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The article in question is directly below. (Thanks to reader Conan.)
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We're familiar with the New York Times' record of mindlessly
publishing any story celebrating the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom," so coined by the Armenophile Richard Davey
back in 1895. Peter Balakian and company have made sure to drill into our heads the New York Times printed 145 Armenian tales in 1915
alone. This is their "genocidal proof," and on the surface, like all other
"genocide evidence," rather impressive; The New York Times is perhaps the USA's
most prestigious newspaper. Yet, this newspaper showed its bias time and again by
publishing the atrocity news unfit to print. Practically all of these stories were secondhand, provided by
missionaries and Armenians.
But if The New York Times acted so irresponsibly, imagine how the run-of-the-mill
newspapers of the United States treated the subject matter. On this page, we'll focus on a
couple of the dailies from Minnesota.
Minnesota is home to the University of Minnesota, one of the most Armenian friendly
universities in the nation. Its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) is run by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, and
their web site outdoes many Armenian sites as far as their hatefulness and distorted
information. Somebody decided to go through the archives of the local papers, to offer
"evidence" for this mythological genocide.
As with all propaganda, one must read go through much sludge to come up with the few
kernels of truth. In this regard, one of these newspapers provided some interesting
contra-genocide evidence. It is entitled, ARMENIANS ARE BLAMED, and it is from The Duluth
Herald.
Before we get to the article, let's examine the variety of sorry "1915"
contributions The Duluth Herald made to the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom":
Over 1,000 Christians Killed in Urumiah
Missionaries Abandon Van
Americans Willing to Assist Armenians
Half Million Armenians Put to Death in Turkey
Instructed to Inquire Into Turk Outrages
Holy War is on in Turkey
Massacre of Armenians
The Duluth Herald was matched atrocity for atrocity by its
sister in sensationalism, The Duluth News Tribune.
A Quick Look at the Caliber of Some of These Accounts
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The Duluth News Tribune - September 13, 1915.
Armenian Girls Sold in Turkish Capital
ROME. Sept. 12 — A Rome news agency tonight gave out a copy of a telegram from
Bucharest stating that 800,000 Armenians are now in Turkish internment camps.
Thousands of women, the telegram stated, have been carried off to Turkish harems,
and young Armenian girls and children are being sold at auction in Constantinople.
Note that all we're told as the source is "a telegram from Bucharest."
Anyone could have been behind it, likely an Armenian. Never mind how someone from
Bucharest could possibly know these details. It's got sex, it's got sensationalism!
The kind of story the readers, well accustomed by now as far as what a different
species the Turkish people represent, simply ate up. Note how ludicrous is the claim
that there was an "auction of slaves" in the capital itself — right
under the noses of the foreigners and newspaper people.
The Italian press was especially reputed to "make things up"; who knows,
perhaps there was no telegram, and the "Rome news agency" decided to add a
little color to the atrocity festivities. As C. F. Dixon-Johnson related, regarding the experience of
newspaperman Melton Prior:
The renowned war correspondent confided In me that he was in an awkward
predicament. The public at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to
receive pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them
with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no women or
children suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been desecrated. As an old
admirer of the Turks, and as an honest man, he declined to invent what he had not
witnessed. But others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian
illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of women and children being
massacred in a church.
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One
More Example |
The Duluth News Tribune - October 21, 1915.
Two Americans Slain by Turks in Armenia
Columbia, Mo., Oct. 20. -- That American missionaries as well as native Armenians are
being killed by the Turks, was asserted in a letter by Leonard Ardroonig, instructor of
economics in the University of Missouri from Kurken Hussian, an Armenian refugee. The
letter was written from Tiflis. In it Hussian tells of the deaths at Turkish hands of Mrs.
Charles E. Ely and Joe Knapp, Americans, stationed at Bitlis, Turkish Armenia.
Mrs. Ely, the letter said, was shot by Turkish soldiers when she protested against their
carrying away the Armenian girls, students of the mission school. How Knapp met his death,
the letter does not say. Although he spent most of his life in Bitlis, Knapp was an
American citizen. His father was a pioneer missionary in Armenia.
Isn't it incredible? It's not only hearsay, but hearsay from the pen of an Armenian. How
many readers questioned this story? The first thing they thought about in their bigoted
minds was that the "Unspeakable" Turks were at it again, carving up poor,
innocent Christians, and... as cleverly calculated by the Armenian propagandist...
Americans, to boot. Tailor-made to increase the hatred Americans already felt toward what
they had been conditioned to regard as a sub-human species.
And The Duluth News Tribune was only too happy to publish such an unverified,
defamatory story. Multiply this sort of racist irresponsibility all across the newspapers
and magazines of the land, and it's no wonder the Turks will have the greatest difficulty
in living down their terrible reputation.
But here's the funny part; you'll notice the missionary Knapp's death is also blamed on
the Turks (the article states his death is not explained, yet The Duluth News Tribune
happily filled in the blanks with the article's headline!); however, the newspaper
published this other story less than two weeks prior:
October 2, 1915
American Missionary Dies in Asiatic Turkey
BOSTON, Oct. 1 — News of the death at Diarbekir, Asiatic Turkey of the Rev. George
Perkins Knapp, a missionary, about Aug. 10 last, was received today by the American board
of commissioners of foreign missions. The nature of his illness has not been learned. He
had been engaged in missionary work in Turkey for the last 25 years.
The Armenian propagandist might have gotten the first name and location wrong, but he was
obviously referring to the same man. And The Duluth News Tribune either failed to
put two and two together, or purposely ignored their own recent report. How do you like
them apples.
ARMENIANS
ARE BLAMED
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The Duluth Herald
October 9, 1915
ARMENIANS ARE BLAMED
Conduct Towards Ottoman Government Has Invited Repressive Measures.
Turk Wreaking Vengeance Upon the Guilty and Innocent Alike.
(Correspondence of the Associated Press.)
Constantinople, Sept. 16. — By virtue of a total suppression of all news on the
subject, the Turkish government has succeeded in throwing an impenetrable veil over
its actions towards all Armenians. Nothing definite is
obtainable in Constantinople of the fate of this people out in the provinces,
but it is known that severe measures planed against the Armenians in the Ottoman
capital were not carried out owing to objections of the German government.
Concerning the Armenian affair, three separate notes were presented to the Ottoman
government by the German ambassador as interim, Prince Hobenlohe-Langenburg. If the
Associated Press is rightly informed, these notes had no far-reaching effect,
because under present conditions, the German government has been obliged to act
rather gently. Turkey is still the ally of Germany, and the Armenians seem to have
alienated the good will of the German government and people to a considerable extent
by having made open cause with the entente powers. Many of
them have joined the Russian forces near Van, and at Zeitoun and Dort Jul they
revolted against Turkish authority, The three notes referred to were but
official incidents in weeks of endeavor to persuade the Turkish government to take a
more reasonable and humane view of the Armenian affair. One of the notes drew
attention to the great injustice of making all Armenians suffer for the acts of a
few.
Turk is Adamantine.
The Turkish government, however, seems to have remained adamantine.
As already stated, it has been impossible to secure accurate information in the
premises. Turkish officials have either refused to discuss the situation, or have
placed all blame on the Armenians; these latter, on the other hand, have either
refused to talk for fear of being also persecuted, or have assigned all
responsibility to the Turks. A mass of irreconciliable statements has been the
result, ranging on the part of the Turkish officials, from the absurd claim that the
Armenians were being well treated, to the assertions of
Armenians that in Zeitoun, Dort Jul and other places 50,000 Armenians had been
massacred.
That the Turks have in many instances been guilty of needless severity and in some
cases have permitted barbarous acts of violence, including murder and rape, seems
well established. On the other hand, the Armenians in the Van
country have been accused of similar excesses against the Turkish population,
and the Turks, having power on their side, have repaid such acts with liberal
interest, it is said, in well-informed Constantinople circles.
Will Not Talk.
It cannot be said that the acts of the Turkish government in this connection have
found the approbation of the advanced Turkish classes in the capital, who, for the
greater part, favor a policy of conciliation, and some of whom even go so far as to
advocat the establishment of a separate Armenian state in Asia Minor under the
sovereignty of the Ottoman imperial government. Meanwhile the tendency of the
Ottoman government, to either deny altogether that the Armenians are being
persecuted, or give its acts a too obviously artificial basis and character, would
have but one result, namely that it is both ashamed and afraid to let the truth be
known. The many attempts made by the Associated Press correspondent to throw some
light on the Armenian situation resulted in failure, because the Turkish officials
would not talk and the censorship would not permit the free messages of dispatches
on the subject.
Nevertheless it must be said that the Armenians are not
blameless. Divested of all factors related to the national ambitions of the
Armenians, their conduct toward the Turks, and the Ottoman government has invited
constantly measures of repression. The rising of Zeitoun, Dort Jul and Van, and
wholesale desertion of Armenian soldiers to the allies on the Gallipoli peninsula,
and to the Russians in the Caucases, have turned the Turk's heart into stone
in matters Armenian; he is now wreaking vengeance upon guilty and innocent alike.
Many Rumors Afloat
Constantinople has for weeks had its daily crop of Armenian rumors. One of the most
interesting of them is that even the Sheik-ul-Islam had protested against the
excesses from which the Armenians had suffered. There is a possibility that this is
true, because the Sheik-ul-Islam is a man of moderation and very progressive
tendencies.
It is asserted in Constantinople that the German government has for some time, even
at the beginning of the war, taken a special interest in the Armenians. The Germans
feared from the very start of the war between Turkey and the Entente that the
Armenians would make an attempt to re-establish by force, their independence.
Prominent Armenians were informed that Germany would continue, and even increase,
its benevelont interest in the race, if a reasonable attitude was taken during the
war. For a time the influence of the men who had been intrusted with the
dissemination of this promise had the desired result. But last January and February,
more especially in March and April, when the allies had begun to attack the
Dardanelles in real earnest the services of these intermediaries ceased to be of
value. Exaggerated reports of Entente victories inflamed the
imagination of the Armenians and in many parts they rose in revolt.
What has happened since then is still an unwritten chapter. No
newspapermen are allowed to visit the affected districts and reports from there are
altogether unreliable. The reticence of the Turkish government cannot be
looked upon as a good sign, however, especially when viewed in the light of what the
German government has been obliged to do.
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Note the underlying racist tone of
the article; the Turks are referred to, as was customary in the reportage of many
newspapers, as "The Turk." As though these things weren't even human, and
that whatever they are must surely deserve our contempt. (Compare: when others were
referred to as a race, would we be offered terms such as "The Swede" or
"The Austrian"? Perhaps on occasion, but never as a rule. Substitute with
the sub-headline, "Turk Wreaking Vengeance Upon the Guilty and Innocent
Alike.")
The article is very revealing, when one reads in between the lines.
For one, the newspaper admits that "Nothing definite is obtainable,"
confirming these reports of the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom" were
all secondhand. We're further told that "No newspapermen are allowed to visit
the affected districts and reports from there are altogether unreliable."
There you have it: "unreliable." That did not stop newspapers as
this to print whatever stories they heard as the facts, however.
According to Jay winter's propaganda book, America and the Armenian Genocide of
1915, there was one American newspaperman who did manage to travel through the
Ottoman interior in 1915. His name: George Schreiner. His conclusion:
There was no "genocide."
The article sheds rare insight into the facts that not only did the Armenians
perpetrate atrocities in 1915, but that there was a definite revolt going on.
For such a Turk-unfriendly newspaper, these conclusions are highly significant.
It's interesting that Armenians were reported to have claimed only 50,000
Armenians were "massacred" by October 1915. (Why, U.S. Consul Jesse
Jackson had figured one
million only the month before.)
Note as well we are informed Armenians not only deserted in the east to join the
Russians, but also in the west, to join the British and the French.
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Two Other Reports of Interest |
The Duluth Herald — September 13, 1915.
Turk Army in Bad Way
No Coal at Constantinople. (Excerpted)
Owing to the interruption of sea transportation it is almost impossible to purchase coal
at Constantinople, and wood is being used for locomotives. The crops were good but it has
been almost impossible to harvest them. Petroleum costs $1 a gallon and the price of sugar
has increased seven fold.
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Saint Paul Pioneer Press — August 16, 1915
"Armenians Go to Fight"
Twelve Leave St. Paul to Join Countrymen on Way to Europe
Another delegation of Armenian volunteers left St. Paul last night for New York, where
they will join volunteers from all parts of the United States and go to Europe to fight
for their country. Practically all of the soldiery now opposing the Turks in Turkey are
Armenian volunteers, many of whom formerly lived in the United States. The delegation
which left last night consisted of twelve former St. Paul residents. The first party of
twenty-five volunteers left St. Paul several weeks ago.
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