phantom

It appears some Azeris have quite the vibrant imagination Domino.

Nasty, I think people here are right about you. Talking with you is a waste of time, because you have a one track mind. Plus, it's getting increasingly tiresome to try to decipher your broken English. You can't even focus on the topic that you started here, nor can you focus enough to answer any questions posed to you. First you start talking about ASALA, then you bring up McCarthy to somehow prove there was no Genocide, and now you've migrated to the topic of Karabagh, which has nothing to do with either of the aforementioned. You migrate from topic to topic, because you have no justifiable responses to any of the questions that we have raised. To disprove the Genocide, you bring up Karabagh. What does one have to do with the other? And not only that, but you just totally made facts up regarding Karabagh, namely that Azeris lived there for an ASTOUNDING 4000 years! Apparently, the Azeris were around during the age of Gilgamesh! Noah himself must have been an Azeri! According to Nasty, it wasn't Adam and Eve, it was Heydar and Eve. Nice going Nasty. Please, who here can take you seriously with funny facts like that!

That's what I love about you Domino, you just can't resist highlighting falacies. This is why the marketplace of ideas works and why we shouldn't censor. Plus, it's far more fun.

Jewish Friend, I try not to generalize about anyone. This Nasty guy seems to just be a sheep who grazes on whatever his shepherds allow him to digest. But not all Turks are stupid, and most of the Turks I know in California are quite successful business people or engineers. But even many of them are ignorant on the topic of the Genocide, just because it's not something that they learn about inTurkey, and of course, when they begin to learn about the Genocide they are prone to find ways to distance themselves from such a horrible catastrophe perpetrated by their ancestors.

Sasun, I understand you, but I just worry that banning people sends the wrong message. I would rather be inclusive rather than exclusive. We Armenians are so protective of one another and so closed off as a community. I would hope that at least on the Internet, we could expose ourselves a little and find out what others have to say, even if it makes us uncomfortable. I think the benefits of hearing other viewpoints outweighs the detriment of having to deal with retards who think they know everything there is to know about Armenians and the Genocide. But that's just my opinion. If everyone wants to ban people like Nasty, I can't stop that, but I would lobby against it. After all, the reason why liberal democracies like the U.S., Canada, some of Europe, and hopefully Armenia some day, have the freedom of speech is to make sure that the unpopular message has an outlet. It's easy to say what everyone else is saying and to follow the masses, but it's much more difficult to be the lone dissent, especially if you believe that there is a risk of being censored or banned. This is an Armenian web site. It represents our community and our people to some extent. I don't want to convey the message that Armenians censor people or ban unpopular speech. I want to convey the message that Armenians are inclusive people who respect individual rights, the most important being the freedom of speech, even when the message is so abhorrant and nearly intolerable to us. It shows how strong we are as a group of people.

Nasty, you are looking at the facts and the story from a subjective point of view. You don't want to find the truth, you just want to vindicate your people, and to do that, you pick and choose the facts to suit your needs. McCarthy is only one source who writes about the Genocide. To say that his viewpoint is in the minority is an extraordinary understatement. If you had ever bothered to read what others have written about the Genocide, then maybe you could carry on an intelligent conversation regarding this topic. Regarding Armenians living in Turkey. You say there are thousands living there. I might remind you that just before 1915, there were AT LEAST 1.25 million Armenians according to what your present government says, and 2 million according to what the consensus says. By 1918, that number was reduced to 200,000, and today it is about 50,000, and almost all of them live in Istanbul. This land where you say, "thousands of Armenians live" is where millions of Armenians lived for almost 3000 years, and now they do not live there any more. Can you understand the mangitude of what must have happened in 1915 for an entire population of people to disappear in a matter of 3 years from a land in which they lived for almost 3000 years? CAN YOU THINK ABOUT THAT FAR A LITTLE WHILE! Regarding Dashnaks and Hinchaks? You don't know anything about Dashnaks or Hinchaks other than what you have been brainwashed into believing. But let's assume that your government is right and all Dashnaks and Hinchaks were traitors to the Ottoman government. Was everyone a Dashnak or Hinchak? Were women and children Dashnaks and Hinchaks, and even if they were, could they still be a threat? Why were ALL ARMENIANS targeted and not just the Dashnaks and Hinchaks? Please don't just come back with answers from ATAA, do some homework and some independent thinking for a change, and don't be so lazy. Regarding Armenian churches. There are 40 or 41 Armenian churches in operation in Turkey today, and almost all are in Istanbul. At the turn of the century, there were over 2000 Armenian churches and monasteries operating throughout Turkey, most of them are ancient structures that you should consider national treasures, but which are completely destroyed are laying in ruins. Should we thank you for only destroying 1,960 of them and not every one of them?

Well, it looks like this nasty person has been exposed before, is still being exposed now, and will be exposed for the time to come... at the expense of your time. I am surprised you never get tired. I have asked this question to Domino: how many denialists have you succeded in changing or teaching the truth? Do you really think nasty and the likes of him will learn anything from you? Maybe he won't learn anything from me or you, but that's not reason enough in my view to censor him and take away his freedom to post here. He may not learn anything from us, but we can learn something from him about the mentality of some of the Turkish population. Furthermore, if we do censor him, that will tell the world something about us, namely that we hide behind censorship.

Nasty, I see that your ASALA timeline ends in 1985. The number of Turkish casualties is well under 100. ASALA apparently hasn't been in operation for almost 20 years. What shall we say? ASALA was bad. Killing innocent people is bad. I, for one, am sorry about that and apologize on behalf of Armenians like me who are remorseful about it. I hope that the purpose of your thread was to get an apology and not to use ASALA as some sort of proof that a Genocide didn't happen or that Armenians are evil people. Now, what do you have to say about the elimination of virtually all Armenians from Turkey wihin a span of roughly 7 years beginning in 1915? I have remorse for the few dozen Turks killed by ASALA. Do you have any remorse for the 1 million plus Armenians killed by the Ittihadists? I don't think you do. In fact, I think you wish they had managed to get us all, don't you?

Does anyone here believe that there is any hope for Armenia? Why is Armenia so corrupt? How much longer are we going to use the excuse that it is hard to change old habits formed under communist rule. Estonia was a communist country too, but now look, it is integrating into Europe and has a growing economy with a strong democratic backbone. I have heard from every friend that has visited Armenia how everything requires a bribe, even getting out of the damn airport with your luggage apparently requires bribes. I am a member of an Armenian organization that raises money for Armenian schools every year. And every year we actually send one of our members to the school that we are going to renovate to oversea the work and make sure that it gets done. This year he had to actually hire the contractors and buy the materials himself to ensure that the money is used effectively and the work is done efficiently. If he didn't do that, the money that we sent would have disappeared faster than you can say Blood Sucking Oligarch. So what the hell is going on over there? Can someone who is from Armenia please help me to understand what is going on over there?

Thoth and Domino, thanks for welcoming me back. I don't post that often here, because there isn't a whole lot I can add. You guys already know the same things I know, and we all agree about the Genocide. I like persuasive writing, which tends to be more argumentative. That's why I post more often at Turkey.com, becaus very few people agree with me there, and so I have more people with whom to argue. By the way, I've noticed that the Armenians in this forum bicker a lot amogst one another. I guess it's kind of funny and entertaining though. Just look at this thread. It started out about the number of Armenians killed during the Genocide, and somehow it morphed into I don't even know what. It's like everyone here has attention deficit disorder or something. Now that I'm on the topic, I am going to start a new thread about Corruption in Armenia. That's a topic that I'm interested in these days.

Yes I agree!! Who wants to hear the same old tiring denial excuses over and over again, screw them I say! I disagree. If you want to expose the the denialist campaign for what it really is, total crap, then you have to let them speak. In my opinion, the marketplace of ideas has a way of elevating the truth while eventually dismissing fabrications and outrageous excuses like the ones that we get from the denialist camp. I am against any censorship here or anywhere else. Let them speak their lies. We can counter with the truth. We have nothing to hide, thus we need not censor anyone.

Ok Domino, thanks. And yes I do rememer a retard or two at that forum, and now I'm sad that I wasted my time on this post.

Nasty, First, I want to start off by saying that you have a right to your own opinion, no matter how misguided it is. And as you can see, you have been free to say whatever you want here. But you can't expect to come to an Armenian web site, deny the Genocide, and have everyone respond calmly. I'm sure you knew that your post would stir up controversy here; you'd have to be an idiot not to realize that. Having injected your baseless claims into the marketplace of ideas, you should be prepared to defend them. I know that that is much harder for you to do, given that all you did was cut and paste from a Turkish government web site. You probably have done little or no research to verify the veracity and accuracy of what you pasted here. The overall theme of your post is that the number of Armenian casualties has been artificially inflated by Armenian propoganda over the decades, and that the first number proposed was less than 600,000, and now the number is three times that. Your post, which you copied from a Turkish web site, is completely wrong. The number of Armenians who were killed during the Genocide more or less remains constant as far as credible sources are concerned. In March 1919 the then Ottoman Interior Minister relying on statistical data which the staff of the ministry had been compiling during the previous two months, publicly declared that "during the wartime deportations some 800,000 Armenians were killed." (Alemdar (Turkish newspaper in Istanbul), March 15, 1919. Takvimi Vekâyi No. 3909, July 21, 1920, pp. 3, 4. The minister in question was Cemal.). So as you can see, the first TURKISH souce on this issue proclaims 800,000. That already destroys the first important element of your argument, that being that the original number was under 600,000. Excluded from the figure of 800,000 are the Armenian conscripts who, in the wake of their conscription, were liquidated in stages by fellow Turkish soldiers, and countless children, young girls, and brides who were forcibly Islamised and absorbed into the mainstream of the Turkish national entity. If one discounts French and British sources, identified as they were with the enemy camp, the available German and Austro-Hungarian sources involving civilian and military officials of all ranks, and serving as wartime allies of Turkey, supply much more inclusive figures. According to these original sources, the number of victims of the Armenian genocide ranges between 1.2 and 1.5 million. These sources are contemporaneous with the Genocide. Thus, your argument that the number has been inflated over the decades would completely ignore the fact that the Ottoman Empire's allies, Austria and Germany, were themselves saying, during WWI and not decades later, that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians had been exterminated. Nasty, if you really cared about reconiliation between Armenians and Turks, you would have done your homework before posting this thread in which you blindly cut and paste from Turkish denialist source web sites. You don't start from a position of neutrality. You start from an offensive position, and from that position, which is obvious to us all, it is difficult for us to believe that what you care about is reconciliation. Now tell us, what do you really want? Do you want us to accept the lie that you have blindly accepted in the name of "reconciliation"? Furthermore, do you really believe that a dishonest reconciliation can have any lasting effect? A meaningful reconciliation requires trust, and Armenians cannot trust a Turkish government (and people) who deny their dark past and continue to disparage the victims and their ancestors. Your government is teaching its students that Armenians killed Turks; that the Armenians are to blame for everything that happened to them; that we were traitors. Your government has made it unlawful not only to teach about what really happened, i.e., the version that the vast majority of historians accept, but they have made it mandatory for children to write only from your distorted perspective. An Armenian child in a private Armenian school in Istanbul cannot write from the perspective of, for example, Yeduda Bauer or Israel Charney, or Robert Melson, or Dadrian, Hovhanissian, or the hundreds of other historians who acknowledge the Genocide. He must accept the lies or keep his mouth shut. No wonder everybody in Turkey believes that it is the Armenians who have made reconciliation impossible, because all you ever learned was what bad people we were, and how bad we still are for rehashing the past. Finally, I want to address your disdain for our Jewish forum member who acknowledges the Genocide. Jews know full well that the Turks of the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim Turks of contemporary Turkey, which make up 99.9% of the population) always distrusted them and treated them as outsiders, as gavurs. Jews succeeded in Turkey, not because of any special privileges or encouragement, but despite the roadblocks and prejudice against them in Turkey. Jews are used to overcoming obstacles, and if I were Jewish, I would be outraged at your suggestion that Jews flourished because of Ottoman or Turkish openness. If Jews have any warm feelings for Turkey, it is only because Christian Europe treated them even worse than the Turks did, so it is only in that comparative sense that Turkey was "good to the Jews". Today you are pandering to the Jews as if you had been their best friend throughout all of history. Do you think you are fooling the Jewish community with that load of crap, or is it the Armenian community that you think is being fooled? That's all I have to say for now.

good for them, but that couple needs to loosen up and stop thinking of their sexuality and 'touching'...as something bad!! oh geeez! it's always these mega conservatives who claim everyone else is going straight to hell... ...you know what would be the solution to this 'societal crisis' is for boys/men to stop being pimps and players and highly value women, relationships,love, and sex/sexuality!!! it's a two-way street! and women have the same needs as men do...if everyone lived like those two there would be a whole generation of forty plus year old virgins walking around...'cause obviously men wouldn't commit to marriage until...???? now, that is scary! just imagine how this would impact roadrage!!! movses jan, coffehn badrasd eh! Just to clarify: the Onion is a satirical publication. The stories in it are made up for the sake of poking fun at society. They are not true stories. Regarding this raising issue, are you all f---ing kidding me or what!!! This has got to be a misunderstanding or urban legend or something. Please someone tell me this raising thing isn't true, and that we Armenian men aren't that pathetic and insecure! Let me tell you, if some dumbass little punk came to my door and told me how to raise my daughter, he'd be hung off of my third story balcony by his puny little juj and then flattened like a pancake on my driveway, and then I'd call his parents to come scrape him off of my property and take him home for some 21st century education. If anyone's gonna be doing the raising, it's going to be my daughter who raises her boyfriend to be respectfull, honest and kind to women.

You're right, we even went and got big noses, hairy legs, and made lots of money just to copy the Jews. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic. I don't agree with you. The publication of the Jewish struggle may have caused us to undergo awaking regarding the Genocide, but I don't think we are struggling for Genocide recognition because we are jealous of anyone. I don't think Armenians are that petty, especially given the enormous cost of genocide recognition to the development of Armenia in terms of bad relations with Turkey and expenditure of funds by the diaspora.

Do you have any information about the Harvey Weinstein issue? I'd like to know more about what the Jews did or said to him for making Ararat. Any newspaper articles, etc. would be helpful. Thanks.

Yes, very true... didn't mean to repeat what you had said already. Sasun, both you and Domino made an interesting point, and it is one that I will definitely think about. But in any case, I can't tell people what do to do or how to act. I can only say that I for one am not going to stoop to the level of generalizing and stereotyping every Turk or any other ethnic group or nationality for that matter. In my world, every individual is innocent until proven guilty. Every Turk is good until he proves otherwise. Furthermore, I don't think my attitude trivializes the Genocide in any way. The Genocide did happen, the government of Turkey will admit it eventually, just as the rest of the educated world has and will continue to do, and just as some Turks have already done. I don't need to hate all Turks or make nasty statements about them to prove that I am a good Armenian on which the Genocide of my people has had a profound impact.

Whatever you say Gamavor. I didn't realize that you're the self-elected leader of all Armenians the world over. And your theory about why the Genocide is not internationally recognized holds no water. The Genocide is in fact universally recognized, and it is only uneducated Turks who would try to make you believe otherwise, and of course, you with your self-proclaimed wisdom have fallen for their dirty tricks. The only places of consequence that continue to refuse to officially recognize the Genocide are Turkey, the U.S. and Israel, and all of them have their obvious reasons. Don't try to put the blame on other Armenians. All Armenians recognize the Genocide, save for maybe .01% of the Armenian population that hates being Armenian--personally, I don't know of any Armenians like this, but I've heard of them. So don't blame the nonrecognition by Turkey, the U.S. and Israel on any Armenians, you would be doing us all a disservice.

Ok, but what aspect of Gams' rhetoric does that make correct? It's still not clear to me. Are you saying that because your great uncle placed a "Abdul" in his name to hide from the Turks? If that's what you're getting at, then aren't you making enormous leaps in reasoning without further facts? We have no idea why your great uncle put a "Abdul" in his name, so it's premature to say that his Turkish name is evidence that Istanbul Armenians are cowards. I can't believe I'm even making this argument right now.

And one more thing, I don't know if you and "Gams" realize this, but there are literally thousands of Armenian immigrants in Istanbul from Armenia. What should we say about them, and what does that say about Armenia? Are all of these Armenians cowards for living in Istanbul?

And in what respect does that make Gams correct, and correct as to what issue?

And what message exactly were you trying to convey to those Turks? I'll tell you what you did convey: that you are a racist, hate-filled fanatic, which is what many of them already think of us because of actions like your's? By the way, I live in America because it is a better place to live for Christian Armenians than Turkey. But unlike you, I have enough active cerebral neurons to distinguish between individuals and governments. And the Armenians in Turkey are not cowards just because they don't want to kill every Turk they see.

Thanks THOTH, don't mind if I do!

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I guess what you meant then is that his dislike of the Turkish government is justifiable rather than his dislike of Turkish people?

This story is gutwrenching, and also confusing. If people were dying all around, then why would the Armenians have to kill and eat their own children? I don't believe that Armenians would kill and eat their children. They would kill and eat the adults before they touched the children. I'm sure much of the story is factual, but doesn't some of it is sound embellished to you?