Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire did not
commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a
crime widely documented and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars.
The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out;
incriminating documents were later systematically destroyed. Denial has
been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, and rests
on the assumption that the "relocation" of Armenians was a legitimate
state action, not deliberate extermination. Deniers claim the death toll
is exaggerated or attribute the deaths to other factors. Ronald Grigor
Suny states that the main argument is "there was no genocide, and the
Armenians were to blame for it". An important reason for this denial is
that the genocide enabled the establishment of a Turkish nation-state;
recognition would contradict Turkey's founding myths. The Turkish
state's century-long denial of the genocide sets it apart from other
cases of genocide.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide_denial>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1916:
Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising
against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an
independent state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising>
1944:
World War II: The British Special Boat Service executed a
successful raid to destroy an Axis radio station on the Greek island of
Santorini.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Santorini>
1990:
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard STS-31 by Space
Shuttle Discovery.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope>
1993:
The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a truck bomb in
London's financial district in Bishopsgate, killing one person, injuring
forty-four others, and causing damage that cost £350 million to repair.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bishopsgate_bombing>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
soft-pedal:
1. (transitive)
2. To reduce the volume of (music, a sound, etc.).
3. (figuratively) To reduce the force or impact of (something); to damp,
to mute; especially, to minimize the less desirable aspects of
(something); to play down, to tone down.
4. (figuratively) To attempt to persuade someone about (something)
through understatement, so that the listener accepts the good points as
obvious.
5. (intransitive, figuratively) Chiefly followed by on: to act in a less
assertive or forceful manner.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft-pedal>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be
contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the
big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
--Robert Penn Warren
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren>
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