THE RIGHT TO DENY GENOCIDE
By Timothy Garton Ash
Los Angeles Times, CA
Oct 19 2006
Passing laws that criminalize denying past atrocities is no way to
address historical grievances.
WHAT A magnificent blow for truth, justice and humanity the French
National Assembly has struck. Last week, it voted for a bill that
would make it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide
against the Armenians during World War I. Bravo! Chapeau bas! Vive
la France! But let this only be a beginning in a brave new chapter
of European history.
Let Britain’s Parliament now make it a crime to deny that it was
Russians who murdered Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. Let the
Turkish parliament make it a crime to deny that France used torture
against insurgents in Algeria. Let the German parliament pass a bill
making it a crime to deny the existence of the Soviet gulag. Let the
Irish parliament criminalize denial of the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition. Let the Spanish parliament mandate a minimum of 10 years
imprisonment for anyone who claims that the Serbs did not attempt
genocide against Albanians in Kosovo.
ADVERTISEMENT And the European Parliament should pass into European
law a bill making it obligatory to describe as genocide the American
colonists’ treatment of American Indians. The only pity is that we,
in the European Union, can’t impose the death sentence for these
heinous thought crimes. But perhaps, with time, we may change that too.
Oh brave new Europe! It is entirely beyond me how anyone in their
right mind – apart, of course, from a French Armenian lobbyist –
can regard this proposed bill, which will almost certainly be voted
down in the upper house of the French parliament, as a progressive
and enlightened step.
What right has France to prescribe by law the correct historical
terminology to characterize what another nation did to a third nation
90 years ago? If the French parliament passed a law making it a crime
to deny the complicity of Vichy France in the deportation to the death
camps of French Jews, I would still argue that this was a mistake,
but I could respect the self-critical moral impulse behind it. This
bill, by contrast, has no more moral or historical justification than
any of the other suggestions I have just made.
In an article last Friday, the Guardian averred that “supporters
of the law are doubtless motivated by a sincere desire to redress
a 90-year-old injustice.” I wish I could be so confident. Currying
favor with French Armenian voters and putting another obstacle in
the way of Turkey joining the EU might be suggested as other motives.
It will be obvious to every intelligent reader that my argument
has nothing to do with questioning the suffering of the Armenians
who were massacred, expelled or felt impelled to flee in fear of
their lives during and after World War I. Their fate at the hands
of the Turks was terrible and has been too little recalled in the
mainstream of European memory. Reputable historians and writers have
made a strong case that those events deserve the label of genocide,
as it has been defined since 1945. In fact, this year’s winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, and other Turkish writers have
been prosecuted under the Turkish penal code for daring to suggest
exactly that. That is significantly worse than the intended effects
of the new French bill. But two wrongs don’t make a right.
No one can legislate historical truth. Insofar as historical truth
can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical
research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts,
testing and disputing each other’s claims without fear of prosecution
or persecution.
In the tense ideological politics of our time, this proposed bill is
a step in exactly the wrong direction. How can we credibly criticize
Turkey, Egypt or other states for curbing free speech, through the
legislated protection of historical, national or religious shibboleths,
if we are doing ever more of it ourselves?
Far from creating new, legally enforced taboos about history, national
identity and religion, those European nations that have them should
repeal not only their blasphemy laws but also their laws on Holocaust
denial. Otherwise, a charge of double standards is impossible to
refute.
I recently heard the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy going
through some impressive intellectual contortions to explain why he
opposed any laws restricting criticism of religion but supported
those on Holocaust denial. It was one thing, he argued, to question
a religious belief, quite another to deny a historical fact. But this
won’t wash. Historical facts are established precisely by their being
disputed and tested against the evidence. Without that process of
contention – up to and including the revisionist extreme of outright
denial – we would never discover which facts are truly hard.
Such consistency requires painful decisions. For example, I have
nothing but abhorrence for some of David Irving’s recorded views about
Nazi Germany’s attempted extermination of the Jews, but I am quite
certain that he should not be sitting in an Austrian jail as a result
of them. You may riposte that the falsehood of some of his claims was
established by a trial in a British court. Yes, but that was not the
British state prosecuting him for Holocaust denial. It was Irving suing
another historian who suggested that he was a Holocaust denier. He was
trying to curb free and fair historical debate; the court defended it.
Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be
poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and
others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for
dismantling them. We must practice what we preach.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European studies at Oxford
University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.

OUTDOOR GRILLING IN GLENDALE ROASTED
By Eugene Tong, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 19 2006
Councilmen say issue turned into a cultural standoff
Article Last Updated:10/18/2006 08:52:56 PM PDT GLENDALE – An ordinance
to legalize outdoor grilling for local businesses – often practiced
at banquet halls catering to Armenian-Americans – has died after
failing to garner enough City Council support.
The 3-2 vote Tuesday night broke down along ethnic lines, with the
council’s Armenian-American majority in favor and Mayor Dave Weaver
and Councilman Frank Quintero dissenting.
Passage required at least four votes on the five-member panel.
Current laws require all commercial cooking to be done indoors.
“Many years ago, we set the rule that commercial barbecues should be
done inside,” Weaver said. “We should not move backward.”
It was a victory for vocal critics who have complained that excessive
noise, smoke and parking congestion from local banquet halls disrupt
their neighborhoods.
“We are taking (the existing ban) off the books to allow a hazard,”
said resident Margaret Hammond, speaking against the ordinance. “They
should be made to put these grills inside.”
Councilman Bob Yousefian, who is Armenian-American, said Wednesday
the city missed an opportunity to create a reasonable law that could
resolve the issue for all parties.
“The reality is there has been grilling outdoors in this city for
at least 30 years,” he said. “In those days there were not a lot of
Armenians, there were other races that did grilling outside.
“This issue isn’t about grilling. The issue is the Armenians are
grilling. I tried to change this to make this about grilling instead of
about banquet halls or Armenian banquet halls. But I couldn’t do that.”
The proposed ordinance would require grill operators to register
with the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Businesses with
grills larger than 10 square feet and used within 200 feet of homes
need to apply for a conditional-use permit.
There also were specific guidelines for grill construction and fire
safety regulations. In a last-minute attempt to sway the dissenters,
Councilman Ara Najarian proposed the ordinance expire in December
2007 so the council can remove or adjust it if needed.
“This is not a closed deal,” Najarian, also Armenian-American, said
Tuesday. “I want to know if the regulations are going to solve the bulk
of the problems. I’m happy to tighten it up if this is insufficient.”
After the vote, Yousefian urged the city to enforce the ban on outdoor
grilling, whether they’re operated by banquet halls, supermarkets or
at special events. “If we’re going to enforce the rule, you enforce
it on everyone.”
Vrej Sarkissian, president of the Restaurant and Banquet Hall Owners
Association, which represents 13 of the city’s halls, said he was
disappointed by the decision.
Grilling and barbecue using charcoal and copious fanning to whip the
flames – khorovats in Armenian – has been a part of family celebrations
for centuries.
“We put a lot of time and energy into this ordinance, and I think
this is something the majority of the residents wanted,” he said.
“I’m disappointed that certain individuals didn’t recognize the
cultural significance of outdoor grilling.”

DYER: A GENOCIDE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL STINK
VUE Weekly, Canada
Oct 19 2006
Words matter. The Holocaust of the European Jews during the Second
World War was a genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their
Caucasian homeland during the same war was a crime but not a genocide,
even though half of them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them
from collaborating with German troops who were nearing Chechnya, not
to exterminate them. Which brings us to the far more controversial
case of the Armenians and the Turks.
On Oct 12, the French parliament passed a law declaring that anyone
who denies that the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey in
1915-17 was a genocide will face a year in prison. But the French
foreign ministry called the law “unnecessary and untimely,” and
President Jacques Chirac telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyib Erdogan to apologize.
Why would the conservative majority in the French parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing that the law would
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke a
nationalist backlash in Turkey that would further damage that country’s
already difficult relationship with the European Union.
French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk-tales of “Polish plumbers” working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of 80 million Turks-Muslim Turks-joining the
European Union, even if it is at least 10 years away, is enough to
make their blood boil.
So a big row with Turkey should attract lots of votes to the right’s
presidential candidate in next May’s election, who is likely to be
none other than current prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy-who announced
last month that Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU: “We
have to say who is European and who isn’t. It’s no longer possible to
leave this question open.” The new law is not really about Armenians
or Turks. It’s about the French election.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game
underway. While Turkey was busy amending its penal code to make it
conform to EU standards over the past few years, hard-line lawyers and
bureaucrats smuggled in a new law, Article 301, which provides severe
penalties for “insulting Turkishness.” In practice, that mainly means
trying to ban public discussion of the Armenian massacres, and some 70
prosecutions have already been brought by the ultra-right-wing Union of
Lawyers against Turkish authors, journalists and other public figures.
For several generations the Turkish government flatly denied any guilt
for the Armenian massacres, insisting that they didn’t happen-and,
if they did, it was the Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against
the Turkish state in wartime. Latterly, a new generation of Turkish
intellectuals has been saying that a million or more Armenians did
die in the mass deportations from eastern Anatolia, and that Turkey
needs to admit its guilt and apologize-though most still refuse to
call it a genocide, as that would put it in the same category as the
Jewish Holocaust.
Israel, too, refuses to use the term “genocide” for the Armenian
massacres, on the grounds that there was some provocation (Armenian
revolutionaries conspired with both Britain and Russia in 1914-15
to launch local uprisings in support of their planned invasions
of Turkey), and that the Turkish state’s actions, though brutal,
illegal and immoral, were not premeditated. Most Armenians, of course,
desperately want the label “genocide” to be applied to their ancestors’
suffering, since they feel that any other term demotes it to a lower
rank of tragedy. But there is room for dialogue and even reconciliation
here, if people can get past the issue of nomenclature.
The prosecutions for “insulting Turkishness”-even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk-are not just
an attempt to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between Turks and
Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the negotiations
for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian and intolerant
state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in effect, Sarkozy’s
objective allies.
But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once
next year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people
to discuss the Armenian massacres in precisely the terms that 301
bans, will probably be vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known
Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, who has already been prosecuted
several times under 301, has just announced that he will go to France
“to protest against this madness and violate the (new) law … And
I will commit the crime to be prosecuted there, so that these two
irrational mentalities can race to put me into jail.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

POOR CUSTODIANS OF FREE SPEECH
Virginian Pilot, VA
Oct 19 2006
Last week in Baghdad, dozens of heavily armed Shiite terrorists stormed
the offices of Shaabiya, a new television station, suspected of Sunni
sympathies, which had run nothing more controversial than a few songs
to test its broadcasting equipment.
That the freedoms to speak, publish and broadcast have not taken
hold in Iraq shouldn’t come as a big surprise. In a region dominated
by dictators, petty monarchs, official state media and the brutal
repression of dissidents, the Middle East was always going to be a
stony soil for Western ideals.
But before judging the Iraqis too harshly for failing to accept one
of our better ideas, or beating on President Bush for acting like the
Federalist Papers might be a best-seller if translated into Arabic,
it is worth remembering what a hard sell real free speech is even in
the places where it should be safest:
The University. Last week, the president of Columbia University in New
York announced an investigation into the circumstances surrounding
several pro-immigration student groups’ decision to storm the stage
and unfurl a banner rather than let a leader of the Minuteman Project
give a speech.
The Internet. Over the past two weeks, YouTube has been purging
its site of politically incorrect videos, arrogating to itself
the authority to remove videos based on such a vaguely worded
user agreement that Saturday-morning cartoons easily violate its
“standards.”
France. If there is a birthplace for the Jeffersonian ideals embodied
in our Bill of Rights, France is one of two contenders. Last week,
the lower house of parliament there decided that anyone who disagrees
with historical accounts of the Armenian genocide should go to jail
for a year.
With American and NATO troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan,
trying to bring a bit of freedom to places it has never been known,
it is profoundly sad that we practice that freedom so poorly here.

GEORGIA . . . ON RUSSIA’S MIND
By Ariel Cohen
Washington Times, DC
Oct 19 2006
Amid great power fretting over North Korea’s nuclear test and
continuing Iranian truculence against the West, Russia escalated its
confrontation with the neighboring Georgia. The arrest of five Russian
alleged intelligence officers two weeks ago was a pretext for Moscow
to further escalate an already difficult relationship with Tbilisi,
now affecting the 1 million Georgian Diaspora in Russia.
Ethnic Georgians, including children, were loaded on cargo planes
and expelled from Russia, citing their illegal immigration status.
Prominent Georgian intellectuals, who are Russian citizens, are being
harassed by the tax police. Georgian businesses in Moscow are singled
out by law enforcement authorities. The handling of the crisis is
threatening Russia’s international standing as a responsible and
constructive great power.
Georgia may have overplayed its hand by arresting the military
intelligence officers, whom it accused of sabotage, and not just
expelling them quietly — an acceptable modus operandi in such cases.
In response, Moscow recalled its ambassador from Tbilisi, evacuated
diplomats and their families and halted issuing visas to Georgian
citizens. The Russian military forces stationed in Georgia have gone
on high alert. Russia cut air and railroad links, and blocked money
transfers from Georgians working in Russia, denying an important
source of income for many Georgian families.
Since Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the Rose Revolution of
2003, anti-Russian statements by Georgian leaders, a relentless
push to evacuate Russian military bases (to which Russia has agreed
previously), an attempt to join NATO, and opposition to Russian
membership in the World Trade Organization, have caused the Putin
administration to embargo the two key imports from Georgia. These
are Borjomi mineral water and wine, much beloved in Russia.
It did not end there. In September, South Ossetian separatists, who
receive Russian military support, have fired on Georgian helicopter
carrying the defense minister. This was a provocation, which, if
successful, could have led to conflagration of hostilities in the
small secessionist territory that belongs to Georgia. However, Russia
made little secret of its desire to start a war in the Caucasus that
would lead to a regime change in Tbilisi.
There are regional and global reasons why Moscow is escalating the
crisis over Georgia: c? To begin with, this is not the first time
Russia is trying to stop NATO enlargement into the formerly Soviet
territory. In 1999, Russia fulminated against the Baltic States’ NATO
membership. But at that time, Russia was extricating itself from the
1998 economic crisis while a power struggle was afoot in Moscow to
succeed President Boris Yeltsin. As energy prices were much lower
in 1999, Western European countries supported the Baltic States’
NATO bid despite Russian protests. However, today, Western Europe is
increasingly energy-dependent on the Gazprom and so is taking Russian
foreign-policy positions much more seriously.
c? Second, the Kremlin is now buoyed by $250 billion in petrodollar
reserves. These funds buy a lot of hardware for the Trans-Caucasus
Military District and for pro-Russian separatists in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia.
c? Third, Russia is uneasy over the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export
pipeline, which takes Azeri oil to the Mediterranean markets, and
crosses Georgia but bypasses Russia. The Absheron-Erzurum gas pipeline
will be coming online, bringing Azeri gas to Turkey and Europe. Gazprom
is concerned that this gas pipeline may eventually allow export of
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstani gas to Europe, circumventing Russia’s
pipeline network.
If Georgia comes under the Russian sway, neighboring Azerbaijan
and Armenia will feel the full weight of Russian presence. Leading
foreign policy experts in Moscow believe Azerbaijan has not allocated
enough oil patches to Russian companies and facilitated oil exports
via Turkey instead of Russia, which may explain why Russia is leaning
on Georgia so much.
The Armenian opposition openly demands a more pro-Western and less
pro-Russian policy, noting close ties with Moscow did not improve
Armenia’s abysmal living standard and did not allow it to receive
international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence.
A pro-Russian Georgia in the Collective Security Treaty Organization
of the Commonwealth of Independent States would permit Russia and
Iran to dominate Azerbaijan and Armenia, severely limiting the U.S.
policy options there. Furthermore, such a development would put to
rest U.S. ambitions in Central Asia and may cut off strategically
important Kazakhstan from Western energy markets.
Russia has warned repeatedly it will retaliate severely in case
Kosovo is granted independence against the will of Serbia, a
historic ally. Mr. Putin has called for imposition of the Kosovo
criteria on separatist enclaves in the former Soviet Union, including
Transnistria, which is a part of Moldova, Abkhazia, South Ossetia
and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia would enforce a referendum in these
territories, and would recognize their independence, opening the door
to their eventual incorporation in the Russian Federation. Moreover,
such an approach would create dangerous precedents vis-a-vis the
Crimea, where a majority of the population is pro-Russian; for
Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine; and even for predominantly Slavic
Northern Kazakhstan.
Violations and alternations of the existing borders of the former
Soviet Union may generate severe tensions in Europe and open the
Pandora’s box of territorial claims and ethnically based border
challenges there and elsewhere, for example in Iraq and Kurdistan.
The United States today is preoccupied with major crises, such as
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. Russia is a key player in all
these. Its true and real cooperation would be welcome, although so far
it is not sufficient. It is vital for the future of the U.S.-Russian
relations and for global security that Moscow behaves responsibly and
constructively. Quickly defusing the Georgian crisis via diplomacy
is a good place to start. Washington should encourage the European
powers, the European Union and Turkey to become more engaged in
diffusing the Georgian-Russian confrontation. It should also advise
Georgia not to escalate rhetoric and performance vis-a-vis Russia
unnecessarily. After all, a peaceful and prosperous Caucasus is in
the Russian, Georgian and American interests.
Ariel Cohen is senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies
and international energy security at the Heritage Foundation.

HISTORY A PART OF IMAGINATION
Laura Aylesworth
Royal Purple News, WI
Oct 19 2006
UW-Madison professor and historical writer is the most recent author
to visit campus
Mitchell
“If you’re not a writer and you spend hours and hours in a room
filled with imaginary people – people might think you are a little
weird.” This is an serious statement given by UW-Whitewater’s most
recent visiting author, Judith Claire Mitchell.
Mitchell, author of the historical novel “The Last Day of the War,”
associate creative writing professor and director of the MFA Program
at UW-Madison, came to campus on Tuesday, Oct. 10. She first visited
professor Alison Townsend’s current writing scene class to share her
insight on the writing life to eager students.
The novel took her six years to write and publish. It is based upon
her friend’s great-aunt’s letters describing her work as a Young
Mens Clubs of America volunteer in France in 1919, where she met an
Armenian who had lost his family. The story is of a Jewish girl from
St. Louis and an Armenian- American soldier at the end of World War I.
Mitchell had some Armenian friends and was inspired through them
to write a story about the Armenian massacres as well as the YMCA’s
efforts at that time. While researching the book, she noticed there
were no books on the Armenian genocide. After she realized this, she
felt it was important to write a story about this particular moment
in history.
At the Works in Progress Cafe, Mitchell unleashed what could be the
first chapter of a novel she is working on, with the tentative title
“On This Day in History.” The novel features three narrators who
were all real people in history, only they are now speaking from the
dead. Mitchell admits that it’s easier to “tell the story from the
dead” because you can pretty much make up anything.
The next guest author, Amaud Johnson, is the assistant creative
writing professor at UW-Madison and author of the book “Red Summer”.
Johnson will speak at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in 214 Heide Hall. Johnson
is also scheduled to speak at the Works in Progress Cafe at 4:30 p.m.
at Bassett House located at 708 W. Main St. Jesse Lee Kercheval is
the final guest lecturer and will speak Nov. 14.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

IT WAS A BAD MISTAKE, CORRECT IT IMMEDIATELY
Sabah. Turkey
Oct 19 2006
EU term President Finland warns France harshly: French parliament
has made a big mistake with the Armenian genocide bill.
EU term President Finland’s minister of foreign affairs Erkki
Tuomioja criticized France harshly for the Armenian bill in the
article published in presidency website. The title of the article was
“Parliaments should not make laws regarding historical facts.”
EU warns France: Withdraw the law immediately
EU term President Finland’s minister of foreign affairs Erkki Tuomioja
warned France and demanded France to correct this bad mistake.
EU term President Finland’s minister of foreign affairs Erkki Tuomioja
warned France once again and demanded France to correct this bad
mistake. EU term President has referred as “silly” to France’s approval
of the bill which anticipates denial of the Armenian genocide as a
crime. EU term President stated: “I do not find the term genocide
exaggerated for the events experienced at that period.”

PRESIDENT: COOPERATION WITH WORLD BANK HAS PRODUCED SIGNIFICANT RESULTS FOR ARMENIAN ECONOMY’S DEVELOPMENT
Regnum, Russia
Oct 19 2006
On October 18, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan met with World
Bank Yerevan office head Roger Robinson, who finished his official
mission in Armenia.
As a REGNUM correspondent was informed at the Armenian presidential
press office, Robert Kocharyan stressed that cooperation of the last
years with the WB produced significant results in the process of
Armenian economy’s development. Especially, the president stressed
that programs aimed at reforming structure of state governing,
infrastructural development, poverty reduction calling them important
factor for guaranteeing the country’s progress.
In his turn, Roger Robinson stressed with satisfaction the changes
in Armenia, to which the WB had contributed, too.
Robert Kocharyan wished Roger Robinson good luck in his further work,
stressing with assurance that it would be as efficient as it was
in Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

SPIELBERG CALLS HOME FOR POIGNANT PREMIERE
>From Tony Halpin in Kiev
The Times, UK
Oct 19 2006
HIS films have brought home the horror of the Holocaust to millions.
Yesterday Steven Spielberg came home to Ukraine to launch a film
about survivors of the Holocaust in his ancestral homeland.
The Hollywood director’s grandparents all came to the United States
from Ukraine, but Spielberg had not visited the country before last
night’s premiere of the documentary Spell Your Name, by the Ukrainian
director Sergei Bukovsky.
Spielberg told The Times that he feared that the “epidemic” of racism
would lead the world into a new era to match the mass slaughters of
the 20th century.
“Hatred comes from fear and we have experienced a century of fear and
I fear that we are going into another century of heightened fear,”
he said.
“Until we get to the bottom of what makes people so afraid of
the differences in others, and what we look like, we are going to
experience an even greater century of fear.”
Spielberg’s arrival in Ukraine came a month after commemorations
marking the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre in Kiev, when
the Nazis murdered 33,771 Jews in two days. He said he had visited
Babi Yar earlier in the day and placed stones at the memorials to
those killed – a traditional Jewish act of remembrance. It and other
massacres had happened, he said, because people had allowed them to.
Tolerance was born of education through films such as Spell Your Name.
“It happened in the 20th century with the Armenians, it happened in
Rwanda, it happened in Sarajevo,” he said. “What is inconceivable
to me is that as I look around at what technology has given us to
shrink the world and make us better neighbours and friends, we often
are not better neighbours and friends.”
The 90-minute documentary records testimonies of Jews who survived the
Nazi occupation of Ukraine. The $1 million project was funded by Victor
Pinchuk, a billionaire Ukrainian industrialist whose grand-father
left Kiev with his family shortly before the Nazis invaded.
“My parents told me that they knew friends and neighbours who found
themselves at Babi Yar,” Mr Pinchuk said.
He had been inspired by Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List to approach
the director with the idea for the documentary.
Spielberg, 59, whose Shoah Foundation co-produced the film, said he
was happy that it had given him an opportunity to visit Ukraine.
“I grew up in a home where my grandparents spoke Russian and Yiddish.
I kind of felt that I had a piece of Ukraine in my own home, especially
around dinner time,” he said.
A CELLULOID LIFE
Steven Spielberg, born December 18, 1946, has won three Oscars and
is the most commercially successful film director
Wrote and directed his first large-scale movie at 16 while attending
Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona
Applied unsuccessfully three times to the University of Southern
California’s School of Cinematic Arts
Attended California State University, Long Beach, majoring in English,
but dropped out in 1969 to take a television directing contract at
Universal Studios
Finished his degree by correspondence in 2002, 35 years after starting
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OUTSIDE VIEW: TURKEY’S ARMENIAN PROBLEM
By Pyotr Romanov – UPI Outside View Commentator
United Press International
Oct 19 2006
Denying its own Holocaust
MOSCOW — Armenian genocide is in the news again. There are two
reasons for this.
First, the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded this year to
brilliant Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had barely escaped prison for
publicly acknowledging the 1915 Armenian genocide. This is qualified
as treason by Turkish law.
He was saved by international solidarity but the pressure exerted on
him by the Turkish government had its effect. Pamuk flatly refused to
talk on the subject when he arrived in Moscow for the presentation
of his book in Russian translation. On a human plane, this is easy
to understand — the author wanted to return home to Istanbul, the
main character of all his books.
To sum up, the Nobel Committee’s decision has caused mixed feelings
in Turkey; it is not often that it gives such a prestigious award to
someone who is guilty of “high treason” at home.
The law that has just been passed by the lower chamber of the French
Parliament has evoked an even bigger uproar. In a way, this is a mirror
image of the Turkish law on Armenian genocide; in Istanbul the crime
is to admit genocide, whereas in France it is illegal to refute it.
The adoption of this law in France was generated by domestic
pre-election considerations rather than international motives. It
is highly dubious that the upper chamber will approve this law,
and even less likely that the President will sign it. Moreover,
France officially acknowledged the Armenian genocide by passing a
relevant law in 2001. President Jacques Chirac was laying a wreath
to the monument to the victims of genocide at almost the same time
as the Parliament voted for the recent law.
Incidentally, the official date of the Armenian genocide — 1915 — is
largely a convention. There had been atrocious anti-Armenian pogroms
much earlier than that. Thus, the Turkish theory of attributing the
events to the excesses of the war is not convincing.
Moreover, the Turks were also slaughtering Greeks, Serbs, and many
other Christians.
The wave of indignation which has swept Turkey because of Europe’s
renewed attention to the genocide is remarkable. The recent protests
in Turkey suggest many questions. The main one is whether it is worth
admitting to the EU a country that does not want to acknowledge its
guilt for heinous past crimes and repent for them? Respect for Germany
only grew when it was honest about the Holocaust. What prevents Turkey
from telling the truth?
Can Europe fling its doors open to Turkey?
I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that the survival of
European civilization in the 21st century depends on what decision
the EU adopts on Turkey’s admission. The excessive flow of migrants
is already a heavy burden for Europe. The migrants may contribute to
its culture, but every year the Europeans lose much more, and their
identity is fading away amidst this carnival of newcomers. If Europe
cannot absorb the migrants it already has, what will happen when it
flings open its doors to Turkey? Fairy tale writers may hope that
Europe stands to gain from this, but others will have to face reality.
On top of it all, there is also the religious aspect, from which
Europe is trying to disassociate itself as much as possible.
Meanwhile, political correctness is only indispensable in everyday
life but very counterproductive when it comes to serious analysis.
Looking at life through rose-tinted glasses means deliberately
distorting reality, and making wrong decisions.
Speaking Aesopian language may help one avoid the “uncomfortable” word
— Islam. But if you want to survive in the real world, you had better
look through old newspapers, recall the names of terrorists, find out
who taught them, whom they prayed to, and who gave them money. Only
in this way will you be able to protect yourself and your children.
As Orthodox Father Kurayev put it, instead of going into the future,
rethinking and reassessing its past, elements within the Islamic
world have convulsed under any excuse imaginable. On one occasion,
it may be the problem of hijab, on another, the cartoon scandal, and
on still other, a deliberate misinterpretation of an ancient quotation
mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI. Fits of hatred are frequently directed
at Christians, who are attacked and often murdered.
German opera directors have recently decided to cancel a performance
with a Muslim motive for fear that Muslim fanatics might go crazy.
Angela Merkel made a statement against this decision, but it did not
help. Europe is already filled with fear.
Of course, it would be incorrect to say that most Muslim likes these
fits of hatred. But the general goal of Islam is clear — to unite the
Muslim world along obvious lines. It is an indisputable fact that in
the 21st century the non-Muslim world has developed serious problems
with fundamentalist Islam.
Some people believe that these are growing pains rather than the
gist of Islamic doctrine. I’d like to hope this is so. But even in
this case, it is more sensible to wait until teenage aggressiveness
is over before inviting such a guest home.
Others attribute Islamic extremism to impudence towards Muslims on
behalf of people professing other religions. This also happens from
time to time. Impudence is evil, but it should not be mixed with the
right to speak the truth. Hard-line Muslims must learn to appreciate
freedom of speech, and respect the opinion of others. Otherwise, we
will get nowhere. This is absurdity rather than political correctness.
Still others think that social inequality is the root of all evil.
This opinion is justified. We should end social inequality by all
reasonable methods.
What we should not do is to fling European doors wide open without
first thinking about the consequences. The times have changed.
— (Pyotr Romanov is a political commentator for RIA Novosti. This
article was reprinted with permission from the news agency.) —
(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written
by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important
issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of World
Peace Herald or United Press International. In the interest of creating
an open forum, original submissions are invited.)