Oh *****

[bellthecat]

Didn't they (couldn't they?) learn anything from the first fiasco?:

 

On Britain's second National Holocaust Memorial Day, the Institute of

Contemporary History will be organising a ground-breaking conference

focusing on four genocide of the twentieth-century. Highlighting Armenia,

the Balkans, Rwanda and the Holocaust, the conference will examine the

history, processes, implications and responses during and post-conflict. A

range of political, historical, legal, sociological and psychological

perspectives will cover themes including:

* Economic and Political Strategies of genocidal governments and regimes

* International Responses, Surveillance and Prevention

* Law, Denial, Acknowledgement

* The role of the Media and Language

* Generational Transmission

The conference will be a public conference aimed at scholars, professionals

also working with survivor communities, survivors and descendants of

survivors and perpetrators. It will be one of the first major conferences

of its kind to be held in the United Kingdom and is scheduled to take place

on 26-27 January 2002.

 

 

P.S. The title of this thread has been edited by MJ.

 

[ July 11, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[Kazza]

It actually sounds very VERY impressive, and something interesting. I can think of many people who would be interested in that. Anyone on this forum who can make it really should. You people always have such a lot of interesting things to talk about so why not make your voices heard? It could be a great chance. I will try my best to go...Someone remind me in 2002.

 

 

Can ordinary people go as well? You could call me a "survivor" I suppose. Or a descendant of a survivor. I wish I could speak to my grandfather today about his story. It would be wonderful to speak to these psycobabble people. (joking!) as well as the respected writers and proffessionals I always wanted to meet. I may even invite some of my family.

 

 

It would be nice if anyone on this forum happens to be making that trip to England they always wanted to attend this. It will be nice because it's something fully interactiive and not just sitting down. You may even get your picture in the paper.

 

 

Steve, THANK YOU. You are useful to have around..

 

 

MJ , why did you edit it, come on now, don't be shy. What HAS he done now. If you don't want to say in front of the forum you can tell me privatley

 

[ July 13, 2001: Message edited by: Kazza ]

[bellthecat]

It was a "four letter word" with two letters starred out - but obviously the forum's list of banned words thought even that too much so replaced it with five stars. So you see, I'm not actually in favour of it!

 

Kazza, all respect to you, but you are NOT a (genocide) survivor; that is an insult to the real survivors as well as limiting yourself. I hope you have not been affected/infected by all that American "cult of being a victim" stuff.

 

I found the whole "genocide commemoration" earlier this year to be extremely repulsive - so repulsive that I don't wish to remember it in detail in order to cite my many reasons for finding it so. (Sorry).

 

Steve

 

PS:

Note how the capital "H" for "holocaust" has creeped in. Ara with his "?" regarding the oppression of Palestinians will approve of that. ( http://armenians.com/cgi-bin/forum/ultimat...c&f=17&t=000151 )

[THOTH]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bellthecat:

I found the whole "genocide commemoration" earlier this year to be extremely repulsive - so repulsive that I don't wish to remember it in detail in order to cite my many reasons for finding it so. (Sorry).

Steve

[/url] )

---

Well then you obviously fail to understand a number of things on a fundemental level - why descendents or survivors would wish to commemorate their slain families and keep the memory of such tragedy alive. I have attended Holocaust related rememberences and found them to be very powerful (and approprite IMO). Do you attend funerals Steve? Do understand why people do so? Do you see no value in pressing Turkey for genoside recognition? Should we all just forget and move on? Is it acceptable for crimes to go unpunished? etc. You have disapointed me with this comment.

[bellthecat]

There you go again with that capital "H" holocaust. But that says it all, you are not really interested in reality. These events bastardise history and thus insult the memory of the victims they allegedly commemorate. I think you also know nothing about the specific event I am talking about (President Blair's "National Holocaust Memorial Day").

[THOTH]

How dare you claim that I am not interested in reality (you divine this from use of a word?) and how can you presupose that you know anything of the Holocaust events that I speak of. While I am familiar with the exclusivist controversy (no Armenians) of the memorial event of which you speak - and I condemn the exclusivistic attitude in general of certain Holocaust proponents - in no way does this diminish the very real tragedy and UNIQUE (in certain important respects) aspects of the Holocaust and denigrate any commemoration of it. As I said before - I have attended some very moving commemorations - accompanying survivors of concentration camps whom I know and with people who were there to hear their parents names and brothers and sisters names read off along with others who were loaded on the same box car by the Nazis. The ceremony had real meaning and impact - I fail to understand how you fail to appreciate this and how anyones use of a capital "H" (which has become an accepted usage) infers not being interested in reality.

 

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by bellthecat:

 

There you go again with that capital "H" holocaust. But that says it all, you are not really interested in reality. These events bastardise history and thus insult the memory of the victims they allegedly commemorate. I think you also know nothing about the specific event I am talking about (President Blair's "National Holocaust Memorial Day").

---

[bellthecat]

Thoth - if you had an interest in reality then you would understand the objections to using a capital "H" for holocaust. The word is not the exclusive property of Jewish/Israeli pressure groups, it existed long, long before 1940 (indeed someone from the Roman empire would recognise the word and its usage). In the 1920s Churchill used the word "holocaust" to describe the Armenian genocide. By your use of the phrase "The Holocaust" you ally yourself with Armenian genocide deniers.

My opposition to "National Holocaust Memorial Day" has nothing to do with the exclusion of Armenians from it. That was an unimportant detail for the overwhelmingly critical opposition to it - an event that was considered a bad joke amongst anyone with brains in Britain. I do not wish to see the day when shops sell "Happy Holocaust Day" cards. The Armenian support for it was particularly pathetic, given their initial deliberate exclusion from it. But that was to be expected - the community's leaders had already sold its soul by its support for NATOs invasion of Kossovo.

Steve

[ThornyRose]

Not sure why the need for sarcasm. Not all marked days have to be happy, do they?
Besides, different people feel different needs... I wouldn't be bothered.

[THOTH]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bellthecat:


Thoth - if you had an interest in reality then you would understand the objections to using a capital "H" for holocaust. The word is not the exclusive property of Jewish/Israeli pressure groups, it existed long, long before 1940 (indeed someone from the Roman empire would recognise the word and its usage). In the 1920s Churchill used the word "holocaust" to describe the Armenian genocide. By your use of the phrase "The Holocaust" you ally yourself with Armenian genocide deniers.

---

I reject your contention that just due to use of a now commonly accepted term "Holocaust" I am in league with Genocide deniers. (and that I don't understand the issues aurrounding the use of this word). You obviously don't know me nor are you familiar with my activities on the web or elsewhere to make such a statement. I am familiar with the prior uses of the term "holocaust" including the Churchill quote. However the use of "Holocaust" with a capital "H" preceded by "the" has entered our lexicon as the commonly accepted term for the Genocide of the Jews and others by the Nazis and there is really nothing you or Armenians can do or say to change such. I think one can accept this term as a name for a specific event without denigrating the genocides etc that other groups have experienced. Its funny, I know one Holocaust resercher who laments the term - claiming that Genocide is more discriptive of what happened and that holocaust is too vaugue. So to me it is all semantics - what is important is a proper understanding (and acceptance) of the events and their significance/impact and a clear understanding of the motives, methods and effect of such by the perpetraitors on the victims. I think you are out of line by attacking me and others for using what is basically an accepted word (regardless of how it got to be so)...were you having a bad day?

quote:

---

Originally posted by bellthecat:
My opposition to "National Holocaust Memorial Day" has nothing to do with the exclusion of Armenians from it. That was an unimportant detail for the overwhelmingly critical opposition to it - an event that was considered a bad joke amongst anyone with brains in Britain. I do not wish to see the day when shops sell "Happy Holocaust Day" cards. The Armenian support for it was particularly pathetic, given their initial deliberate exclusion from it. But that was to be expected - the community's leaders had already sold its soul by its support for NATOs invasion of Kossovo.

---

I am not familiar enough with the specific of the event to comment. However your initial statement was directed at genocide commemorations in general. Do you stand by the statement - that you regard such commemoration etc as worthless? or do you wish to be more specific of your critisism and perhaps show us a little humanity and understanding of/on this issue - because again - I beleive your comment and subsequant pouncing on the use of the word "Holocaust" was out of line...

So your a supporter of Milosevic and (violently expressed) Serbian nationalism - etc? You care not that innocents were being exterminated by means reminicent to earlier genocides - you really think NATO (or the West in general) should just have let it happen? In fact I advocated action years earlier - when such events were occuring in Bosnia. (and as I have had access to very first hand accounts of what occured there and in Kosovo I feel fully justified in my support for such action). In fact my plan (to stimulate the Europeans into action) was for the United States to unilaterally offer to airlift Turkish armed forces into Bosinia to protect the Muslims there. LOL - What better way to light a fire under all those milk toast - only motivated by pure narrow self interest - without any moral backbone to speak of Europeans...Sure the (methods of) prosecution and (particularly) timing of the NATO campaign may have been faulty - but I do not beleive that any rational and feeling human could just advocate doing nothing in the face of such crimes. Armenians, IMO, should understand this more than most...are you some kind of Orthodox solidarity kind of guy without regard to right and wrong? I am interested in your characterization of why supporting NATO in Kosovo constitutes selling ones soul....

[Guest Fadi]

Thoth, I must agree one one of Steve statment, and this about the capital "H" of the Holocaust, I can not accept that a group decide to take a word and going as far as using a capital "H", the word holocaust is not a Jewish property, there is no one holocaust, using a capital letter to discribe the event, is a pure selfishness and a kind of arrogance. You may desagree with me, but it is this case.

 

The word holocaust was used many times to describe what happened to Armenians and this before the Armenian genocide, Steve has a point about Churchill, but Churchill was not the first to describe what happened to Armenians as "holocaust", in 1895 burning of a church, I believe, from a British report, they were talking about an armenian holocaust, the fire in Adana that killed thousands of Armenians in 1909 was also called a holocaust, in fact foreigner reports were calling it the Adana holocaust and the name was even used for the comparaison with the burnings happening during WWI.

 

Now you have a group, that take the word and label a capital "H" to it, it's a selfish act an egocentricism, this is what I feal, taking a word that always existed, then give a definition to describe one event, this is not enough using a capital "H" like there was just one holocaust one burning in fire. I object categoricly to this, even if I use the word to describe the "Soah".

 

And it is true that the word Holocaust is many time used by deniers, about the Uniqueness of the Holocaust, but no one talk about the uniqueness of the Armenian genocide, why then not take a general word and labeled as the Armenian genocide, why not taking the word genocide with a capital "G" and use it only to describe what happened to Armenians, after all, Lemkin was well inspired with the word Armenocide used starting 1895. I can also quote many things about the Armenian genocide that were unique, this don,t mean that the Armenians have the right to take a word for themself.

 

As for the publicity of the Holocaust, and the bad humour of steve about the Cards, it is maybe a bad image, but still this is the exact thing that a Jew author say about, the industry of the Holocaust that he categoricaly condemn. I am not justifying Steve ton here, but just telling that there is truth in what he is saying, and we as Armenians should take examples an not repeat the mistakes that the Jews have don with the "Industry" that they established, it is pathetic of making this with a such a terrible event.

[ThornyRose]

There we go with the issue of word-play. Although I understand the point of "the capital H," I don't see a reason to rally for termination of its use any more than I see a need to be for it. All of this comes down to the "shall we say 'e-mail' or 'e-posta' in Turkish?" and "we are not anti-Semitic, the Jews are the worst anti-Semites!" because Arabs happen to be Semites as well. (I am talking about Snotty Annie and Aboush here.)

Brewing a storm in a cup, that's what this is. These are accepted names and concepts, guys, though I do think it is commonly agreed that the name is not the focus of the friction at hand.

[bellthecat]

Thorny - you do not really understand the cultural setting.

The events to which I refer were described by the BBC (now firmly under the control of the Labour party) as “Holocaust Day celebrations” with all the standard commentators dug out to report on it as if it were some sort of Royal wedding, or national sporting event. Do you have unhappy "celebrations" in Turkey?

And as for different people feeling different needs - that is all right when it is done in private, with some sort of dignity - but this was a massive, state sponsored, national event hoisted onto the public with zero consultation, and filled with all the deceptions, half-truths, and simplifications that inevitably accompany state propaganda.

Also, the way a word is used reflects the meaning the user wants to put on it - so the manner of its use or mis-use is important to recognise. Recognising any distortion from reality reveals the hidden motives of its user.

Steve

[bellthecat]

Domino’s support of my position is eloquent enough for me to let my argument rest. Except to say that it is a commonly accepted convention that the words "Armenian genocide" should be preceded by the word "alleged". Does that mean you will now blindly follow that convention? The reasoning that you use to justify your use of "The Holocaust" suggests you should.

quote

I am not familiar enough with the specific of the event to comment. However your initial statement was directed at genocide commemorations in general. Do you stand by the statement - that you regard such commemoration etc as worthless? or do you wish to be more specific of your critisism and perhaps show us a little humanity and understanding of/on this issue - because again - I beleive your comment and subsequant pouncing on the use of the word "Holocaust" was out of line...

I NEVER ONCE mentioned genocide commemorations in general. It was YOU that did that, and continue to do so (in order to distort what I am saying?) I have talked only about Britain’s "National Holocaust Memorial Day" event.

quote

So your a supporter of Milosevic and (violently expressed) Serbian nationalism - etc? You care not that innocents were being exterminated by means reminicent to earlier genocides - you really think NATO (or the West in general) should just have let it happen? In fact I advocated action years earlier - when such events were occuring in Bosnia. (and as I have had access to very first hand accounts of what occured there and in Kosovo I feel fully justified in my support for such action). In fact my plan (to stimulate the Europeans into action) was for the United States to unilaterally offer to airlift Turkish armed forces into Bosinia to protect the Muslims there. LOL - What better way to light a fire under all those milk toast - only motivated by pure narrow self interest - without any moral backbone to speak of Europeans...Sure the (methods of) prosecution and (particularly) timing of the NATO campaign may have been faulty - but I do not beleive that any rational and feeling human could just advocate doing nothing in the face of such crimes. Armenians, IMO, should understand this more than most

Hey, have I found the last person that still believes the NATO propaganda! Or is it just that you want it to support your pre-existing prejudices. I am trying to understand history in order to shed light on present and future events. The parallels in history between Armenia and Serbia are clear, and the only reason that there were ANY Serbs living in Kossovo was that the German led, Albanian killers in Kossovo during WW2 were rather less efficient killers than the Turkish led Kurdish killers in eastern Turkey during WW1. And for the future, if you want to know the fate of Artsakh - just look at what happened to the formerly Serb populated region of Croatia.

quote

....are you some kind of Orthodox solidarity kind of guy?

What a laugh

quote

I am interested in your characterization of why supporting NATO in Kosovo constitutes selling ones soul....

Europe and America is full of self-defined little ethnic groups, each with their stereotypes of others and themselves, and with their historic enemies, and national myths, and exaggerated sense of importance, and an instinctive need to latch, poodle-like, onto any cause that may give them a bigger stage on which to prance for a while.

I had hoped that Britain's Armenians had more sense and dignity that that lot, but it seems that many did not.

[ThornyRose]

It seems to me as though this is getting out of hand, but...
Yes, marked days may be happy or unhappy, but celebrations are happy. Are you trying to tell me that the guys were actually smiling on TV?
The events to which I refer were described by the BBC (now firmly under the control of the Labour party) as “Holocaust Day celebrations”
If so, what about not learning from the first fiasco and implementing it to the program you mentioned above? Are they calling it a "celebration" again?

[THOTH]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bellthecat:
I found the whole "genocide commemoration" earlier this year to be extremely repulsive - so repulsive that I don't wish to remember it in detail in order to cite my many reasons for finding it so. (Sorry).

Steve

---

I interpreted this as a general comment concerning April 24 commemorations - as you use the term "genocide" and not Holocaust etc. If you meant only the one commemoration of which you later speak than OK - but my read of the above statement of yours was a more general application.

[THOTH]

Steve -

 

I for one see a big difference between the use of "Holocaust" to indicate a particualr event etc and the use of "alleged" before Armenian Genocide. First i reject that "alleged" is generally accepted (most folks aren't even aware of the Genocide at all in any event. Secondly, "Holocaust" is prewtty much accepted (right or wrong) and use of such has no where the impact (and falseness) of "alleged" before the Genocide. While I understand Fahdi's points I don't think the semantics is such an issue - there are plenty of examples of use of a word that may have been used previously for a more generic purpose to describe some particularly intense example - regardless if it was the first or only - etc. I don't think that use of the capital "H" necessarily superceeds any legitimacy etc of other Genocides (though i understand the effort by some to use it this way).

 

I am familiar with the campaign to eliminate Sebs by the Nazis and their supportes (mostly Croats I had thought) and that the Kosovo region is a historic Serb area of some signifigance. Regardless - the issue for the 1990s is that ethnic Serbs have resorted to violence - including mass slaughter and round ups of people etc to achieve there aims - regardless of the past history this is plain unacceptable (IMO). Reports of such are absolutly NOT propaganda. Sorry - untrue. Do you advocate that Armenians (if and when able) begin a scorched earth genocidal campaign against the Turks in Eastern Anatolia to regain their ancestral lands? This is how I see the Serb actions in Bosnia and Kosovo. I do not reject your comparisons with Artsahk - but its not like we can turn back the clock - we have to live with the realities of today - and we need to work towards peaceful solutions to these problems - and not violence. People have to learn to put aside certain aspects of past animosities and learn to live together - otherwise the tragedies of the past will only be repeated and new groups of embittered survivors will be born....