French lawmakers appealed to their country's highest court yesterday (31 January) to overturn a law that makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide. More »

I suppose it'll add some spice to history exams though. Get the wrong answer and you not only fail: you get carted off to jail as well. - The concluding sentences of a piece by Mick Hartley criticising a new French law which, once President Sarkozy signs it, will make it a criminal offence to deny that genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians....

Erdogan should have followed a rational and strategic approach regarding the French bill on Armenian genocide. Instead, he acts like a small kid in the sandbox, writes Michael Kambeck from European Friends of Armenia. More »

France approved yesterday (23 January) a bill making it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide, sparking angry retaliation from Turkey and threatening a "total rupture" of diplomatic ties. More »

Turkey vehemently denies massacre of Armenians in what was then the eastern frontiers of the crumbling Ottoman empire, amounted to genocide

Ben Pile at Climate Resistance notes Steven Pinker's latest book: In this startling new book, the bestselling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. With the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps, Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Mediev...

As the French Senate rushes to consider a bill that would penalise denial of the massacre of over 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey is lobbying to stop the effort, warning of economic consequences. More »

The relationship between Turkey and France — which started with the alliance between Francis I and Suleiman the Magnificent — is in precarious territory following the French Parliament's decision to ban denial of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey's moderate Islamist government has taken as hard a line on the issue as previous Kemalist governments did, and has announced, in respon...

Turkey has warned France of grave consequences should the French Senate pass a bill today (19 December) that would penalise denial of the massacre of over 1 million Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. More »

The "Arab Spring" in Syria has turned into more of a "nuclear winter" for the unarmed civilians in Homs as Bashar al-Assad prepares for his endgame there! All this while the Obama administration is MIA in that country and in other potential flash-points due to its collective eyes being on other prizes viewed as more critical (the 2012 presidential election for one)! In a global crisis such as geno...