Stormfront member admits existence of Holocaust(s???)!

That's right.

There is only one thing missing from today's arsenal of spectacular weapons, and that's the bludgeon of irony. One comment declares the Talmud a "hate manual" while at the same time putting a link to JewWatch (resource site for anti-semites) in their signature and declaring that Jews are the HIV of the human race.

The idea that Jewish persecution is the "Jews' fault" is absurd. Modern morality is such that responsibility (as much as any guilt exists) is individual not communal. Not even the premise of blaming the victim holds water in the ideology of the forum member. If we assume the idea that victims are responsible for their own persecution, then it follows that neo-Nazis are responsible for their own persecution. My own belief is that neo-Nazis are far more responsible, as they actively take up the banner of twelve million dead.

"Dennis, do the right thing!"

Anti-genocide activist band System of a Down recently held a protest at House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office. They called on him to allow a vote on a House resolution to recognize the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War 1.

See a video here.

The Armenian genocide

The band System of a Down held an awesome protest at House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office last week, attempting to get him to finally allow a vote on a House Resolution admitting the fact that Turkey slaughtered Armenians during World War 1. Hastert has prevented two similar bills in recent years from coming to a vote. I thought I'd share a pretty interesting passage from a World War 1 history book about the subject.

Between 1.5 and 2 million Armenians lived under Ottoman rule, almost half on the Armenian plateau in the north-east. [n19] Wehn war broke out their leaders were publicly loyal and asked their people to obey the call-up order [This is the order to form military divisions for war}, which about 100,000 did. However, they refused to summon their fellows across the frontier to rise against tsarist [Russian] overlordship, and the latter enlisted in the Russian army. Yet although the Turkish government claimed to be retaliating against disloyalty and preparations for insurrection, the Ottoman Armenians appear to have been guilty of neither until the action against them began, after Sarikamish, in late February 1915. First the Armenians in the army were segregated, disarmed, and either murdered or forced to work untl they dropped. Those who had not enlisted were searched in their villages for arms, tortured, and killed. With the able-bodied men removed, the second phase from April to August centred on deportations of the remaining Armenians on long forced marches towards detention camps in northern Mesopotamia, where they died in thousands if they had not already lost their lives en route. It is true that Zeitan, the first town to be attacked, was violently resisting conscription, but when the Armenians in the city of Van rebelled (and for a time were relieved by the Russians) in April-May, they were clearly doing so in order to avoid their compatriots' fate. None the less, the Van uprising brought matters to a climax. Hundreds of Armenians in Constantinople itself were arrested and murdered, the remainder of the Armenian plateau was cleared and the Allies warned that they would hold the Turkish government to account and the officials concerned personally liable. [To some small extent this happened, the British held a number of genocidaires in Malta for a while after the war, but as Kemal Ataturk rose to power the criminals were repatriated. See Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell.] As for the Germans, although their advisors deplored the massacres as deeply as did neutral missionaries and diplomats, the Berlin foreign ministry hesitated to press the matter for fear of jeopardizing the alliance. In all, probably over a million people died in what was certainly a centrally planned campaign, inspired by the CUP leaders [Committee of Union and Progress, leading political party in the Ottoman Empire] and implemented by 'Special Organizations' coming under the party and the war ministry. Who took the decision and why remains uncertain, and the relevant documents have been destroyed or withheld. In particular, it is unclear whether a security operation to protect the Caucasus border escalated because of the Armenian resistance and the Special Organizations' indiscipline, or whether the aim from the start was to wipe the Armenians out. Some of the statements of the Young Turk leaders give credence to the latter possibility, and in its implementation the policy was indeed genocidal.

The massacres were the most appalling of many signs in 1915 that this would be a war of hitherto unknown intensity, and the ninteenth-century restraints on the conduct of hostilities were collapsing. They happened when the Young Turks' gamble on intervention appeared to have gone disastrously wrong, though this is no plea in mitigation. In contrast, however, in the second phase in the Middle East the Allies took the offensive but the Turks successfully struck back, containing the Russians' summer 1915 attacks in the Caucasus and repelling both an advance by Indian forces on Baghdad and a determined Anglo-French attempt to capture Constantinople.

David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, 2004, pages 94-95.

New film on the Rwanda genocide

Sometimes in April was screened at the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival recently.

A review on the Houston Chronicle, although taking a harsh view of recent movies about Africa including Hotel Rwanda, tells a bit more about the movie. I hope it's released on DVD so those of us without HBO can see it.

More recently, the underrated HBO film Sometimes in April also looked back at the Rwandan genocide, with Idris Elba as a man devastated by the loss of his wife and children. The film's torture scenes are even harder to watch than those in Hotel Rwanda, and its romance is more tentative. The hero tries to rebuild his life with another woman but may be too caught in the horrors of the past. Without the need to attract a theater audience, HBO films are freer to toy with the formula.

Been awhile

Well, its been awhile since I have posted. I have been pretty busy with work, school, and debate. I am trying throughout my school to get this blog noticed alittle more. But if you have been reading this, then please, some how get the word out about our blog. There arent many blogs out there like this. Most people today dont know much about genocide. If you are one of those people, then I suggest you go out and BUY the movie, "Hotel Rwanda" It is my favorite movie, and it is really touching and opens your eyes. Then, you can visit some of the sites that we have linked on the side.

One other thing. If you go to the StormFront site, dont by into their bullshit. Just look at how they make most of their claims. They think something that could of happend, or the way something happend, THEN they find evidence to support it. Anyone that doesnt consider what Hitler did during the Holocaust a genocide, has no heart nor mind.

His very hair sacred?

Thread on Stormfront suggests, seriously, that Hitler's mustache might have had health reasons. Of course, this pseudo-science reflects their pseudo-science in their holocaust denial and ideas of race, but never has it been so utterly ridiculous as this. At least the other racist and neo-nazi fields keep a facade of academia.

The same Stormfront member has another thread suggesting that the Basques rigged Guernica to blow during the Spanish Civil War. Of course the facts are not presented in the thread, it's just a "hey, let's suppose for a moment...."

Another thing to consider is why would the nationalists do something that would create a world wide issue when they didn't have to level a city to win the war in that part of Spain at that particular time.

Of course! Why would anyone commit an atrocity when it would be viewed poorly by the world? By this logic, noone in history has ever committed an atrocity, ever! (Except those ritual-killing Jews, though, right Stormfront?)

Wikipedia has a number of reasons why the German Condor Legion (NOT, as the Stormfront member says, the Nationalists) would terror bomb Guernica.

Who's voting against Roberts?

I blogged a while back about Bush's Supreme Court Justice nomination John Roberts, and his despicable justification for supporting the Genocide Convention. So, I'm deciding to keep a little tally of who's voting against Roberts. This will be updated as I get more information.

9-21: New York Times reports Harry Reid will not vote for Roberts.
9-21: An email from John Kerry saying he will not vote for Roberts.

RIP Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal, a man who tirelessly hunted Nazi war criminals and supported the war crimes court for genocide in the former Yugoslavia, died yesterday in Austria at the age of 96.

The New York Times has an excellent obituary, even alluding to his wit:

Once, in West Germany, he [Wiesenthal] related, he defused a harangue by a speaker who accused him of dining on Nazis for breakfast, lunch and dinner. "You are mistaken," he replied. "I don't eat pork."

R.I.P.