. Brueggemann and I had a brief correspondence. I haven't visited his site to see if he has made changes... at his core, he's probably too diehard a believer to have done so... but I hope he has come to realize that, at least partly, he has erred in relying so exclusively upon his sources, to have arrived at such ruinously accusatory conclusions.

 

Mike Joseph and Jenny Randerson

Mike Joseph, as far as I could figure, is an an author who is " writing a book on the Holocaust...  based on his family's story as survivors of that genocide." His speech, "Denying Hitler's Question" was delivered on April 24 or 25, 2002, in the National Assembly of Wales (co-sponsored by the Armenian-Wales Solidarity... why, those Armenians are everywhere) appeared on a page of a site called CRAG (Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, described as "a single-issue pressure group," whose "central aim is to secure official British Government recognition of the Armenian W.W.I experience as genocide."

He hopes to make the case that Hitler's infamous quote, which he recites as "Who after all talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?" was definitely made. (This is yet ANOTHER variation of the alleged quote! I wish people who are in a quandary to have us believe Hitler actually said this thing would get right exactly what he is supposed to have said..!) At any rate, Mike Joseph's supporting statements are what caught my eye, rather than the stupid quote.

Mr. Joseph tells us the reason why Adolf supposedly uttered these words was to "convince" his generals that genocide would be in their future. Unfortunately, the 1939 speech in which this quote was supposedly made had nothing to do with the Jews... Hitler was invading Poland. (And did Hitler need to "convince" anybody? He was Der Fuehrer!)

As Mike Joseph describes giving his lecture in the University of Wales (Swansea), he is annoyed to find a student sitting with a "fixed, waterproof kind of smile that displays scorn rather than satisfaction." When the student objected by bringing up such seemingly incidental points as 1) There was no genocide, 2) Armenians were just as bad (the student was being kind), and 3) Western references to the "genocide" were mistakes, lies and forgeries, Mr. Joseph sniffed that these were "lame assertions"... particularly in light of Mr. Joseph's having examined a paper by "a leading Turkish denier of the Armenian Genocide, Professor Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv."

Even if Mike Joseph truly managed to tear apart Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv's paper, how can he justify pooh-poohing the "lame assertions"? Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv's paper, Hitler and the Armenian Question, mainly deals with... as the title promises... Hitler's connection with the Armenians.

Hitler, not long after the days when Mike Joseph alleges Herr Richter served as der Fuehrer's Rasputin.

The gist of Hitler's intimacy with the Armenian "Genocide," according to Mike Joseph, had to do with the Nazi leader's association with a Max Erwin von Scheubner Richter.... a Vice Consul and commander of German forces in the Ottoman Empire. (At the same time? It would be odd for a diplomat to simultaneously serve as a soldier.)  Mr. Joseph claims Richter had firsthand knowledge of the genocide apparatus, sending the message to Berlin that "The Armenians of Turkey for all practical purposes have been exterminated."

Hmmm. I'm not in the know as to the extent of Richter's responsibilities during the War, but I'd imagine he would have had to remain wherever he was stationed ... and did not have the freedom to check out the far corners of the Empire, to actually know what the extent of this probable "extermination policy" could have been. The evidence clearly does not support nearly the entire Armenian population (1.5 million) of the Ottoman Empire was done away with (the Welsh gentleman claims "over" a million and a half Armenians met their "destruction," more than the number in the entire Ottoman Empire), as the Armenians, who took a few thousand years to reach a total worldwide population of three million before WWI, could not have mushroomed to over seven million... in just eighty years or so... if only a few of them were left behind. This incriminating assertion was only Richter's opinion, probably influenced by the violence he had direct involvement with.

Richter would become a Nazi, managing the SA... and would be shot dead in 1923, during Hitler's premature misstep in challenging the State.

With Richter, Mike Joseph proves the Turkish professor was incorrect in asserting Hitler's associates were "completely ignorant" of the genocide.

I just read the professor's paper, and found it to be very professionally prepared and documented. (The professor obviously believes in the facts he's talking about, and Mr. Joseph's "cheap shot" statement of "...So when Professor Ataöv spins, we may be confident he spins in time with the Turkish government," is out of line; once again, the desperate assertion that anyone who believes there was no Armenian "Genocide" cannot make up their own minds, and must be paid or somehow influenced by the Turkish government.)

Here is a very wise passage from Professor Ataöv's paper:

In many human records there may be contradictions, and interpretations may be disputed by different parties. But a "statement", a single sentence attributed to a man; i.e., Hitler, whose opinions are now in utter disrespect, is a detestable piece of propaganda. It is ugly and loathsome to expect any gain from words, supposed to have been uttered by someone whose uniqueness in history has been to lead a great nation off to war, conquest and ruin. How can just ten words summarize a controversial phenomenon of the last century and the beginning of the present one?

I didn't find where the professor said Hitler's associates were "completely ignorant" of the genocide....although I didn't look through the paper with a fine-toothed comb... as this is the only thing Mike Joseph is talking about having possibly countered, in the professor's paper. (Mike Joseph only alludes to the "hard evidence" of Hitler's quote as a " smoking gun"... but does not specify this evidence.) Is it possible the professor might have been referring to Hitler's associates during the time of the alleged quote's speech (in 1939) who were ignorant of the Armenian "Genocide"? And not some Nazi who died sixteen years earlier..?

How many of the 12,800 German military personnel stationed in the Ottoman Empire during WWI went on to become "leading Nazi criminals," anyway? (He's trying to say all these soldiers had firsthand exposure to the "genocide"... including the many who were stationed at the western part of the nation in Gallipoli, led by Liman von Sanders?) 12,800 personnel is not that large a figure from a war that took place nearly a quarter-century prior to Hitler's speech. Did Mike Joseph get a list of these individuals and cross-check them to see who among them rose to become Hitler's associates, in a position to be able to influence Hitler's mind? Or is Mike Joseph just giving his opinion, here?

 

Mike Joseph claims, "my point of view, though deeply respecting evidence and truth, is not academic but personal." (Since some among his family were victims of the Nazis, Mr. Joseph apparently craves making an association with the Armenians... so that he may enjoy that warm and fuzzy bonding sensation, I suppose. Well, what about the Turks who died under the Armenians' campaign of systematic extermination? The one "The Jewish Times" stated (in their June 21, 1990 edition) served as the REAL "appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust"? I guess Mike Joseph can't identify with those sufferers, perhaps because they're Muslims, and don't count.)

If he so deeply respects evidence and truth, how can he cite Lloyd George, Lord Bryce and the young Arnold Toynbee? Hey. Learn your history. None of these men were objective, when it came to the matters of the Ottoman Empire. The very prejudiced Lloyd George was intent in wiping the Turkish nation off the face of the map. The latter two ran Wellington House, an exceptionally effective propaganda bureau whose only purpose was to vilify Britain's wartime enemies. So don't go quoting from their fairy tale 1915-1916 book, discredited immediately after the war, if you want to present yourself as a man of integrity.

Also in Mr. Joseph's footnotes: "Hitler's rhetorical question was posed in a speech to his military commanders on 22 August 1939... Versions  of the speech were also taken in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials." There was an attempt to introduce the quote at the Nuremberg Trials, but the judges were too smart to be taken in. It's widely known the quote was rejected at the Nuremberg Trials. (The Nuremberg Tribunal accepted two versions of this Hitler talk, USA-29 and USA-30, and neither text contained the quote; they refused to approve a third version. So, in a way, Mike Joseph is technically not lying, since versions were accepted — just not the versions with the quote. However, Mike Joseph is clearly giving the impression the Hitler quote was accepted at Nuremberg.)  What kind of "respecting evidence and truth" is this?

And here's the whopper:

"Responsible for implementing the genocide, the Turks had their own SS — the Special Organisation, and there was even a Turkish Wannsee Conference, a secret gathering of 75 top leaders in Istanbul on February 26, 1915 to finalise the operational plan for the solution to the Armenian Question. A plan which achieved the destruction of over a million and a half Armenians."

STOP THE PRESSES! Mr. Mike Joseph has actually found the REAL "smoking gun" genocide advocates have been searching for all these many years. Why, it's the Turkish Wannsee Conference. That's IT! Case closed.... genocide proven!

I guess we can all go home now. But... wait.

I wonder why this amazing and case-closing discovery hasn't made headlines? I wonder why the Armenian web sites, who have no qualms about putting in all kinds of misleading disinformation to trap the unwary, haven't made any mention of this "Wannsee Conference"? (At least none of the many I've been visiting, of late.)

(This whole Armenian "Genocide" business is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I'm spotting similarities in what Mike Joseph is saying with the words of professional Armenian ministers of disinformation, like Dadrian and Papazian. When I first read this Mike Joseph piece, I got the feeling he conducted his own independent research. Now I'm getting the strong feeling the only research he conducted was copying the findings of the Armenian professors.)

Then he goes on to say the Ottomans had "concentration camps." In case Mr. Joseph isn't aware, two typically required components of a concentration camp are people held against their will (think prison walls and barbed wire), and armed guards. Is he trying to tell us the relocated Armenians were forcibly imprisoned in a Turkish Auschwitz or Dachau that the nearly bankrupt Ottoman Empire spent the cash to construct? (I guess if there were a Turkish Wannsee Conference and Turkish SS in his little fantasy world, there must have been similar counterparts to Nazi concentration camps.)

This "concentration camp" assertion is repeated, on another page of the CRAG site, by a Jenny Randerson, identified as "the leading figure on behalf of Armenian Genocide Recognition in Wales." She "spoke with tremendous emotion and clarity," saying:

"Turkey can certainly be blamed for its modern denial [of the Armenian Genocide]. And I say to representatives of the modern Turkish Government who have sought to put pressure on me since I spoke out on this issue, that as someone who in past life was a historian, I know how to judge evidence and weigh up the pros and cons, and to judge where the truth lies."

Bluto heats up the feet

HAH? Are we now to assume the Turkish government had nothing better to do but to "put pressure" on this rinky-dink lady? (I wonder what form this "pressure" took? Did she get a nasty letter? Or did the Turkish government send "Bluto," the prison guard from MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, to put the little lady's feet in red hot iron shoes?) And if she really was a "historian," perhaps she has forgotten the duty of a historian is to look at a story objectively, with none of that "tremendous emotion"! (What do you make of the Malta Tribunal, "historian"? As if there is not a wealth of other impartial evidence that would cause doubt in any reasonable person's mind... any reasonable person who refuses to get suckered in, that is.)

Where does this near-pathological sympathy for the Armenians stem from? I certainly don't want to make charges I can't back up (that would be the way too many Armenians and Greeks choose to go, in their campaign to give a negative impression upon Turks, whenever possible), but just one of the many, many well-financed Armenian organizations, AGBU, has a budget of twenty seven million dollars. Multiply that with all the other millions from all the other Armenian organizations, worldwide... Where does this money go? (Of course, a good portion goes to buying politicians and media air time, if America is an example... but there is so much of this money. Where does it all go?)

Assuming these two are pure at heart, let's examine what their possible motivations could be. Mr. Joseph is a presumed Jew who was affected by the Holocaust... so now he's seeing Nazis where he wants to. Ironically, he is overlooking the Armenians' role during World War Two, when they lent a healthy hand to their Nazi pals to clean up Jews, probably like Mr. Joseph's murdered family members. Otherwise, let's say these two think the Armenians got a raw deal and are basically outraged. What would compel them to spend so much time and energy on the subject? I understand the Japanese are still whitewashing or "denying" some of their crimes during the WWII era... as with the Rape of Nanking... but that wouldn't make me create a web site over such an injustice, and go out and give speeches. (It took me years to finally get around to creating this web site, that I fervently believe in!) If Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson are so outraged over what happened to the poor, innocent Armenians, why are they not speaking up for some other examples of man's inhumanity to man... all the more glaring, because we never hear about them?

What about the crimes of their own country, when Britain was an empire? While "Exterminate All the Brutes” was, at times, a colonialist policy... when many thousands of barely-clothed African natives were wiped out under British machine guns, or when during the second Ashanti war, the king was actually made to kiss the feet of British officers? What about the one successful genocide in relatively contemporary history, the total wiping out of the Tasmanians? If the British Empire did not send settlers to the Tasmanians' part of the world, the Tasmanians would probably be alive today. Why are these two hypocrites choosing to focus on favorite whipping boy Turkey, and not looking in their own backyard? And if it's too uncomfortable for them to consider the genocidal history of their own forefathers, what about all the many other uncelebrated victims of genocide... why are Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson not crying over these other victims? Because these other victims weren't Christian, and many weren't white? Could Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson's racism and religious bigotry be at the root of why you won't catch them shedding tears over the many massacred Turks, by their beloved Armenians?

Lloyd George

While I'm aware the Welsh might feel a strange compulsion to carry on the proud Turk-hating principles laid by David Lloyd George, the Welsh prime minister of Great Britain who designed to wipe Turkey off the face of the map... I hope not all Welsh people are as closed-minded, unfair and hysterical about the Armenian "Genocide" issue as these two; it would be enough to make one lose one's respect for Catherine Zeta-Jones..!

nniversary Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London, Mr. Mazower reviewed The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden by Viscount Bryce Uncensored Edition by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, edited by Ara Sarafian, at this site. At least he makes an attempt to consider the Turkish perspective (for example, he correctly cites that there were one and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire), so he's not as hysterically bat-blind, as many other Turcophobes are. However, in an essay entitled "The G-Word," the "Genocide" indeed bloody well took place, pip-pip, no question about it.

He cites the usual statistics, such as "Between 1894 and 1896, at least a hundred thousand Armenians had died in massacres in eastern Anatolia." In 1915, the Armenians began to get their raw deal because "Enver and his circle needed scapegoats for their recent military failures," similar to Hitler's Jews-as-scapegoats.

"According to the inspector-general of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, the Governor of Van had given an order 'to exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years and over'. On 20 April, the Armenians of Van rose in self-defence, and held on till a Russian advance reached them in May." That's the kind of information that would interest me... an actual order for extermination. However, this is the first time I'm hearing about this supposed order. (Well... actually... I did read Ambassador Morgenthau's despicably biased chapter [in "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"] entitled "The Revolution at Van," where Morgenthau characterized the governor as a man who "hated the Armenians," and opined [since the only "evidence" Morgenthau cites is from missionaries] "There is little question that he came to Van with definite instructions to exterminate all Armenians." Could this silly book have been the "evidence" for the British professor we are now referring to?) Mazower believes:

1) Enver was looking for scapegoats to take the attention away from his military failure,

2) Enver's brother-in-law, was appointed Governor of Van in February 1915

3) Blood is thicker than water, so in order for Enver to save face, the brother-in-law orders a cruel slaughter of Armenian males.

Oh, for the love of all things that are good and holy. How very tidily convenient. A schoolchild could only believe this silly rationale.

Did the Ottoman inspector-general claim that the governor gave this order? If so, when did the Ottoman inspector-general claim this... during the kangaroo courts in Allied-occupied Istanbul when people were saying everything and anything to save their necks? Why wasn't this information used as evidence for the Malta Tribunal, where the British searched feverishly for nearly two-and-a-half years to convict Ottoman officials of genocide? Or did some Armenian put these words into the inspector-general's mouth?

Then, on April 20, 1915, the Armenians rose up in "self-defense." If the Anniversary Professor buys any more into the Armenian B.S., he would start becoming Armenian himself. Professor Mazower unfortunately has his chronology mixed up. You see, before the poor, innocent Armenians rose up in "self-defense," they had already rebelled in Van, months earlier.

The professor would think the "Call to Arms" documented in the November 1914 issue of the Hunchak Armenian [Revolutionary] Gazette must have had some effect: "The entire Armenian Nation will join forces — moral and material, and waving the sword of Revolution, will enter this World conflict ... as comrades in arms of the Triple Entente, and particularly Russia... Armenians proud to shed their blood for the cause of Armenia...."

Just the fact that the Armenians would be able to hold the city until the Russians arrived, as the professor writes, should have made the professor raise his eyebrows... how could these unarmed, defenseless citizens manage to mount such a significant counter-offensive against the implied considerable Ottoman forces [carrying out such a huge order as the near-entire extermination of Armenian men in the Ottoman city where there were the most Armenians would have taken a lot of manpower]?

(Morgenthau, through his ghost-writer: "The whole Armenian fighting force consisted of only 1,500 men; they had only 300 rifles and a most inadequate supply of ammunition, while Djevdet had an army of 5,000 men, completely equipped and supplied. Yet the Armenians fought with the utmost heroism and skill; ... I cannot describe in detail the numerous acts of individual heroism, the cooperation of the Armenian women, the ardour and energy of the Armenian children, the self-sacrificing zeal of the American missionaries, especially Doctor Ussher and his wife and Miss Grace H. Knapp, and the thousand other circumstances that made this terrible month one of the most glorious pages in modern Armenian history. The wonderful thing about it is that the Armenians triumphed." 300 rifles, limited ammunition, and they hold out for over a month against "5,000 men, completely equipped and supplied"? Tell us another one, Henry.)

(Oh, here's another one. The Van governor, Djevdet, would nail "horseshoes to the feet of his Armenian victims." It is truly criminal that the ambassador and former lawyer had such low moral scruples that he would be responsible for this fiendish book, based entirely on hearsay... regarding the Armenians, at least.)

As the Times link above states, the Armenians refused to join the army. The Armenians were in open revolt. For years, their revolutionary leaders had planned to strike when their nation was at war, and in preparation for such treachery, they had amassed a huge cache of weaponry and even uniforms, throughout the empire. The fact of the matter is, many Armenians in the army deserted. (The 205,000 Armenian fighters, by Armenian Boghos Nubar Pasha's count, had to come from somewhere... and he was not only talking about the Russian Armenians... since the Russian Armenians were already part of the Russian army; Nubar was referring to other Armenians as well, helping the Allied cause. Turkish professor Yusuf Halacoglu claims "pertinent documents" [letters from Armenians are provided as examples] — in his "Realities on the Armenian Immigration, 1915" [TTK Publications, Ankara, 2001] — demonstrate 50,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers deserted to join the Russians, and many thousands of "Armenian soldiers went to America to be trained in the US Army to fight against the Turkish Army." One Ottoman-Armenian who betrrayed his country to join the Russians, although probably not as an Ottoman soldier but as an Armenian teenager, was Gourgen Yanikian ... at 78, he tricked two Turkish diplomats to come to a California hotel room on the pretext of donating a painting to Turkey, and shot both dead on January 27, 1973) Mr. Mazower repeats the Armenian claims that the Armenian soldiers fought loyally, and I'm not saying some did not. But there were MUCH too many signs of their disloyalty, and any nation would have reassigned them to "labor battalions," under the circumstances.

Arthur Tremaine Chester wrote in his Feb.1923 article that appeared in The New York Times Current History, "Angora and the Turks":

 The facts are that the Turks sent an army to the Russian border to defend their country against the threatened Russian invasion. The army consisted of Turkish subjects of all nationalities, being drafted just as ours are drafted. At the front the Armenians used blank cartridges and deserted in droves. This was bad enough, but the Armenians were not satisfied with this form of treachery. The provinces in the rear of the army had a large Armenian population, and these people, feeling that there was an excellent chance of the Russians defeating the Turks, decided to make it a certainty by rising up in the rear of the army and cutting it off from its base of supplies.

"Working through the military, the regional bureaucrats and Enver's own secret service, the Teskilat-i Mahsusa, which carried out his dirty work throughout the Empire, the new leadership had begun preparations for the killings perhaps as early as February 1915." For goodness' sakes. Everyone knows the Ottoman Empire had a generally "a la Turca" kind of inefficiency and disorganization about it. How could a GENOCIDE be implemented if these regional bureaucrats were not communicated with? At least ONE telegram would have survived, don't you think? If anything, the telegrams on record indicate the welfare and safekeeping of the Armenians were being kept in mind. And DON'T tell me the sinister agents of  the Teskilat-i Mahsusa traveled to the far corners of the Empire, when manpower was at such a shortage during this desperate period of wartime (with battles on multiple fronts), and that these secret agents conveyed their genocidal instructions on paper with invisible ink, or something out of a cheap spy movie... just so later generations could not find evidence of their government's evil-doing. The Ottoman Turks were already aware the Turks' name was mud throughout the Western world, no matter what they did... and "covering their tracks" would not have even occurred to them. Especially when they had freed themselves of the years-long and humiliating European-imposed capitulations... and were in a "To Hell with you" mood.

The professor raises the interesting point: "...The Turkish authorities, ... do not seem to blanch at the term 'massacre' but are beside themselves when the G-word is mentioned." "Why does it matter whether or not the massacres are 'officially' a genocide?"..

The answer is, a genocide is the worst crime against humanity there is. Genocide, as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, makes clear that genocide is a crime of "specific intent."  One cannot infer genocide from actions, one must prove by direct evidence that the accused party intended to destroy the protected group. Has any such reliable evidence ever been found? To answer this question, ask yourself... how come World War I's "Nuremberg," the Malta Tribunal, which set out exactly on such a mission, released every single Ottoman official in the end?

At the time of the Convention's ratification, the Secretary General of the U.N. also made clear that the Convention does not protect "political groups"; homicide becomes genocide when the destruction is directed at members of a protected group simply because they are members of that group. The Ottoman Armenians did not constitute a protected group because the Dashnak and Hunchak guerrillas and their civilian accomplices openly and admittedly waged war against their own government. "The relocation would not have taken place had the Armenians not violently and politically allied themselves with the invading Russian forces... the relocation had nothing to do with the Armenians' ethnic or religious identity."

So what does the professor think, Turkey has to admit a genocide when a genocide as defined by the U.N. Convention on Genocide did not take place? If the professor is so desperate for admission of genocide, he might do better to look at the background of his forefathers' actions.

The professor does make a valid point when he speculates one reason why the Turks are sensitive to this issue is "...more intimately bound up with official Turkish self-perceptions." Naturally. When Turks have been unfairly accused by the West of being barbarians for many centuries, naturally the Turks would be a tad more sensitive. Wouldn't anyone?

Regarding the professor's thought-provoking assertion that the Turks hate the idea of genocide but don't mind "massacres," let's examine this for a moment. Massacres aren't such a nice thing either. However, the Turks admit to the massacres that took place in their history, because what are they going to do? As opposed to genocide, massacres did take place. Turks don't claim they have been angels throughout history... and unlike Armenians, Turks tell the truth.

However, what about the extent of these massacres? For example, when the professor states,  "Between 1894 and 1896, at least a hundred thousand Armenians had died in massacres in eastern Anatolia," one gets the idea that the savage, cruel Ottoman forces deliberately carved up innocent people... kind of like this image:

From Armenian web sites, included among the rows of photos with skeletons and suffering people, of dubious origin... to prove the "Genocide." In fact, this photo is the only evidence that would make me think a genocide took place, as the Ottoman soldiers are clearly cutting up the innocent victims. Oh, hold on a second! This is a PAINTING, not a photograph... Maybe the men on horseback weren't even meant to be Turks. Some Armenian might have run into this image and thought, hey! This could serve a purpose...

However, given the motivations of the many prejudiced people who reported these massacres (as Bryce and Rev. E.W. McDowell cited at the bottom of Mazower's page; E.W. was a missionary.... enough said. Bryce was running Wellington House, Mazower's nation's unscrupulous propaganda machinery, and Bryce's Blue Book was discredited after the war), is it fair to accept at face value this image whenever we hear the Turks have been guilty of massacres? For another view of the exaggerated Abdul Hamid massacres, look here. One reason that has been put forth as to why the half-Armenian Abdul Hamid has been accused of massacring Armenians is because he hated Armenians, like Hitler hated the Jews. (Kind of like the reason Mr. Mazower gives for the Armenian "Genocide": Enver Pasha needed scapegoats!)  Is that what really happened?

There are many examples of missionaries and others claiming massacres of horrifying numbers in villages where only dozens of people lived. (Read this eye-opening examination of the Bristol Papers, for example.) Gladstone really went to town with his exaggerations in his report of the Bulgarian atrocities because he was, well, Gladstone. (As with the Armenian episode, note the inequality; 10,000 Bulgarians died vs. 262,000 Turks/Muslims, with a further 568,000 exiled [McCarthy]; the latter victims were invisible, in Western eyes.) Armenians who perished with the retreating Russians did not die at the hand of the Ottoman sword, and yet these 40,000 souls (Hovannisian wrote some 150,000 [1967]) are listed among the massacred Armenians of the "Genocide." (As Kamuran Gurun brought up, 2-3,000 Armenians who were with the French died during a retreat.... Were the French guilty of "massacring" these Armenians?)

And who committed many of the actual massacres, anyway? Troops acting under government orders, as is usually implied? No. Armenians would provoke their neighbors with revolutionary acts and outright massacres, and the Muslims would then be out on an "eye for an eye" blood feud. (Armenians and Greeks act.... and Turks react.) Many of the Armenians who got murdered on their relocating marches were victims of Muslim bands, a good number out for revenge... and the gendarmes who were assigned to protect the Armenians were few in number, or rotten in quality. (Rotten in quality because of a sinister campaign to exterminate the Armenians, or because there was a desperate war situation with mortal enemy Russia at the gates, and manpower was critically short? For example, The Ottoman central government had ordered the Van governor to send gendarmes to guard columns of Armenian deportees. He responded that because most of his forces were at the front fighting the Russian Army and its Armenian irregulars, he was left with only 40 gendarmes at his disposal and they were protecting Muslim villages against Armenian attacks. Yep, the same Van governor, I'd imagine, who had given the order "to exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years and over," according to Professor Mazower.)

Alluding to some of these massacres, U.S. Admiral Colby M. Chester wrote in 1922: "There have been riots, now and then, when local Turks have felt that their rights have been outraged by outsiders. It seems to me that once or twice I have read something about riots in America in circumstances of like sort, although of differing detail. Speaking generally, the Turks are far more patient than Americans would be."

The admiral's son, Arthur Tremaine Chester, embellished the unfairness of massacre reports in 1923, with:  "It has been the custom of those who wish to condemn the Turk to give religious intolerance as the cause of all disturbances in Turkey. I have never heard one of these people admit that politics, treachery, or any other similar cause had any connection with them. If an Armenian or Greek is killed, it is always referred to as the massacre of a Christian."

It was true then, and it's still true now. One would hope apparently fair-minded men like Professor Mazower would take the trouble of scratching beneath the surface, but swallowing the Armenian line hook, line and sinker is just too easy and irresistible, I suppose.

The professor concludes, "perhaps as many as one million Armenians" died. That's from an original population of one and a half million, as he himself believes. (Yet the Armenians themselves concede one million Armenians survived.) Of Mazower's remainder of only half a million, we have to conclude there were hardly any young men... as Professor Papazian, among other Armenians, keeps telling us the survivors were women, children and old men. (The young men were all shot on the spot, you see.) This is why, when it took the Armenians a couple of thousand years to reach a worldwide population of three million just before the war, their numbers mushroomed to seven million in just eighty five to ninety years.

 

Particularly once I discovered, after examining Dr. Smith's congressional testimony, the paper this very testimony was based on... a paper he had written with two other "scholarly" Armenian apologists, in which they shamelessly attempted to discredit Dr. Heath Lowry (link at bottom). There is an excellent chance Dr. Smith read Dr. Lowry's "The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," from 1990, in which Dr. Lowry proves beyond a shadow of a doubt... by cross-checking with Morgenthau's own diary and letters... what an unreliable source Morgenthau is. Even with this extremely likely knowledge, Dr. Smith still refers to Morgenthau as a credible source. (Hmmmmmm... but why?)