Welcome to Absurdistan - More Rantings From "Azzam the American"

In case you missed it the Ministry of Disinformation over at Al-Qaida central has put one of the their star performers - a disturbed American convert to Islam known as "Azzam the American" - on the air for a video message that was just released calling on Americans and the rest of the Christian world to convert to Islam.  His words -

"To Americans and the rest of Christendom, we say either repent (your) misguided ways and enter into the light of truth or keep your poison to yourself and suffer the consequences in this world and the next."

The absurdity and hypocrisy of a spokesperson for Al-Qaida calling our ways "misguided" and "poison" was a bit much for me to hear without offering some words to rebut this nonsense.  The propaganda that Al-Qaida has foisted upon the world would have us believing that we are the oppressors and occupiers of Muslim lands and that they hold the moral high ground.  Even if we disregard the despicable actions of the Islamic fanatics conducting terror attacks around the world - this so called "Religion of Peace"  -   www.thereligionofpeace.com - has a rap sheet starting in 632 A.D. that constitutes hatred for those who do not bow to Islam unmatched in history.  Osama Bin Laden talks about the lost lands of Islam in his tirades against the west when in reality the lands of Islam were conquered by force and the indigenous inhabitants either converted, expelled or killed.  Islam rode out of the Arabian Desert in 632 A.D. with sword held high screaming Allahu Akbar and their Jihad against us continues to this day.  As the saying says - "Those Who Live By The Sword Will Die By The Sword" and the only way to defeat radical Islam is to illustrate the complete BS of their version of history while rolling back their forces of hatred and intolerance wherever it rears its ugly head around the world.   

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Constantine takes a Biplane ride

Come fly with me over Provincetown!

CLICK HERE to view the slide show.

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Tears for Armenia - Remembering the Armenian Genocide

 It was a day of tears, rage and remembrance  for Armenians and friends of Armenia all over the world.  91 years ago on April 24th 1915 the Turkish government rounded up 200 leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and sent them away to be tortured and killed.  There had been massacres of Armenians in Turkey prior to this in the years of 1894 -1896 under Sultan Abdul Hamid and in 1909 under the "Young Turk" government.  In fact all non-Muslim subject peoples of the Ottoman Turkish Empire had faced massacres at the hands of the Turkish rulers.  Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs had suffered such incredible atrocities perpetrated by the Turks that they finally united in 1912 to drive the Turks out of Europe right to the gates of Constantinople which the Greeks had hoped and prayed to recapture one day. 

For the Armenians that fateful day in 1915 started what became known as the "murder of a nation" or genocide (a term that was invented later on to describe this crime) by the fanatical rulers of the Turkish Empire.  This crime against the Armenian population of Turkey is comprehensively detailed in the book ''Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" which was written by Henry Morgenthau who was the US Ambassador to Turkey in 1915.  The ambassador received first hand reports of what was happening from all over Turkey via foreign businessmen, consular officers and missionaries and there are numerous detailed accounts of the savagery in the historical record.  The death marches that the Armenians were subjected to all across Turkey are a blot on the conscience of humanity.   We commemorate the genocide that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 because the world must remember the evil that was perpetrated by the Turkish government and to show our support for the survivors and their offspring who ensured that Armenia and the Armenians would live on despite the effort to wipe them out. 

91 years after this despicable crime against humanity the Turkish government continues to deny that the genocide ever happened.  Millions of dollars are spent every year by the Turkish government to try and rewrite history and pressure governments and media outlets to adhere to their make believe version of history.  Here in Massachusetts a Turkish political lobbying group is behind a lawsuit against our state government for teaching about the Armenian Genocide in the school system!  Not only have the Turks denied their shameful past but they have decided the best way to muddy the issue is to hurl baseless accusations that it was actually the Armenians who committed genocide.  One just has to look at the current population of Anatolia which was the ancestral homeland of the Armenians to see through the BS being foisted on the world by the Turkish ministry of disinformation.  What was once a land filled with millions of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians is now virtually devoid of them and the population of Turkey is 98 percent Muslim.  I wonder how that happened.  My grandparents were Greeks living near the great cities of Constantinople and Smyrna and they were forced to flee for their lives during this horrible persecution of the Christian populations of Turkey.  Check out this Web site for an eye opening account from a US Consul General in Turkey who witnessed the atrocities perpetrated against the Greeks and Armenians - www.martyrsofanatolia.org

Millions of your tax dollars go to Turkey every year in foreign aid because they are supposedly our "valuable ally" in the region.  Whatever your views are on the Iraq war this much is certain - when the US needed our Turkish "ally" to allow US forces to enter Iraq from the north as the most effective battle plan called for they refused and caused serious logistics problems for the US military.  Some military analysts have stated that if the pincer attach from north and south had proceeded as planned the US would have had plenty of troops to secure the country more effectively and maybe have nipped the ongoing insurgency before it gained momentum.  With allies like Turkey who needs enemies.

Constantine calls on all people of conscience to contact their legislators and reaffirm that the decent and honorable thing for the US government to do is to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide and to start holding the Turkish government accountable for their crimes against humanity.    

"What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea."

  REVELATIONS, I:11

THE MARTYRED CITY

Glory and Queen of Island Sea

Was Smyrna, the beautiful city,

And fairest pearl of the Orient she

O Smyrna the beautiful city!

Heiress of countless storied ages,

Mother of poets, saints and sages,

Was Smyrna, the beautiful city!

One of the ancient, glorious Seven

Was Smyrna, the sacred city,

Whose candles all were alight in Heaven

O Smyrna the sacred city!

One of the Seven hopes and desires,

One of the seven Holy Fires

Was Smyrna, the Sacred City.

And six fared out in the long ago-

O Smyrna, the Christian city!

But hers shone on with a constant glow

O Smyrna, the Christian city!

The others died down and passed away,

But hers gleamed on until yesterday

O Smyrna, the Christian city!

Silent and dead are churchbell ringers

Of Smyrna, the Christian city,

The music silent and dead the singers

Of Smyrna, the happy city;

And her maidens, pearls of the Island seas

Are gone from the marble palaces

Of Smyrna, enchanting city!

She is dead and rots by the Orient’s gate,

Does Smyrna, the murdered city,

Her artisans gone, her streets desolate

O Smyrna, the murdered city!

Her children made orphans, widows her wives

While under her stones the foul rat thrives

O Smyrna, the murdered city!

They crowned with a halo her bishop there,

In Smyrna, the martyred city,

Though dabbled with blood was his long white hair

O Smyrna, the martyred city!

So she kept the faith in Christendom

From Polycarp to St. Chrysostom,*

Did Smyrna, the glorified city!

 *Martyred at Smyrna, September 1922.

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The Greeks and the Epic of 1940

Holiday reflections on a critical battle for freedom sixty-five years ago

                                   The Greeks and the Epic of 1940
 
"The time has come for Greece to fight for her independence. Greeks, now we must prove ourselves worthy of our forefathers and the freedom they bestowed upon us. Greeks, now fight for your Fatherland, for your wives, for your children and the sacred traditions. Now, over all things, fight!"
                                                          Ioannis Metaxas
                                                          Prime Minister of Greece – 1940
 
“Until now, we knew that Greeks were fighting like heroes; from now on we shall say that the heroes fight like Greeks.” - Winston Churchhill,  Prime Minister of Britain - 1940.

had an interesting conversation during the Christmas break when an elderly friend of our family brought her husband to our house for the holiday meal.  She had lived in Italy for a number of years and had been an opera singer.  He was an Italian composer of classical music and quite talented in his field.  After leaving Italy they had settled outside of NYC where he runs a music-composing studio.  Over the course of the meal we were extremely interested to hear about his background and tales of his life growing up in Italy.  I am a huge history buff so I was riveted as he told of his experience being a soldier in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy during World War II.  Hearing about the war from somebody who had been on the other side was intriguing.  He hated everything about the Fascists and considered himself a pacifist but unfortunately was drafted from his hometown of Milan into the army.  He had ended up as a soldier in the elite Italian 3^rd "Julia" Alpine Division.  It was this elite military unit that became infamous as the symbol of the complete fiasco that resulted from Mussolini’s decision to invade Greece in 1940.  Our guest was very reserved as he recounted the incredible events that had taken place sixty-five years ago but he became quite emotional when he expressed his admiration for the Greeks.  His words really had an impact on me.  “If the Greeks had not resisted and had given in to the Italians then the chain of events that led to the ultimate downfall of the Axis powers would have been radically different”.
 
The Greco-Italian War had started when the Italian ambassador in Athens issued an ultimatum on October 28^th 1940 to the Greek Prime Minister for Greece to allow Italy to occupy the country.  There were many Italians – our dinner guest included - who were quite dismayed at Mussolini’s hostile attitude towards Greece and rightly predicted that nothing good could come from Mussolini’s desire to show off the Italian war machine to his ally Hitler.  The Greeks had replied to the Italian ultimatum with a resounding NO (OXI in Greek) and October 28^th is still celebrated every year in Greece as a national holiday commemorating the resistance of Greece to Axis aggression and the sacrifice of the Greek nation for the allied cause.  The Greeks have a saying  - “when we are right we fight” – and fight they did.
 
Mussolini had been busy building up the Italian war machine and watching in envy as his ally Hitler conquered one country after another.  He was fond of lecturing the Italian people about how he would restore Italy into a powerful new Roman Empire.  The Italian armed forces had an overwhelming advantage in terms of modern weaponry and numbers of troops but they drastically underestimated the fighting spirit of the Greek army.  Besides the fact that the Greeks were fighting for their homeland they also harbored a deep animosity towards the Italians for their betrayal of the Greek cause during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 when the supposedly allied Italians secretly sold weaponry to the Turkish side and then cut a deal to support the Turks.
 
When the Italian army crossed into Greece they expected an easy victory but met an enemy who was preparing to deliver a response that would devastate the Italian battle plan.  As the columns of Italian infantry and tanks advanced through the valleys into Greece the Greek forces converging from all over northern Greece went into action.  They came down from the surrounding mountains where they had been monitoring the troop movements and attacked from all sides stopping the invasion dead in its tracks.  In one of the most amazing episodes in military history the Greek army trapped the Italian 3rd Alpine Division in the mountains and shocked the Italian high command by annihilating the unit taking 5,000 prisoners.  By the middle of November the Greek army had gone on the offensive driving the Italian army back into Albania. 
 
At the end of December in 1940 the victorious Greek army had not only repulsed the Italian invasion but had gone on to push the Italian forces out of the southern one third of Albania completely.  On December 28^th Mussolini had to acknowledge that his grandiose vision to show Hitler how Italy could easily conquer Greece was a complete failure and he asked for German military assistance.  Hitler who was furious that Mussolini had embarked on the invasion of Greece in the first place now had to rescue the defeated Italians.  This amazing Greek victory over the Italians became known as The Epic of 1940 to the Greeks and to the rest of the world as the first defeat of the Axis powers that gave them reason to hope that the aggression could be halted. 
 
The Germans were unable to render assistance to their Italian allies until winter was over and then they launched their “Balkan Blitzkrieg” against Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6^th, 1941.  As with the fight against the Italians – the Greeks fought ferociously and with British assistance succeeded in holding out until the end of May 1941.  The final battle of the German invasion of Greece was the airborne assault on the island of Crete.  The Greek and British forces repelled two out of the three airports assaults but the Germans poured men and material into the one airport that they had captured and finally turned the tide in their favor.  Greek peasants hunted down and killed the elite paratroopers wherever they could find them.  The German paratroopers suffered about 50% casualties (with almost 4,000 dead) out of 14,000 troops used in this final battle. So heavy were the losses that Hitler decided never to launch an airborne invasion again. General Kurt Student would later say, "Crete was the grave of the German parachutists".
 
At the end of the war the German officers on trial at Nuremberg had commented that if the invasion of Russia taken place on schedule early in the spring of 1941 instead of at the end of June they would have succeeded in conquering the Soviet Union before the winter of 1941 which proved to be the only thing capable of stopping the German advance.  Field Marshall Keitel who was Chief of Staff of the German Army was very bitter when he said that "The unbelievable strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general, and others would have been accused and would be occupying this seat as defendants today”.
 
At the end of the war there were 10% fewer Greeks alive than when the war started and the overall devastation of the country took years to recover from but this small country showed the world at a time when it mattered the most that freedom is worth fighting for.  The sacrifices made by the Greek nation ultimately changed the course of history and contributed in preventing the evils of Fascism and Nazism from dominating the world.
 
The following poem was written in 1941 as a tribute to the heroism of the Greek nation after their defeat by the Germans. 
  
 THE GREEK

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Welcome to my Blog

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Constantine last defender of Constantinople

Constantine XI Paleologus was the last Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.  The last of the Emperor  Constantines from the founding of the empire 1123 years earlier by Constantine the Great on May 11, 330 A.D. 

Constantine XI Paleologus, also known as Constantine Drageses (Gr. Κωνσταντίνος ΧΙ Δραγάσης Παλαιολόγος), (February 9, 1404 – May 29, 1453) was the last reigning emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 1449 to his death when  after almost two months of heroic defense, directed by the emperor, Constantinople and the empire fell.  The Emperor, when realising that the end had come, discarded his purple cloak and charged into the breach. He died fighting with the last of his men.

A ruler of great wisdom, I hope by adopting his name I shall be gifted with a little of his. 

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