NARRATOR: "There were similar uprisings in three other villages."

Only "three." Hoo-boy. What kind of quadruple-checking of the facts, doing "homework six ways from Sunday" is this? Andrew Goldberg would be conducting a public service if he would release the long list of "so many people — historians, journalists" who helped check his facts, so that the world can know to stay away from such incompetent and/or prejudiced "experts."

To give an idea, from "The Armenian File," a list of events taking place in a snapshot of time from late February 1915; let us bear in mind these are all internal Ottoman communications, and never meant to be publicized:

The Governor of Bitlis sent the following telegram to the Ministry of the Interior on 21 February 1915: `The Armenians of the nahiye of Haksef have rebelled. In the village of Siranun under the jurisdiction of the central kaza of Mush, shots were fired on our detachment, and the confrontation continued for two hours. In the village of Kumes, under the jurisdiction of the bujak of Akan, shots were fired at the house where the bujak superintendent and the gendarmes were staying, and the confrontation lasted for eight hours.'33

The same day, the governor of Bitlis, in a second telegram, stated: `Armenians have revolted in many villages. I became suspicious when I saw that among the Armenians who opened fire in Kumes, a village in the bujak of Akan, were Rupen, the Tashnak delegate of Van, Zovin, and Eshroone of the Tashnak leaders in Mush. As a precaution, I had the delegate of Van, Papazian, be a guest of the sanjak governor, to hold him as a hostage.'34

On 27 February, about 300 volunteer soldiers from Sürt, who were on their way from Adiljevaz to Van, wanted to spend the night in the Armenian village of Arin. The Armenians, who attempted to prevent this, opened fire and killed eight privates. Upon this a detachment was sent from Erchish to Van, but the Armenian bands escaped to Lake Van.

Imagine the pressure the Ottomans were under, being besieged by their mortal, merciless foe Russia (this was before the French-British attacks on other fronts), and having their treacherous Armenians attacking from within, from all sides. What would any nation have done, under the same, desperate circumstances? It is amazing, actually, that the Ottomans waited as late as May, suffering a whole half year of Armenian revolts, before even considering the relocation program in a serious manner.

Goldberg goes back and squeezes in pre-1915 Armenian uprisings. Here is how he handles it:

"Armenians responded to what they considered to be excessive taxes and oppression with violence against Turks and Kurds, and engaged in three uprisings."

We've already covered this chapter, and know the Armenians were fairly content, and the reasons for the uprisings had only to do with the criminal attacks of their fanatical terroristic leaders. Andrew Goldberg is trying to pass off the number "three" again, but that only represented the tip of the iceberg. "They even took over an Ottoman bank by force," we're told as one of these "three" uprisings, but there is a huge difference between just any bank and THE Ottoman Bank. Turkish casualties, as presented by Andrew Goldberg and his "six ways from Sunday" homework: "Experts estimate that Armenians killed close to a hundred Turkish officials in these attacks."

Perhaps Goldberg's utterly unqualified "experts" mistook the pre-1915 period for the Armenian terrorism from the 1970s and 80s, where close to a hundred Turkish officials and others were killed. But the casualty list before 1915, as with 1915 and after 1915, included more than just Turkish "officials." The ones who were mainly targeted were the common people. The idea was to incite the Turks into counter-massacres, and hopefully bring in European intervention. Why, a better "expert" from those days, Aghasi, the Armenian rebel leader, claimed he killed 20,000 Turks from one battle alone!

BALAKIAN: "In Trabzon, they decided to take men, women and children out in boats, and just dumped them in the Black Sea, where they drowned."

The background information on Lord Bryce's propagandistic beginnings of this anecdote may be read here. The initial idea was that 10,000 had been drowned in one afternoon, yet another unverified horror story the New York Times was quick to spotlight (it helped that the most trusted Briton in America, former Ambassador James Bryce, was behind the statement. Bryce was the head of the Turkish division of his country's war propaganda bureau, Wellington House. At least the tag team of Goldberg and Balakian didn't go as far as 10,000 in an afternoon, but they sure made it sound like this was a systematic policy, didn't they? (Not to say there weren't drownings. But the number of people killed via this method must have been small.)

Goldberg outdid himself and his quadruple fact-checking by allowing the bigoted Tessa Savvidis Hofmann to include absolutely pure propaganda, based on hearsay: "Diarbekir was then under the leadership of the notoriously Christian-Armenian hating governor, and he was one who got notorious for his particular cruel ways of torturing Armenian clerics which were (indecipherable) with burning iron, stripped naked and chased around and other ways of torture." (Propagandistic paintings served as the accompanying imagery; must be the "proof.")

PBS Editorial Standards and Policies, June 14, 2005, IV-L: "Responsible treatment of important issues may sometimes require the inclusion of controversial or sensitive material, but good taste must prevail in PBS content. Morbid or sensational details... should not be included unless it is necessary to an understanding of the matter at hand."

The photo representing the "Diarbekir governor." No name was provided.

Why, if this keeps up, we can almost expect the arrogant Peter Balakian to give an actual demonstration of how that other Christian-hating governor of Van, Jevdet Bey, nailed horseshoes onto Armenian feet... as Balakian wrote in his Burning Tigris, without providing any evidence.

An Armenian site offered this shot as Mehmet Kemal Bey.

(A Feb. 12, 1919 N. Y. Times article, "Turkish Trials Begin," shown later in the program, identified the Diyarbakir governor as "Keimal Bey." This requires closer scrutiny, but the closest party found guilty by that name was Mehmet Kemal Bey, an ex-governor of Bogazliyan [in Yozgat, a vilayet in Ankara, the center of the country. Diyarbakir is toward the southeast] and hanged by the puppet Ottomans on April 10, 1919. In point of fact, the Governor of Diyarbekir Province was Dr. Mehmed Reshid, who would commit suicide in early 1919. )

At least we can be thankful for one thing. There is no shortage of well-rendered illustrations depicting "genocide" that the program has made sure to adorn itself with. Perhaps these paintings and pictures can substitute for actual "evidence."

Vahakn Dadrian

After that old women's rights advocate, Vahakn Dadrian, gets through telling us that very few Armenian women were spared, we get into Aurora Mardiganian's experience. (Her voice-over, from Natalie Portman, sounds down-home American, whereas Enver Pasha's voice-over earlier was slightly "foreign," and therefore somewhat sinister). She was the star, along with Henry Morgenthau himself, of the notoriously propagandistic 1919 film, RAVISHED ARMENIA. As the Chairman of the National Motion Picture Committee stated, Aurora was the tool to make "as many adults as possible ... know the story of Armenia, and the screen was selected as the medium because it reached the millions, where the printed word reaches the thousands." Goldberg makes use of his professional propagandistic tool to shed light on how Armenian girls were violated in the "harem" (this is a misuse of the term, and old stereotypes. Ordinary Turks did not have "harems," not in the way Westerners think of that word, where female slaves were for the taking. Even the one-and-only imperial harem did not operate in such a fashion.) Footage is presented with the caption "100 girls all under age 20 from Turkish harems." That is really impressive for producer Goldberg, and his quadruple fact-checking skills, to have tracked down each of these people and verified their age and status.

Were Armenian women abused, raped, violated and killed? Of course they were. Unfortunately, the rape of women is a constant of war. During the break-up of Yugoslavia, who can forget the tactic of the Bosnian Serbs, to systematically impregnate Bosnian Muslims, with the knowledge of the Muslims' cultural shame and fear of being regarded as "soiled" would be devastating? One who is aware of the hateful and destructively propagandistic tactics of this film must force oneself to be numb to these assaults. Just as Goldberg makes no mention of a single Turkish victim of the Armenians (unless the Turks are soldiers or officials), was there no reverse side to this coin? Turkish women who fell into the clutches of vicious Armenian bands would consider themselves lucky if their ordeal ended with rape. (This hateful film does not mention the fact that many younger Armenians were taken into good Turkish homes as a measure of humanistic goodwill, as happened to Leon Surmelian's sister in "I Ask You, Ladies and Gentlemen." By using the word "harem," we are, of course, being made to think these women were all sexual slaves.) To remind all there is no "exclusive victimhood" going on with these tragic years, here are a few Turkish women who evidently escaped with their lives: And for good measure, a few more:

As with every other facet of anti-Turkish propaganda, this omnipresent "harem" notion meant to suggest the inhuman cruelty of the Lustful and Terrible Turk has another side.

Next,. we are shown a list of notable Americans such as Ezra Pound, Woodrow Wilson, Rabbi Stephen Wise and others speaking out for "the Armenian cause." (With Editorial Consultant and Writer Peter Balakian at the helm, what this show really turned out to be was a filmed version of Balakian's "The Burning Tigris"... chapter by chapter.) Teddy Roosevelt described the events as "the greatest crime of the war."

What is the intended effect of presenting the views of these upstanding Americans? Imagine, the robust former president, Theodore Roosevelt himself confirming the Armenian propagandistic claims. As usual, the honest truth-seeker must always dig deep beneath the surface. Roosevelt was very much into the "whites are superior" notion that was popular during his day. He thought of the Turks as, basically, human sewage. All of that Armenian propaganda, compounding the existing age-old anti-Turkish prejudices, served as a driving influence for all of these people... a practice that goes on to this very day, although not as overtly racist, as demonstrated by what drives the people of PBS and its affiliates.

Each one of these men had their own reasons for despising Turks. Woodrow Wilson was a deeply religious preacher's son, and Rabbi Wise was a confirmed Zionist, like his friend, Ambassador Morgenthau. Engaging in the vicious rhetoric could more speedily knock the Ottomans out, ensuring a quicker path to a Jewish homeland. (Ironically, the Sultan had offered this very homeland back in 1516, but the Jews declined, feeling their best protection against Christian anti-Semitism rested with remaining under Ottoman jurisdiction.) The Ottomans were history's greatest pure-hearted defender of Judaism, and unfortunately some who claim they have a "Jewish consciousness" partake in films (whose propagandistic power the National Motion Picture Committee's chairwoman spelled out paragraphs ago) that defame the honor of the Turks and results in hatred against the Turks.

Kamuran Gurun noted in The Armenian File:

Without any doubt the USA was the country where anti-Ottoman views were most prevalent in that period. The information sent by the Protestant American missionaries in Turkey from the 1890s onward, and the attitude of the press has poisoned public opinion in the United States with regard to the Turkish people to such an extent that a member of that race is seldom thought or spoken of in this country otherwise than as the "unspeakable" ... Nor was the government itself impartial in its opinion and attitude concerning the present or the future of the Ottoman state.... When Woodrow Wilson was considering the appointment of ambassadors shortly after his election in 1912, Colonel House suggested Henry Morgenthau as Ambassador to Turkey; Wilson replied, "There ain't going to be no Turkey"...

 NARRATOR: "The International Association of Genocide Scholars affirms that over one million Armenians died during the Armenian Genocide. Other scholars put the numbers as high as 1.5 million."

"The International Association of Genocide Scholars" is frequently referred to in order to strengthen the genocide thesis. Who are these people? In order to join the genocide club, they must first agree there was an Armenian genocide because, for one thing, wealthy Armenians support the genocide industry. For another thing, anyone who begins a thesis with a conclusion first and then tries to fit the evidence around the conclusion is anything but a scholar; such a person can more accurately be termed a "propagandist." These people unquestioningly take what unscrupulous researchers as Vahakn Dadrian have written, and accept them at face value. Like the people at PBS, their ingrained belief system, after years of propaganda bombardment, tells them the barbaric Turks must have been guilty. Very few of these so-called scholars have a background in history. A famous one, Israel Charny, for example, has a background in psychology. Charny has mainly edited other people's research. Israel Charny, who serves as the Association's current president, is not a "scholar." (As Prof. Guenter Lewy — not incidentally, a Holocaust survivor — succinctly put it: "I am less than impressed by the unanimous vote of the International Association of Genocide Scholars... The great majority of these self-proclaimed experts on Ottoman history have never set foot in an archive or done any other original research on the subject in question." Commentary. Feb. 2006.)

Few of these hypocrites ever concentrate on the many other examples of historical extermination campaigns. The two that are the best financed attract them the most, but at least one of these two happens to be a real genocide. Regardless, majority opinion can never substitute for genuine history. Because there is a preponderance of ignorant, agenda-ridden bigots who are in agreement does not make "The International Association of Genocide Scholars " any more valid than the "4,000 pages" of the U.S. Archives.

Simply look at the propagandistic numbers "The International Association of Genocide Scholars" has agreed on, to demonstrate their partisanship. The pre-war Armenian population was around 1.5 million, and hardcore Armenian propagandists themselves agree there were one million survivors. 1.5 million minus 1 million does not equal the result these scholarly frauds would like us to believe. What they are basing their estimate on is the propagandistic pre-war population figure provided by the Armenian Patriarch, 2.1 million. (Lepsius swore, under oath at the 1921 Berlin trial of Talat's assassin, that the Patriarch had told Lepsius 1,850,000... but that's the Armenian Patriarch for you.) Regardless, even the dishonest Armenian Patriarch broke down his initial 2.1 million figure as such, at the tail end of 1918: 1,260,000 survivors, and 840,000 dead. "The International Association of Genocide Scholars" have the shame to out-propagandize even the propagandistic Armenian Patriarch.

NARRATOR: In 1919, shortly after W.W. I ended, the British pushed the Turks to hold war crimes tribunals for the Armenian massacres. A series of trials were then held in Constantinople. DADRIAN: "The Turkish court-martials are a very significant event... in terms of future settlements of the issue of the Armenian genocide, because the Turkish military tribunal scrupulously investigated the issue of the Armenian genocide and concluded in its final verdict that the Young Turk party as responsible for the conception, organization, and execution of the Armenian genocide."

Whew! Old man Dadrian sure knows how to stick the phrase "the Armenian genocide" into his sentences, doesn't he? (By the way, the issue of "future settlements" has already been resolved; the Armenians had put their John Hancock on a treaty wherein they "agreed 'to forego their rights to ask for damages . . . as a result of the general war, thus closing the doors FOREVER to reparations for the enormous destruction of Armenian life and property," in the words of Arthur Derounian.

Let's say, God forbid, the Nazis had defeated the Americans during WWII and installed a puppet government in Washington. They held a gun to the Americans' heads and forced war crimes trials to be held for Truman, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, and other war principals. Otherwise, the Nazis would come in and really take control of the nation, as they eventually did with Vichy France. Should these trials be considered as legitimate?

The 1919-20 trials were such a travesty, even the British rejected their findings during the longer process of the 1919-21 Malta Tribunal. What's more, Dadrian, who investigated and translated the "transcripts" of these trials (actually, the summaries printed in lackey Ottoman government newspapers; the transcripts are unavailable)... the unscrupulous Vahakn Dadrian, cited for his "misleading quotations" and the "selective use of sources" even by fellow pro-Armenian "genocide scholar" Hilmar Kaiser... desperately points to these kangaroo courts as his "evidence," because he has nothing else. Naturally, he is desperate to suggest these courts were conducted professionally (as he reminds us above with the word "scrupulously"), but when their legitimacy does not serve his purposes, he has been known to quickly reverse himself, in the typical style of a shifty Dashnak "historian." If readers want to get what lay behind these spurious courts, please tune in to Prof. Guenter Lewy's even-handed evaluation.

NARRATOR: "On March 15th, 1921, a young man named Soghoman Tehlirian approached Talat, tapped him on the shoulder, then shot him in the head... Tehlirian, an Armenian student, was arrested by the German police and tried for murder. He was found not guilty."

Yet this cursory two-day trial was another kangaroo court, where only witnesses for the defense were allowed, and wealthy Armenians throughout the world hired the best German legal talent money could buy, through a "Soghoman Tehlirian Defense Fund"... a tactic Armenians would follow in the defense of their future terrorists. The imbalance of the trial was further demonstrated when several of the high-priced lawyers took their turn versus one for the District Attorney, and there was further mention in the transcripts that the verdict could have been pre-determined. A defense lawyer provided reason; the Germans were seen as the masterminds behind the Armenian "genocide," and the freshly defeated and demoralized nation figured the best way to get let off the hook would be to let the murderer go. What this trial amounted to was a historic case of murder justification, and the German nation will have to live forever with this shame. The verdict's destructive effect would become apparent in future years, as other Armenian terrorists figured they could get away with murder. Many did, in the courtrooms of the biased Western world.

The quadruple-fact checking Andrew Goldberg was aware of easily available Internet resources such as the TAT site, yet still chose to go with the typical propaganda. (But it's looking more and more like "Writer" Goldberg was the "Ambassador Morgenthau" to "Additional Writer" Balakian's "Burton Hendrick," the ghost writer of Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.) Tehlirian did not tap Talat's shoulder; the trial transcript tells us he waited for Talat to pass by, and shot Talat in the back of the head, in a fashion befitting the cowardly murderer. It was Tehlirian's second known assassination, according to a 1960 article about him in The Armenian Review; he also knocked off an Armenian, suspected of snitching on Ottoman-Armenians to Talat Pasha, in 1915. Tehlirian might have taken dance lessons to idle his itchy trigger finger in Berlin, but he was not a "student"; he was a member of Nemesis, the Dashnak organization's professional hit squad. Tehlirian had betrayed his Ottoman nation, among the many other Armenians who defected to Russia, at age 17 and war's outset, 1914. Eventually fighting under Antranik, he doubtless was behind many of the cold-blooded mass killings the Armenians perpetrated in eastern Anatolia.

Ataturk Marches On.

At least Goldberg did not go so far as to claim, while continuing to tell us of the fate of other Ottoman officials, that Enver Pasha was felled by the bullet of an Armenian, as Armenian propaganda likes to tell us. (The newspaper clip states Enver was "left dead on the field after desperate fight in Bokhara.") The producer also found an exciting "Time Marches On" type of newsreel, popular in movie theaters at the time, regarding Mustafa Kemal.

Halil Berktay, always with a mysterious ax to grind against his country that (to him) can do no right, has his heart broken as he relates the secular and westernized changes Ataturk implemented: "As a result, Britain, France, Germany, everybody else, they were now out to court this new Turkey to try to become friends with it, and the great powers did not have any interest in pursuing the dirty matter of what had happened in 1915, and all kinds of reasons like this, made it undesirable for the Republic to maintain an honest memory of what had been done in 1915. And as a result, you have an enormously constructed, fabricated, national memory."

This boy really has a chip on his shoulder. He makes it sound like it was a bad thing for the other nations to want to become friends with his own country. Even if everything about the Armenian "genocide" were true, note the double standard: Turkey must forever be held to past ills, while what England had done in Kenya (with the Mau Mau) during the 1950s is never talked about, France's "dirty business" in Algeria (also from the later 20th century, as well as before; France may also have been complicit in the Rwandan Genocide) is frequently brushed aside, and in one of the real first genocides of the 20th century, German colonialist actions in South West Africa (evidently the real influence for Hitler's "Final Solution" instead of his fabricated quote), is paid only lip service to. Why isn't Berktay up in arms over these, and many, many other examples of historical "Man's Inhumanity to Man"?

As we have seen from the Malta Tribunal process, it is not as though the powers had lost interest. What happened is that they simply could not find the real evidence. In the long 1919 to 1921 process, the Western world discovered what deceivers the Armenians and Greeks had been. Their lies had begun even to filter down to the common person, as William T. Ellis nicely put it in a 1928 article about "Smyrna": "[T]he average American was beginning to grow sophisticated and sceptical concerning propaganda about the Near East."

What Ataturk had achieved was truly miraculous. He conducted what might be televisionalistically (I coined that) called today as an "extreme makeover" for his country. In order to make the transition more successful, the nation's back was turned to the old history. But far from what a one-note thinker as Berktay has his heart bleeding over, the detriment came not in hiding dirty laundry, but in reducing the pride of Turks over their rich history. That is one reason why Turkey has an identity crisis, and is often unsure of itself today.

The benefit, however, came in keeping future generations free of hatred; Turkish people had an excellent reason to be resentful of the traitorous Armenians, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish people. That is the real reason this catastrophic period was not dwelled upon in Turkish schools. Would it have been better to foster hatred in the hearts of the young, as Armenian parents and churches have been doing with their own innocent youth?

There is no "fabrication" for Turkey's national memory. As may be seen from this page's analysis, utilizing almost exclusively pro-Armenian sources, the real history was that the "Sick Man" was in for a fight for its life, a fight that ultimately resulted in its death. During this most dangerous moment, the Armenians turned traitor and joined the enemy. Treacherous actions bear consequences, as with any other nation, and the price for the Armenians to pay was their relocation under horrible circumstances. The circumstances were not horrible out of "intent," because manpower and resources were painfully limited, and the rest of the nation was also suffering dreadfully. Anyone who wishes to detract from this very real history is the real fabricator.

So let's focus on what Ms. Power should have been addressing, Aktan's statement that there was no "intent." Ms. Power can use all the words like "methodical" and especially "systematic campaign of destruction" as she likes. But where is the proof of this "intent"? There is nothing in Goldberg's program that proves "intent." We were offered plenty of sad violin music, the personal opinions of endless ignorants and bigots, accounts of biased newspapers ready to print second-hand stories, decisions of courts lacking due process and conducted under enemy occupation... everything but genuine, factual evidence. Meanwhile:

—There was no mention of Ottoman orders safeguarding the lives of Armenians and their properties, displaying a formal commitment to, as Dr. Lewy put it, a "relatively humane" process.

—There was no mention of Dashnak and Hunchak revolutionaries who bragged in their publications not of "self-defense," but of their heroic fight for national liberation, nor was there mention of Armenians being the "Seventh Ally" of the Entente Powers, as the Daily Chronicle beamed on Sept. 23, 1914. (5-6,000 Armenians accompanying the Russians was mentioned, but that didn't give the idea.)

—There was no mention of the punishment of Turks who committed crimes against Armenians, during the war, at times to the point of execution.

—There was no mention of the callous disregard the Ottoman government had for the welfare of its own people, revealing the Armenians were not singled out as a deprived party, nor was there mention of the suffering of all of the Ottoman people, of famine and disease.

—There was no mention of the counterpart of Nuremberg, the Malta Tribunal.

That is little more than the tip of the iceberg for facts there was no mention of. But again, most importantly, there was no mention of the real facts that would prove "intent." A possible lawyer like Samantha Power should know that without "intent," there can be no "genocide." Assuming, of course, that she is not as poor a lawyer as she is a "scholar." (ADDENDUM: The pathetic way in which Power lays out her case for the "Armenian genocide" has been examined: tallarmeniantale.com/samantha-power-hell.htm)

Goldberg found a great old CBS-TV news clip where Raphael Lemkin (at the time a "professor of law at Yale University"), who coined the "genocide" word, was shown revealing that he thought of the Armenian experience as genocide.

But here, it looks like Goldberg pulled a fast one. After the interviewer asked Lemkin of his interest in genocide, Lemkin replies, "I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times, it happened to the Armenians. and, uh, after the Armenians..."

Lemkin takes a second to formulate his next words, and we stay on his face while he is thinking. And then we suddenly switch to what appears to be an insert shot of the interviewer as Lemkin continues in voice-over, "...Hitler took action..." If Goldberg did what I think he did, replace Lemkin's next words with words that came later in the program in order to make the all-important Hitler connection, he proved himself to be a man after Vahakn Dadrian's blackened heart. Engaging in "misleading quotations" and the "selective use of sources," and an all-around breach of ethics.

Reasons lending themselves to possible manipulation are that, number one, "quick-cutting" was not the style of the older television programs. Number two, while a guest is briefly pausing with his thoughts to possibly come up with a revealing statement, it would be the rare TV director who would cut away and miss out on something important, for the sake of an undramatic non-reaction shot. And number three, the "...Hitler took action..." comment unnaturally starts the instant of the reaction shot, and as soon as the line ends... that is, lasting about one second, much too quick for the editing style of the period... we're back on Lemkin again, with the show's voice-over taking over. (Not to say it couldn't have happened this way; but the sequence was so jumpy, it caught my immediate notice.)

PBS Editorial Standards and Policies, June 14, 2005, IV-K, Unacceptable Production Practices: Never invent or add elements that were not originally there; and Never make choices that mislead or deceive the audience.

Lemkin, a "Polish Jew" as the program informs us (have you noticed that whenever we run into a description of Lemkin, those words, "Polish Jew," are sure to follow?), grew up in Poland, mainly a Christian country. Like genocide advocates who never scratch beneath the surface because they arrogantly think they are right, like the prejudiced people who run PBS and its affiliates, the only thing that reached Lemkin's ear was "Terrible Turk" propaganda. If everyone was saying the Turks were bloody butchers, why should Lemkin have had the desire to poke around, to find the real truth? (It doesn't say much about Lemkin's scholarly integrity, to allow his emotions to supersede his science, since he did go on to become a professor... but his specialty was in law, and just because someone specializes in law does not make that person a specialist in history. As we know so piercingly from Samantha Power's example.) The fact that Lemkin believed there was a genocide of the Armenians was nothing more than his "personal opinion," as relevant as the consensus of "personal opinions" of the hypocritical "International Association of Genocide Scholars."

We then move on to how the "Turkish state" is steadfast in its refusal to accept the charge of genocide, but now there is an "increasing number of Turkish intellectuals" who have broken with the state line. Cue in a fuming Halil Berktay:

"I was speaking out of a feeling of utter disgust at all the hypocrisy surrounding this question. That is to say, the nauseating repetition of all the state line phrases about the 'Armenian slanders,' the 'so-called genocide,' the 'false Armenian allegations,' and so on and so forth. It was fairly clear that somehow the state... was signaling the press that this was how they should be talking, and the media, the press, the journalists, the TV anchorman, etcetera were all instinctively falling into line."

"Falsified Genocide"!

Part of the visuals accompanying the above were the scrolling written words like "allegations" that Berktay was listing. The last and central example was "Falsified Genocide," which came to a stop and remained frozen by itself for seconds, getting the most screen time. Since, most likely, nobody had used the word "Falsified" in relation to this genocide matter before the creation of the TAT site (the reason why it was chosen to represent the site's slogan was that the word catchily rhymed with "The Other Side" and "Genocide"), it's a sure bet Andrew Goldberg was paying a nod to TAT, for which TAT feels honored, and gives thanks.

This is the first time I am seeing Professor Berktay "in action," seeing what he really looks like, and sounds like. He comes across as a man who is really, if you'll pardon the expression, pissed-off. As opposed to many of the Armenian propagandist scholars, who know the real facts and purposely stray from them, I am getting the impression that Halil Berktay really believes everything he is saying.

Berktay proudly relates how he was proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes, only to receive accusations for being a traitor, and of aiding and abetting the enemy. If he genuinely believes in what he is saying, all of that would have been terribly unfair, because what he would be suffering from would be "delusion" and poor scholarship. He used to be part of a Marxist movement that wanted to save his Fascist state. Maybe he feels his Fascist state is beyond redemption, and this is his patriotic way of saving Turkey... who knows? (Although whole-heartedly joining a camp that is clearly hostile to his country would be a funny way of saving his country.) The one thing that is clear is that if Halil Berktay has been allowed to spew his poison in Turkey for so many years, Turkey cannot possibly be the "totalitarian" state that Peternocchio Balakian likes to say it is.

 Prof. Suny complains about Turkey's Ministry of National Education finally waking up and including this matter in its curriculum, in April 2003. (Before, his pal Gocek implied Turkey was evil for avoiding the topic. Now Suny will imply Turkey is evil for including the topic.) His gripe is that the Turkish schools were directed to show this matter as groundless. Sorry, Prof. Suny, they were only doing what is right, since the claims happen to be groundless. Suny's point is that this is "official denial by the state," once more reinforcing what a "totalitarian" country Turkey is. Yet, many nations have such central bureaus that determine which direction some topics should be taught, within their nation's classrooms. For example, Yossi Sarid, as Minister of Education of Israel, directed that the Armenian "genocide" would be included in the country's school curriculum and that he would do everything possible to make sure Israeli children learned the subject thoroughly. He did so because he had faith in Ambassador Morgenthau (specifying that Morgenthau was "Jewish," meaning, I guess, that must have had something to do with Morgenthau's truthfulness), and because Sarid was influenced as a child by the fiction of a novel, "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh." (The author of which Sarid also stressed was "Jewish," in April 24, 2000.) He planned to put "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" on reading lists for Israeli schoolchildren, corrupting their innocent minds with an exciting new "Nazi" role model, based on fiction.

Note the double standard; what does Suny think is happening in his own country, regarding this topic? The wealthy, obsessed Armenians have infiltrated school boards across the land, forcing their propaganda into the school curriculum. (Along with other underhanded tactics, such as intimidating universities from initiating Turkish studies departments.) There might not be a national education minister making these directives (On the federal level, a Department of Education could be in existence), but the Land of the Free's "official denial by the state" is directed through its individual states. The topic is presented strictly from the Armenian perspective in most cases, and at the time of this writing, a lawsuit is brewing in Massachusetts, challenging the partisan bigots who are running the show. (Many of these folks got into the act purely for "freedom of choice" reasons, but believing in the validity of the genocide thesis... similar to how the American Civil Liberties Union once defended the rights of the Ku Klux Klan to hold a parade; that is, the notion might be hated, but the rights still need to be defended. My understanding is, the involved people are beginning to have their eyes opened as to the real history, once they were forced to look into the issues more carefully.) The ones behind the case, aside from a dirt-poor Turkish association: a Jewish student, at least one Jewish teacher, and Jewish attorneys. Now THAT'S the kind of real "Jewish consciousness" that brings tears to my eyes.

But, of course, in the barrels of humanity, not all of the apples will be lip-smacking good. Israel Charny, the epitome of "genocide scholars" with his own peculiar brand of "Jewish consciousness," is up next:

"Imagine for a moment the history books of the Western world being printed without having the story of World War I in there."

Israel Charny

Let's make a record of that, folks. Israel Charny is asking us to believe there are no history books in Turkey covering World War I. I suppose the utter stupidity of such a remark goes well with the domain of being what Charny is identified as onscreen, the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. (As stated earlier, not only is this non-scholar part of the club, he is actually the president. This is very appropriate.)

What Charny really means is that the "genocide" part has not been stressed, and we have gotten into the reasons why. He just doesn't get it that World War I for the Turks encompasses far more than the Armenian story. But what Charny means is far different than what he says. The ignorant and unwary will actually believe that the nation of Turkey is "totalitarian" enough to have pretended this defining event of their history, World War I, does not exist; Turkey is so ashamed, and the Armenian matter so completely describes the Turkish WWI experience, there was simply no other way for the Turks to have covered up their great crime, but to do away with the WWI topic altogether.

Using Charny's words, a far more pertinent question to ask is: "Imagine for a moment the history of what happened between the Turks and the Armenians is printed without having the story of the Turks in there."

"Here is a significant country in our world, spending an enormous amount of its money, of its resources, on one subject: Don't you mention the Armenian genocide."

The only time Turkey spends significant sums, to my awareness, is when the services of those with clout (mainly, political representatives) are paid huge fees to lobby for the Turkish side when the umpteenth Armenian genocide resolution is introduced legislatively (on the Federal level; the Armenians have had free rein with the states, which is one reason why so many states have passed meaningless resolutions). It's also said Turkey spends a lot on P.R. firms, but here is what lies behind those kinds of claims.

The sad fact of the matter is, that Turkish government, made out to look so diabolical by propagandists like Israel Charny, usually has no idea of what it is doing. Here's Sam Weems on the topic

"I am stupefied, and I am wondering where in the world are the Turks? What is the Turkish government doing? Where in heaven's name is the Turkish Foreign Service? No one seems to be doing a darn thing in defending truth and the Turkish interest. If a non-Turk American, like me, can research and find such unbelievable data so destructive for the Turks' and Turkey's vital interests, I ask myself why in the world don't the Turks..?"

He sure laid it on the line. The proof that Charny is talking out of his scrawny derriere is exactly this: if Turkey is really spending an enormous amount of its money to fool everybody, why is it making no dent on the lazy-thinking world's acceptance of  the "genocide"? As usual, the "Armenians" do the crime, and then point to the Turks as having committed the same crime; Weems again:

I know a few Turkish Americans who are true champions for Turkey. Sad truth is that they are too few and they have little funding to compete against a well-oiled and funded Armenian lobby organization. The Armenians have perhaps 40-50 full time professionals in Washington DC doing nothing but working each and every day to undercut Turkey and Azerbaijan and promote themselves for more foreign aid taxpayer funding. Turkish Americans have -0- staff and office working for them in Washington DC. The Turks really should do more to protect themselves. All they have to do is tell truth!

The main ones doing the fighting are a very few Turkish-Americans, whose voices are almost always met with an automatic censorship by media outlets (this PBS episode serving as but one example), not only because of the anti-Turkish baggage of Westerners, but because Armenian propaganda is now so powerful, those with contra-genocide views are put in the same boat as neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. (Which was exactly the unscrupulous genocide industry's goal... insidious.) Most "Picnic" Turks couldn't care less. The few who are doing the fighting are only motivated by their anger against the great injustice over the situation. Aside from the Turks' laziness, one important reason why more Turks don't get involved is because the facts of the "genocide"... that is, the hideous crimes the Armenians perpetrated on the Turks on a widespread and (if we can use Samantha Power's word) methodical scale ... have been kept from them. As a result, Turks have no hatred, which was precisely the noble idea. The reason why the Armenian genocide juggernaut is so functional is because too many Armenians are taught to hate.

One last tidbit from Weems: "Here is an eye-opening calculation for you: Armenians, in the last 10 years, have probably spent about 14 million dollars to support all the political candidates that they did. When those candidates got elected, Armenia got 1.4 billion dollars in the same 10 years as US Foreign Aid. That is, for every one dollar Armenian Americans "invested", they got $100 back in US Aid to Armenia! 100 to 1 return! This is a better return than Las Vegas casinos!"

So here is Armenia, landlocked, poor, their people leaving the nation in droves (not too many of those hypocritical diaspora Armenians from America are going off to live in their "ancient homeland" that they pay such loving lip service to), their corrupt dictator Dashnak leaders not caring for the welfare of the people as usual, instigating violence and terror as usual (as in Karabakh), and knowing they will get away with it because they are the darlings of the Turk-unfriendly West. Armenia that continuously has its hand out to get millions in American taxpayer money without offering America anything in return (the crooks still have to pony up the $50 million they borrowed from the USA, at 5% interest, all the way back in 1919); the real question for Israel Charny is not what the Turkish government is doing to protect itself from constant vicious propaganda and slander... but why is Armenia spending millions of its limited dollars to perpetuate their mythological genocide? (But that is the last question Israel Charny would want to ask.)

 

The Great War (1996)

An Armenian Journey (1988)

The Forgotten Genocide (1983)

The Armenians, a Story of: Survival (2002)