Just How Honest Should We Be?

As many of you already know, I have been in a relationship with someone I really care for. It's been almost 3 months and we are still getting to know each other. When people are in the process of getting to know each other in a romantic relationships, we have a tendency to ask questions about the other persons past. It's a dangerous territory to get into because you never really know how the other person is going to react to what you have to say. You also don't know how you are going to react to what they have to say.

So just how honest should we be about our past relationships? Should we even dare to talk about them? I personally had some relationships that ended acrimoniously and I would prefer not to talk about those disastrous relationships. Jeff (my boyfriend) had asked me about my ex-husband (a real asshole) and I don't really see the point in talking about him or anyone else I have had a relationship with. But naturally, when he asks me about my ex-boyfriends, I then ask about his ex-girlfriends and all it does is get on my nerves to hear about how beautiful, smart or funny some of them are.

Before you know it, you start to compare yourself to all the people they have dated. I start to make myself insecure by making those comparisons. Am I as pretty, smart or funny as the people he used to be with? What are my deficiencies? Am I adequate, average or better than those other women? It goes on and on in my head. So long as these other people don't come up in conversation, I am okay. But when they do...oh, how pathetic I become!

Maybe because it's early in the relationship that I don't feel completely secure with what we have. I will admit that he has said that he never felt quite as connected to any of them as he does with me. But still, I wonder. Is honesty about our past really the best policy??

Armenian Story Has Another SIde

Armenian story has another side

By Norman Stone, a historian and the author of "World War I: A Short History"

October 16, 2007

All the world knows what the end of an empire looks like: hundreds of thousands of people fleeing down dusty paths, taking what was left of their possessions; crammed refugee trains puffing their way across arid plains; and many, many people dying. For the Ottoman Empire that process began in the Balkans, the Crimea and the Caucasus as Russia and her satellites expanded. Seven million people -- we would now call them Turks -- had to settle in Anatolia, the territory of modern Turkey.

In 1914, when World War I began in earnest, Armenians living in what is now Turkey attempted to set up a national state. Armenians revolted against the Ottoman government, began what we would now call "ethnic cleansing" of the local Turks. Their effort failed and caused the government to deport most Armenians from the area of the revolt for security reasons. Their sufferings en route are well-known.

Today, Armenian interests in America and abroad are well-organized. What keeps them united is the collective memory of their historic grievance. What happened was not in any way their fault, they believe. If the drive to carve out an ethnically pure Armenian state was a failure, they reason, it was only because the Turks exterminated them.

For years, Armenians have urged the U.S. Congress to recognize their fate as genocide. Many U.S. leaders -- including former secretaries of state and defense and current high-ranking Bush administration officials -- have urged Congress either not to consider or to vote down the current genocide resolution primarily for strategic purposes: Turkey is a critical ally to the U.S. in both Iraq and Afghanistan and adoption of such a resolution would anger and offend the Turkish population and jeopardize U.S.-Turkish relations.

Given this strong opposition, why would Congress, upon the advice of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, make itself arbiter of this controversy? What makes the Armenians' dreadful fate so much worse than the dreadful fates that come with every end of empire? It is here that historians must come in.

First, allegedly critical evidence of the crime consists of forgeries. The British were in occupation of Istanbul for four years after the war and examined all of the files of the Ottoman government. They found nothing, and therefore could not try the 100-odd supposed Turkish war criminals that they were holding. Then, documents turned up, allegedly telegrams from the interior ministry to the effect that all Armenians should be wiped out. The signatures turned out to be wrong, there were no back-up copies in the archives and the dating system was misunderstood.

There are many other arguments against a supposed genocide of the Armenians. Their leader was offered a post in the Turkish Cabinet in 1914, and turned it down. When the deportations were under way, the populations of the big cities were exempted -- Istanbul, Izmir, Aleppo, where there were huge concentrations of Armenians. There were indeed well-documented and horrible massacres of the deportee columns, and the Turks themselves tried more than 1,300 men for these crimes in 1916, convicted many and executed several. None of this squares with genocide, as we classically understand it. Finally, it is just not true that historians as a whole support the genocide thesis. The people who know the background and the language (Ottoman Turkish is terribly difficult) are divided, and those who do not accept the genocide thesis are weightier. The Armenian lobby contends that these independent and highly esteemed historians are simply "Ottomanists" -- a ridiculously arrogant dismissal.

Unfortunately, the issue has never reached a properly constituted court. If the Armenians were convinced of their own case, they would have taken it to one. Instead, they lobby bewildered or bored parliamentary assemblies to "recognize the genocide."

Congress should not take a position, one way or the other, on this affair. Let historians decide. The Turkish government has been saying this for years. It is the Armenians who refuse to take part in a joint historical review, even when organized by impeccably neutral academics. This review is the logical and most sensible path forward. Passage of the resolution by the full House of Representatives would constitute an act of legislative vengeance and would shame well-meaning scholars who want to explore this history from any vantage point other than the one foisted upon the world by ultranationalist Armenians.

Man, it is so easy to HATE Armenians

So I generally use my blog to chronicle my personal life. However, in light of the recent events regarding Pelosi (a fool's fool) and the resolution that looks like is going to pass deeming the events of 1915 in the Ottoamn Empire as a so-called genocide, I felt compelled to write about it.

First off, since when in hell are politicians in a position to act as though they are an authority on history? This whole issue is best for historians to sort out. Am I right?

Secondly, why in the world won't the Armenians go to the Hague and make their case if they are DEAD certain that they have one.

Thirdly, why won't the Armenians open up their God damn archives the way that Turkey has? Again, if they are soooo certain that they were systematically exterminated, what are they so afraid of?

One more question: in 1984 a letter was drafted and signed by (literally) dozens of HISTORIANS (from the U.S. and England) stating that the events of 1915 were NOT a genocide. So tell me, why did Armenian terrorists go after those historians who made this statement? Well, hellooo, Armos, remember your terrorist organization called ASALA. For those of you not familiar with ASALA, they were an Armenian terrorist organization who murdered scores of Turkish Diplomats and civilians.

Yes, I now loathe Armenians who sole national identity has been to have the world feel sorry for them for betraying the very govenment that had long been on their side. That is, up until Armenians got greedy and thought that they could carve out land of their own out of the Ottoman Empire. You all suck. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart