More likely the Canadians have caught on to the whole genocide trap.
But first: yes, Isis have indeed committed horrific crimes against
minorities under their control. Their massacre of Shia Muslims and
the murder and enslavement of Yazidi and Christian women and
children are all real – perhaps 10,000, perhaps 100,000, the figures
are as numbing as they are vague. The Isis magazine Dabiq admits
all this – perhaps the closest anyone has come to self-incrimination
since Pol Pot listed his crimes in Cambodia.
But there’s a problem. These terrible atrocities are being committed
on the very land and deserts upon which a far more terrible genocide
was perpetrated just over a hundred years ago by the Turks who
head-chopped and knifed and shot to death a million and a half
Armenian Christians, raping their women and throwing so many
of their dead men into the waters of Anatolia that the very rivers
changed course. And Turkey – heaven be praised – is now our
good friend, Nato ally and, since this month, our bastion against
the Muslim refugee "invasion" of Europe. Back in 1915, the Brits
and Americans had no problems in naming the guilty party, along
with the Turks’ militia ally – again, take in your breath – the Kurds,
now our brave allies against the forces of Isis darkness.
All this, you see, is a bit embarrassing. The Yazidis and Christians
of Iraq have certainly been massacred – including a few Armenian
grandchildren of the 1915 survivors, although that hasn’t cut much
ice in the US – although the Shia Muslims of Iraq were being
slaughtered in Iraq by the thousand during the latter half of
America’s military occupation. The Shia, I suspect, have been
given a bloodbath upgrade to genocide because Shia Iran a
greed to a nuclear deal with the rest of the world. But back to
Yazidis for a moment.
One of the worst genocides against this forlorn, centuries-old religion
occurred in 1892 when the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II
targeted them for mass extermination. But the Sultan included
among his victims tens of thousands of 19 th century Armenians
– whom Mr Kerry cannot bring himself to declare victims of genocide
in the 20 th century (although he did so for many years when he
was a mere Senator). So earlier references to Yazidi extermination
have to be left out of the Kerry narrative of history. The current Kerry
mantra for the Armenian genocide is “one of the worst atrocities of
the 20 th century”.
Clinton is going to be no help in all this. She regularly condemned
the Armenian genocide until she became Secretary of State to
Barack Obama and discovered that the frightful persecution of the
1915 Christians – a teaching forum for future Nazis who witnessed
the genocide as young German army officers and later put their
lessons into practice against the Jews – was now “a matter of
historical debate”. Donald Trump has not yet entered this particular
blood-boltered ‘debate’ although his Trump hotel in Azerbaijan
– a country which, like Turkey and (to its shame) Israel, denies the
Armenian genocide – suggests that we shall be hearing from him
soon.
Much of the rest of the world – governments and parliaments of
29 countries up to last year – have recognised the Armenian
genocide. For 20 years, The Independent has regularly referred
to the Armenian Holocaust – with a capital ‘H’, the very same word
(‘Shoah’ in Hebrew) used by many ordinary Israelis to describe the
slaughter. But not the Americans.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose Sukhoi jet had
of course not yet been shot down by the Turks, attended the official
genocide memorial day in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, declaring
the genocide a fact of history – to the fury of the Turks -- while
President Obama skulked in Washington, still too fearful of offending
his Nato ally whose airbases – ironically built, in many cases, on
lands stolen from murdered Armenians – were so important to the
US Air Force which was already supposedly destroying Isis.
All in all, then a pretty mess. Kerry tells us that Isis is “genocidal by
self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions…” as if the destruction
of the Armenian people in 1915 was not – and is perfectly happy to
label the dark forces of the ‘Islamic Caliphate’ as genocidal themselves
– which they clearly are. But it raises another frightful question. Since
we know that Isis sells Syrian and Iraqi oil to the Turks – Russian
bomber pilots have seen miles of Isis oil convoys running to the
horizon towards Turkey – and since Turkish journalists have been
imprisoned for reporting on secret Turkish arms transfers to Islamists
in Syria – the Americans are, in effect, blaming Isis for the genocide
of a hundred thousand or more human beings while being too
frightened to label the Armenian massacres of a million and a half
souls as genocide lest it offend Isis’ sinister chums in Turkey.
It’s not difficult to accuse the bad guys of genocide – Colin Powell had
no problem over Darfur in 2004 – but shouldn’t we stand up to the real
bullies who prevent us honouring the memory of those million and a
half Christians who were treated just as Isis treats the Yazidis and
Christians and Shia today : the Turkish government and the Turkish
army and the Turkish institutes of state? And all this at a time when
an increasing number of brave Turks are themselves acknowledging
the Turkish genocide of 1915?
Forget it: 75 million visas to Turkey in response to their $3-billion
European bailout to block those refugees is enough to keep the
Armenian mass graves of 1915 well and truly closed. Just ask
John Kerry.
asbarez.com
An 82 year old cyclist on his 17th mission to help Armenia
25 Mar 2016 Siranush Ghazanchyan Asbarez ` Vatche Soghomonian, the 82 year old athlete and lifetime
member of Homenetmen Scouts, will be riding his bike again for another
worthy cause to aid the people of Armenia.
It was 17 years ago, in 1999, when Vatche rode his bike from capital
to capital ` Stepanakert to Yerevan to help fund the grape nursery
that the Armenian Technology Group, Inc. (ATG) was establishing in
Karabakh. Since then, every year he devotes two weeks in the summer to
travel to Armenia with his own resources to paddle throughout the
countryside to raise funds in support of numerous worthy endeavors.
This year, Vatche has committed himself to help deliver the latest
innovation, the Mobile Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (MVDL), to
Armenia. `This is the most valuable and noble mission that I am
undertaking,' said Vatche. In 2004, Vatche, along with his cycling
friends, helped deliver four milk collecting-refrigeration tanks for
ATG project in Armenia. He will ride his bike on April 2, 2016.
`I was a lab technician during my college years. Now that I see this
portable lab, I can only envision how beneficial it will be to the
veterinarians and especially to the dairy farmers.' It will enable the
vets to do on site testing and diagnosis of food producing animals to
ensure that they are free of diseases. After all, the consumers, the
children and people in Armenia, will benefit from it.
`My goal is to raise enough funds to supply one portable lab this
year,' said Vatche.
This innovation is the latest projects of the ATG. Dr. James Reynolds,
President of ATG, devoted three years of his time to testing and
assembling the lab and delivered the first prototype to Armenia in
2015. ATG's objective is to supply 10 MVDLs, one for each region of
Armenia and Karabakh. Each of the units costs $15,000, which includes
training and follow-up support to develop baseline diagnostic
information and clinical data. The MVDL could be rapidly deployed and
activated in any rural location. Our mission is simply help increase
farm production and income.
More than 25 years ago, ATG started with a simple belief that we can
make a difference in the lives of your brothers and sisters in Armenia
and Artsakh no matter what the challenges are. We have the collective
power to do so.
As Vatche likes to say with a smile on his face, `I will be doing all
the hard work, and I will truly appreciate your financial support for
this worthy cause.'
National Geographic Magazine
OUT OF EDEN WALK A Century Later, Slaughter Still Haunts 
