Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day: Revisiting Islam’s Greatest Slaughter of Christians

 

BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM APRIL 24, 2019

CHAT 124 COMMENTS

Today, April 24, marks the “Great Crime,” that is, the genocide of Christians—mostly Armenians but also Assyrians—that took place under the Islamic Ottoman Empire throughout World War I.  Then, the Turks liquidated approximately 1.5 million Armenians and 300,000 Assyrians.

Most objective American historians who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.  A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.  At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Similarly, in 1920, U.S. Senate Resolution 359 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (consistent with Islam’s rules of war).  Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross,” she wrote, “spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”  Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.

Whereas the genocide is largely acknowledged in the West, one of its primary if not fundamental causes is habitually overlooked: religion.  The genocide is usually articulated through a singularly secular paradigm, one that factors only things that are intelligible from a secular, Western point of view—such as identity and gender politics, nationalism, and territorial disputes. Such an approach does little more than project modern Western perspectives onto vastly different civilizations and eras.

War, of course, is another factor that clouds the true face of the genocide.  Because these atrocities mostly occurred during World War I, so the argument goes, they are ultimately a reflection of just that—war, in all its chaos and destruction, and nothing more.  But as Winston Churchill, who described the massacres as an “administrative holocaust,” correctly observed, “The opportunity [WWI] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.”  Even Adolf Hitler had pointed out that “Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.”

It’s worth noting that little has changed; in the context of war in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, the first to be targeted for genocide have been Christians and other minorities.

But even the most cited factor of the Armenian Genocide, “ethnic identity conflict,” while legitimate, must be understood in light of the fact that, historically, religion accounted more for a person’s identity than language or heritage.   This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments and Muslim mobs persecute Christian minorities who share the same race, ethnicity, language, and culture; minorities who are indistinguishable from the majority—except, of course, for being non-Muslims, or “infidels.”

As one Armenian studies professor asks, “If it [the Armenian Genocide] was a feud between Turks and Armenians, what explains the genocide carried out by Turkey against the Christian Assyrians at the same time?”

Indeed, according to a 2017 book, Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide:

[The] policy of ethnic cleansing was stirred up by pan-Islamism and religious fanaticism.  Christians were considered infidels ( kafir).  The call to Jihad, decreed on 29 November 1914 and instigated and orchestrated for political ends, was part of the plan” to “combine and sweep over the lands of Christians and to exterminate them.”   As with the Armenians, eyewitness accounts tell of the sadistic eye-gouging of Assyrians and the gang rape of their children on church altars. According to key documents, all this was part of “an Ottoman plan to exterminate Turkey’s Christians.

To understand how the historic genocide of Armenians and Assyrians is representative of the modern-day plight of Christians under Islam, one need only read the following words written in 1918 by President Theodore Roosevelt; however, read “Armenian” as “Christian” and “Turkish” as  “Islamic,” as supplied in brackets:

the Armenian [Christian] massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey [the Islamic world] is to condone it… the failure to deal radically with the Turkish [Islamic] horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.

Indeed, if we “fail to deal radically” with the “horror” currently being visited upon millions of Christians around the Islamic world—which in some areas reached genocidal proportions—we “condone it” and had better cease talking “mischievous nonsense” of a utopian world of peace and tolerance.

Put differently, silence is always the ally of those who would liquidate the “other.”  In 1915, Adolf Hitler rationalized his genocidal plans, which he implemented some three decades later, when he rhetorically asked: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

And who among today’s major politicians speaks—let alone does anything—about the ongoing annihilation of Christians by Muslims, most recently (but not singularly) seen in the Easter Sunday church bombings of Sri Lanka that left over 300 dead?

Note: See author's recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, for more on Turks and Armenians — including how the first "genocide" of Armenians at the hands of Turks actually began one-thousand years ago, in the year 1019.  

Alan Dershowitz and the Mueller Report

April 23, 2019

Alan Dershowitz and the Mueller Report

 

Alan Dershowitz is a self-defined “liberal-Democrat”. He doesn’t hide the fact he voted for Hillary in 2016 or that he voted for Dems in the latest mid-term election. So why is he the target of so much liberal angst right now? Because he dared write an introduction to the Mueller Report, published yesterday, and did not jump on the bandwagon by proclaiming Trump not only must be impeached but that he was guilty of all allegations against him.

How dare he!

Professor Dershowitz dares because he is more than a liberal-Democrat. He dares because he refuses “to substitute partisan wishful thinking for neutral analysis of the law and facts.” (loc. 266*). That’s the key to the difference between how he looked at the report and how others–the Washington Post, for example–have. Not only did Professor Dershowitz go into this with the goal of doing a neutral analysis, he did so looking at both the applicable law and the facts.

From the very first paragraph, he makes clear he isn’t out to grind a political axe of any sort. He tackles the issue of the redactions immediately, noting they were “minimal” and were “required by law”. Then he reminds everyone that none of the redactions were made because of executive privilege. In fact, he points out President Trump refused to claim executive privilege on anything relating to the investigation.

Hmm, that’s not the action of a man with anything to hide, is it?

The report presents “no evidence of any criminal behavior by President Trump or his campaign with regard to Russia.” (loc. 45) But, as Dershowitz points out, while Trump won’t be charged with obstruction of justice, he wasn’t exonerated either. This lack of a finding in one direction or another, the professor feels, was a basic cop-out on Mueller’s part. Mueller’s job was to make this sort of difficult decision and he failed to do so.

Hmm, so that does play into the liberal talking points. So why are they not applauding Dershowitz? Oh, let me count the ways.

To start, Dershowitz writes that Attorney General William Barr’s statement that:

the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.” (loc. 62)

Oh, my. There’s that pesky little problem of the the law and our wonderful Constitution. As Dershowitz said, that one statement from the AG “constitutes a complete legal exoneration”.

And now we see why the Dems are not happy with how one of their own is speaking out against the approved narrative.

But it gets better–or worse, depending on your point of view.

Dershowitz writes Mueller conducted a “generally fair prosecutorial investigation of the facts.” And there’s another word the Dems would prefer we forget about–facts. Then he condemns Mueller for failing to do his job by not coming to a clear decision about the obstruction charges.

You have to admit, had Mueller done so, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now. Sure, the Dems would still be digging–all the way to China if necessary–to try to find something on Trump. But there would be a concrete finding and much of the “what ifs” and “why nots” we’re seeing would have been put to rest.  

Of course, the Dems are hanging their hats on the 14 indictments that came out of the investigation. As Dershowitz points out, those indictments are smoke but not fire. The indictments fall into three basic categories: financial crimes committed by people in Trump’s “sphere” before he became president; process crimes such as perjury which almost always come about when you have such a lengthy and complex investigation; and those indictments against Russian corporations and individuals, none of which will ever see the inside of a US courtroom.

The pull quote from this comes from Judge Ellis in the Paul Manafort trial. Speaking to the prosecutors, Judge Ellis said:

You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud—what you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.

“This vernacular to ‘sing’ is what prosecutors use. What you’ve got to be careful of is that they may not only sing, they may compose.” (loc. 80)

Despite this warning, the Dems continue to dig and threaten others within Trump’s inner circle with investigations–or worse–in their attempt to bring down the president.

Dershowitz makes an interesting comparison in the introduction between the Mueller Report and James Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation in 2016:

Despite these conclusions [that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge Trump with collusion, etc.] , the public release of the report creates the same effect as what James Comey, then director of the FBI, improperly did in the Hillary Clinton case of 2016: announce the decision not to indict and then add a statement that she had been ‘extremely careless’ in using a private email server.” (loc. 88)

Where Dershowitz really deviates from the approved Democratic response to the Mueller Report comes with his discussion about whether there should have been a report or not. According to the professor, the answer is no. There should not have been a written report. He cites “long standing Department of Justice traditions”.

He also says a special counsel never should have been appointed. This is where he really goes off the rails, at least where the Democratic Party is concerned. To start, he says it would have been better for the prosecutors with the DoJ to have conducted the investigation. Then he points out, rightly so when you give it serious thought, that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General who appointed Mueller as special counsel, had at the very least a conflict of interest in doing so.

To start, Rosenstein was, according to Dershowitz, a “key witness” in the investigation into Comey’s firing (which goes to the obstruction charge). But it goes beyond that. Rosenstein could be seen as a potential defendant in such an investigation. The reason is because current law would prevent Trump from being charged with obstruction, at least at this time, if Mueller hd determined Comey’s firing was a criminal act. That means Rosenstein might be the only one who could be charged.

And yet, he didn’t recuse himself. Instead, he appointed a special counsel. That should have left to someone else to determine 1) if such action was appropriate and 2) who should be appointed if the action was warranted.

Another reason Dershowitz feels there should never have been a written report is that this was a criminal investigation. The example he gives is that of a prosecutor deciding whether to indict someone or not. When they do indict, they don’t give a written report. They simply present the case to the grand jury and, if they meet the evidentiary standard, get their indictment. They certainly don’t issue a written report to the public-at-large on why they decided not to indict. Oh, they might hold a press conference but there is no written report.

There is one caveat to what Dershowitz writes about the written report, one he points out. The DoJ requires special counsels to file a written report with the attorney general. But, as Dershowitz points out, there is nothing in the regulations that require the AG to make the report public.

Yes, the Democrats in Congress would have a fit, but they are already. Nothing short of Mueller condemning Trump and bringing him up on charges would have satisfied them. Their very actions after the report’s release proves that.

Dershowitz writes that, instead of a special counsel being appointed, Congress could have appointed a commission to hold public hearings into the matter. Of course, they’d have to hold some closed-door sessions to deal with “highly classified matters”. But, had this route have been taken, there would have been a transparency to the investigation that is lacking. The goal would have been to inform the public, not prosecute.

Or, as I like to say, not try to take down the presidency.

Of course the Dems would never agree to that. They bet all they had on the report bringing Trump down. It didn’t and now they are frantically scrambling to find something, no matter how tenuous, to give credence to theirs cries of outrage about the report and the fact Hillary isn’t our president.

Here’s the money quote from Dershowitz’s introduction and it explains so much about not only the reaction to the Mueller Report but about politics in general:

But in our age of hyper-partisan division, nobody seems to want the kind of objective, unbiased truth that an expert commission is tasked to find. Partisans want ‘Democratic truths’ and ‘Republican truths,’ ‘prosecutorial truths’ and ‘defense truths.’ That is why an expert commission was not established, and why an expert report based on all the evidence, was not issued.” (loc. 189)

Partisan politics, where the truth gets obscured in favor of the message.

Despite pointing out the weaknesses in the report, Dershowitz is being pilloried in some circles because he hasn’t stuck with the narrative. Too many on both sides of the aisle have forgotten that our criminal justice system is based on laws and has evidentiary requirements. They put too much emphasis on the court of public opinion and gladly place it ahead of our constitutional rights and privileges.

Professor Dershowitz has more to say about the report. I highly suggest you read it for yourself. He has done a much better job of trying to present an unbiased look at it than anyone I’ve seen to date. It is certainly much less slanted than the Washington Post’s treatment of the report.

I’ll leave you with this quote from near the end of his introduction:

Now it remains to be seen how this flawed report will be used and misused for partisan purposes. Already, some are calling it a ‘road map’ for impeachment or further partisan congressional investigations. That is precisely why it is so dangerous to civil liberties and the rule of law to release reports by special counsel detailing noncriminal wrongdoing by subjects of a one-sided investigation who were not charged.” (loc. 257)

One-sided because the “defense” was not allowed to cross-examine the “prosecution’s” witnesses. It was not allowed to present a counter to the witnesses interviewed or charged by the special counsel and his team.

We are a nation of laws, laws the liberals seem all too willing to toss to the wind in their efforts to get Trump out of the office. If that doesn’t terrify you, it should.

Franklin Graham Tells the Sad Truth (Nov 11, 2012)

Today's Sad Truth

Time is like a river.  You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.  Franklin Graham was speaking at the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, when he said America will not come back.  

He wrote:“The American dream ended on November 6th, 2012.  The second term of Barack Obama has been the final nail in the coffin for the legacy ofthe white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest republic in the history of mankind.

A coalition of radical blacks and Latinos, feminists, gays, government workers, union members, environmental extremists, the media, Hollywood,uninformed young people, the “forever needy,” the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other “fellow travelers” have ended Norman Rockwell’s America.

You will never again out-vote these people.  It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away.  It will take zealots, not moderates and shy, not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.

People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will probably never again be able to legally comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.

The Cocker spaniel is off the front porch, the pit bull is in the back yard, the American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the likes of Chicago shyster David Axelrod along with international socialist George Soros have been pulling the strings on their beige puppet and have brought us Act 2 of the New World Order.

The curtain will come down but the damage has been done, the story has been told.

Those who come after us will once again have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to white guilt and political correctness..”

The Trump Doctrin

MICHAEL ANTON:

An insider explains the president’s foreign policy.

The fact that Trump is not a neoconservative or a paleoconservative, neither a traditional realist nor a liberal internationalist, has caused endless confusion. The same goes for the fact that he has no inborn inclination to isolationism or interventionism, and he is not simply a dove or a hawk. His foreign policy doesn’t easily fit into any of these categories, though it draws from all of them.
Yet Trump does have a consistent foreign policy: a Trump Doctrine. The administration calls it “principled realism,” which isn’t bad—although the term hasn’t caught on. The problem is that the Trump Doctrine, like most presidential doctrines, cannot be summed up in two words. (To see for yourself, try describing the Monroe, Truman, or Reagan Doctrine with just a couple of words.) Yet Trump himself has explained it, on multiple occasions. In perhaps his most overlooked, understudied speech—delivered at the APEC CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, in November 2017—he encapsulated his approach to foreign policy with a quote from The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home.” Two months earlier, speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, he made the same point by referring to a “great reawakening of nations.”

This is a longer piece, but well worth your time.

102Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green   

VDH on Mueller Roport and How It May Backfire on Democrats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn9q7JEscqY


VDH on Mueller Report

Christians Marginalized - in Aftermath of Sri Lanka Terrorism

Why Clinton and Obama Tweeted about ‘Easter Worshippers’

By DENNIS PRAGER

April 23, 2019  

The Left won’t allow itself to acknowledge anti-Christian terrorism.

Sometimes, a few sentences tell you more about a person — and, more importantly, an ideology — than a learned thesis. That is the case with tweets from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama two days ago in response to the mass murder of more than 300 Christians and others in Sri Lanka.

 Their tweets are worth serious analysis because they reveal a great deal about the Left. Of course, they reveal a great deal about Clinton and Obama, too, but that doesn’t interest me.

And that, too, is important. Many Americans — especially conservatives and “independents” — are more interested in individual politicians than in political ideologies.

Many conservatives have long been fixated on Clinton — so much so that probably any other Democrat would have defeated Donald Trump, as conservative anger specifically toward her propelled many people to the polls. Similarly, Republican Never-Trumpers are fixated on Trump rather than policy. They care more about Trump’s personal flaws than about the mortal dangers the Left poses to America and the West or about the uniquely successful conservative policies Trump promulgates.

And independents all claim to vote “for the person, not the party.”

Only leftists understand that one must vote Left no matter who the Democrat is, no matter who the Republican opponent is. Leftists are completely interchangeable: There is no ideological difference among the 20 or so Democrats running for president. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is not one degree to the right of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

That is why it is important to understand Clinton and Obama’s tweets: to understand the Left, not to understand her or him.

Here are the tweets:

Obama: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.”

Three hours later, Clinton tweeted: “On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence. I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers in Sri Lanka.”

As they both spelled “worshipers” the same idiosyncratic way and used the term “Easter worshippers,” it is likely that either they had the same writers or Clinton copied Obama.

Here’s what’s critical: Neither used the word “Christians.” And in order to avoid doing so, they went so far as to make up a new term — “Easter worshippers” — heretofore unknown to any Christian.

When Jews were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Clinton mentioned the synagogue in a tweet. But in her post–Sri Lanka tweet, despite the bombing of three churches filled with Christians, Clinton made no mention of church or churches. In a tweet after the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand, she wrote that her heart broke for “the global Muslim community.” But in her latest tweet, not a word about Christians or the global Christian community.

Obama similarly wrote in his tweet about New Zealand that he was grieving with “the Muslim community” over the “horrible massacre in the Mosques.” But in his tweet about Sri Lanka, there is no mention of Christians or churches.

The reason neither of them mentioned Christians or churches is that the Left has essentially forbidden mention of all the anti-Christian murders perpetrated by Muslims in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and of all the Muslim desecration of churches in Europe, Africa, and anywhere else. This is part of the same phenomenon — that I and others have documented — of British police and politicians covering up six years of rape of 1,400 of English girls by Muslim “grooming gangs” in Rotherham and elsewhere in England.

Essentially, the Left’s rule is that nothing bad — no matter how true — may be said about Muslims or Islam and nothing good — no matter how true — may be said of Christians or Christianity.

Clinton’s post–New Zealand tweet also included these words: “We must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalization of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms. White supremacist terrorists must be condemned by leaders everywhere. Their murderous hatred must be stopped.”

She made sure to condemn “Islamophobia,” but she wrote not a word about the far more destructive and widespread hatred of Christians in the Muslim world, seen in Muslims’ virtual elimination of the Christian communities in the Middle East, the regular murder and kidnappings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the murder of Christians in Nigeria. She calls on “leaders everywhere” to condemn “white supremacist terrorists,” one of the smallest hate groups on Earth, but never calls on leaders everywhere to condemn Islamist terrorists, the largest hate group on Earth.

9

These two tweets tell you a lot about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But far more importantly, they tell you a lot about the Left.

© 2019 Creators.com

_________________________________________________________________________________

Shame on the Left

and

Shame on all those who Marginalize CHRISTIANITY

THAT’S DIFFERENT, BECAUSE SHUT UP:

Related:




_______________________________________________


Remember, in the WaPo’s world only the “far right” cares about brown people being murdered in church on Easter Sunday.

UPDATE:

Arthur Chrenkoff:

This effort to use language as a cudgel has several sinister implications. It delegitimises perfectly normal political ideas through guilt by association. It also creates the impression that the (genuine) far right is much bigger, more influential and more threatening and dangerous than it actually is. This in turn is used to downplay and minimise the dangers of Islamist and far-left extremism and terrorism. But perhaps the scariest aspect of it all is that the left, by manufacturing the far right monster, are actually genuinely contributing to the growth of far-right extremism. The relentless flood of identity politics, grievance and victimhood, and shaming and guilting entire sections of population based on their skin colour and culture is genuinely radicalising some misfits into fascism, like the Christchurch terrorist, for example. For every action there is eventually an equal and opposite reaction. The left might think it’s courageously defanging the fascist dragon but instead it’s just sowing its teeth.

It’s more than that. When you call perfectly reasonable things — like being upset over an Easter church massacre — “far right,” you convince people that “far right” maybe isn’t so bad.

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Denmark - Socialist Paradise? NO (Prager U)

Denmark a Free Capital Country - Not Socialist

Prager U

Tolerance : The Left's Definition

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD:

Grenell: Buttigieg’s “pushing a hate hoax” like Jussie Smollett.

Grenell wondered where all the calls for tolerance from the gay community have gone. Grenell, himself in a same-sex marriage, laments that their goals used to be tolerance. That doesn’t mean enforcing sameness on everyone, Grenell argues, noting that he disagrees with people he admires but doesn’t expect them to conform to his point of view.

“We were the ones saying everyone should be able to accept and love each other,”

Grenell recalls. “Now, suddenly, there’s a whole community of people who are demanding that we all think alike. I think it’s outrageous.”

Grenell’s correct that tolerance has gone from its original meaning to an Orwellian term on the Left for enforcing groupthink and silencing any dissent.

Yes, he is.
Related (From Ed): The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler writes, “we conclude there is little evidence that Pence supported conversion therapy, especially given the discussion concerning the Ryan White bill at the time. Media citations on this issue should be more careful in how they reference it.”
As Stephen Miller tweets, “I mean what was the rush here? Why not just wait a few years and let a narrative take hold before checking something like this?”

96Posted at 6:10 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

H