Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003
Subject: Once more: the University of Minnesota and historical Truth
 



Dear President Bruininks, Vice-President Maziar, and distinguished historians of the University of Minnesota:

As I wrote you last week, I intended to send the second part of my correspondence with Dr. Feinstein, which should have arrived in a separate e-mail. This one concentrates less on historical facts than other issues... including Dr. Feinstein’s defense of the Armenian “Genocide,” an examination of genocide scholars and Jewish relations between Turks and Armenians (many of these Holocaust-motivated genocide scholars are Jewish), and the issue of credibility.

I hope you have all sensed my only motivation for these communications is the truth. Any reasonable and unbiased person who considers both sides of the Armenian “Genocide” debate would conclude the Morgenthaus, Bryces, missionaries and newspapers have Gibraltar-sized holes... with propaganda and bigotry to serve as motivations. Armenian allegations simply cannot be substantiated by non-partisan historical evidence.

The Western, Russian and even some Armenian sources that serve as counter-evidence have no other basis for their reportage except the telling of truth… since very few of those sources would have had reason to defend the Turks. There are enough facts unearthed that should dictate conclusions by responsible historians. Sixty-nine American academicians published an open letter in two major American newspapers in May 1985, disputing the Armenian characterization of events. What may be preventing other historians from joining these voices is a successful terror campaign by pro-Armenians that threatens to smear the reputations of such professors.

Prof. Stephen Feinstein

Dr. Feinstein wrote me a short note after I sent my first letter to you... one of you must have contacted him... saying I should keep my letters coming, as they benefit fundraising.

Those people who are interested in perpetuating the myth of the Armenian “Genocide” will keep on contributing, regardless... as truth has little to do with their motivations. I don’t know any of you personally, but I prefer to think the best of people until proven otherwise. I’m assuming all of you are people of integrity. The reason why I’m writing these letters is to let you be aware that the university you are associated with supports an organization that presents hearsay, manipulated truths, and outright falsifications/forgeries as fact.

Your sense of integrity should force you to be very troubled by such an association... particularly the historians among you. Perhaps the president and executive V.P. of the university who are also receiving copies of these communications are in an awkward position... maybe there are some politically-motivated benefactors they need to answer to; wealthy Armenians who give grants to the university, just as at least one appears to support Dr. Feinstein’s center.

Consider this: if your university presented Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda as fact, how many of you would stand for it? Then why would any of you be comfortable with the racist, missionary & Armenian concocted stories (similar to this one that appeared in The New York Times, representative of many of the tales in the CHGS’s “Armenian Resources” section that present the Turk as savage and bloodthirsty, one of the definitions we find in the dictionary?

When “Midnight Express” director Alan Parker was asked (at a press conference following one of the first showings of the film) whether the film might not be racist, the director replied (to paraphrase)... perhaps contemplating the issue for the first time... “But they’re only Turks.” Do you feel this way?

Do you all remember in our nation how anything that came from the mouths of radical feminists (such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon) was automatically accepted as fact, by a media too afraid not to go along politically-correct lines? It was a period (in the 1980s) when man equaled evildoer and woman equaled victim. (A la Turk and Armenian, today.) All it took was one crack in the wall... when it was reported statistics from NOW were exaggerated regarding the many rapes committed per minute or hour (or something to that effect). All of a sudden, practically, the voices of radical feminism were discredited, and the nation returned to normal with what we now call the Feminist Backlash. We no longer had to deal with such foolishness as a man’s requiring formal permission to touch a woman each step of the way, in the natural seduction process.

Of course, thanks to the juggernaut of superbly financed Armenian propaganda (well in place for nearly a century, and more), the media is totally in bed with the CHGS version of the Armenian “Genocide”... but all it’s going to take is a few open-minded and non-racist journalists or historians who are going to blow the lid off this huge fraud. Perhaps a television outlet in Minnesota might be concerned enough to bravely question how the University of Minnesota could be behind the presentation of propaganda as fact... (Particularly in a racist way.) If the university is that sloppy in allowing such bigoted, one-sided material to be presented, what would that do to the university’s credibility? What would that do to the credibility of the history faculty members who knew about this ugly propaganda being presented as fact, and remained quiet about it?

However, it shouldn’t take the possibility of a media whistle-blowing to spur you into action. What should motivate each and every one of you is the TRUTH; nothing more, nothing less. Since the university you happen to work for is so mysteriously and overwhelmingly in support of the Armenian “Genocide,” it’s your responsibility as historians to study this issue... even if it’s not your area of specialty... objectively and in a neutral manner, as is your professional duty. Try to dispense with your very human prejudices, that the Turks must automatically have been barbarians... and if you should encounter evidence for the Ottoman government’s having perpetrated a state-run policy for extermination, first examine what the motivations of the source could be... and then put it through the MALTA TEST. The Tribunal that was run by the one nation that wanted Turkey to cease existence... why would this nation have finally found all 144 of the Ottoman officials innocent? After nearly two-and-one-half years of searching, with a team of crack Armenian researchers, and with every document available not only in Allied-occupied Istanbul, but as far away as the United States?

If you come to conclude the Armenian “Genocide” cannot be supported by the facts (hopefully the insightful among you have already arrived at that conclusion), then perhaps you should discuss the issue with like-minded colleagues, and consider how troubled you are by working for an institution that supports this event with little consideration for historical accuracy.

Professor John Dewey (of Dewey Decimal System fame) wrote in 1928 ("The Turkish Tragedy"): "It is at least time that Americans ceased to be deceived by propaganda." The time has far from arrived, and the University of Minnesota serves as an important party to such deception. That is not right.

I came across some new figures I wanted to throw your way as a postscript.

Thank you for your consideration,

Holdwater

P.S.: I got into casualty numbers in the first part of my correspondence with Dr. Feinstein. As you might be aware, the standard Armenian argument is that 1.5 million Armenians were “annihilated.” Sources like Dr. Feinstein’s that are even more Armenian than many Armenian sites exceed the common figure: 1,745,200 are implied to have been massacre victims out of a total pre-war Armenian population of 2,133,000 … when over half a dozen neutral sources don't go beyond a total pre-war population of 1.5 million. (“Neutral” meaning non-Turkish and non-Armenian... which still generally translates to pro-Armenian; the median pre-war Armenian figure is 1.3 million, a total that agrees with the Ottoman census.)

Armenians living in the west were largely not subjected to the relocation policy (cities such as Istanbul, Edirne, Izmir, Aydin and Kutahya), numbering at least 200,000. Add to that the number of Armenians who were exempt from relocation, such as most Catholic and Protestant Armenians, the ill and blind, soldiers and their families, and certain workers.

British war propagandist Arnold Toynbee calculated 500,000 of those relocated reached their destinations safely. (Ambassador Morgenthau was surprised about such a firsthand report from an Armenian representative, that I mentioned in the first part of the Feinstein correspondence... in his PRIVATE letters or diary. Morgenthau never made this finding public... ask yourselves why.)

(A common figure presented by pro-Armenians is 600,000 murdered in Mesopotamia. Has anybody bothered to ask what became of all those many, many skeletons? Why have none of these wealthy Armenians come up with the idea for an excavation to prove their genocide..? Among other questions few bother to ask.)

According to official figures published by the League of Nations Migration Bureau, the number of Armenians who left Anatolia together with the Russian armies came to 400,000 to 440,000.

Calculate the difference, to arrive at the number of casualties. (Don’t forget, the Armenians themselves claim one million survived.) Among the casualties, please keep in mind that not all died from massacres (the massacres commonly occurring in areas where Ottoman control was weakest, usually by Kurds who were mostly out for revenge for what the Armenians had done to their families); other reasons were famine, disease and combat, the same causes for all other Ottoman citizens who lost their lives. Armenian “historian” Richard Hovannisian himself wrote in a 1967 book that some 150,000 Armenians died of famine while and after accompanying the Russian retreat.

There is your “genocide.”

Meanwhile, figures presented to the Paris Peace Conference by the Armenian National Delegation, by the German war report that formed a basis for this and by the population studies conducted by Professor Justin McCarthy all show that while Eastern and Central Anatolia was under Russian occupation, some 1.2 million civilian Muslims died in the Eastern region of the Ottoman Empire.

There is your other “genocide,” the one nobody cares about... especially not the politically motivated genocide center run by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, that carries the good name of the University of Minnesota.