Yesterday my spouse and I were discussing the NPR news of the day having to do with a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the people of Turkey for the annihilation/genocide of Armenians in WWI

With that conversation fresh in mind, while indulging in my favorite "read of the day" CHINA ROAD I came across this quote having to do with the incorporation of Tibet into China.

"Although is is no excuse for the appallingly brutal way the Communist Party has treated Tibet since 1959, it is important to remember a few chapters of our own history in North America, Australia, and elsewhere. Even conservative estimates say that more than 2 million indigenous people were killed during the colonization of North America. In Australia, the aboriginal population was reduced by disease, loss of land, and direct killing by 90 percent between 1788 and 1900. American and Australian history are full of examples of white men killing indigenous peoples just for the sake of killing them, almost for sport. And let's not even get started on the slave trade and the full onslaught of white colonialism elsewhere. Chinese atrocities in Tibet during the 1960s and '70s, and until today, have been shocking in the extreme, but they have not yet reached anywhere near those levels. That does not excuse them in any way. All I am saying is that the white man speaks with forked tongue on these issues, and you will never hear a Han Chinese person saying, "The only good Tibetan is a dead Tibetan."

Mr. Gifford, an NPR correspondent and student in China for most of his adult life, has not to my knowledge, weighed into the discussion regarding the Turkish/Armenian genocide resolution, but I believe I would be in good company to believe that he and many of us can almost weep when we review our country's history of condemning others and forgetting, seemingly, our own tragic betrayal of native persons.

I don't know what else to say about this - only that I credit and congratulate many authors who have the courage to condemn our leaders' righteous behavior when our own country's history is littered with hate and death crimes of its own. Perhaps governments of other countries should begin to adopt resolutions of their own (where that is politically possible)condemning our people for the genocide we so conveniently keep swept under the rug.