Friday, April 24, 2015

Genocide

To-day, one hundred years ago, began the genocide of Armenians within the Turkish empire. First they took a couple hundred of the intelligentsia from the then capital city, Constantinople/Byzantium/Istanbul, and killed them. They did not stop there. Numbers can only be guessed at, one million perhaps less, perhaps more. Many others became refugees, and emigrated about the world. The Armenians call it Medz Yeghern (Great Crime). Raphael Lemkin in a 1944 book, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress", created the term 'genocide'. The Turks killed other Christian national groups too, Assyrians and Greeks. Turkey still denies this happened, and gets upset [click]when someone remarks about it. The United States has been careful not to upset their 'ally'.

Recently, last week, the director of the FBI, James Brien Comey, Jr. said [click] something ridiculously and outrageously stupid. "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil." 

The Nazis controlled Germany, Germany started the war in Europe by the invasion of Poland, with the Soviet Union. There was no state of Poland during the war. People in occupied territories are not free. Once war begins, evil flows; evil that would not have occurred otherwise. That is why war needs to be prevented, and those that start the war are the progenitors of that evil and bear some responsibility to successive evil.

Several things about Comey are contradictory. He is a government official of the United States, a country that is not willing to admit to all genocides. There is the Armenian genocide, and there is the genocide of the American Indians. Under georgebushjr, Comey was promoted to Deputy Attorney General. Where is condemnation of bushjr's Iraqui war?

The foto in the article is of the Washington D.C.'s Holocaust Museum's replica of the Auschwitz gate. The first victims of Auschwitz were Polish soldiers and intellectuals. Many Jews were killed there, as were Russian soldiers, Gypsies, and people of other nations. I had relatives that were sent there, one did not come back; they were neither Pole, Jew, Russian, or Gypsy.

Comey may have been less than articulate in making a true statement, that people other than the Nazis in charge did evil things; but he in so doing, reduced the culpability of those most at fault, and broadcast on to many others, many who were not at fault, and also were victims. Of course, Comey did not mention the American financiers, and other businessmen that dealt with the fascists; nor the evil deeds that Americans did in foreign lands. And further, "In their minds...didn’t do something evil" is bullshit. Evil has a contagious factor, a frenzy, a revel. People do evil willingly, and unwillingly; they then often lie about it. Some regret with suicide. Some are psychopaths that were temporarily given license, and regret nothing [dick cheney].

But in the politics of victimhood, some are acknowledged [special pleading] and others are not. And the politics that involve the Jewish victims of Nazis, and the present state of Israel are connected. Israel has no problem killing non-Israelis. The United States supports their 'ally' Israel politically, and financially. Many American politicians give a practical allegiance to Israel to gain and maintain office. Israel constantly reminds the world of the tragedy that befell Jews; it does not highlight Jews who betrayed Jews to the Nazis, nor Jewish communists that ran Soviet gulags, and communist totalitarianism in other countries. Israel has received reparation payments from Germany; now  reparations are wanted from Poland.

What does Comey and the American government have to say about the Armenian massacres? to-day, or yesterday?


1 comment:

  1. There have been so many massacres since then, it is out of sight out of mind. All of the victims and perpetrators are long dead. the west was pretty burned out on World War 1 when it happened, and we were much less powerful then than we take ourselves for granted being now. It is a small miracle there were not more ethnic genocides in the former Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the War. http://www.amazon.com/Paris-1919-Months-Changed-World/dp/0375760520

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