Posted by pancho from adsl-64-160-45-128.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (64.160.45.128) on Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 5:30PM :
The answer I made regarding the meaning of Genocide was deleted...I believe. My response to them below...
Let's not be so obvious and heavy handed. A little refinement and subtlety wouldn't hurt. Peter refused to even discuss the issue of Muslim Assyrians...a glaring fact that begs to be addressed...or a fanciful fiction that should be laid to rest. Either way it is unbecomming of people who tout Democracy and condemn Turks and others for censorship to behave in such a manner. Let's try to do better than the people we slam for being unfair to us and afraid to air and accept challenges to their own differences of opinion or fact.
There seems to be a concerted effort made to insist on certain interpretations of things, often with as little justification or reasoned thought or open dialogue as the Turks have displayed. We should fear nothing, nothing at all. There should be no taboos among us... while we insist on cutting and fitting the world to please us...we are being increasingly left out of it because we can't speak a common tongue with people who are out there giving and getting with the best of them.
The world will not give us anything, and we will only lose more ground if we don't come up to the mark. If there is something inaccurate or just plain wrong in what I am saying about martyrs and Genocide, it is no worse than what others are saying about us...when they discuss us at all. Yet the only ones we have power to silence or shout down, are our own people. We have not the wit, the language skills, the skills in debate or logic to take exception anywhere else. All we do is retreat to these worlds we've created, cut and paste words and ideas to suit our own narrow sensibilities and ban and delete anything that displeases us because we have no ready answer for it. This is madness, not nationalism.
A little courage never did anyone any harm.
-- pancho
-- signature .