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Saturday 28 April 2007

Norman Stone: 'There is No Armenian Genocide'

Famous British Historian says he is ready to be prisoned by France

JTW News (Saturday , 21 October 2006)

“The Armenian ‘genocide’ is an imperialist plot.” So said Dogu Perincek, in Marxist mode, and he chose to say it in Switzerland. Switzerland passed a law threatening prison for anyone ‘denying’ that there had been a genocide of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915, and Mr. Perincek was interrogated by the police.

There have been similar events in other countries and now we have the French parliament passing a law that is harsher than the Swiss one – a year’s prison and a heavy fine. This is a ridiculous and contemptible business – bad history and worse politics. It is also financially very grubby indeed. We all know how the American legal system can work: lawyers will agree to work for nothing, in return for a share of the profits at the end of a court case. Court cases are very expensive and it can simply be easier for banks or firms or hospitals to agree to make a payment without any confession of liability, just because fighting the case would be absurdly expensive, and the outcome – given how the American jury system works – unpredictable. A burglar, crawling over a householder’s glass roof, fell through it, was badly wounded, and took the householder to court: result, a million dollars in damages. Class actions by Armenian Diaspora descendants in California shook down the Deutsche Bank over claims dating back to 1915 and collected 17,000,000 dollars; then they attempted the same with a French insurance company. We can be entirely certain that if Turkey ever ‘recognizes the genocide’ then the financial claims will follow.

But if Turkey refuses to admit it, she is in fact on perfectly good ground. The very first thing to be said is that the business of ‘genocide’ has never been proved. The evidence for it is at best indirect and when the British were in occupation of Istanbul they never found any direct evidence or proof at all. They kept some hundred or so prominent Turks in captivity on Malta, hoping to find some sort of evidence against them, and failed. They asked the Americans if they knew anything and were told, no. The result is that the alleged ‘genocide’ has never been subjected to a properly-constituted court of law. The British released their Turks (meanly refusing to pay for their journeys back home from Malta). There is a counter-claim to the effect that this happened because the Nationalist Turks were holding British officers hostage but the fact is that the Law Officers simply said that they did not have the evidence to try their captives.

Diaspora Armenians claim that ‘historians’ accept the genocide case. There is some preposterous organization called ‘association of genocide scholars’ which does indeed endorse the Diaspora line, but who are they and what qualifications do they have? Knowing about Rwanda or Bosnia or even Auschwitz does not qualify them to discuss Anatolia in 1915, and the Ottoman specialists are by no means convinced of the ‘genocide’. There is in fact an ‘A’ team of distinguished historians who do not accept the Diaspora line at all. In France, Gilles Veinstein, historian of Salonica and a formidable scholar, reviewed the evidence in a famous article of 1993 in L’Histoire. Back then the Armenian Diaspora were also jumping up and down about something or other, and Veinstein summed up the arguments for and against, in an admirably fair-minded way. The fact is that there is no proof of ‘genocide’, in the sense that no document ever appeared, indicating that the Armenians were to be exterminated. There is forged evidence. In 1920 some documents were handed to the British by a journalist called Andonian. She claimed that he had been given them by an Ottoman official called Naim. The documents have been published as a book (in English and French) and if you take them at face value they are devastating: here is Talaat Pasha as minister of the Interior telling the governors to exterminate the Armenians, not to forget to exterminate the children in orphanages, but to keep it all secret. But the documents are very obviously a forgery – elementary mistakes as regards dates and signatures. At the time, in 1920, the new Armenian Republic was collapsing. Kazim Karabekir was advancing on Kars (which fell almost without resistance) and the Turkish Nationalists were co-operating with Moscow (in effect there was a bargain: Turkey would abandon Azerbaijan and Russia would abandon Anatolian Armenia). The Armenians were desperate to get the British to intervene and save them, by landing troops at Trabzon. However, the British (and still more the French) had had enough of the problems of Asia Minor and were in the main content to settle with the new Turkey. Andonian’s documents belong in that context. The chief Armenian ‘genocidist,’ V.Dadrian, still passionately defends the authenticity of these documents but the attempt does not do much credit to his scholarship: for instance, to the claim that the paper on which these documents were written came from the French school in Aleppo, he answers that there was a paper shortage (leading the Ottoman governor to ask a French headmaster if he could use some of his school-paper? Not very likely). The Naim-Andonian documents have incidentally never been tested in a court. The British refused to use them and a German court subsequently waved them aside. They have since disappeared – not what you would have expected had they been at all that is the sum total of the evidence as to ‘genocide’. Otherwise you are left with what English courts call ‘circumstantial evidence’ – i.e. a witness testifying that another witness said something to someone. Such evidence does not count. In the past three years Armenian historians have apparently been going round archives ın two dozen countries to find out what they contain – the Danish archives for instance. What they contain is what we knew already – that an awful lot of Armenians were killed or died in the course of a wartime deportation from many parts of Anatolia. Did the Ottoman government intend to exterminate the race, or was it just a deportation that went horribly wrong?

As to this, the experts are divided. A deportation gone wrong is the verdict of many of the best qualified historians – Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Justin McCarthy, Yusuf Halacoglu. Other historians who know the old script and the background believe that it was a premeditated campaign of extermination, and some of these historians are Turkish (Mete Tuncay and Selim Deringil, unless I am taking their names in vain). There is a Turkish historian, Taner Akcam, whose book, based on the war-crimes trials set up in the early period of the British occupation, is obviously scholarly and who accepts the genocide thesis (though he does stress that the process cannot be compared with what happened in Nazi Germany to the Jews). In view of these divisions among scholars it is simply scandalous that the French or any other parliament should decree what the answer is. But it is worse, because the Armenian Diaspora can be extremely vindictive. For instance, Gilles Veinstein, as a reward for his quite dispassionate article, faced a campaign of vilification. He had become a candidate for the College de France, which elects the very best scholars in the country to give seminars. The historians very much welcomed this: he is an extremely serious scholar. But the Armenian Diaspora organized a campaign against him, especially among the mathematicians for some reason. One of them, a Professor Thom, was told that, on the whole, the French historians supported Veinstein and did not like the genocide thesis. His answer: ‘they are all Ottomanists,’ as if that somehow disqualified them. The fact is that the Armenian Diaspora have never taken this affair to a proper court of law. Instead, they try to silence men such as Veinstein. There was an extraordinary episode in American publishing two years ago. A very well-known historian, Gunther Lewy, who was a professor at the University of Massachusetts and author of several books still in print on modern German history, wrote a book on the Armenian massacres on the basis of German documents. The book is valuable because it shows how Dadrian twisted the German evidence. He offered it to his usual publisher, Oxford University Press (New York branch). A report was commissioned from one Papazian – not exactly a celebrity – who identified what he claimed were tremendous inaccuracies: they turn out either not to be inaccuracies, or just little slips of the kind anyone might make. On that basis Lewy’s manuscript was refused on the grounds that he had taken up ‘Turkish denialist discourse’. He found another publisher, the University of Utah Press. And lo and behold the senior Armenian historian in the USA, Richard Hovannisian (University of California) wrote in protest to the President of that University to complain about the publication. Be it said, incidentally, that the last two volumes of Hovannisian’s History of Independent Armenia are a well-written and fair-minded account – in some ways, even a classic of historical writing (the earlier two volumes are not of the same class).

Now, there is something very wrong here. If you believe that you are right, and then you will let evidence speak for itself, and if you face opposition you will simply expect to win the argument one way or the other. Attempts to silence opposition, to boycott lectures by, say, Justin McCarthy, to bully or manipulate foreign politicians – all of that surely argues that the Armenians themselves know their case is very far from being overwhelming. In any case it does nothing whatsoever for Armenia. If you go to eastern Turkey and Kars, look across the border at Armenia. It is very poor, and will continue so if there is no commerce with Turkey. The only obvious industry is the issue of visas for Moscow or the USSR (or for that matter Turkey, where up to 100,000 ex-Soviet Armenians live). The place obviously lives off Diaspora money (and the spread of American fast-food places now means curiously enough that the inhabitants are becoming obese in the manner of some Americans). In Soviet times Armenia had a population approaching three million. Then came independence and the war over Karabagh. The population dwindles and declines every year and is now not much above 1,500,000 – of all absurdities, in other words, independence has caused the Armenians to lose twice as many as vanished in the supposed ‘genocide’ of 1915. There is in other words a sickness at the heart of this whole frankly preposterous affair.

What should Turkey do? If the French law does pass then Turks must be prepared to act, otherwise they risk being landed with enormous bills for compensation. It will take organization. I would volunteer, myself, to provoke some trouble in France: it would be very easy indeed for me to give a public lecture and just to point out what is wrong about the whole thesis of the ‘Armenian genocide’ – I might even just read out Veinstein’s article (or another important one by the then leading German general, Bronsart von Schellendorf). The French government probably would be mad enough to put me in prison for a while (this was done to a well-respected French historian of slavery, whose crime had been to point out that many Africans were involved in the slave trade and that some slaves volunteered for transportation because it saved them from cannibalism). But someone has to make a stand against the ridiculous misuse of parliamentary power and the instructing of historians what they must say about an event nearly a century old in a country two thousand kilometers away with a language that very few people can now read.

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Norman Stone (1941-) is a British historian of modern Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. He is the author of ''Europe Transformed, 1878-1919.'' Stone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Between 1984-1997, he served as professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Since 1997 Stone has worked at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. After 2005, he transferred to Koc University,Istanbul,Turkey and still continues to teach there.
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20 October 2006

Tuesday 24 April 2007

The politics of saying 'genocide'

Dear Friends,

Have a read of the below article published in the LA Times and my communications with Mr Welch below that.

Regards
Ataman

The politics of saying 'genocide'

More than 90 years after the Armenian genocide, the U.S. is deadlocked in a humiliating linguistic debate.

By Matt Welch, MATT WELCH is The Times' assistant editorial pages editor.April 22, 2007

ON TUESDAY, President Bush will be obliged, by law, to wrap his double-talking mouth around one of the most curiously persistent debates in modern geopolitics: Whether to call a 92-year-old genocide a "genocide."Every April 24 since 1994, the U.S. president has delivered a proclamation honoring the people Congress has declared to be "the victims of genocide, especially the 1 1/2 million people of Armenian ancestry who were the victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923." And every year since 1994, the U.S. president has managed to do it without once uttering the G-word.

It's a ritual of linguistic realpolitik in deference to the massive objections from Washington's important NATO ally, Turkey. But 2007 may be the year that the cop-out finally blows up in a president's face. What was once the obscure obsession of marginalized immigrants from a powerless little Caucasus country has blossomed in recent years into a force that has grown increasingly difficult to ignore. In 2000, the Armenian issue helped fuel one of the most expensive House races in U.S. history; two years ago, it turned a mild-mannered career U.S. diplomat into an unlikely truth-telling martyr.

Now the question of how to address these long-ago events is having an impact on next month's elections in Turkey. What's more, Congress appears poised to vote on a resolution urging the president to say the words "Armenian genocide" when observing the awkwardly named "National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man" on April 24 — the date in 1915 when the Ottoman predecessors of modern Turkey launched the genocide by rounding up 250 Armenian intellectuals for eventual execution.The resolution won't take effect on Tuesday. The Bush administration, ever mindful of its delicate relationship with Turkey (especially with a war in Iraq next door), takes the bill so seriously that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned in a joint letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) that it could "harm American troops in the field."

The lobbying has been successful enough that the House has delayed its vote until after this year's April 24 commemoration. But passage later this year would still be an enormous blow to the White House.Why is this hairsplitting exercise over a single word — in a nonbinding resolution, no less — reverberating so strongly more than nine decades later? The easy answer is that there has been a confluence of mostly unrelated events. Democrats took control of Congress in January and are spoiling for a fight, especially one that can paint Bush's foreign policy as hypocritical. The president, after all, used "genocide" as a justification to topple Saddam Hussein before, during and after the war against his regime, and the United States has not hesitated to apply the word to the crisis in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died since 2003. Across the Atlantic, the Armenian question — especially Turkey's offensive laws against "insulting Turkishness," which have been used to prosecute even novelists who create fictional characters questioning the government's denialist position — has become one of the main lines of attack against Turkey's bid to become the first majority-Muslim country to join the European Union.

Most of the 15 countries that have officially recognized the genocide are European (with Switzerland and France even going so far as to pass over-the-top laws making it a crime to deny the genocide).Then there was the January murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in broad daylight on a busy Istanbul street. Dink's assassination, at the hands of a Turkish nationalist, shocked the world and led to a wave of anxious introspection in Turkey. Yet Ankara quickly — and disastrously — concluded that the proper response was to redouble its losing campaign to prevent foreign governments from using the G-word.High-level Turkish ministers were dispatched to Washington over the last few months to warn that the resolution in Congress could force them to close the crucial U.S. Air Force Base at Incirlik and could imperil relations at a tipping-point moment for the Middle East. (The exact same argument was used by President Clinton in October 2000 to convince then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert to withdraw at the last moment a similar bill, introduced by then-Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale), who was fighting a losing battle against Democratic challenger Adam Schiff in an $11-million race.)

For Turks, the genocide is taboo for a host of reasons, but perhaps the most important is that it occurred at the time of the founding of modern Turkey under Kemal Ataturk, a man so sainted that insulting his memory is still punishable by jail. So the battle continues, year after year. Earlier this month, Turkish lobbyists successfully scotched a United Nations exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it dared refer to the "1 million Armenians murdered in Turkey." "Every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide," a New York Times editorial observed, "they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today's democratic Turkey with the now distant crime." Turks even helped water down a U.S. Senate resolution condemning Dink's murder.Yet this flurry of recent developments doesn't adequately explain the enduring potency of the recognition issue.For that I will defer to the most recent U.S. ambassador to Armenia, John Marshall Evans: "In the real world," Evans told a packed Beverly Hilton hall of diaspora Armenians in February, "when an official policy diverges wildly from what the broad public believes is self-evident, that policy ceases to command respect."

Evans, a career, keep-your-head-down foreign service type, surveyed the available literature on the events of 1915-23 before taking the Armenian post in September 2004 and concluded that the U.S. position of avoiding the word "genocide" diverged so wildly from the historical consensus that it undermined Washington's moral authority.He attempted to budge the policy from behind the scenes, but when that failed he took a page from a man he knew well from his pre- and post-communist postings to Prague — former Czech President Vaclav Havel and decided to publicly "call things by their proper names."So in February 2005, while speaking in California, Evans said: "I will today call it the Armenian genocide. I think we, the U.S. government, owe you, our fellow citizens, a more frank and honest way of discussing this problem." For that remark he was recalled from his post so that Washington could get back to the business of evading the historical truth.President Bush won't say "genocide" on Tuesday. In the words of Condoleezza Rice, the administration's position is that Turks and Armenians both need to "get over their past" without American help. But this issue won't go away. Watching Rice's linguistic contortions in response to harsh congressional interrogation by Schiff, who has become the Armenians' great House champion, is profoundly dispiriting; it makes one embarrassed to be American.

Of all issues subject to realpolitik compromises, mass slaughter of a national minority surely should rank at the bottom of the list. Hitler reportedly said, just before invading Poland, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's a chilling reminder that forgetting is the first step in enabling future genocides. Yet Hitler was eventually proved wrong. No temporal power is strong enough to erase the eternal resonance of truth.

matt.welch@latimes.com



Your welcome for the links but there is so much more out there, ever thought what the Armenians in Turkey have got to say have a look at their web site http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/ there is so much information but to us Turks it appears that the “Western” (how I hate to use that word) seems to “Censor” that is never puts forward the Turkish case. As you would well be aware being a learned person that the Offence of Genocide is a very serious and heinous criminal offence. Why has there been no conviction of any Turkish Official Ottoman or otherwise for the crime of Genocide or akin to Genocide. This is a matter, which ought to be resolved in a Court of Law or properly convened Tribunal. The Republic of Armenia as well as many other nations like France, Switzerland and the U.S. could take the Republic of Turkey as the successor State of the Ottoman Empire to any number of International Tribunals, but they haven’t why is that ? That is because the requisite evidence does not exist, that is the Turks with the intent of exterminating in part or whole their Armenian citizens.

You see PBS and most media in the West do censor the Turkish side there is a very professional documentary produced entirely by an independent American Martin Callaghan named “ The Armenian Revolt” they will not air it and the Armenian Diaspora do all within their power to censor the Turkish side. The media give effect to that censorship by never stipulating the full facts of the matter, ala the Malta Tribunals the precursor to the Nuremberg Trials. The difference being out of the 144 Ottoman Officials arrested by the British and incarcerated on their island colony of Malta were never charged with any criminal offence let alone tried. After two and a half years approximately of an exhaustive inquiry by Lord Curzon ( a man known to loathe the Turks) he asked the US government of the day to assist with any evidence or information and the response came back that they had none. Yet these facts and many more are never published, however, the proven forgeries of the Armenians are continually put before the public as if it were the truth like a broken record with the intention of “Manufacturing Consent”. So much so that individual Turks have got together to show that it’s not a Turkish Government conspiracy by placing full page adds in your newspaper and the New York Times (again another media outlet which is Anti Turkish) to put to the wider public the facts of the matter.

Even when the first Prime Minister of the Armenian Republic states that it wasn’t a genocide in his speech and subsequent book the Western Media take no notice. How much more independent evidence do we have to provide.

Regards
Ataman

From: Welch, Matt [mailto:Matt.Welch@latimes.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 6:33 AM
To: Ataman
Subject: RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

There is a difference between "censoring" someone and not agreeing to "put in an editorial" that supports their views. (We have, and will continue to, publish Op-Eds that are much more aligned to your point of view than to mine.) I'll continue to seek truth where I can find it, and thanks for the links.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Welch Assistant Editorial Page Editor, Los Angeles Times 213-237-7330 www.latimes.com/opinion Opinion L.A. blog ~ www.opinion.latimes.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Ataman Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 3:34 PM
To: 'Welch, Matt'Subject: RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

Dear Matt,

If you appreciate my position and agree to censor nobody and continue searching for the truth, why don’t you put in an editorial about the Turkish case facts and all. Have a look at the web site http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/ it has references to documentary evidence. Further why do you state,

"Hitler reportedly said, just before invading Poland, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's a chilling reminder that forgetting is the first step in enabling future genocides. Yet Hitler was eventually proved wrong. No temporal power is strong enough to erase the eternal resonance of truth.”

When you well know that comment attributed to Hitler is fictitious. What about the Malta Tribunals and so much more have you ever looked at what the Turks have to say for themselves ? Or is it easier creating bogeymen of Muslim nations.

Ataman

From: Welch, Matt [mailto:Matt.Welch@latimes.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 6:20 AMTo: Ataman
Subject: RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

Dear Ataman,

I appreciate your position, censor nobody, and continue seeking the truth.

Best,
Matt

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Welch Assistant Editorial Page Editor, Los Angeles Times 213-237-7330 www.latimes.com/opinion Opinion L.A. blog ~ www.opinion.latimes.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Ataman Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 3:23 PM
To: 'Welch, Matt'
Subject: RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

Dear Matt,

The information is not new for those who truly seek the truth and do not attempt to censor the case for the Turks, and it’s hard to be respectful under continual attacks by the media.

Regards
Ataman

From: Welch, Matt [mailto:Matt.Welch@latimes.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 6:14 AM
To: Ataman Subject:
RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

Dear Ataman,

Unlike you, I will respectfully disagree. Thanks for writing, and bringing new information to my attention.

Best,
Matt

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Welch Assistant Editorial Page Editor, Los Angeles Times 213-237-7330 www.latimes.com/opinion Opinion L.A. blog ~ www.opinion.latimes.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Ataman Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 3:16 PM
To: matt.welch@latimes.comSubject: RE: The Fallacious Armenian Genocide claims

Dear Mr Welch,

When will the Media and journalists such as yourself develop a conscience, and speak the full truth for once in your lives. Although I am not a medically trained Doctor I am led to believe most journalists possess the character traits of a socio – path. Have a look at what a former Australian Ambassador had to say about the fallacious Armenian Genocide claims. His letter was published in The Australian Newspaper if ever you want to search for the truth. And I quote,

“Mr. George Karagiannakis's letter (2/6/94), making all sorts of incredible allegations against Turkey in regard to its domestic and foreign policies, should not be allowed to go unanswered.

It is not possible in the space of a few lines to answer all of his allegations. However, in fairness to the truth, the following points must be made:

The 'facts beyond credible dispute' to which he alludes are in fact based largely on fictions to justify unrealistic ambitions or failures in the past to achieve totally unrealistic goals.

Whilst it is true and sad that many Armenians lost their lives in their own bid for territory, what is not recognized is that the Armenians themselves inflicted as much damage as others in the hostilities of that time, goaded on by some Western powers for their own selfish and geopolitical objectives.

The Turks had no deliberate policy of genocide at any stage, only the removal of Armenians from the front line with Russia, where they were collaborating with the Ottoman Empire's enemies and were thus a threat to its security.

The Kurdish issue is more complex. Two points are relevant:

The PKK, like IRA, is a terrorist organization, SUPPORTED MATERIALLY BY THE GREEKS AND ARMENIANS, with the stated objective of destabilizing Turkey. It has so far assassinated over 10,000 people in Turkey. It has no justifiable claim to represent the Kurdish people.

Most Kurds are integrated into Turkish society. About one-third of the Turkish Parliament is of Kurdish origin. This illustrates the absence of discrimination.


As for Cyprus, if any genocide or ethnic cleansing has taken place, this has always been carried out by the Greeks. The abortive coup of 1974, organized by EOKA and Greek colonels, aimed at elimination of the Turkish Cypriots from the Island. Turkey intervened to protect them and prevent Enosis. Since that date, the island has been peaceful and free of bloodshed.

Turkey has consistently supported a fair and reasonable settlement on Cyprus, but one that gives the Turkish Cypriots a secure future and equal political and social status with the Greek Cypriots.

The real problem between Greece and Turkey is Greece's reluctance to give up its Megali idea, that is, the recovery of the territories occupied by the Byzantine Empire, which finally fell to the Turks in 1453. All the many conflicts between Greece and Turkey over the past two centuries have been initiated by Greece. Your correspondent's reference to bloodied Turkish history is therefore clearly wrong, except in the fact that in the past three Greek-initiated conflicts, the Turks gave the Greeks a severe hiding, which partly accounts for the large fall in numbers of Greeks in present-day Turkey.

Regarding persecution. the Ottomans had one of the most tolerant policies towards non-Turks of any empire of its day. The three communities of Jews, Greeks and Armenians were virtually autonomous within the empire.”

P. F. Peters

Former Australian Ambassador to Turkey
(The Australian, June 9th, 1994)


Further still, have a look at what Justice Brian Sully of the Supreme Court of NSW had to say about the media and I quote,

“A Sully serve for sullied media, law reformers
by Richard Ackland SMH
March 30, 2007

Talk about blowing a gasket. One of the state's senior trial judges, Justice Brian Sully of the NSW Supreme Court, retired last week with a finely honed tirade from the bench. He'd been on the court for 18 years and clearly there was a lot to unbottle on valedictory day. His targets: law reformers, bureaucrats and the vile media.

Here's a few of his slices about the rotten press: "The media, as we know, react with savage vindictiveness to any attempt to apply to them those standards of transparency and accountability that they are insistent on applying to other people … The media are not a constitutional arm of government … To suggest that [they are] is legal fiction, a political subversion and a moral absurdity. The media are major money-making cartels. They are not knights in shining armour. Their agenda is power. Their strategy is fear and their tactics are a combination of ridicule, sometimes of the most savage personal kind."

It got better. The media deal in lies and worse, "finely calibrated half-truths"; they fuse fact and opinion, and there's been a campaign in recent times in the Sydney metropolitan media "which in my time has never been surpassed for the persistent, wilful and vicious mendacity with which it has been conducted".

It's about time the Bar Association did something about it, the steaming judge declared. It should take the fight to the media by insisting they say not what they are against, but what they are for.”

I couldn’t agree more with His Honour. You are a pathetic individual with no morals whatsoever in the manner which you report.

Regards
Ataman

Friday 20 April 2007

Turkey called unfit to join EU after killings

Dear Friends,

Have a read of the below article it will astound you. All I have to say is how many times do the Turks have to be told they are not welcome in the EU, don't we have any shame. Forget about the EU and stop begging to get in. We have been told on numerous occasions it is a Christian Club. They still have the Crusades mentality. We should be looking towards the Turkic Republics and Asia for Turkey's future prosperity.

All I would like to say to young Miss Dictator and her Nazi friend is when the British, Germans, Spanish and French stop terrorism and murder occurring in their own countries then the Turks will follow suit. Clean up you own backyards before criticising Turkey.

Regards
Ataman


Turkey called unfit to join EU after killings

By Philip Pullella

ROME (Reuters) - Italian and German conservatives on Thursday said the killing of three Christians at a Bible publishing house in Turkey showed Ankara could not control violent Islamists and was thus unfit to join Europe.

"Yet another attack against Christian values. Turkey should forget about the European Union," said Massimo Polledri, a senator from the anti-immigrant Northern League. The three Christians, including a German, were found with their throats slit on Wednesday at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, a city in the predominantly Muslim country's southeast.
Alessandra Mussolini, a parliamentarian who is granddaughter of Italy's wartime dictator, urged Italians to sign her petition to the EU condemning the killings and stating the "refusal of Italian citizens to allow Turkey into the European Union".

"After this the question of Turkey's EU entry cannot be just a bureaucratic decision," she said, also referring to last year's killing of an Italian missionary priest in Turkey. Ankara began membership talks in October 2005 but the EU has frozen negotiations in eight of the 35 policy areas because of a row over Cyprus.

"Turkey has once again shown itself not to be worthy of the values and standards of Europe," said Wolfgang Boernsen, a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, adding that "Europe's and the Christian West's cultural identity is being challenged".
Germany's conservative Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) oppose full membership and instead favour a "privileged partnership."
Opinion polls in predominantly Catholic Italy show that many people oppose Turkey in the EU because of its Muslim background and human rights record.

"The government must send a clear signal to the Turkish government -- that the violation of religious freedom and human rights are incompatible with any hypothesis of Turkish membership in Europe," said Luca Volonte, from the UDC party. He said Ankara tolerated "Islamist extremists ... who see Christians as sacrificial animals whose throats should be slit".
Prime Minister Romano Prodi, on a trip to Asia, said the killings "certainly will not help" Turkey's EU bid but that such incidents should not be allowed to influence "policy regarding long-term horizons".
(additional reporting by Tom Armitage in Belin)

Tuesday 17 April 2007

The Fallacious Armenian Genocide a perspective by an Australian Ambassador

Mr. George Karagiannakis's letter (2/6/94), making all sorts of incredible allegations against Turkey in regard to its domestic and foreign policies, should not be allowed to go unanswered.

It is not possible in the space of a few lines to answer all of his allegations. However, in fairness to the truth, the following points must be made:

The 'facts beyond credible dispute' to which he alludes are in fact based largely on fictions to justify unrealistic ambitions or failures in the past to achieve totally unrealistic goals.

Whilst it is true and sad that many Armenians lost their lives in their own bid for territory, what is not recognized is that the Armenians themselves inflicted as much damage as others in the hostilities of that time, goaded on by some Western powers for their own selfish and geopolitical objectives.

The Turks had no deliberate policy of genocide at any stage, only the removal of Armenians from the front line with Russia, where they were collaborating with the Ottoman Empire's enemies and were thus a threat to its security.

The Kurdish issue is more complex. Two points are relevant:

The PKK, like IRA, is a terrorist organization, SUPPORTED MATERIALLY BY THE GREEKS AND ARMENIANS, with the stated objective of destabilizing Turkey. It has so far assassinated over 10,000 people in Turkey. It has no justifiable claim to represent the Kurdish people.

Most Kurds are integrated into Turkish society. About one-third of the Turkish Parliament is of Kurdish origin. This illustrates the absence of discrimination.


As for Cyprus, if any genocide or ethnic cleansing has taken place, this has always been carried out by the Greeks. The abortive coup of 1974, organized by EOKA and Greek colonels, aimed at elimination of the Turkish Cypriots from the Island. Turkey intervened to protect them and prevent Enosis. Since that date, the island has been peaceful and free of bloodshed.

Turkey has consistently supported a fair and reasonable settlement on Cyprus, but one that gives the Turkish Cypriots a secure future and equal political and social status with the Greek Cypriots.

The real problem between Greece and Turkey is Greece's reluctance to give up its Megali idea, that is, the recovery of the territories occupied by the Byzantine Empire, which finally fell to the Turks in 1453. All the many conflicts between Greece and Turkey over the past two centuries have been initiated by Greece. Your correspondent's reference to bloodied Turkish history is therefore clearly wrong, except in the fact that in the past three Greek-initiated conflicts, the Turks gave the Greeks a severe hiding, which partly accounts for the large fall in numbers of Greeks in present-day Turkey.

Regarding persecution. the Ottomans had one of the most tolerant policies towards non-Turks of any empire of its day. The three communities of Jews, Greeks and Armenians were virtually autonomous within the empire.

P. F. Peters

Former Australian Ambassador to Turkey
(The Australian, June 9th, 1994)

Monday 16 April 2007

Letter to Foriegn Correspondent

Dear Mr (Ataman),

Thank you for your e-mail . I have fowarded it to David Hardaker in Jerusalem . While we note you comment about his interview with Mr Pamuk , Foreign Correspondent stands by that report.

Yours
Mavourneen Dineen ( producer )


Dear Ms Dineen,

I would not have expected any less than the fact Foreign Correspondent stands by it’s own report, alas it is the usual response the Turkish Community in Australia have come to expect. However, since you stand by your report in light of my original comment that is “I note your very much one sided interview with Mr Pamuk”, please allow me to examine the transcript and raise certain issues about that interview.

Firstly, the synopsis opens with the line, “What I said is true, legally I have the right to say it, and historically and morally this has to be said, if we are decent human beings”. The statement indicates that according to Mr Pamuk, the Armenian Genocide did take place and he takes the moral high ground. Now Mr Pamuk is never questioned as to how he comes to that conclusion or the sources he relies upon in order to reach his conclusion. It is a fait accompli according to the transcript that a genocide did take place from the very outset.

From this very point, the synopsis goes onto criticise the Turkish Government and or people with the statements,

“However, as Pamuk explains to David Hardaker, he has become a pariah virtually overnight for daring to break a 90 year old taboo – talking openly about Turkey’s role in the deaths of more than a million Armenians. Sometimes known as “the sick man of Europe”, Turkey suffers from a deep-seated insecurity about its identity. The heavy-handed state response to Pamuk’s remarks to a Swiss newspaper shows why the country faces so many hurdles when it comes to joining the European Union.”

You see the program never suggests or explains how the Turkish Legal system works and the fact that it was NOT Governmental identities that laid the complaint in the first instance. Similar to Australia whereby an individual makes up a false accusation and attempts to frame another person and the authorities initially take action and eventually at trial under cross examination the tested evidence does not come up to proof. Now I do not think I need to provide you with examples of miscarriages of justice in Australia. Being the well-educated people that you are at Foreign Correspondent you no doubt would know about the vast majority of the matters, which I speak about.

You see there is no problem speaking about the events, which occurred during the material times in the Ottoman Empire so long as you can back them up with hard evidence. The problem is the debate is stifled not by the Turkish authorities but Western Media corporations not explaining the FULL FACTS.

Now you go onto describe Mr Kemal Kerincsiz and his comments but you do not go into any explanation as to who Mr Kerincsiz is nor his part in the Pamuk debacle. You see most Turks throughout the World know Mr Kerincsiz is a Nationalist Lawyer who can at times be over zealous; he is not a part of any Turkish Government institution. He is not a Prosecutor or a member of the Judiciary he is a private individual. That is never explained, according to the transcripts, it deceives the viewing public into believing that Kerincsiz may be a part of the Turkish Institution.

In fact, the entire paragraph and I quote,

“The Turkish state is also vigorously pursuing those who dare to publicly question the official line. Pamuk was charged under the notorious Article 301 - which makes it an offence to insult the Turkish state, and carries a six month jail sentence. His case became a cause celebre in Europe, and the charge was eventually dropped, but Kemal Kerincsiz is appealing. Dozens of other lesser known people have also been charged with the same offence, and we meet some of them in this story.”

Is totally deceptive and misleading, again Kerincsiz is not apart of the Turkish Government nor judiciary. What you have done in the above paragraph is best articulated by Justice Brian Sully formerly of the Supreme Court of NSW, that is and I quote, “The media deal in lies and worse, "finely calibrated half-truths"; they fuse fact and opinion…”.

Then to end off the synopsis it states, “As Hardaker reports, the cases highlight Turkey’s identity crisis and force Turks to confront their past in a way which up till now, they have refused to do”. Again that statements re enforces the fact that according to Hardaker the Armenian Genocide is fait accompli, the point being that Turks do not know their own past and in fact if they did know they are in an identity crisis situation denying that their ancestors committed genocide. Where is the evidence of genocide? A pre planned well thought out premeditated initiative by the Ottoman Government to wipe out either in whole or in part of its Ottoman citizens?

Then the transcript of the actual program gets better that is in the character assassination of Turks and the Republic of Turkey in general.

Mr Pamuk states, “What happened to Turkey’s Ottomans is a grave, important issue that the nation should know about and we have to have freedom of speech”. You see there is freedom of speech in Turkey so long as you can back up your argument with facts, but that is never explained or put forward in the program. In Australia, we have the laws of defamation, the Turkish system a sovereign nation has different, and or a varied version of defamation. The defamation laws in Australia are in my very humble opinion in effective and cannot be utilised by the vast majority of ordinary Australian citizens because of varying reasons but primarily due to prohibitive legal costs and the fact, the media are trained in negating these laws and regulations.

Example being when Mr John Marsden Solicitor died the Sydney media went to town on his character knowing full well “dead men can’t sue” they published outrageous comments which if he were alive they could not have, or more appropriately would have been too scared to publish due to the legal ramifications. So not only is the media dishonest but also cowardly. They are despicable by and large with no honour and no integrity. You find very few Journalists with any integrity or common human decency. Now do not misunderstand me here I never knew nor met Mr Marsden but for all his flaws whatever they may have been, the act of assassinating his character after his death was the lowest of the low.

Again, comments attributable to Mr Hardaker state,

“What happened to Orhan Pamuk is a salutary tale of state repression, not only of freedom of speech today but of the truth of the country’s past. Orhan Pamuk’s sin as such, was to publicly question the deeds of the nation’s founding fathers but the way the Turkish State has handled his case, reveals the deep forces which are pulling at the fabric of Turkish society and it shows exactly why Turkey faces so many hurdles when it comes to joining the European Union. Orhan Pamuk dared to speak of a dark episode in Turkey’s past, the forced removal and killing of over a million Armenians.”

Yet again, another fine example of what Justice Sully states, “The media deal in lies and worse, "finely calibrated half-truths"; they fuse fact and opinion…”. Where does Mr Hardaker get the number of “a million Armenians” being killed? What sources does he rely upon? You see I bet you would NOT be surprised to find out that even in accordance with Armenian Sources the highest estimates were around 600,000 dead and the vast majority were not killed as eluded to they died of other causes. Look at for example what the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenian stated, but no doubt, that is of no relevance because that would be in defence of the Turkish case.

Now I could go on and on but I think you would pretty much get the gist of my argument. However, I could not go past the tear jerking heartstring-pulling comments made by Sarkis Cerkezyan. Firstly the comments, “If one who is guilty is taken to court, he denies everything, doesn’t he? It is like a guilt complex. They found the easy way out – they sit on all their assets, their money, everything – and say such a thing never happened.”

So yet again, the Turkish race and the Ottoman Empire are guilty and they are denying the fact they are guilty like all persons charged with a criminal offence. The only difference being no Ottoman Official was ever charged with the offence of Genocide or anything akin to genocide. There were Ottoman officials charged, tried (under dubious conditions) and hung by the same government for offences OTHER THAN GENOCIDE or INTENTION TO WIPE OUT or EXTERMINATE an entire race in whole or in part. However, what Mr Cerkezyan suggests is that the Ottoman Government in fact pre planned, premeditated an extermination of the Armenian population in whole or in part that is not correct at all. There is ample evidence to suggest to the contrary as depicted by that entire program.

Further, Mr Hardaker’s lies and finely calibrated half-truths know no bounds let me qualify that comment, I quote,

“…capturing the time when rulers of the old Ottoman Empire expelled Armenians from their land and out of their homes and forced them to march into the desert of neighbouring Syria. Men, women and children – their fate was a near certain death.”

The Ottomans NEVER EXPELLED Armenians from their land, it was all one Empire one sovereign nation Syria was a part of the Ottoman Empire they were relocated due to the rebellion the Armenians in that part of the Ottoman Empire was conducting. Have a look at the independent documentary “The Armenian Revolt” which the ABC, SBS, and other Media around the Western world REFUSE point blank to air.

The treatment of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia during the material times was not unlike the internship of numerous nationals in Australia and America during wartime ala the German and Japanese residents, BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT no doubt. However, what white Australia did to the Aboriginals of this land is Genocide clear cut, most clearly is the fact of the “stolen generation” at law as well as morally.

Then Mr Cerkezyan goes on to describe the horrors, which fell upon his family, well Ms Dineen what makes his personal suffering different from the millions of Turks, Arabs and Kurds that were murdered by the Armenians, roughly 2.5 Million according to the best statistics available. Now I am not trying to diminish the suffering of certain Armenians in that region during that specific time, but let me tell you about my maternal grandmother’s situation.

During that same period, her and her sibling (brother) were small children living in a Village near Kars in Eastern Anatolia named Subatan. When the troubles began, her parents sent both children to stay with relatives near Ankara. Shortly, thereafter my grandmothers parents and other living relatives that remained in Subatan were murdered by the Armenians, some shot, others butchered with knives, others clubbed to death, some taken to a local Mosque and burnt alive inside. These included men women and children of the entire Village. So what makes Mr Cerkezyan’s suffering any more different to mine or my grandmothers. The only reason I able to write this letter to you today is because my grandmother escaped with her life. Why doesn’t the Western Media ever highlight those atrocities committed by the Armenians, instead of making them look like innocent victims, which are quite often compared to the Jews of Nazi Germany?

Well can you imagine Hitler having a person of the Jewish faith as his Foreign Minister, because the Foreign Minister of the Ottoman Empire during that period was Armenian Christian? Further, there was the Nuremberg Trials with mountains of evidence, trials convictions. There was before World War II written propaganda against the Jews of Germany and Europe. Where is the written propaganda or hate of the Armenians depicted in Ottoman Archives? Did the Ottomans just wake up one morning and think well lets kill the Armenians but only those in the East we’ll leave the one’s in the West alone, and in fact we’ll cover our tracks for future historians by keeping our token Armenian Christian Foreign Minister ?

Why is it that the precursor to the Nuremberg Trials, i.e. The Malta Tribunals failed although Lord Curzon (a known Turk hater) tried his hardest to find and produce evidence, which would stand up in an English Court of Law? You see these are all apart of the events, which took place, and questions that need to be answered and highlighted but it is not in the interest of the biased Western Media. All that you do is marginalise the Turkish Community living within Australia. The Turks are used to Western propaganda, which has continued from the days of the Crusades, we do not expect anything less from the media in Australia or other parts of the Western world. As for entering the EU, I think if you did a survey in the Republic of Turkey as well as Turks living abroad you would find that most would be against joining the EU. It has been stated to the Turkish nation time and again, that the EU is a Christian club. It is successive Turkish Governments that beg to enter the Club, which they will never be allowed to do. Most Turks know this, if it is not the Armenian issue, it will be Cyprus if not Cyprus it will be the Kurds, if not the Kurds it will be something else.

Most Turks know that the Republic of Turkey’s future, destiny, and economic prosperity lies not with the “Sick Man of Europe” the EU, but in the East with the Turkic Republics and Asia in general.

You see Ms Dineen that program once again compounded the shame on this country, which their Honours referred to in the case of Levon Demirian, which I have previously stated. Your program was another fine piece of propaganda best described by Justice Sully’s comments; you have done a marvellous job at assassinating the Turkish character yet again. I will end by reiterating Justice Sully’s comments,

“The media, as we know, react with savage vindictiveness to any attempt to apply to them those standards of transparency and accountability that they are insistent on applying to other people … The media are not a constitutional arm of government … To suggest that [they are] is legal fiction, a political subversion and a moral absurdity. The media are major money-making cartels. They are not knights in shining armour. Their agenda is power. Their strategy is fear and their tactics are a combination of ridicule, sometimes of the most savage personal kind."

The media deal in lies and worse, "finely calibrated half-truths"; they fuse fact and opinion, and there's been a campaign in recent times in the Sydney metropolitan media "which in my time has never been surpassed for the persistent, wilful and vicious mendacity with which it has been conducted".

It's about time the Bar Association did something about it. It should take the fight to the media by insisting they say not what they are against, but what they are for.”

So you see Ms Dineen, what the Armenians could not achieve via armed conflict, dubious legal means, and acts of terrorism, they are now achieving politically with the huge assistance of the Western media. In turn, the Western media continue to marginalise young Muslim men, which then create, as has been stated a fertile ground to cultivate the uneducated of these into terrorist organisations and their only hope is defending themselves via acts of violence because they do not have the capacity to defend themselves intellectually or through organs of the mass media. People such as yourself are just as much to blame for the rise of radical Islam and the violence certain sections of that community has caused as the actual terrorists themselves. How does it feel to have the blood of thousands on your hands, because you continually refuse to tell the full facts as they are?

I would suggest Mr George Negus had far more integrity than Mr Hardaker could ever dream of achieving. Mr Hardaker has turned Foreign Correspondent into a cheap tabloid current affairs program akin to Today Tonight and A Current Affair, it really is a shame.

I apologise for my typos in advance.

Regards
Ataman

Saturday 14 April 2007

500,000 rally against Turkish government


Dear Friends,

I hope the Turkish people remember this protest at the General Elections later this year, Erdogan is finished. This should be an example FOR ALL TURKISH POLITICIANS AND GOVERNMENTS, the people put you in power and the people can take that power from you. Just because you get elected into Government you should not let that go to your head, ARROGANCE will kill political careers. Lets hope at the next general elections the Political parties and Politicians take notice and the people make a wise choice. All Political parties should put up educated and cultured men and women as representatives.

WELL DONE TO THE ADD I CONGRATULATE THEM WHOLE HEARTEDLY.

As for the Europeans being worried about Fundamentalist Muslims take heed and read the below article. YOU HAVE MORE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS AND THOSE THAT WANT SHARIA LAW IN EUROPE THEN THERE IS IN TURKEY, LOOK AT THE U.K., FRANCE, GERMANY BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS.

Turkey should stop begging the EU to let them in and look towards the East for future prosperity and growth Europe is the "sick man" now.

Ataman

By Selcuk Gokoluk and Hidir Goktas

ANKARA (Reuters) - Around 200,000 Turks marched on Saturday to try to stop the ruling AK Party from picking Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as their presidential candidate next week because of his Islamist roots.

The AK Party has its roots in political Islam, and a possible presidency headed by Erdogan has split this secular but predominantly Muslim country seeking European Union membership.

"Turkey is secular and will remain secular forever," shouted protesters as they waved national flags and banners of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, revered founder of the republic which separated religion and state.

Tens of thousands of people were bussed into the capital Ankara to attend the rally in Tandogan square, one of the biggest gatherings in recent years.

Thousands of people holding flags also gathered at Ataturk's mausoleum, a place where Turks seek solace in times of tension.

Turkey's secular elite, which includes army generals and judges, fear Erdogan as president would try to undermine Turkey's strict separation of state and religion.

The AK Party has a big enough majority in parliament to elect Erdogan, or anybody else it chooses, to the seven-year post as head of state. The party is expected to name its candidate on April 18. Parliament is due to vote in May.

"We're warning the deputies in parliament. We're worried that the secular character of Turkey will be removed if Erdogan or Bulent Arinc (AK Party member and parliament speaker) is elected president," said Huseyin Ozen, a retired teacher.

Erdogan denies any Islamist agenda and says he has broken with his past and is now a conservative democrat. Erdogan, who has presided over strong economic growth and the launch of EU entry talks, has not confirmed whether he will run.

While he is Turkey's most popular and charismatic politician, opinion polls suggest a majority of people in the country do not want him to become president.

"We're here to defend the republic. We're here to defend the women's rights which Ataturk gave to us ... I hope Erdogan will not become president," said Sanem Erdem, a 28-year-old shop owner.

Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said on Friday the country's secular system of government faced its gravest danger since the founding of the republic in 1923, in comments seen as a direct attack against the AK Party.

The stark warning from Sezer, ahead of polls that could give Turkey its first head of state with Islamist roots, came on the heels of similar remarks by the powerful army chief on Thursday.

Analysts say Saturday's rally will be the last opportunity for the secular establishment to pressure the AK Party to pick a compromise candidate for the head of state, a seat which carries great symbolic weight in Turkey.

"The road to Cankaya (presidential palace) is closed to sharia (Islamic law)," a group of youths chanted at the rally in a reference to Islamic law practiced in many Muslim countries.

Erdogan and his ruling AK Party have repeatedly stressed that they are faithful believers in secularism, which combines a strict separation of state and religion but also carries heavy undertones of nationalism and a strong central state.

Critics say efforts by the AK Party to remove a ban on Islamic-style headscarves, to expand religious Islamic teachings, appoint religiously minded members to senior positions in the Turkish bureaucracy and to ban alcoholic beverages from local municipalities point to the contrary.

For God’s Sake

By PAUL KRUGMAN in the New York Times

Published: April 13, 2007

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go under reported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

Kay Cole James, who had extensive connections to the religious right and was the dean of Regent’s government school, was the federal government’s chief personnel officer from 2001 to 2005. (Curious fact: she then took a job with Mitchell Wade, the businessman who bribed Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham.) And it’s clear that unqualified people were hired throughout the administration because of their religious connections.

For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.

Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of “intelligent design by a creator.” He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.

One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.

There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?

Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.

And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.

You see, Regent isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.

Two days after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Robertson held a conversation with Jerry Falwell on Mr. Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club.” Mr. Falwell laid blame for the attack at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” not to mention the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way. “Well, I totally concur,” said Mr. Robertson.

The Bush administration’s implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right’s strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.

Friday 13 April 2007

Turkish army chief takes aim at Kurds

Too little too late, I say. Have a read of the article below from the Age Newspaper, for all these years the Republic of Turkey has been led up the garden path to E.U. membership and therefore has lost way too much in many terms. First and foremost in Turkish lives and property. While the US and others around the world can use the concept of self defence to use deadly force on terrorists and other entities that are a real and imminent risk to their national security Turkey has shown way too much restraint, in fact 40, thousand dead people or there abouts to much. The time has well and truly come to forget about the EU, look towards the East for future prosperity and finish the PKK issue once and for all.

Cheers

The Age April 12, 2007 - 11:44PM
The head of Turkey's powerful military General Staff called for a military operation in northern Iraq to quash Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding there. "From the military point of view, a (military) operation in northern Iraq must be made," General Yasar Buyukanit told a rare news conference, adding that a political decision from the government was first required to authorise such a step.

Turkey has repeatedly urged the Baghdad government and US occupying forces in Iraq to crack down on an estimated 4,000 rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who use northern Iraq as a springboard to attack targets inside Turkey. Ankara has said it reserves the right under international law to send troops into northern Iraq to tackle the rebels if Iraq and Washington continue to disregard its calls for action.

Turkey has been especially incensed in recent days by Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani's comments that Iraqi Kurds would interfere in Turkey's mainly Kurdish cities if Ankara interfered in northern Iraq. Buyukanit told the same news conference the military had received intelligence that Kurdish guerrillas would step up their activities in Turkey from May.
He said 10 members of the armed forces had been killed in clashes with the rebels in recent days during a major military offensive in southeast Turkey. Some 29 PKK militants have been killed in the same period, he added.

Turkish authorities fear increased attacks by the PKK on military and civilian targets could harm the country's lucrative tourist industry as the summer season looms.More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched its armed struggle for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The United States and the European Union, like Turkey, classify the PKK as a "terrorist organisation".

U.S. urges Turks to show restraint on border problem with Iraq

Dear Friends,

Have a read of the article below and consider the article I had posted earlier about the concept of Self Defence at International Law, how the US and Israel has applied. Well, the below article is just another example of double standards from the West and most particularly the US when it comes to Turkey and the Turks.

The below article and facts stated in it make the case for a Turkish Intervention into Northern Iraq. You decide.

Cheers
Ataman


WASHINGTON: A top U.S. State Department official urged Turkey on Thursday to show restraint in responding to attacks inside the country by Turkish Kurds operating from Iraqi territory, a senior State Department official said.

Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried issued the call for calm to Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy after the Turkish military sought government approval to launch cross border raids into Iraq to root out guerrillas from the Kurdish Workers Party of PKK, the official said.

The official asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Earlier State Department spokesman Sean McCormack acknowledged the legitimacy of Turkey's concern.

"Turkey faces a real threat from the PKK," he said. "It's a terrorist organization. It has killed innocent Turkish citizens. It has killed Turkish military. And it's a problem that needs to be dealt with."

But, he said, the Turkish and Iraqi governments should work together to try to resolve the problem. He noted that retired Army Gen. Joseph Ralston is trying to assist the two countries in reaching an accommodation.

"The focus should be on trying to resolve this in a cooperative way, in a joint way, rather than to resort to unilateral actions," McCormack said.

Hostilities between Turkey and Iraq would put the United States in the middle of conflict between two close allies and would deflect attention from the U.S. effort to bring stability to Iraq.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, said recently that Iraqi Kurds would retaliate for any Turkish interference in northern Iraq by stirring up trouble in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast.

The double standards and hypocrisy of Politicians

Have a read of the below article, it is another classic example of the double standards, hypocrisy and racism of Australian Politicians. Now don't misunderstand me here I am not a supporter of the thick Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, but what Jones has done is wrong offensive and in fact in my view in breach of any number of laws and regulations of this country. He conducts his affairs with a deliberate and well planned out strategy. The thick Sheikh just makes off the cuff remarks, there is a big difference in audience numbers between the two men as well. Hilali was condemned by Australian Politicians but so should Jones.

However, the politicians are afraid of the mighty power the likes of Jones wields, they are afraid that they may soon become the target of Jones’s vindictiveness, and his use of what has been described as "Their strategy is fear and their tactics are a combination of ridicule, sometimes of the most savage personal kind....The media deal in lies and worse, "finely calibrated half-truths"; they fuse fact and opinion," That is what the Politicians are all too well aware of and scared to death of. Hilali on the other hand is an easy target.

Have a look at a comment made by Jones and I quote from the below article, "We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in Western Sydney" NO MR JONES MOST OF THEM ARE IN JAIL. What an idiot, the jails throughout Australia are full of Anglo Saxon males convicted of rape, not only rape but also Murder. Look at the offenders in relation to the following victims; Anita Cobby, Janine Balding, The Granny Killer Glover in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney, The Snow Town Murders in SA, The Bernies serial rapists of WA, should I go on?? Jones you are an idiot, you need therapy for that particular comment you made, you are only playing a populist tune attempting to incite racial hatred.

Read the below and see the difference

Regards
Ataman


One rule for muftis, another for shock jocks
Elisabeth Lopez 13 April, 2007

LEADERS from both sides of politics have united to condemn Sydney radio shock jock Alan Jones after he was found by the communications and media regulator to have broadcast material likely to have incited racial violence during the Cronulla riots.

Alexander Downer, Foreign Minister: "This man just stumbles from one absurdity to another, he stumbles from one absurdity to another, and he is humiliating the Australian community."

Kevin Andrews, Immigration Minister: "Basically, the Australian people are sick and tired of what Alan Jones has been saying. The man ought to decide whether he wants to be an Australian, live in Australia and be part of this community, or go and live in Alabama."

Alexander Downer, Foreign Minister: "Alan Jones is not only an embarrassment but Alan Jones is damaging the standing of the Australian community here and in the Middle East."

Kevin Rudd: "2GB should not be taking any decision which allows someone like Alan Jones, who's given oxygen to listener emails urging biker gangs to meet "Lebanese thugs" at Cronulla station, and said "We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in Western Sydney", to be given a platform for his views, even if it's for another three months'."

All these statements were uttered but the names and other minor details have been changed. Our political leaders were, of course, talking not about Alan Jones, but about Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali.

Jones appeared on his usual spot on the Nine Network on Wednesday morning after the Australian Communications and Media Authority delivered its finding. Business as usual.

Even the ABC's flagship morning current affairs program AM devoted more airtime on Wednesday morning to a US shock jock, Don Imus, and his racial slur against a group of African-American female basketballers than to the Jones finding — both were stories from the day before. Imus said: "I feel embarrassed that I did the wrong thing." And even he got suspended for two weeks.

No such pressure here on Jones.

It seems few in politics or the media are even questioning whether this hate-monger should continue to have unrivalled access to the airwaves. Communications Minister Helen Coonan announced in a press release that it's time for an overhaul of the commercial radio code of conduct (it's due in September anyway) and urged industry to get involved if it's unhappy with the status quo. Why she felt the need to announce this straight after the Jones finding her office won't explain, and she's turned down at least one morning radio invitation.
Rudd has confirmed he will still appear on Jones' program. He says he hasn't seen the media authority's report, but if he needs this to convince him Jones' comments were beyond the pale, perhaps he has — as Prime Minister John Howard is fond of saying — a judgement issue.

Howard's own chumminess with Jones is well documented. "I don't think he's a person who encourages prejudice in the Australian community, not for one moment. But he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think." This must make it right, then, but does this reasoning stand up when the shoe is on the other foot?

Hilali was also articulating what a lot of people think when he allegedly said the September 11 attacks were the work of God.

Perhaps we need a parliamentary register of politicians who get letters of demand from Jones, and who holiday at his farm, and one on Crikey for journalists who do the same.

The authority may issue fines, or demand training or mediation for its broadcasters. It could also suspend 2GB's licence, but then so too could pigs fly.

Just imagine this former rugby coach in mediation. Give me a rampaging soccer mum any day.

If it's good enough for a hate-mongering sheikh to be issued vague threats about his future in this country by Australia's entire political establishment, what does this say about the relative silence with which the media authority's findings on Jones have been greeted? Few if any calls for Jones to quit, re-examine his behaviour, or even take a breather. No rap over the knuckles. Let alone an offer of a one-way ticket to Nauru. 2GB must be cracking out the champagne still.

Hilali compares uncovered women with meat; Jones' 2GB colleague Brian Wilshire says Lebanese people are inbred and have low IQs.

There's a difference?

Kevin Rudd told ABC radio's Jon Faine on Wednesday morning: "This guy hasn't emerged from the 7th century, in my view. You can be silent about them (his views) or stand up and be counted."

Indeed.

But was he talking about Jones or Hilali?
Elisabeth Lopez is a Melbourne writer