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The Armenian genocide of 1915 happened. Where you happen to live in the world determines if you would argue against the truth of this statement. Robert Fisk, as usual, takes our past grim accounts and makes us see our blood stained history.
“The Nazis told their Jewish victims that they were going to be “resettled” in the east rather than gassed. They also tried to cover the traces of the gas chambers of Treblinka before the Red Army arrived. But the “double” instructions sent by Talat Pasha and his 1915 genociders demonstrate that the pretence of humanitarian resettlement was conceived even before the organised genocide began. Some of the young German officers who witnessed the killings of 1915 turned up 26 years later in the Soviet Union, overseeing the slaughter of Jews.
And here is one very short account (courtesy of the Turkish historian Akcam) of an Armenian witness to his people’s destruction, which could – if the identities and locations were changed to the Ukraine or Belarus – have been written during the Second World War: “In order to eliminate the last remaining Armenian deportees…between Aleppo and Deyr-i Zor [sic] who had managed to survive…Hakki Bey…evicted all the deportees along the Euphrates, starting from Aleppo… Close to 300 young men and boys…surviving in the camp Hamam were sent to the South in a special convoy… Solid reports about them arrived that they had been killed in Rakka [sic]… Elsewhere, we learned in no uncertain terms that in the area around Samiye, 300 children were thrown into a cave opening, gas was poured in and they were burned alive.”
So here’s the real hypocrisy of this story. The Israeli government, so outraged by Poland’s Jewish Holocaust denialism, refuses to recognise the Armenian Holocaust. Shimon Peres himself said that “we reject attempts to create a similarity between the [Jewish] Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide.”
The Americans, I should add – Trump included, of course – have been equally pathetic in their failure to acknowledge the Armenian truth. But oddly, not Poland.
For 13 years ago, the Polish parliament passed a bill which specifically referred to the “Armenian genocide”. The speaker of the Polish parliament, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said at the time that the Armenian genocide did indeed take place, that responsibility fell on the Turks, and that Turkish documents – though not yet those which Akcam has just revealed – “confirm” this.
So there you have it. Poland punishes anyone who speaks of Polish participation in the Jewish Holocaust, but accepts the Armenian Holocaust. Israel insists that all must acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust – and Poland’s peripheral guilt – but will not acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust.
Mercifully, Israeli scholars like Israel Charny do so. And mercifully, Turks like Taner Akcam agree. But how many times must the dead die all over again for nations to accept the facts of history?”
Almost like there is something else going on. Like a societal system that is completely indifferent to how one self-identifies and still codes people into dominant and oppressed roles.
This is such a good question. Why gender friends, are trans identified females not leading the vanguard they are after-all, (according to the trans-narrative) men and thus should be accepted as leaders and decision makers – chock a bloc full – of all the bountiful rewards of male privilege.
It’s not happening. Outside of the bubble of trans-ideology the world continues with same patriarchal paradigm. Despite this, a good chunk of the feminist movement seems to want to continue to faff about with genders and identities while ignoring the structural issues that reinforce and maintain patriarchal oppression.
If gender identity (et cetera) was *any* sort of threat to patriarchal norm, do you really think there would be anything like the ‘gains’ the trans movement likes to celebrate.
The actual problem – *gender* – is a facet of patriarchal oppression – that the trans/queer movement has been diligently polishing to the detriment of feminism, and in particular radical feminists who can see and correctly identify the trans platform as just another vector for misogyny and homophobia.
As always, the feminist struggle continues. Please see the Feminist Current for what actual feminist theory and praxis looks like. :)
Here’s why:
When you stop and think about it…
I sincerely hope the MAGA’s down south are enjoying the bountiful economic gifts the cheeto-in-cheif and his republican bag men are bestowing upon them. I mean the establishment of an military oligarchy in the US was well under way under Obama, but at least he made the obligatory nods to democracy and caring for the American people (while of course, still screwing them). Nuance isn’t a thing anymore in terms of US domestic policy. It is being sky-written for the populace to see, you (the general public) are paying for the military and corporations first and maybe, if there are few scraps left in the budget, you may get some society and civilization as a part of the bargain.
The New Gilded Age is proceeding quite monstrously in the USA. Perhaps this latest give away to the military industrial complex will fuel the rise of organized labour and demands that US society should prioritize its citizens, rather than its military. William Hartung writes with great detail on what is going on in the budgeting process:
“While domestic spending fared better in the recent congressional budget deal than it would have if Trump’s draconian plan for 2018 had been enacted, it still lags far behind what Congress is investing in the Pentagon. And calculations by the National Priorities Project indicate that the Department of Defense is slated to be an even bigger winner in Trump’s 2019 budget blueprint. Its share of the discretionary budget, which includes virtually everything the government does other than programs like Medicare and Social Security, will mushroom to a once-unimaginable 61 cents on the dollar, a hefty boost from the already startling 54 cents on the dollar in the final year of the Obama administration.
The skewed priorities in Trump’s latest budget proposal are fueled in part by the administration’s decision to embrace the Pentagon increases Congress agreed to last month, while tossing that body’s latest decisions on non-military spending out the window. Although Congress is likely to rein in the administration’s most extreme proposals, the figures are stark indeed — a proposed cut of $120 billion in the domestic spending levels both parties agreed to. The biggest reductions include a 41% cut in funding for diplomacy and foreign aid; a 36% cut in funding for energy and the environment; and a 35% cut in housing and community development. And that’s just the beginning. The Trump administration is also preparing to launch full-scale assaults on food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare. It’s war on everything except the U.S. military.
Corporate Welfare
The recent budget plans have brought joy to the hearts of one group of needy Americans: the top executives of major weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. They expect a bonanza from the skyrocketing Pentagon expenditures. Don’t be surprised if the CEOs of these five firms give themselves nice salary boosts, something to truly justify their work, rather than the paltry $96 million they drew as a group in 2016 (the most recent year for which full statistics are available).
And keep in mind that, like all other U.S.-based corporations, those military-industrial behemoths will benefit richly from the Trump administration’s slashing of the corporate tax rate. According to one respected industry analyst, a good portion of this windfall will go towards bonuses and increased dividends for company shareholders rather than investments in new and better ways to defend the United States. In short, in the Trump era, Lockheed Martin and its cohorts are guaranteed to make money coming and going.”
Civil society is for chumps after all…
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