The CONSERVATIVE estimate here, folks, is that approximately 100,000 Armenians were obliterated that year by the Turks. And, as hard as it is to believe, that was only the damned frigging prelude. Twenty years subsequent - that was when the "mega slaughter" (upwards of a million killed) started....And to think, the Turkish government (more than a hundred years later now) STILL refuses to use the word, genocide. Unbe-frigging-lievable.
Oh well, Americans shouldn't throw too many stones. The Europeans didn't exactly ask the Native Americans nicely about moving into the neighborhood. The exact number of Native Americans that were killed, directly and indirectly, because of the European invasion of North America is subject to wild speculation but it was still genocide.
ReplyDeleteIt was absolutely genocide. But wasn't it also inevitable, primitive peoples in a sparsely populated land, a land that was rich in natural resources - human nature being what it is? I mean, certainly, the WAY that it all went down could have been far more conscionable and everything but, still, the way that it ended up was utterly predictable.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how we could "discover" a land already populated with people. I think that is rather arrogant.
ReplyDeleteAnd, sadly, Jerry, we're arrogant to this day.
ReplyDeleteWell, lets see. Since Europeans were apparently unaware of the existence of the western hemisphere at the time they "found it" I would think they discovered it.
ReplyDeleteSort of like discovering any previously unknown fact.
Beach said: "Oh well, Americans shouldn't throw too many stones"
ReplyDeleteI know this issue well, but the problems with American responsibility over this are nothing like Turkey's hardline type of holocaust-denial.
RN makes a good semantic argument. Discovering something has nothing to do with whether or not it is inhabited.