The Armenian Genocide
In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until 1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.
The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Turks who had conquered lands extending across West Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe. The Ottoman government was centered in Istanbul (Constantinople) and was headed by a sultan who was vested with absolute power. The Turks practiced Islam and were a martial people. The Armenians, a Christian minority, lived as second class citizens subject to legal restrictions which denied them normal safeguards. Neither their lives nor their properties were guaranteed security. As non-Muslims they were also obligated to pay discriminatory taxes and denied participation in government. Scattered across the empire, the status of the Armenians was further complicated by the fact that the territory of historic Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Russians.
In its heyday in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was a powerful state. Its minority populations prospered with the growth of its economy. By the nineteenth century, the empire was in serious decline. It had been reduced in size and by 1914 had lost virtually all its lands in Europe and Africa. This decline created enormous internal political and economic pressures which contributed to the intensification of ethnic tensions. Armenian aspirations for representation and participation in government aroused suspicions among the Muslim Turks who had never shared power in their country with any minority and who also saw nationalist movements in the Balkans result in the secession of former Ottoman territories. Demands by Armenian political organizations for administrative reforms in the Armenian-inhabited provinces and better police protection from predatory tribes among the Kurds only invited further repression. The government was determined to avoid resolving the so-called Armenian Question in any way that altered the traditional system of administration. During the reign of the Sultan Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II (1876-1909), a series of massacres throughout the empire meant to frighten Armenians and so dampen their expectations, cost up to three hundred thousand lives by some estimates and inflicted enormous material losses on a majority of Armenians.
In response to the crisis in the Ottoman Empire, a new political group called the Young Turks seized power by revolution in 1908. From the Young Turks, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti, emerged at the head of the government in a coup staged in 1913. It was led by a triumvirate: Enver, Minister of War; Talaat, Minister of the Interior (Grand Vizier in 1917); and Jemal, Minister of the Marine. The CUP espoused an ultranationalistic ideology which advocated the formation of an exclusively Turkish state. It also subscribed to an ideology of aggrandizement through conquest directed eastward toward other regions inhabited by Turkic peoples, at that time subject to the Russian Empire. The CUP also steered Istanbul toward closer diplomatic and military relations with Imperial Germany. When World War I broke out in August 1914, the Ottoman Empire formed part of the Triple Alliance with the other Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and it declared war on Russia and its Western allies, Great Britain and France.
The Ottoman armies initially suffered a string of defeats which they made up with a series of easy military victories in the Caucasus in 1918 before the Central Powers capitulated later that same year. Whether retreating or advancing, the Ottoman army used the occasion of war to wage a collateral campaign of massacre against the civilian Armenian population in the regions in which warfare was being conducted. These measures were part of the genocidal program secretly adopted by the CUP and implemented under the cover of war. They coincided with the CUP’s larger program to eradicate the Armenians from Turkey and neighboring countries for the purpose of creating a new Pan-Turanian empire. Through the spring and summer of 1915, in all areas outside the war zones, the Armenian population was ordered deported from their homes. Convoys consisting of tens of thousands including men, women, and children were driven hundreds of miles toward the Syrian desert.
Ballad to Zuckerberg
Phase 1: The Fickle Founder
Business Insider reported this week on a series of IM chats between the 19-year-old Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angelo, his best friend from high school (and the guy who would later become Facebook's CTO). In the chat below, Zuckerberg and D'Angelo discuss a dating site Zuck is developing for fellow Harvard students -- and consider how it'll fit in with "the Facebook thing."
Zuckerberg: I ... hate the fact that I'm doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready and then be like "look yours isn't as good as this so if you want to join mine you can...otherwise I can help you with yours later." Or do you think that's too dick?
D'Angelo: I think you should just ditch them
Zuckerberg: The thing is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they have money to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friend who wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. Apparently insider trading isn't illegal in Brazil so he's rich lol.
D'Angelo: lol
Later, Zuckerberg would go on to suggest that he was interested in Facebook in part for its ability to be sold and in part for its ability to drive another product he'd been building: the file-sharing service Wirehog. In an IM chat with an unnamed confidant about the lawsuit heard round the world, Zuckerberg declared: "I won't pay the legal fees. The company that buys us will haha."
"Cool hopefully that'll be soon so you can move on and just work on what you want to," the confidant replied.
To which Zuckerberg responded, "Well it just needs to propel Wirehog."
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About ITCC
The ITCC is an international forum which brings together researchers and practitioners working on different aspects of Information Technology. It is a technical congregation where the latest theoretical and technological advances on Information Technology are presented and discussed. The ITCC is being held in conjunction with another international conference - The Information Systmes: Next Generations (ISNG 2005) whose primary emphasis is on information systems hardware, prototypes and architectures.
This year's conference will bring together the world's most respected authorities on Information Retrieval, Operating Systems, Networks, Image/Video Processing, Digital Library, Coding & Data Compression, Watermarking, Simulation, Computer Graphics, Information Technology: Education, Curriculum & Accreditation, Information/Website Security, Data Mining and other IT related technologies. (Please check the advanced Program for more details)
Whether you participate as a speaker, tutorial presenter, and/or sponsor, you will find ITCC 2005 as the best forum to share your knowledge with other peers in the IT field. The proceedings of the conference will be published by IEEE Computer Society
Microsoft Honors Perficient with Best Practices Award
a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout North America, today announced it recently received the "Best Practice Award" at Microsoft's Southwest District bi-annual partner briefing. The Best Practice Award recognizes exceptional partner expertise or competency in a specific industry, vertical, solution or segment. Microsoft recognized Perficient for its SharePoint solution developed for a large automotive manufacturer looking to strengthen dealer relationships, improve operational efficiency and provide positive customer experiences.
"As a Microsoft NSI partner, we are thrilled to have been recognized by the organization as providing best-in-class, consistent delivery capabilities and solutions across projects," said Dana Berg, general manager, Microsoft West Business Unit, Perficient. "Perficient has designed and implemented many SharePoint solutions, and what makes our approach a 'Best Practice' is our ability to tie the business technology solution to the client's business problems and to do so with the end user in mind."
In this case, the automaker engaged Perficient to define, build and deploy a system to record and track manufacturer-dealer interactions for the field organization. It needed to be simple, easily navigated, and flexible for both dealers and field reps. Perficient delivered a solution that utilized capabilities within Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Business Connectivity Services (BCS), which ultimately services approximately 80 field sales people covering more than 600 auto dealers in the United States.
The capabilities of SharePoint 2010 allows the client tools to record notes about dealer meetings, share any documents related to the dealer, and record follow-up tasks and events. Already, the automaker has experienced a high user adoption and utilization with more than 2,000 records added, and user feedback from the field reps centers positively on simplicity and ease of use.
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