(no subject)

[saramarabu]

So for the Armenians, is there to be no justice, no acknowledgement of the terrible crime committed against them, no restitution, no return of property, no apology? Just a million and a half skeletons whose very existence the Tuks still try to deny? Is Turkey so fearful, so frightened of its own past that it cannot do what Germany has done for the Jews - purged itself with remorse, admission, acknowledgement, reparations, good will? As Jonathan Eric Lewis of the Remarque Institute at New York University has asked, "how can the destruction of a huge portion of the Ottoman Empire's metchant class be anything other than a central issue in Turkey's modern history? The lands, homes, and property of the Armenians are now in the hands of whose who have benefited from past crimes. The fear of having to pay reparations is but one of the many reasons why the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the genocide".

Robert Fisk, The Great War of Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East
Chapter ten - THE FIRST HOLOCAUST

----

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo
Shovel them under and let me work -
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
          What place is this?
          Where are we now?

I am the grass,
          Let me work.

Carl Sandburg, "Grass"