ARMENIA THE THIRD CHESS COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
ArmRadio.am
05.02.2007 13:17
Surpassing the US with one point, with 2 627 points Armenia occupies
the 3rd place in the last list of leading chess countries issued by
the International Chess Federation (FIDE). Russia is the first with
2 713 points, the second is Ukraine with 2 661 points. The US has 2
627 points.
Posted on Sat, Jan. 27, 2007
Heavenly unearthing
Self-styled legend chaser sees Scripture as one big archaeological road map
By Mark I. Pinsky
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
ORLANDO, Fla. – Bob Cornuke, the evangelical Indiana Jones, admits he comes
to biblical archaeology from an unlikely background. This controversial
researcher and author tells audiences he started his professional life as a
SWAT-team member and crime-scene investigator for the Costa Mesa, Calif., Police
Department.
On second thought, he tells visitors at the Holy Land Experience theme park
in Orlando, Fla., maybe it wasn’t all that unlikely.
"I learned I had a skill: researching and collecting little scraps of
evidence," he says. "God just gave me this ability. It was a gift."
After leaving police work, Cornuke, 55, was drawn into archaeology by Apollo
15 astronaut Jim Irwin, who asked Cornuke to join Irwin’s High Flight
Foundation and the search for Noah’s Ark.
Connecting with Irwin "changed the direction of my life," Cornuke says.
While working with someone who walked — and drove — on the moon, "the doors
would open up."
The notion of a swashbuckling, Bible-believing archaeologist who "proves"
the truth of the Bible is as attractive to many evangelical Christians as the
Indiana Jones movies have been to the general public. So attractive that Tim
LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling Left Behind novels, has launched a
successful new fictional series with just such a character, called BabylonRising.
The novel’s non-fiction counterpart tells the audiences at Holy Land’s
Shofar Auditorium that he uses the Bible as "a road map and a compass. We have to
go back to the source. The word of God is never wrong. Archaeology can only
reveal truths that are already existing in the Bible."
Because faith is defined as belief in things unseen, a larger question is
whether it’s possible — or necessary — to integrate science and Scripture.
"Absolutely," Cornuke says. "Everybody wants a natural explanation for a
supernatural event. That is empowering to them because it can be measured,and
science abhors a mystery."
Cornuke, the author of half a dozen books chronicling his adventures
searching for biblical sites, has sparked controversy along the way because his
conclusions are often at odds with those of traditional archaeologists.
He thinks the sacred peak of the Exodus is in Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai
peninsula. Noah’s Ark, he thinks, came to rest on a mountain in Iran, rather
than on Mount Ararat in Turkey. Furthermore, St. Paul’s boat was wrecked off a
reef along the southern shore of the Mediterranean island of Malta, rather
than in a bay on the northern shore. And he thinks the Ark of the Covenant
exists and might be in the Ethiopian highlands.
In fact, this week Cornuke was scheduled to leave on an expedition to
Ethiopia, his 10th trip to the area.
Dan Hayden, director of Holy Land, introduces Cornuke as someone who "is
causing quite a stir" with his claims.
Others, especially researchers with formal academic training in archaeology
— which Cornuke lacks — are more critical of his methods.
William Dever, retired biblical archaeologist at the University of Arizona
and a recognized authority in the field, has called Cornuke a charlatan,
telling the San Diego Union- Tribune that Cornuke wouldn’t know Mount Sinai if he
"stumbled on it."
Cornuke is not troubled by such criticism or claims by some that there is no
factual basis for biblical stories such as Noah’s Ark.
"Scientists have an anti- supernatural bias, by and large," he says.
"Science is a great tool for understanding these great mysteries, but science can’t
prove God or disprove God. We have finite minds trying to comprehend an
infinite God."
However, criticism also has come from researchers who are evangelicals and
who believe in biblical inerrancy, such as James Hoffmeier, author of Ancient
Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness
Tradition.
Hoffmeier, who calls Cornuke a dilettante, says Cornuke "wraps himself in
the banner of taking the Bible literally when it’s convenient to his theory,
and in other places he does not take it literally."
Cornuke, who bills himself as an "explorer/apologist" and "The Legend
Chaser," will return to Orlando in February to speak at Holy Land’s Annual
Bible
Conference. He is planning to move his ministry, the Base Archaeology Search
and Exploration Institute, from Colorado to Orlando, where he will be a
"minister-at-large" with Holy Land.
As he lectures, Cornuke holds a Bible in his hands, citing passages from
Exodus and Kings to bolster his views, and setting it aside only to hold up an
artifact. He also quotes Beach Boys lyrics to make a point about
interpretation and context.
And he clearly strikes a chord with his audience.
"I think it just confirms that the best road map is God’s word," says Jeff
Siegel of Lawrenceville, Ga. "Cornuke used God’s word to find these places.
The word of God showed him where to find these places, and when he went there
the things that he found confirmed that these were the very places that the
Bible talked about."
Cornuke never went to church until he was 12, and then went by himself on
his bicycle. But Sunday worship was not a spiritual experience. It was the
search for Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia that transformed him. In 1988, standing
where he believed Moses spoke with God, was also spiritually transforming.
"It changed my life," he recalls. "I had an epiphany at that moment. I was
there — and it changed me."
It also brought Cornuke into the spotlight. He and Montana millionaire Larry
Williams had slipped into the country using forged documents, claiming a
connection with the Saudi royal family. When they were captured and imprisoned
by soldiers, who suspected them of being Israeli spies, Cornuke pretended to
be a doctor.
The adventure was chronicled in the 1997 best-seller, The Gold of Exodus:
The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai by New York Times reporter Howard Blum,
and optioned to Hollywood.
But for Cornuke, who wrote his own version of that adventure, the search for
Mount Sinai also had a downside.
"I did cut corners," he admits. "I snuck in. I forged documents. I regret
that more than anything I’ve ever done."
But Cornuke has no regrets about the course he has taken since.
"Scripture is a treasure chest of clues," he says.
© 2007 Lexington Herald-Leader and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
Armenia’s Architectural Language: Getting Lost in Translation
The Expeditioner, January 2007
Earthwatch Institute, Maynard, MA
On December 7, 1988, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 shook
northwestern Armenia, and was followed four minutes later by a magnitude 5.8
aftershock. Waves of aftershocks, some as large as 5.0 in magnitude,
continued for months. Whole towns were leveled, 25,000 people died, and half
a million people became homeless. As if this was not enough, this enormous
disaster was followed by a series of other social challenges. In 1989, the
Soviet Union collapsed; in 1991, Armenia declared independence; also, in
1991 a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan began, and didn’t end until a
truce was called in 1994.
Architect Jane Britt Greenwood has watched Armenia’s struggles first-hand.
After touring Eastern Europe in 1988-89 with the Boston Society of
Architects, Greenwood, a Boston-based architect, and her husband, an
engineer, jumped at the opportunity to teach at the new American-style
university being opened in Armenia. The living conditions were hard in
1992-93: gas lines were constantly blown up, food was limited, and any
bathing was done from a bucket, yet the people were warm and open, and
Greenwood says it was really a life-changing experience.
Although the earthquake hit almost 20 years ago, and war ended more than 10
years ago, Armenia is still in recovery. For years, residents of Gyumri
(pronounced Goom-ri) were actually living in shipping containers that make
FEMA trailers look comfy in comparison. But during the last four years,
Gyumri, the capital city of the Shirak region of Armenia, has seen major
economic growth and development, and is undergoing a building boom. This
prosperity and growth is spreading throughout the country.
After leaving Armenia, Greenwood stayed in touch with friends, and when
conditions started to improve in 2000, she started looking for a way to be
involved in the reconstruction of this country she had come to love. As an
architect, the rebuilding of Armenia’s infrastructure interested her, and
she was disappointed to find that the new buildings generally lack the
traditional Armenian character. In the quest for modernization, Armenia’s
distinct heritage and character is being lost. `What they are doing is
building another Times Square, something that could be anywhere, because of
the desire to appear prosperous,’ says Greenwood.
Greenwood’s Earthwatch-supported expeditions, which will start this April,
will take volunteers to Gyumri, a city founded in the 5th century B.C.E. by
the Greeks. However, archaeologists have found remnants of human life dating
back 100,000 years that suggest almost continuous habitation. Gyumri has had
a series of names and hosted a multitude of cultures over the years, which
have lent the city its unique conglomeration of architectural styles.
Working with Greenwood, Earthwatch volunteers will identify and document the
historical architectural elements and patterns in the historic districts,
which will contribute to a database of architectural information that can be
access and shared by Armenian planners, architects, and designers.
`Despite all the hardship, Armenia has an incredibly resilient, positive,
and optimistic culture,’ says Greenwood. `I want to help them keep what’s
unique about their heritage by documenting their historical and vernacular
patterns, so that they can use this as a guide for managing future city
growth and economic development.’
To find out more about Greenwood’s expedition, please call our friendly and
knowledgeable Expedition Advisors at 800-776-0188.
Photos: An old stone church that collapsed during the earthquake in Armenia;
New construction beside vernacular architecture; Stone mason repairing a
damaged wall; Interior of a Roman style bath
Photos © NOAA NGDC, Jane Greenwood.
0107Expeditioner/Jan07enewsfull.html?tr=y&auid =2321222#armenia
Inspire Magazine, UK
Feb 4 2006
Landlord demands eviction as Turkish church is vandalised
Assailants on Turkey’s Black Sea coast vandalised a Protestant
church, days after nationalists from the region murdered a well-known
Armenian journalist.
Attackers shattered the Agape Protestant Church’s windows and
spray-painted its street sign on January 28 in the city of Samsun,
Pastor Orhan Picaklar told Compass News Direct.
Located in a region infamous for producing the nationalist killers of
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and an Italian Catholic priest last
year, the congregation has suffered a dozen stoning attacks and
weekly e-mail threats during the past two years.
`I was shocked, because, though we’ve been stoned before, it was
never this big an attack,’ Pastor Picaklar said. `When I arrived at 5
am there were about 20 police on the premises, including Samsun’s
deputy police chief.’
According to the pastor, about 30 heavy rocks had been thrown through
church windows, some of them smashing interior windows and denting
walls.
He said a note was left inside the church but that police refused to
show him what was written on it, claiming that it `wasn’t important’.
Samsun’s police chief later refused to include the note in the
official investigation, stating that it had `nothing to do with this
case,’ he added.
The pastor said he had received two death threats by e-mail on the
day of the attack, one signed by the Turkish Vengeance Brigade.
`I will kill you Orhan, you have very little time left,’ read one
e-mail, which cursed the congregation as `Christian pigs’ who would
`burn in hell’.
`I’ve received so many of these in the last three years that I don’t
even pay attention to them, I just delete them,’ Pastor Picaklar told
Compass. `But in recent days I’ve started to take them seriously.’
The murder of Armenian writer and thinker Hrant Dink, gunned down by
a young nationalist from the Black Sea city of Trabzon on January 19,
has created concern over growing militant nationalism in Turkey.
The event has also fuelled debate over the responsibility of the
state to protect individuals targeted by violent elements in society.
`After these events, both Dink’s death and this church attack, the
police are planning to provide us with security,’ the pastor said.
Sunday’s attack has convinced the church’s landlord that the
congregation must leave. The church only moved into the building
from its former location three weeks ago.
`I think people don’t want to work with us because of the
rock-throwing attacks,’ Pastor Picaklar said. `Where are we supposed
to worship this winter, on the street?’
BMI takes control of BMED in £30m deal
By Alistair Osborne, Business Editor, Daily Telegraph, London
Last Updated: 8:17am GMT 03/02/2007
BMI, the UK airline controlled by Sir Michael Bishop, has flown to the
rescue of BMED, paying £30m to acquire the struggling carrier that flies
to some of the hairiest destinations on the planet.
The deal will see Bmi take total control of BMED, which is chaired by
Tory peer Lord Hesketh and flies under British Airways colours from
Heathrow airport to 17 destinations in 16 countries, including Beirut,
Damascus, Teheran, Tashkent and Khartoum.
Talks between the two sides began last month, as The Daily Telegraph
revealed, after the breakdown of negotiations between BMED and Lebanon’s
Mikati family.
advertisement
For BMED the clock has been ticking because it was fast running out of
cash. It had been brought to the brink by the soaring oil price and the
war in Lebanon, which led to the temporary closure of the runway in
Beirut, one of BMED’s most important destinations.
The carrier is on course to lose £21m this financial year on sales of
£118m, on top of the £10m it lost in 2006. Its financial crisis was
triggered by the decision of Syrian financier Wafic Said, whose family
owns almost 50pc of the shares, not to put any more money into the
company, having already advanced it an £8m loan.
Under the deal, Mr Said, a racehorse owner and founder of the Said
Business School at Oxford, will receive no cash for his equity, which is
worthless, but have his shareholder loan repaid. Lord Hesketh, the
second biggest shareholder with 19pc, will also have a £500,000 loan repaid.
Nigel Turner, Bmi chief executive, said: "BMED couldn’t be a more
complementary fit." He said BMED operated from the same Heathrow base,
where Bmi has 12pc of the take-off and landing slots, flying eight IAE
engined Airbus A320 and A321 planes – the same aircraft that Bmi utilises.
"It gives Bmi a mid-haul strategy on a plate," he said, adding 17 more
destinations to its sole middle-range city, Moscow.
Bmi, which made £10m profits on £869m sales in 2005 – its latest
accounts – also owns the Bmibaby low-fare airline and flies to long-haul
destinations including Chicago and Saudi Arabia.
He said Bmi would retain BMED’s chief executive David Richardson and
welcomed its 750 staff to Bmi, which is eight times bigger than BMED.
"The real issue is that it [BMED] wasn’t big enough to support the route
network. It didn’t have enough scale," Mr Turner said.
All of BMED’s non-executives, who also include Lord Powell, Baroness
Thatcher’s former foreign policy adviser, have resigned.
Lord Hesketh, who set up the airline in 1994 and ran it for years as a
profitable venture, said: "It’s very sad after 13 years not to be able
to see it through but I’m pleased it’s going to a good home.
"Bmi are paying a significant amount of money which proves what we were
trying to do is not without value.
"As far as I’m concerned the effort’s been worth it." Lord Hesketh said
he had the "greatest of respect" for Bmi chairman Sir Michael.
BMED became a BA franchise partner in 1997 and Bmi will continue to
operate it as such until the end of this summer. Asked if it would
revert to Bmi colours after that, Mr Turner said: "That is probably our
intention."
NOTE: BMED (British Mediterranean Airways) flies as British Airways
to Yerevan four times a week.
Daily Trust (Abuja, Nigeria)
Feb 2 2007
Nigeria: Dink, Zion And the Armenian Genocide
OPINION
February 2, 2007
Posted to the web February 2, 2007
Adamu Adamu
What a sad and painful irony that Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian
journalist, would finally fall a victim to the genocide debate that
he himself has done much to downplay. And last year, to his own
astonishment, he fell victim to the laws of the Turkish Republic that
had imposed on him a civic schizophrenia of sorts. He had been coping
well, though, but it was not easy in a modern state that seemed to
have so much anxiety about its own holistic integrity. With the
result that Dink was on his way to prison for being such a good Turk.
On 8 October 2005, a court in Istanbul sentenced him to six months in
prison [suspended for good behaviour], for writing an article that
‘insulted and belittled Turkishness’. And he was totally devastated
by the conviction.
"I guilty of racism!?" he asked. "How can this be? All my life I have
struggled against ethnic discrimination and racism. I would never
belittle Turkishness or Armenianness. I wouldn’t allow anyone else to
do it, either."
But others before him had done exactly that to the Republic. The
Young Turks, in particular Mehmed Talaat, Ismail Enver and Ahmed
Djemal; Ziya Gokalp, Alparslan Turkes and, above all, Mustapha Kemal
Ataturk had each in his own way belittled Turkey; and what was the
result?
Defeat followed defeat. With the help of Russia, Britain and France,
Greece defeated Turkey in 1829. Russia forced Turkish withdrawal from
Bulgaria in 1878. In 1908, the Young Turks untied Turkey from its
past and the slide accelerated.
In 1911, Ottoman provinces in North Africa were lost to Italy and in
1913, the Balkans had wrested their independence; and thereafter,
Bulgarians and Serbians launched the original ethnic cleansing that
saw about 5 million impoverished and bitter Muslim Turks fleeing from
southeastern Europe to seek refuge in their Anatolian ancestral home,
in the eastern parts of which Armenians had already taken up arms for
independence. They collaborated with an invading Russian army against
their homeland, an action that in any nation would have been regarded
as treason. In 1915, the majority of Anatolia’s two million Armenians
were deported to Syria and Mesopotamia. And today, they constitute
the largest unassimilated minority group in Syria; but according to
Armenian sources that was not what happened. They said that hundreds
of thousands [the highest estimate is 1.5 million] died or were
killed in the process. But despite being an Armenian, Dink, the
journalist, in a rare bout of candour, dismissed the genocide claim.
He worked for reconciliation between Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks; and, along with Nobel Prize winner Orham Pamuk, had been
prosecuted for their views about the genocide claim. They denied
claims that one and half million Armenians had been killed in a
systematic genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. They had
argued that large numbers of people-both Muslim and Christian-had
perished during the traumatic breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and,
especially, during the actual deportations taking place amidst a war
with Russia. And Turkey stand condemned for the unnecessary loss of
lives; but there was never any policy by Sultan Abdul Hamid or even
the godless Young Turks who replaced him. If anything, there is ample
evidence to prove that the genocide claim was invented.
But a parallel event was to happen in Russia itself under Joseph
Stalin. Crimea, which had been under Turkish rule for 300 years,
briefly became independent in 1774 before it was annexed and
swallowed by Russia in 1783. After the October Revolution, it became
the Republic of Taurida. During the Second World War, suspecting
Crimean Tartars of pro-German sympathies, Stalin deported them to
Siberia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and around 600,000 died en
route.
But today none of the great powers is accusing Russia of genocide as
they properly do in the earlier case of the Ukraine Famine in which 7
million Ukrainians perished as a direct result of Stalin’s deliberate
policy to cause mass starvation, part of the estimated 70 million
killed as sacrifice to the god of communism. By 1933 up to 25,000
were dying everyday in Ukraine as they bravely resisted the
Bolsheviks.
In all of the other well-known cases of genocide, paradoxically,
except the most famous of them all-the Holocaust-there was always the
essential element of deliberate policy that was lacking in the
Turkish case. In the Rape of Nanking, in 1937, for instance, the
Japanese Imperial Army deliberately murdered 300,000 Chinese. Between
1975 and 1977, Pol Pot exterminated 2 million Cambodians; and between
1992 and 1995, Serbians killed more than 200,000 Muslims. In 1945,
Allied forces-United States, Britain and France-firebombed a target
without any military value or significance. But, curiously, the world
today does not remember as genocide the gratuitous massacre of the
inhabitants of Dresden and the destruction of Europe’s most beautiful
city by the leaders of the ‘free world.’
At any event, the claim of the Armenian genocide had never been taken
seriously be any of the European powers except France, which had its
own reasons for promoting it. From time to time, it would raise it as
it did in 1998. That time, however, it was not raised as a foreign
policy issue to be used against Turkish attempt to get into the
European Union; but as French contribution to Armenia that was then
locked in a bitter struggle over land with Azerbaijan after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea was that the genocide claim
would do for the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994 what Holocaust
claims did for the Zionists in Palestine in 1948. Both claims,
however, have remained unproved; and to the discerning world they
remain what they are-false claims.
In order to better publicize their cause they took a leaf from the
Palestinian struggle that resorted to spectacular acts of skyjacking
and other desperate acts of terror to catch world attention. At the
time the PLO was enjoying its heyday, they established the Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia [ASLA] otherwise known as
the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide. By the end of the
1970’s more than two dozen Turkish diplomats had been assassinated by
the commandos and many more injured.
And the Armenian lobby, like the Holocaust industry before it, has
accepted and come to value what Dr James J Martin, the doyen of
historical revisionism, had said in relation to the invention of the
word ‘genocide’ by Raphael Lemkin, the Americanized Polish Zionist
Jew, in preparation for the charge that would be made against Germany
after World War II: "that with vast labor and proper publicity,
something can still be made out of nothing."
And the Armenian lobby is relatively speaking, quite powerful and
capable of vast labour that can get to places and mount the proper
kind of publicity required. Just consider this:
The Association of Genocide Scholars in its conference held in
Montreal, June 11-13, 1997, reaffirms that the mass murder of
Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to
the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide. It further condemns the denial of the
Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government and its official and
unofficial agents and supporters.
Several US presidents had spoken about the Armenian Question. Some of
them have included Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush. On
April 24, 2000, President Clinton said, "Today we remember a great
tragedy of the twentieth century: the deportations and massacres of
roughly one and a half million Armenians in the final years of the
Ottoman Empire.
"I join Armenians around the world, including the Armenian-American
community, in mourning the loss of those innocent lives. I also
extend my sympathy to the survivors and their descendants for the
hardships they suffered. I call upon all Americans to renew their
commitment to build a world where such events are not allowed to
happen again. The lesson we must learn from the stark annals of
history is that we must forge a more humane future for the peoples of
all nations. April 24, 2000."
And it almost went beyond presidential speechmaking. Early in October
2001, the House International Relations Committee passed a
non-binding resolution urging President Bill Clinton and future US
presidents to recognize what it described as "the systematic and
deliberate annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide."
However, owing to pressure from the Turkish prime minister, the Bill
was withdrawn two weeks later. Bulent Ecevit sent a letter to Clinton
thanking him for his efforts to shelve the resolution. It had become
an object of diplomatic paper-chase.
But even Henry Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Turkey at the time,
would only report to Washington: "When the Turkish authorities gave
the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death
warrant to a whole race."
The origins of the Armenian Genocide story has a far more
intellectual basis that even the Holocaust; because it was invented
by top-ranking scholars in the service of the British Foreign Office.
The whole incident was a masterful fabrication built upon a real
happening in order to embarrass the defeated Ottomans and use it to
exert concessions.
It was written by Professor Arnold J Toynbee, reputedly the greatest
historian the world had ever known, though he himself was to say of
ibn-Khaldun’s Muqaddimah ‘the greatest book ever written’ by any man.
But perhaps its greatest value was that when the Zionists came, they
would have something to draw upon in inventing their own forgery. But
perhaps, it should be admitted, though, that with Deuteronomy at
their disposal, they probably wouldn’t need Toynbee.
The Holocaust is Israel’s number one propaganda weapon creating a
deep-seated guilt complex in Western society and unprecedented
international sympathy, which has lead to an uncritical support for
the Jewish [or, more correctly, Zionist] State, and made even the
most deserved and most appropriate criticism of Israel impossible for
Western statesmen, most especially in the US, where Zionist control
of the media is total.
When recently Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad questioned the
Holocaust, international media took up the chorus of condemning him;
and, in the process, unwittingly opened up the subject for debate.
But it was not debate that was on their minds. What they wanted to do
was to isolate Ahmedinejad. The most effective weapon of the Zionists
against exposure has been what is called "the silent treatment;" but
it is impossible to ignore the president of a leading nation who has
decided to lend his weight to Holocaust denial. Otherwise that is
what they would have done.
That the media couldn’t ignore Ahmedinejad’s comments was more
because they believed that by publicizing the denial in a world that
had come to accept its "truth," they hoped to ridicule the president,
and, in addition, use the reminder that his denial had afforded them
and capitalize on the sympathy generated to write and push through
the last remaining chapter of the Holocaust saga.
Last Friday, they got their way when the United Nations adopted a
resolution sponsored by the United States and co-sponsored by more
than 100 other countries condemning Holocaust denial. And so,
finally, the Holocaust has truly become a ‘Holy Cause’ as John Bennet
of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties once feared. He
questioned ‘why in a country such as America where most people can
say anything they like [the laws of obscenity here being what they
are] and do practically anything they like, the one thing Americans
can’t do is to publicly challenge the Holocaust, or the "Holy Cause,"
as it may perhaps be more accurately described.’
Ahmedinejad was not the first to deny the Holocaust, though he is the
first president to do so publicly and to damn the consequences.
Thousands before him have denied it and with good reason. But
Holocaust denial as a science may be said to have properly begun with
the publication of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur R.
Butz, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at the
prestigious Northwestern University, Evanston in the United States.
No one who has read this book will ever again believe any shred of
the Holocaust saga; but, of course, one should be ready to be up
against a lie that has been so often repeated that it becomes a truth
that can no longer be questioned.
For, among the stoutest defenders of Holocaust are some of its most
vulnerable victims. Such is the effect and power of a 60-year-old
propaganda machine that has almost all the international news and
entertainment media at its beck and call.
The works of Professor Butz, Dr. Robert Faurisson of the University
of Lyon in France, Professor Udo Walendy of Verlag fur Volkstum he &
Zeitgeschichsforschung, Dr. Martin A. Larson of The Spotlight in
Washington, Swedish historian Ditlieb Felderer, and, above all, the
pioneering works of Dr. James J. Martin set the tone for the founding
of the Institute of Historical Review, which, in its own words, is in
business "to bring history in accord with the facts." Its turf was
the Second World War, and this immediately brought it into conflict
with the Holocaust myth.
Paul Rassinier, who was interned at Buchenwald, was the first to
throw the salvo that began the demolition work of the Holocaust
edifice; and it was as a result of his exposes that the Holocaust
Establishment was forced to admit that no gassing of human beings
took place in any of the concentration camps in Germany. They now
concentrate on the concentration camps in Poland-Auschwitz, Sobibor,
Treblinka, Maidanek, Bitburg-before these too are demolished.
Professor Walendy carried out a pictorial critique of Holocaust. He
took each and every one of the better known pictures of Holocaust and
painstakingly traced them to all the originals from which they were
cleverly faked-with barbed wire, emaciated bodies and all. Books by
the Institute, written in the highest tradition of historical
scholarship and on scientific basis, have torn to smithereens the
tales of soap from human fat, the gas ovens and the crematoria, the
impossibility of using Zyklon-B to effect what they claim happened,
and devastating exposes on the Nuremberg trials.
But because these classic works of history will not be touched by the
prestigious publishing houses nor be stocked by any of the reputable
bookshops and other outlets, the weight of Ahmedinejad is of greater
propaganda value than all the tomes of intellectual output that have
been written to discredit many of the claims that people today regard
as Gospel truth.
But the Holocaust Establishment was not without its own intellectual
effort. It commissioned the writing of The Diary of Anne Frank,
ostensibly written by a young Jewish girl of her ordeals in hiding as
her race was systematically liquidated. It was quickly exposed as a
fake, though you never got to hear about it. For instance, you
probably have never heard that Anne’s diary was written with a
ballpoint pen, something that had not yet been invented when the book
was supposed to have been written. And Anne’s father, Otto Frank,
later had to pay off the diary’s ghostwriter in order to duck a
lawsuit.
It is indeed a pity that Dink died as a result of a genocide that
never took place, for a nation that didn’t know where it was going,
and on behalf of a people who didn’t know who they were. But is it
really then such a pity?
tml
The Financial Times , UK
31 January 2007 Wednesday 10:18:04 PM GMT
Turkey must loosen the grip of its founding myths
by Mark Mazower
The banners read "We are all Armenians" at the funeral in Istanbul
last week for Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist shot in
January by a young nationalist assassin. "We are Turkish. We are all
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," nationalist football fans chanted in reply
from terraces across the country, referring to modern Turkey’s
founder.
As Dink’s tragic death and the polarised reactions to it demonstrate
in the most graphic way, the ongoing reckoning with events now nearly
a century old remains a huge factor in Turkey itself. It is not
merely that, fairly or unfairly, its pursuit of European Union
membership is generating international pressure on the government to
recognise the Armenian genocide. The issue polarises the country
internally as well and raises more acutely than any other issue the
question of how tightly it remains within the ideological grip of its
founding fathers.
In many ways, the government of Tayyip Erdogan has moved further on
this issue than any of its predecessors. While still publicly
insisting the point has acquired an almost theological quality that
the mass murders of 1915-16 were not genocide, it has opened up the
Ottoman archives and even proposed to the Armenian government that
they jointly sponsor an international commission to settle the issue
once and for all. That the Armenians showed little interest may have
been just as well. States generally need to get out of the business
of adjudicating on history, not deeper into it.
Just as French parliamentarians would have done much better recently
to avoid laying down the law on a whole range of past (non-French)
crimes and (French) achievements, so the Turkish government should
not imagine that a bilateral commission of official appointees will
do anything more than continue politicking in another form.
Government committees, parliamentary resolutions and even
state-sponsored anniversaries often possess a powerful
headline-grabbing symbolic charge but, precisely for this reason,
they are a crude means of getting at truth.
The process of coming to historical understanding does not work
through officialdom. It is essentially uncontrollable, often
acrimonious and cannot be wrapped up fast to meet a ministerial
deadline. After 1945, Holocaust scholars enjoyed uniquely favourable
access to documents, survivors and perpetrators. Sixty years on, they
are still debating some fundamental matters of interpretation.
Serious discussion of the events of 1915-16 is at a much earlier
stage. Right now, it seems fairly clear that much of the killing was
centrally organised, and genocidal in scope; denial of this point
simply flies in the face of the evidence. Yet how the killing was
organised is poorly understood. Moreover, most Turkish nationalists
do not so much deny the killings themselves as claim they need to be
seen in the context of an all-out assault on what was left of the
Ottoman empire itself. It is certainly true though Europe still
ignores the unpalatable fact that the expansion of national states,
mostly Christian, was accompanied by the killing and expulsion of
Muslims from the Balkans and Russia. To explain is not to justify.
Yet the escalation of violence in Anatolia after 1914 was certainly
linked to the upheavals that had preceded it. Franker discussion of
the Armenian genocide thus has the potential to open up an entirely
different perspective on Europe’s modern history as a whole.
There are many ways the Turkish government can help this along. Its
key responsibility lies in fostering better conditions for such
discussions to flourish. Repealing the now infamous article 301 of
the penal code, under which Dink among many others was convicted,
would be an important step towards ending the legal intimidation of
writers: the government’s talk of reforming it is not really enough.
It could do more to support the dissemination of the exciting
research that is emerging from Turkey’s flourishing universities.
Above all, it should take a hard look at how the country’s history is
taught in schools. Right now, the Kemalist old guard still talks and
acts as though any discussion of the republic’s founding myths will
jeopardise the security of the state. This is absurd: Turkey is not
going to crumble if its leaders finally acknowledge the Armenian
genocide. The Turkish army is not suddenly going to be weakened by a
more critical look at what happened 90-odd years ago. The
alternatives right now look pretty stark. On the one hand, an opening
to Europe. On the other, continuing to live in a world where the work
of defining patriotism and historical truth is placed in the hands of
trigger-happy 17-year-olds.
The writer teaches history at Columbia University
MICROSOFT AND ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT SIGN COOPERATION AGREEMENT
YEREVAN, JANUARY 31, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA Minister of Trade and
Economic Development Karen Chshmaritian and the Chairman of Microsoft
Corporation Bill Gates signed the Agreement on Cooperation between the
Armenian Government and the Microsoft Corporation in Edinburgh on
January 30. The RA Deputy Minister of Trade and Economic Development
Tigran Davtian told this to reporters. According to him, the Armenian
delegation is in the capital of Scotland by the invitation of
Microsoft in order to participate in the event Government Leaders
Forum-Europe organized by the corporation.
T. Davtian said that under the agreement, Microsoft will implement a
number of investment, educational and innovation programs in Armenia
with the aim of further development of the Armenian IT
sector. Particularly, it is envisaged to create Microsoft Innovation
Center in Armenia. Besides, Microsoft envisages to provide Armenian
schools with softaware packages in Armenian and other assistance to
the IT sector.
According to T. Davtian, the Armenian government in its turn will
continue making efforts to protect copyright in the Armenian IT sector
and to take measures on the use of Microsoft’s legal software in the
state governance system.
He reminded that a principal agreement to start strategical
cooperation between the Armenian government and Microsoft was reached
at the meeting between the Armenian prime minister and European
regional vice chairman of Microsoft during IT Month held in Yerevan in
September 2006. The programs on cooperation of the sides in specific
spheres will be formulated through additional agreements which are
envisaged to be signed within a year.
T. Davtian said that signing the agreement with Microsoft is a logical
continuation of the process of increasing strategical cooperation with
world-famous companies such as Alcatel, SUN-Microsystems, Hewlett
Packard in order to develop Armenia’s IT sector.
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Jan 24 2007
ARMENIAN PRESIDENT’S REGULAR VISIT TO RUSSIA EVIDENCE OF ACTIVE
TOP-LEVEL DIALOGUE
YEREVANA, January 24. /ARKA/. RA President Robert Kocharyan’s regular
visit to Russia is evidence of an active top-level dialogue.
The press service of the RF Embassy in Armenia reports that the
Armenian leader’s visit is supposed to raise the level of
Russian-Armenian strategic partnership, strengthen bilateral
cooperation in the most importance spheres, using the potential
created by the Year of Armenia in Russia and the Year of Russia in
Armenia.
"Armenian-Russian relations are described as allied relations and are
distinguished by positive dynamics of development. Regular contacts
between the two countries’ Presidents have become practice and are
distinguished by mutual confidence," says the report.
The sides are to discuss the most urgent issues or bilateral
cooperation and prospects for development. The sides are to discuss
the execution of top-level agreements on further development of
Armenian-Russian cooperation, particularly in the fuel, energy and
transport sphere.
The Armenian and Russian Presidents plan to exchange views on
deepening cooperation with the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) and reforming the CIS.
The sides will focus their attention on coordination of efforts to
improve the situation in the Caucasus, create an atmosphere of
confidence in the region, establish cooperation and settle conflicts
on this basis.
The sides will lay emphasis on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
problem.
"Russia welcomes further Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogue at various
levels, first of al between the two countries’ Presidents. We proceed
from the principle that the conflicting parties themselves must find
a mutually acceptable solution to the conflict. We are ready to
render most active assistance both in the bilateral aspect and as
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair and become guarantor of a prospective
agreement," says the Embassy’s report.
This year will see the 15th anniversary of fruitful multipronged
cooperation between Armenia and Russia, which has a solid basis – an
Agreement on Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, Declaration on
Armenian-Russian Cooperation oriented at the 21st century.
RF President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Armenia in March 2005 and RA
President Robert Kocharyan’s visit to Russia in January, August and
October 2006 were significant stages of consolidating the strategic
partnership and intensifying bilateral cooperation. P.T. -0–
Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Jan 25 2007
Fascism must be fought everywhere
Thursday, January 25, 2007
We are now watching with anger how those that contributed to the
poisonous atmosphere in this country, which culminated in Hrant’s
death, are now shedding crocodile tears over his brutal murder.
Semih İdiz
Hrant Dink was a dear friend of mine, as he was of so many of us – a
fact that alone attests to what a great guy and a lovable human being
he was. Hrant died as he no doubt feared he might. That he feared so
is clear from his last piece in Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian
daily where he was editor.
The article carried the title "The dove-like timidity of my state of
mind" (Ruh halimin guvercin tedirginligi). Having received serious
threats aimed at himself and his family he had a nasty premonition. But
he was the eternal optimist. In that piece he ends up foolishly
believing that "at least no one shoots doves."
Little did he know that they do and will continue to do so unless a
serious change of mind takes hold of the country, stirring it out of
this climate of ethno-centric animosity cultivated for the sake of
petty interests.
As an aside here I would like to honor the memory of Ugur Mumcu,
another brave journalist who was killed in a similarly brutal attack
exactly 14 years ago, on Jan. 24, 1993, in front of his house as he
was getting ready to go to work at his paper.
The supposedly social democratic CHP:
We are now watching with anger how those that contributed to the
poisonous atmosphere in this country, which culminated in Hrant’s
death, are now shedding crocodile tears over his brutal murder. Take
for example the supposedly social democratic Republican People’s Party
(CHP), which I dealt with in this column last week.
It takes some audacity for this party’s leader to now offer condolences
to Hrant’s family and Turkey’s Armenian community when it has members
in executive party positions who were recently calling for the mass
expulsion of up to 70,000 Armenians (from Armenia) who are illegally
employed in this country.
They wanted Turkey to retaliate in this brutal way for the French
law that aims to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide. No
one in the party, including Mr. Deniz Baykal, its leader, had the
sense to understand what such a suggestion does to Turkey’s image,
given the historic backdrop of the mass expulsion of Armenians in 1915.
No one in this party had the courage to say, "Rather than expelling
these people, we should highlight the fact that they are living and
working happily here, thus proving that Turks and Armenians are not
eternal blood enemies, as the pathological nationalists on both sides
would have us believe."
The tens of thousands of Turks who turned up for Hrant’s funeral on
Tuesday are what this country is about. Their tears as they chanted "We
are all Hrant, we are all Armenian" were genuine, not crocodile tears.
As if all this was not enough, we got news of the sad death of
İsmail Cem yesterday. He too was a Turk who reflected this
country’s humane face to the world.
It was this spirit of Cem’s that, when combined with the kindred spirit
of his Greek colleague at the time, Foreign Minister Yorgo Papandreou,
melted the ice between the two countries after years of acrimony. I
have no doubt that Cem’s death has caused sadness across the water too.
Fascism in Europe:
A word of warning here for our European friends before signing off.
Hrant Dink and İsmail Cem were model human beings for Europe
also. We have to remember that the same kind of hate-mongering that
we are complaining about in Turkey also exists in Europe and has
already led to murders and assassinations.
Like our supposed social democrats, there are countless supposedly
"civilized" politicians in Europe today, some vying for the highest
positions in their country, who are contributing to a growing
atmosphere of hate through their racist and supremacist remarks.
Therefore no one should feel complacent and suggest that "these
things are happening in Turkey alone, away from Europe." Fascism is
a pathological state of mind and, like bird flu, can not be stopped
at this border or that.
Only last June Hans van Themsche, 18 and the son of a founding member
of the racist Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc), shot and wounded Songul Koc,
a Turkish woman wearing a headscarf, as she sat reading on a bench. He
then killed Oulematou Niangadou from Mali and the white child, 2,
in her care.
If I was a European liberal I would be equally worried about what
is happening in Europe today as I watch these sad events unfold
in Turkey. We have to understand that a stand against fascism and
crypto-fascism is only meaningful if it is universal.