RUTHFULLY YOURS

April 24 marks the “Great Crime,” that is, the Armenian genocide that took place under Turkey’s Islamic Ottoman Empire, during and after WWI. Out of an approximate population of two million, some 1.5 million Armenians died. If early 20th century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass—such as 1940s Germany’s gas chambers—the entire Armenian population may well have been annihilated. Most objective American historians who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as “Turkey”] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century. At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000…. Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Indeed, evidence has been overwhelming. U.S. Senate Resolution 359 from 1920 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.” In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam’s rules of war).

Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.” Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.

Well, well, well:

Austria’s far right made big wins in the latest round of voting in the country’s presidential election. Norbert Hofer, candidate of the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), took home almost 37 percent of the vote out of five candidates in Sunday’s polls.

The election will now go to a runoff that will take place on May 22, when Hofer will face either Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, who gained 19.7 percent of the vote this round, or independent candidate Irmgard Griss, who won 18.8 percent. For an all-out win a candidate must obtain more than 50 percent of votes to become the country’s head of state, which is a largely ceremonial role.

But the results do reflect Austrians’ frustration with their leaders’ response to Europe’s refugee crisis, and mean that, for the first time since 1945, Austria will not have a president from either the center-left Social Democrats or the center-right People’s Party. Hofer sailed past the candidates from those two parties — the Social Democrats and the People’s Party – who gained only 11.2 percent of the vote each.

Sunday’s results were the biggest victory that Hofer’s Freedom Party has seen since the party’s inception after World War II.

Guilt and the Immigrants

Angela Merkel’s chickens — which she generously distributed up and down the European continent in her suicidal attempt to change the very nature of Europe itself — are coming home to roost.

Hofer, who says he almost always packs a Glock in order to protect himself from refugees, is considered by German media to be the friendlier face of the Freedom Party over its more aggressive leader, Heinz-Christian Strache.

“The truth is, I suspect, that Trudeau’s public performances in the physical and intellectual domains, as well as his documented appeal to female effusiveness, is a vivid expression of his followers’ utter lack of political sobriety, intellectual acumen and emotional maturity. That a country could give its support and a 66 per cent approval rating to a preening charlatan boggles the mind and beggars the imagination—or would, if Americans had not done the same with a smooth-talking ignoramus like Barack Obama, who thinks the U.S. consists of 57 states and that Austrians speak Austrian.”

-Much has been made of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s recent exploits, avidly devoured by the press and lapped up by his dazzled acolytes. The latest installment in the Trudeau saga involves a photo just circulated of Trudeau balancing on a conference table in the advanced yogic Mayurasana or “peacock” pose, which has sent the media into yet another Trudeau frenzy and his fans swooning with adoration. Take a look at the image above.

One admirer tweets: “This guy is just too good to be true.” Another: “I’m so happy to be Canadian.” As CBC News puts it: “Photo of Justin Trudeau doing yoga makes the internet freak out — again.” In my estimation, this is not a posture befitting a head of state—but maybe that’s just me.

A few days earlier, media focus was on Trudeau’s apparently uncanny brain power, to wit, a “stunning” riff on the topic of quantum computing. The media, of course, failed to report that Trudeau’s Wikipedia stunt was set up by Trudeau himself, who asked to be asked so he could reel off a couple of boilerplate lines he had obviously memorized. According to the Daily Mail, “Justin Trudeau stuns room full of reporters and scientists with perfect answer to complex quantum computing question.” Here is Trudeau’s reply to a journalist’s stuttering query (“I was going to ask you about quantum computing, but …”):

“Very simply, normal computers work by …,” he began before he was interrupted by the crowd’s shocked laughter. “No, no, don’t interrupt me, when you walk out of here you will know more — well no, some of you will know far less — about quantum computing. Normal computers work by … either the power going through a wire or not. It’s 1 or a 0. They’re binary systems. What quantum states allow for is much more complex information to be encoded into a single bit. A regular computer bit is either a 1 or 0 — on or off. A quantum state can be much more complex than that because as we know, things can be both particles and waves at the same time. And the uncertainty around quantum states allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer.”

So far as I can see, the question is neither “complex” nor the answer “perfect.” Note how Trudeau says nothing about the real problem, namely quantum indeterminacy and how to manage the superposition of incompatible states reliably and practically. Nor does he explain how the principle of uncertainty would allow us to compress and encode information, which is precisely the issue in question.

Ever since the inception of the European Economic Community, British politicians across the entire political spectrum have been perceptive enough to realize that Britain will lose its sovereignty and turn into a vassal of the France-Germany axis.

This month, in March, an official audit reported that EU auditors refuse to sign off more than £100 billion ($144 billion) of EU spending. The Brussels accounts have not been given the all-clear for 19 years in a row.

There is a joke going around the internet it how the European Union works (or doesn’t):

Pythagoras’s theorem – 24 words.
Lord’s Prayer – 66 words.
Archimedes’s Principle – 67 words.
10 Commandments – 179 words.
Gettysburg address – 286 words.
U.S. Declaration of Independence – 1,300 words.
U.S. Constitution with all 27 Amendments – 7,818 words.

EU regulations on the sale of cabbage – 26,911 words.

Why are EU Regulations so long? Maybe because they have to be translated into the 18 official languages? Interpreters also have to be found who can work into and from those languages at the European Parliament. The translation budget is massive. One of the official languages currently is Irish. It can confidently be said that there is no one in the Republic of Ireland who does not speak English; many Irish do not even speak or understand Irish, and certainly none of Ireland’s politicians will be fluent only in Irish. But all of the “acquis,” the body of regulations that are already part of the EU body of laws, also have to be translated into the languages of candidates for EU membership, such as Turkey, thus adding more languages to the tally each time a new regulation is passed. If Catalonia breaks away from Spain and remains a member of the EU, Catalan will need to be added, even though Catalan politicians all speak perfect Spanish.