Vox Sentences: 100 years since the Armenian genocide began

1. 100 years

An Armenian remembrance march in New York City. (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)

• Today, April 24, marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide.

  [BBC]

• The slaughter, which is estimated to have killed between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians, is usually recognized as beginning with the April 24, 1915, slaughter of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals.

  [NYT / John Kifner]

• The US does not label the killings a genocide, so as to avoid offending Turkey, some of whose founding fathers were architects of the genocide, and which has prosecuted people for acknowledging that what occurred was a genocide.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• Obama's statement acknowledged that "the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths" and that "amid horrific violence that saw suffering on all sides, one and a half million Armenians perished." But he did not use the word "genocide."

  [White House]

• Treasury Secretary Jack Lew attended an event in Armenia marking the anniversary on the president's behalf.

  [USA Today / David Jackson]

• As a senator and presidential contender, Obama acknowledged that the massacres were part of a genocide and pledged to recognize it as president. He has yet to do so.

  [AP / Matthew Lee and Julie Pace]

• In a campaign video for Armenians for Obama, now–UN Ambassador Samantha Power touted Obama's "willingness as president to commemorate it and certainly to call a spade a spade and speak truth about it."

  [Armenians for Obama]

• As Power notes in her book A Problem from Hell, the US ambassador to Turkey at the time of the genocide, Henry Morgenthau, was aware of the killings and urged action, but the US didn't intervene.

  [Google Books]

• Opponents of recognition emphasize that the history is complicated, and many Armenians died in World War I, and while that's true, Armenian suffering was far, far greater, and the result of planned killings of civilians.

  [Foreign Affairs / Thomas de Waal]

• 22 countries recognize the genocide, with Germany the latest addition; in addition to the US, the UK and Israel also notably do not acknowledge it was a genocide.

  [State Commission on Coordination of the events for the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide ]

2. Sturm und Drachma

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (right) with frequent antagonist German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

• European lenders are urging Greece to present plans for economic reform, which the lenders are insisting upon as a precondition for further budget assistance.

  [Reuters / Robin Emmott and Ingrid Melander]

• The two major sticking points appear to be the lenders' insistence that Greece cut pensions still further, and that it maintain a high surplus rather than merely balance the budget.

  [NYT / James Kanter]

• Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, reportedly warned the Europeans that the Greek government could be out of money in a matter of weeks.

  [FT / Peter Spiegel]

• If Greece doesn't get more money, one way it could stay afloat is to default on its debt and demand the European Central Bank finance the government; if the bank refuses, Greece would effectively be kicked out of the Eurozone.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Curiously, the US appears more worried about that scenario than European policymakers are.

  [FT / Gillian Tett]

• One less extreme option, which still gets around the need for strings-attached loans, is to institute harsh regulations on how capital can come into or out of Greece.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• It's worth remembering through all of this that the crisis isn't actually about debt; Greece had a lot, but Spain is hurting too, despite running surpluses before the recession. The basic problem is the recession.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Wolfgang Münchau: Greece needs to default, but it needs to figure out a way to do that without abandoning the euro.

  [FT / Wolfgang Münchau]

• Just saying: the US has figured out a system that effectively transfers money from rich states like Connecticut to poor states like Mississippi on a regular basis. Germany should consider becoming Connecticut to Greece's Mississippi.

  [Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco / Israel Malkin and Daniel J. Wilson]

3. Misc.

• I would agree with this piece's argument that too much of political reporting is just theater criticism, but that seems unduly mean to theater critics.

  [The Atlantic / Derek Thompson]

• An analysis found that 94.2 percent of terrorism convictions from 2001 to 2010 involved "preemptive prosecution," which is just a hair's breadth away from straight-up entrapment.

  [Al Jazeera America / Jenifer Fenton]

• Let us now praise John Bingham, the Reconstruction-era Congressman who crafted the 14th Amendment and gave a legal basis for the civil, women's, and gay rights movements.

  [Slate / Tom Donnelly]

• Have you ever binge-watched a show even though you didn't like it, just because you felt like you should finish? Welcome to "purge-watching."

  [NY Mag / Adam Sternbergh]

• The case for Obama skipping the White House Correspondents' Dinner (the author says "occasionally," I would amend to "always").

  [Politico / Patrick Gavin]

4. Verbatim

• "My father-in-law, an anthropologist, likes to talk about the time he ate dog penis."

  [NYT / Pamela Druckerman]

• "Hello, are you Greece, I am here to run your army? Don’t worry, I’m a poet. Thank you for the gifts I assume are on their way."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "Amazingly, 8,566 New Zealanders served in the [Galipoli] campaign and accounted for 14,720 casualties. They were wounded twice or even three times but returned to the lines again and again."

  [Medium / BA Friedman]

• "'Maria, do you want to go swing dancing?' People are still doing that? The war is over! There’s plenty of pantyhose for everyone!"

  [Maria Bamford to Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• "The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000 … The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison."

  [Washington Post / Spencer Hsu]

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