Posted by panchmaster from pool0187.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.187) on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 at 1:38PM :
In Reply to: There You Are! posted by panchmaster from pool0507.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.211.252) on Wednesday, November 20, 2002 at 10:48AM :
: >>>>Nah, if you think America will 'go down on you' just as fast as the Baathey's or Iranianins, you're dreaming.... there are so, so many people saying things in America that would have gotten them their testicles electrocuted, or had them knee deep in sewerage for a couple of days, or had their tongue cut off, 6 bullets in their chest etc etc no, at the end of the day I'd rather have the 'flawed' Western democracy than a cold Bathy.
: ###The West is counting on you to feel that way...that's how they get away with murder. So long as they aim their guns at anyone but you, you enjoy the benefits of YOUR freedoms. As history shows us repeatedly...there WILL be a day of reckonning.
: : Imagine a priest talking to two journalists about a topic that is very, very taboo in Turkey. No, whichever way you look at it, it’s pretty brave.
####Indeed it is...but there are still two ways of looking at it. In one, the man says something at home after being assured it will go no farther..as we heard it. In the other version, he knows full well it will be made public but resolutely sticks to his guns anyway...damn the consequences...in TURKEY! Then, when he gets hauled in, as you would have us believe he knew there was a good chance of happening, he remains silent from then on, says he was only repeating what he'd heard from others, accepts a sentence based on his promise not to do it again, which he has apparently stuck to. Surely he knew the law, knew it was considered a crime to claim otherwise, yet did it anyway in defiance. Then what happened...with all those Eusropeans in attendance, what happened?
: : +++If it was very brave, then what happened?
: >>> Read the press.
: Akbulut spoke his mind, arrested, tried, found 'innocent' and sent home... one small step for a priest has created ripples that are getting bigger.... things are happening, and it may look slow but in terms of the depth of Mid Eastern history it's pretty damn fast!
###Wait a minute. He was only found innocent because he recanted..."silence gives consent". It makes no sense to assert that he was in a big bad terrible country...broke the law, and got slapped on the wrist. Why didn't they find him guilty...because Europeans were present? Come on. If that was the reason, then all the more reason for the Turks to maintain the fiction that they let him off on a technicality and not becuase they were afraid of world opinion. The whole thing hinged on Akbulut...he HAD to cooperate with them or they would have been clearly in the right to convict him for breaking a law...happens everywhere all the time. There are many laws that are unjust...gives no one the right to break them and no government is going to let it be known that if you get enough publicity for your cause they'll let you off, just bring your European pals.
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: : +++There is fear in America right now among us darkies. The government announced yesterday that it will begin monitoring Iraqi Americans.
: >>>So they should; let them monitor. You will never know it's happening; and unless you have something to hide I wouldn't worry too much; contrast that with the daily and nightly anxiety suffered by political dissidents in the East: you have it easy. Stop complaining and count your blessings.
###Oh brother...back to therapy with you or stop taking the happy pills. So, everyone in jail in the United States or Guantanamo deserves to be there...otherwise they wouldn't be there, now would they? It's interesting that in order to justify every perfidy of the United States you don't hold us up to our own ideals, enshrined in the Constituion, but compare us to some of the most backwards countries in the world,,,countries often bombed into the Stone Age by this very United States, Britain and other righteously free societies.
###It is not crying ofrcomplaining to criticize the United States government,...or are you of the school that believes a democrcay means we all HAVE to think as one? When did that ever become the standard of excellence in a democracy?
###It is because we uphold American ideals and not compare ourselves with Turks, that we express our outrage at the path this government is taking us down. It's the party in power that are the crybabies...the ones terrified of their own shadows, of the people they pushed and supported to do this...and not in our name or for our benefit, but for theirs.
###I'll drive a screwdriver into your eye and when you cry out in pain tell you things could be worse...I could be a Turk, in which case no part of you would be safe. How much better would you feel? Wouldn't You try to point to me that in blinding you I have just broken faith with my own ideals...rather than praise me for hurting you less than a Turk would have?
: The freedoms you extoll in America can vanish in a heartbeat...they have slowly begun to. We had concentration camps and we now hold people in military prisons indefinitely without due process...something never before done in America...maybe in Turkey but not here. The Weimar Republic was a model of democracy and tolerance too before Hitler was elected.
: >>> well, if that happens then America has joined the rest of the world and hey who cares then?
###Silly doctor...what happened to the good life for all...or is it just for you? Physician, heal thyself, don't thyself become a heel.
: : +++Of course it takes courage to stand up...but if Akbulut intended to be defiant, then why was he silent at his trial...why did he maintain he'd just repeated what he'd heard? Mind you this is what I recall hearing at the time. It was the perfect time to defy the government, mildly by simply reasserting the truth...why not seize the moment...with the whole world watching?
: >>> he simply reiterated in court what he said to the journalists.
####This is the first time I heard this from anyone. He agreed to remain silent...to allow the court to let him off on that technicality. You mean to tell me he repeated word for word what got him arrested and tried in the first place, and they just let him go? Just because some white people were watching? Then why don't they all go downtown and talk nothing else but about the Assyrian genocide?
###Do you guys have socialized therapy down there?
: : +++And do you really think there is no secret police in America? And...do you think America's secret police isn't active in those countries? Or are some police better than others? Are we going again to brag because we're better than the Turks, or the Mongolians?
: >>>The secret police in America is doubtless the biggest in the world... and so they should be. Like I said above, they do their work and let 'ordinary' citizens get on with life. Unless you're into something criminal or part of some fucked up 'terrorist' organisation, no probs.
+++Are Black people terrorists...are Mexicans...are Environmentalists...was Dr Wen Ho Lee? You are amazing in your naivtee...the government MUST be right because the government Must be right.
If that worries you,sorry. I sleep ok at night. The Eastern style secret police is a lot more unsophisticated and intrusive and life doesn't go on normally.
###Because it's on the surface. When they come for you...you'll never know it. Of course you sleep okay at night...you aren't wanted yet...you serve the national interest. That isn't freedom, it's utility.
Your cousin could be a spy and let his mates know you think the President of Syria is a knob... and then you better protect your testicles...
###You could read the wrong books and find yourself in solitary for months. You speak like the most privileged of white men do...as if Australia was deeded to you by the Lord, rather than stolen from its rightful inhabitants...but that was some time ago and you had nothing to do with it...so what do you have to complain of. By that logic, the next person to come along and maybe steal your home, has nothing to fear or apologize for either.
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: : +++I'll tell you what...had he maintained his beliefs intact and voiced them that last day...his ass would have been in jail now. They were able to appear more liberal because Akbulut cooperated with them...allowed them to duck the issue he'd raised and failed to follow through on. I don't fault the man...Ashur knows he was the one facing jail time. But something doesn't make sense here...if you're going to make a statement you know is provocative in a country such as Turkey, in a region you say is extremely hostile to such sentiments...why would you make it all only to in essence take it back...for he must have satisfied the court of SOMETHING or else why would they flaunt their own laws in front of the whole world? Their law specifically called what he did a crime. Without his help and cooperation they could not have saved face at all...just caved in.
: >>> Akbulut is a human being, he has all the weaknesses of a human: do you know how scary it is living where he does? He lives in a church fortified with high walls in a city with a populatiobn of millions and a handful of Suryoye... now, you're bound to have a few nutters in all those millions who don't like Assyrians or anyone talking against the history of the country. He had undercover police come one night and take him away; he has several young kids; the head of the Police in Diyarbakir had good relations with the minorities and was assasinated by xenophobes - do you think it's easy living a life like that? It's easy about thinking of all the great things you can do, but believe me when you're in the thick of it, and when you have young children, you might just want tostart thinking of yourself again. We can't all be heroes. Despite that, Akbulut maintained, and still maintains, his beliefs. The priests from surrounding areas wrote a joint statement denouncing Akbulut's comments. He said he would say the same thing if asked to make a public statement again.
###Do you have any idea what it's like living in Baghdad for the last 13 years? yet these paragons of freedom and democracy are itching to inflict even more misery and death on those innocent people. Can a country that spreads murder and mayhem around the world really be said to be a Free and democractic country? can a child murder really be a loving father to his own children?
###We are all weak in the flesh...but some of us don't make a profession out of it...don't claim on that basis to have the ear of god...not if this is the best they can do. He doesn't have to make that statement again in public...he missed his chance in court...with all those white people watching. And I'll bet you he'd get thrown right back in jail if he made the statement again.
###How far do you suppose people get in this country reminding the government that there was a genocide of the native population here? That, "the only good injun is a dead injun" is something we should make reparations for?...what makes what happened in Turkey so damn compelling? just because it happened to US? As long as human beans can be killed by anybody, for any reason...none of us are safe. The Jewish Holocaust coarsened all of humanity, not just those directly involved...."When the bell tolls, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee".
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: : +++See, that statement is hard to understand. Things got better...for what and how?
: >>>Simple-for freedom of thought. There's a precedent now: saying you challenge the official version of Turkish history won't land you in jail or a death penalty ... at least not an 'official' one anyway....
###Do you know how many Americans were unofficially murdered? Ask the FBI, ask about their Cointlepro action that targeted the Black Panthers...not to mention Diem and Allende, the Shah and Mozadeq. And those are the ones we think we know about. Our government can get people killed...it doesn't have to arrest and execute them outright. Ever hear of Hit Men? In each and everfy case, if I had told you such a thing was done...you would have said, "oh come on with your conspiracy theories...where's the proof"? When I hand you the proof, what we can get...you say, "it isn't a perfect world". Could Hitler have wanted a better citizen?
###I think you're dreaming. if that were at all true we would have heard a lot more about it at the time...there would have been crowing and cooing over this victory. Instead everyone sort of slinked away...and glad of it too. Would you happen to have any transcripts...or other evidence. It isn't that I don't believe you, I just can't understand why more wasn't said about this at the time.
: Have the laws been repealed or are they just not enforced?
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: >>>>not sure on that one.... think it's the latter
###In a totalitarian country? In a country so controlled and addled with secret police...the laws are just "not enforced"? Come on.
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: If Turkey is the Turkey of our nightmares...how comes it that they muzzle themselves?
: >>>>It's not Turkey that's part of our nightmares..... on the contrary, Turkey is gorgeous, it's culture fascinating, many of it's people liberal and forward-thinking.... it's part of Turkey's history that is nightmarish for Assyrians. Go to Hakkari and you'll feel the same. I spent 8 days there trekking the mountains and seeing destroyed Assyrian village after village and it brought tears to my eyes....
###As it should. But remember the position of the Ottomans at the dawn of the First World War. They had every reason to mistrust the Western Christian powers...every reason in the world. And we know the Christian powers used religion to agitate, to create situations that could justify their intervention..."to save Christians"...like they weren't set to kill millions of their own Christians in two upcoming World Wars. If you maintain now that governments are justified in controlling "terrorists" within their borders...how about POTENTIAL terrorists? Such as the United States is doing?
###Armenian terrorists took over the national bank in Istanbul, carrying explosives and guns...they threatened to blow the place up if their demands for a homeland weren't meant...in other words...partition, something NO European power would grant to any of their minorities. It was the British consul who negotiated a deal and took the Armenians off in his own yacht. How do you suppose that would play in America...in Australia. We Assyrians got swept into the suspicions the Armenians created...and again paid the price we always pay. Chriatianity saved us not at all...unless you count our dwindling number an example of the 'saved"...down to the last saved one?
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: If it is because of intense scrutiny then why don't people there take advantage of it?
: >>>see above... who says they havent?
###Who knows they have? You mean the government there now gives people a pass...they can criticize it all they want to? gee...wish we could do that here without being monitored...and jailed too, soon.
: After all...father Akbulut won them some measure of freedom...but what good is it? If this 'worked"...why not do it some more...or else what was all the bother for?
: >>>ditto ditto
: : +++From the Turks piont of view Christians should definitely be suspected. The Armenians terrorized the Turkish state years ago as the West circled the Sultan's lands.
: >>>Now this is getting controversial. Sorry, but the Sultan's lands really were Armenian for thousands of years prior to the Turkic people settling there.
###Then get out of Australia and give the land back to the people who had been THERE for thousands of years. There is no controversy at all...land has always belonged to those strong enough to steal it and keep it. Including the Assyrians.
###Whoever the land may have belonged to, at the time it was as much a part of Turkey as Sydney is a part of the former penal colony of Australia...come on Doc, you're breaking up again.
I know, I know, you hate that argument, Empires come and go and lands go from one hand to another but I just can't help seeing the Armenians as anything but people who lived in the land for millenia subjected to the yoke of Turkic, Central Asian nomads.
###What do you mean "yoke? Rome didn't have a yoke...Britain didn't have a yoke, America hasn't imposed its yoke all over the place...Constantinople didn't have a yoke? Only the Turks had one? The Ottoman Turks were an amazing people...who allowed more religious tolerance tha anyone else ever. It was easy for the Christians...they just killed everyone who wasn't Christian...and later killed Christians who weren't as Christian as they were. They also killed all Jews and Muslims. By contrast in Ottoman Turkey ,Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side for centuries under one of the most enlightened governments of that day...in fact Christian peasants esacped to the Sultan to get away from their Christian prelates and princes...from Hungary and Serbia and Bosnia.
###It was when the Europeans decided they wanted the Sultan's lands and cast about for a pretext that they settled on religeous hatred as the best way to drive that wedge...and they appealed to the lowest elements too, the ones who felt all their personal failures were a result of discrimination by the dominant Muslims...just as we have Hanna and Peter the Rabid feeling today. The European Christian Powers started the ball rolling...and it worked, they got the oil, and so what if several of us got killed...gave them more ammunition against the evil Muslims...even while they were killing and raping both Hindus and Muslims in India for a few centuries AND each other. And these are the same forces you take such solace from now. they are the cultprits, they started it...not the Sultan. Just as you are quick to blame Muslims for these woes of today.
. same with the Greeks, Assyrians, Bulgarians... Christ, if you apportion land back to the Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians and Georgians and Kurds and ..I think there MAY be a couple of feet of land left to the Turkic tribes. Maybe. But I know you hate that sort of mentality.
###I don't like silly points so obviously self-serving. How can you decry one kind of theft while you continue to benefit from another kind? is YOUR personal comfort to be the standard of measurement? the answer would be "yes, of course". Then just come out and say it and spare us the tears. Why cry for one set of human beings and not for another set...why cry for Assyrian villagers if you aren't prepared to cry for Turkish villagers?
###I am an Assyrian before I am an Iraqi or an American. But before all else I am a Human Being, an inhabitant of one small, fragile planet, and anyone who risks this one beautiful home we have is an enemy to all Humanity. And if I forget that, then I'm doomed as an Assyrian AND a human bean. You're a scientist type...even as a looney one you must accept first beginnings and all of that. before it was a piece of lumber, it was a tree. We are all humans, all of us far more similar than different. if you only cry for the miseries inflicted on your family...then you help ensure their miseries will never end.
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: See how suspect all Muslims and Arabs are now in the West. Imagine that instead of fifteen Saudi whackos, repudiated by their own government...the entire country was hell bent on attacking America...hell Saddam hasn't done a damn thing to America and look at what the Iraqi people have been subjected to...is it any wonder Christians are not trusted in the Mideast? They are suspect for good reason.
: [>> Left to their own devises I think those same people you mention would have imploded on themselves anyway. They can't cope with modernity. Ouch.]
###Out of repect for you...I'll back off.
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: : +++I strongly disagree with you there...we value freedom of speech very much here...that's why people are so pissed off at the turn towards Turkish policies this government is taking. Do you count as a freedom the freedom of the United States to undermine society there...to destabilize governments, to create and support a Taliban, as the Israelis created a Hammas...is it really freedom we're talking about when it's paid for by the blood of innocent people? Did the West not need despots and thugs to rule the countries whose resources they wish to steal, and whose populations must be rendered impotent and kept backward...do you think the land that gave us the Cradle of Civilization would NOT know how to govern itself?
: >>> The lad that gave us the C of C has seen little peace over its 10 thousand year history... sure there were shining exapmles like Baghdad being the City of Peace, but, like I say, human nature is bent on contiinual conflict. So, probably not... left to their own devises i think there would be more catastrophes than now.... I dont think are more tumultous now then they have been in the past... things always look worse in the period you are living, you know, like the end of the world is nigh type of idea..
###This is another piece of tripe from the West...the notion that there has been continual warfare over there. Take a stroll down history lane and see what the Europeans have been doing to each other and the world. Are you serious? Two World wars in ONE GENERATION...just time enough to fuck the wife and make another warrior for peace. Millions and Millions of them killed...tell me where that can be matched by ANY Muslim power?
###Who in the modern era makes weapons and poisons and ships them around the world, and then gets SHOCKED that they're used? Does any Muslim country do that? Does any Muslim country have aircraft carriers and space missles...do any of them manufacture their own weapons? Who used aton bombs on sleeping women and children...who tests nuclear bombs in the atmosphere...who exports their industrial toxins to the developing world? Who has killed people in such number sfor the last 200 years...Egypt or Britain...Saudi Arabia or Italy... Syria or America, Iraq or Germany?
###Pull yourself together.
: : +++My dear friend...may you forever live secure in these ideas. There is no more militaristic government in the world today than the United States...that has more citizens in uniform and licensed to kill...that has more of its people armed and killing each other than any other...a country that wants very much to go down the path other totalitarian regimes went down, but "Constitutionally"...what with Homeland Security and neighbors recruited to spy on neighbors...do you think it would be long before angry in-laws turned each other in?
: >>>>I know I know its not a perfect system... never said it was... but it's certainly the lesser of two evils.And unfortuantely thats what the pragmatist must settle for.
####It is only the "lesser "of two evils because you live in the better part of it. This better evil is causing misery and death and destruction all over the world for the benefit of those of us lucky enough to live in it. If you were stranded in a Space Station and there was a fire at one end, would you consider it to be no concern of yours? If you didn't like the people at the other end, or wanted their food, would you consider starting a fire to burn them out a good way to benefit yourself?
###You are overwhelmed by the daunting prospect of a modern world gone mad...so you want to vacation till the end comes...something, thank god, enough people at other insane times in our history didn't feel.
###You would have used the same logic 40,000 years ago if someone said we should stop eating our children raw...should at least cook them. The greatest weapon they have against us is that it's hopeless to try to change things. Bull...hard, but not impossible and very imperative. I'm not crying...I'm crying out. There is a difference.
If i had the choice of which system to live under it would definitely be a Western, European,secular model. Screw the Sharia Law, the Baathy system, screw them all!!
###Wait till Pat Robertson takes over in America. I say screw them all too, but I include your darling Christianity in that pile...I also include this present government which is busily screwing all the people they can...they just haven't gotten to you yet...and you feel safe. How scientific is that? An epidemic is spreading, but you're calm because so far only the first fifty families on your block have died.
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: : Things are a lot better for Assyrians in Turkey now. Some Suryoye are going back to their villages with the government’s blessing (whatever the underlying motive may be, it’s still a good thing). They are even telling the world things like ‘the Assyrian pople’s history goes back at least 4 thousand years in Turkey.’ [that’s from a tourist brochure].
: : +++That is certainly wonderful.
: >>>it certainly is; like I say, there's most hope in Turkey
: : I just hope that the new government sustains these positive changes.
###So do I. And I hope for a new government here...based on the same sort of improvements you see in Turkey...less laws and some poor ones ignored...instead of what we have now...a jumble of hastily crafted new laws and agencies by the bushelful...and none of it for anyone's benefit but the same small coterie that benefited the last time.
: : +
-- panchmaster
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