Night Music: Can’t Find My Way Home

The 106 Years of Musa Dagh

Sometime in the mid-1960s, I read a novel by Franz Werfel called Forty Days of Musa Dagh. It told how a number of Armenian villages refused to be exterminated by the Ottoman Empire without a fight in 1915. I have no Armenian or Turkish background, but it was such a stirring story of heroic resistance against a racist holocaust that the memory of their struggle stayed as a bright light in my consciousness.

Over the years, on occasion, a politician or two has bruited the idea of declaring the Turkish actions as genocide and I have cheered them on. Now, finally, with Joe Biden we have a US President who is willing to stand up and say it.

There is no doubt that the current Turkish regime will shout and complain about this “insult” to a fellow NATO member. But frankly, the Erdogan regime, a semi-fascist state already, doesn’t deserve to be in NATO and is quite happy to commit another genocide against its own Kurdish people in a continuation of its bigoted behaviour. Perhaps if we properly remember the slaughter of the Armenians we might have some chance of stopping such atrocities in the future.

In Memoriam To the Martyred Victims

On this day in 1916, the flag of Irish rebellion against the English crown was raised in Dublin in what has become known as the Easter Rising (Éirí Amach na Cásca).

485 people died in the next few days, more than 60% of whom were civilians killed mostly by British bullets and bombardments. All should be remembered.

Over the following weeks, the British murdered/executed a number of Irish leaders and patriots:

• Roger Casement
• Éamonn Ceannt
• Thomas James Clarke
• Con Colbert
• James Connolly
• Edward Daly
• Seán Heuston
• Thomas Kent
• John MacBride
• Seán MacDiarmada
• Thomas MacDonagh
• Michael Mallin
• Michael O’Hanrahan
• Patrick Pearse
• William Pearse
• Joseph Mary Plunkett

Their sacrifice was not in vain, and most of Ireland is now a free republic.  When Ulster (Britain’s second oldest colony after Wales) is freed from bondage, their work will be complete.