Month: September 2012

Aleppo now and during the Armenian Genocide

Posted on By Margot

“in late August (2012) Human Rights Watch reported that targeted artillery shelling and bombing raids on ten bakeries specifically in Aleppo, “killing and maiming scores of civilians who were waiting for bread.”
edition.cnn.com/2012/09/22/world/meast/syria-civil-war/

Aleppo is no stranger to human misery and degradation as a totalitarian regime inflicts its wrath on a people. Today we watch as brutality after brutality is inflicted on the Syrian people for daring to challenge those on power. The Assad clan is supported by Iran and now it seems that it is getting backup and support from North Korea. In 1915, 97 years ago, it was the Armenian people who were the victims as they were marched from their communities into the Syrian and Palestinian desert to be left to die.

The saddest thing of all is that the lessons of this brutal genocide were learnt well by those who wish to perpetuate evil. The shortcomings and inefficiencies of the genocide were analysed by the Nazis, so that there systematic slaughter of the Jews could be more effective and consume less resources. The lesson that brutality can win has been taken to heart by those who run Iran and certainly was learnt by Saddam Hussein and now by Assad in Syria. Can we learn how to prevent such massacres and abuses of human dignity?

When I was a little girl, I was taught the Catechism at school, and we were told that each and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. If more people truly believed that and let that inform there actions and decisions, then maybe, just maybe, the world would change. It would be very sad to think that genocides are always going to be part of human history.

Aleppo 1915

Picture from the Devolution X Blog article about Armenia

Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Posted on By Margot

The Armenian Genocide

After I had read The Thread by Victoria Hislop (see review), my appetite for history was whetted, especially for history connected with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. So I searched out this book, which then had only just been published. And now what can I say about the book?

The Armenian genocide, which even now the Turkish government denies happened. The story centres on a young American aid worker, Elizabeth Endicott, who has gone to Aleppo in Syria as part of an aid mission, and Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and daughter to the deportations. The barbarity and cruelty of the fading days of the Ottoman Empire are chilling. Some of the worst scenes are seen through the eyes of Elizabeth. I scarcely breathed as the horrific landscape unfurls before the reader. The deportees are women with a few children who are herded from town to town before being left in the “Resettlement Camps”. These camps have no facilities. No food, no shelter, no water. Just guards at the perimeter. They are a place to die, slowly. Suddenly the Turks make the Nazis with their death camps look almost humane, at least they killed their victims, and only removed their clothes just before they died. These Armenian deportees were all naked. All were starving, skeletal figures. The aid that Elizabeth and her father have brought is but a drop in the ocean. The hopelessness of their mission seeps through the pages and stains the soul. The Turks were hell bent on wiping every single Armenian from the face of the earth. The estimate of the number of people kill in the genocide varies – Bohjalian puts it at 1.5 million.

My husband asked why on earth I would want to read such a book? Because it was not all gloom. Little rays of hope. Elizabeth’s efforts could not save a race, but she did what she could to save Nevart, the wife of a doctor and one of the naked deportees that Elizabeth first meets, together with Hartoun, a little girl who has witnessed the brutal death of her family. There is the Turkish doctor, a Muslim, who works tirelessly to bring relief to all including Armenians, the market stall keeper who has watched Hartoun with fondness since she arrived in Aleppo. And also the story of Armen’s survival fighting for the allies against the Turks and the Germans.

Did I enjoy the book – I don’t know. I know that the images will haunt me forever. Often when I was reading it, I longed for the lightness of touch that Hislop bought to The Thread. Bohjalian intersperses the grimness of the mission to Aleppo with the story of Elizabeth and Armen’s grand-daughter as she slowly unravels the story of her grandparents past. This was necessary to give the reader a breather before the horror is continued.

Reading a good novel should be a life changing experience. This book certainly was. But the sad thing is that barbarism, that disdain for the sanctity of human life is still rife in what used to be the Ottoman Empire as we watch Syria descend into civil war.

Freedom of speech and the right to be offended

Posted on By Margot

Today I find myself in a world where I dare not say anything against the state of Israel, for fear of being called anti-Semitic. I dare not say anything that shatters the myth of Mohammed, for fear of causing riots hundreds of miles away. And if I were to say anything derogatory about homosexual people – well, I am homophobic at best, if not the worst example of fundamentalist Christianity. And I must not, on pain of being deemed a social pariah, say anything that could be construed as racist. If I were a person in the public eye, say a politician, I would be drummed out of office, even if these terrible blasphemies were uttered in private.

Perhaps, the extremist talk that encourages people to riot, plant bombs, kill, should be banned – that which can be caught up in the umbrella of incitement to hate. But ordinary intellectual discourse or the expression of deeply held beliefs, should they too be banned? And if so, then who decides what is to be allowed and where?

Lymington hails Ben Ainslie

Posted on By Margot

Tuesday 11 September 2012

It is 5pm in Lymington. We are standing by the side of the road in the High Street waiting to see the Ben Ainslie bus. Beside us are two little boys. Both boys are here with their mums and younger siblings. One has his face painted as a Union Jack. Both boys are very excited.

We wait – the crowd is beginning to grow. The boys are attracting media interest from the reporters and camera men wandering up and down the high street. Some stop to interview the boys.

A cheer goes up – the post van is beside the Ben Ainslie postbox. A few minutes early I put my postcards in to the postbox – and never have I found a post box so full – I was concerned that my cards would fall out.

Still we wait. The news ripples through – the bus has left the hospital, then the bus is at The Avenue. A few minutes later, the bus is in St Thomas’s Street. The cavalcade is coming. Now much longer now. And then, coming out of the sunshine, cresting the brow of the hill is the bus. A cheer goes up as the open topped bus inches its way down the hill.

Everyone cheers, the flags are waved, the bus inches forward – the excitement is intense. As the bus moves towards the end of the High Street and its destination, we join the throng following the bus. Now the road is a sea of people following the bus – a few unfortunate drivers have been unwise enough to try to follow the bus downhill and are now marooned in the sea of people.

Somehow Ben gets off the bus which has stopped outside his house and opposite the famous postbox. Even more amazingly he has made it across the road to the Henri Lloyd Sailing Store. Someone cries “three cheers for Ben” and the crowd roars “hip hip hooray”. The hero has been welcomed home.

Links

http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2012-09-11/ainslies-gold-medal-bus-tour-of-lymington/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-19543505#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9922906.Thousands_lined_streets_to_welcome_home_Olympic_hero_Ben/

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Posted on By Margot

The story line is simple and reflects the origin of the book, nine inter-related stories first published in Science Fiction magazines between 1940 and 1950. The stories are based on interviews with Dr Susan Calvin, the chief robopsychologist at US Robots and Mechanical Men and chronicle the development of the robots and teh positronic brain.

Asimov invented the robot that we know and love and his legacy is felt throughout the science fiction world. Data in Star Trek: the Next Generation is powered by the positronic brain.

The three laws

These are hardwired into the positronic brain and provide a framework for robotic behaviour.

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

There is a question that needs to be asked; do these three laws make robots inherently more moral than human beings. This question is explored in the eighth story, Evidence. Given these three laws, how can you differentiate a humanoid robot from a really good man?

Evidence is the prelude to the next question – if Robots are more moral to human beings, should they rule the world?

The benign dictatorship

Suppose super robot brains are developed, brains that are built upon the Three Laws or Robotics – so that they would never harm human beings, and these brains were capable of processing immense quantities of information , enough to run the world. The promise is that war would be eliminated, hunger eradicated and every human desire for self fulfilment could be delivered. Why not, then, allow thaese entities run the world. Heaven on earth? I, Robot ends with this scenario. The earth is divided into 4 regions, and each region has a superbrain referred to as Machines. There is no more war, no more hunger, no more religious intolerance..

The big question : Would you vote in this system? Why (or why not)?

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot

Now reading in September

Posted on By Margot

September is when we go away, this year to the New Forest. So I need something to read. After the Angel’s Game and The Shadow of the Wind, I have decided to go for something a little less thought provoking.

So this is my reading list for my holiday:

I Robot by Isaac Asimov. This was one of the offerings from Surrey County Council, so I downloaded it. It is an enjoyable read and brings back happy memories of those exam years. When I was revising for my O-levels and A-levels I read avidly, mostly Science Fiction – often several books a week.

Wolf hall by Hilary Mantel. I have listened to this as an audio book an now I shall read the book. The English Reformation is fascinating, for many of the key players, Cromwell, Wolsey, More are not from the aristocracy. More was the son of a lawyer and Cromwell and Wolsey sons of tradesmen. I will argue that England only became great when the English people shed the shackles of servitude to the monarch and took matters into their own hands. Here we see the beginning, a process that reaches its culmination when Oliver Cromwell, great nephew of Thomas Cromwell seizes power. England was never the same again, its people were at last in control.

Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian. I really enjoyed Victoria Hislop’s The Thread. This book covers the Armenian genocide (but the Turks insist that there was no genocide).

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James