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#21 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:39 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 10, 2001 07:08 AM
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OBSERVATIONS
*****************************
Some of my readers accuse me of using too much vinegar and not enough honey. "Honey," they like to remind me, "catches more flies." To them and to everyone who believes in the wisdom of the ages, there is a Spanish proverb that says: "Haceos de miel, y os comeran las moscas" (Make yourself honey and the flies will eat you).
We speak too much of genocide and not enough of genosuicide. Genocide is what happened to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire. Genosuicide is what’s been happening to us since.

Eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not insult if you can criticize."
Twelfth Commandment: "Thou shalt not criticize to prove that you are ahead of the game because our problems are not games."

I have been publishing critical articles for at least two decades now and I have never – repeat, never! -- heard a decent Armenian saying that he is offended by my criticism. On the contrary!….

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#22 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:41 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 09, 2001 11:07 AM
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MEMOS
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TO READERS WHO ARE PROGRAMMED
TO CONTRADICT EVERYTHING I SAY:
Obviously, I am the wrong man for the job – the job being convincing you that like all human beings you too may well be fallible. However, if you are certain you are always right and I am always wrong, why waste your time reading me? -- especially in view of the fact that we have so many partisan publications recycling chauvinist crap….
TO THOSE WHO INSULT ME ANONYMOUSLY:
There should be a silent rule for all e-mail communications that says, if you insult someone, have the decency to do so under your real name, otherwise your target may be justified in dismissing your words as those of a cowardly liar: because anyone who lies about his identity will lie about anything.

TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS:
Sometimes I make suggestions (like the above) not with the expectation that they will be accepted but with the hope that they will enhance the awareness of my critics. But that too may well be a vain hope. One cannot make suggestions to someone who has assessed himself as la crème de la crème but who is in fact la crème de la scum. Such a one is not, as a rule, open to suggestion even when the suggestion is to his advantage.

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#23 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:47 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 08, 2001 11:03 AM
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READERS AND CRITICS
********************************
Some of my critics think they are making a positive contribution to our cause when they accuse me of negativism, thus implying, when I am negative I am negative, but when they are negative they are positive.
When a reader insults, curses, swears and foams at the mouth, I feel like James Thurber’s duelist, who, after decapitating his opponent, says "Touché!"

If you adopt a critical stance – which, in our environment, might as well mean: if you use your common sense and view things as they are – you will be accused of being a bad Armenian as if being a good Armenian meant being deaf, dumb and blind.

In his latest posthumously published book, TOWARDS ARARAT (Yerevan, 2001), Gostan Zarian writes that, when an Armenian establishes himself in a foreign country, he acquires something of the ape and the parrot. "You lack originality," I was informed recently by one of these ape/parrots.

To how many of my critics I could say: I am flattered that someone of your intellectual caliber reads my nonsense and takes the trouble to comment on it. In your place I would occupy myself with worthier enterprises.

If an Armenian writer criticizes Armenians and no one reads him, is he still wrong?

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#24 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:48 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted July 30, 2001 07:22 AM
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THE ROUTINE
***********************
After two decades of hostile co-existence, my critics and I have developed a routine that goes something like this:
MYSELF: We have many problems.
MY CRITICS: Mention a single nation without problems.
-Other nations are functional, we are dysfunctional.
-You say that because you are anti-Armenian.
-And you say that because you expect even critics to recycle chauvinist crap.
-Do you have to stress the negative all the time? Why don’t you say something positive once in a while?
-To be truly negative means to give up and to assimilate, which is exactly what the majority has been doing.
-Whose fault is it if Armenians assimilate? People like you who stress the negative!
-Assimilation has been with us long before I was born: it is a result of a divided, corrupt, and incompetent leadership.
-We did not invent these things; you will find divisions, corruption and incompetence in the most progressive nations.
-Progressive nations go forward; we have been going in the opposite directions.
-Give us a chance. We are a new nation: we just gained our independence.
-We are the cradle of civilization, according to our propagandists.
-That’s right! And the first nation to accept Christianity.
-Correction: the first nation to give up Christianity as an impractical religion.
-You speak like a fool and an ignoramus.
-You call that Christian?
-I call it being honest.
-An honest man does not call a fellow human being a fool and an ignoramus.
-I can’t think of you as a fellow human being because you are anti-Armenian.
-I am anti-Armenian because I refuse to recycle chauvinist crap?
-No, because you are anti-Armenian, period!…
…and so on
There you have it: two monologues that never cross!

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#25 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:53 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 04, 2001 06:59 AM
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MY CUP RUNNETH OVER NIAGARALLY…
******************************************
During the last twenty years or so, it has happened to me no more than once or at most twice, that a reader has written to inform me that he disagrees with me but not as much as he used to when he started reading me.
From such glimmers of hope revolutions are born.
And they say I am a pessimist, a purveyor of bad tidings, a somber hombre, a gloom-doom dude!….
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#26 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:55 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 01, 2001 06:52 AM
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…AND THEREBY HANGS A TALE
***************************************
Once in a while a reader takes it upon himself to remind me that I repeat myself. May I confess that I too don’t much care to be exposed to the same ideas and slogans over and over again ad nauseam and ad infinitum. Which is why I avoid churches and partisan functions; also sermonizers (always against sin) and speechifiers (always for patriotism). My only hope now is that those who find me repetitious, monotonous, consistently negative, will avoid me too; and I can’t help wondering why is it that so far they have failed to do so: I find that wasteful on their part, also irresponsible and thoughtless. And now the tale I promised at the outset:
Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a comfortable house in a nice neighborhood. One day, when, after a pleasant walk in the part, he returned home, he saw thick black smoke coming out of his attic window. "Fire! Fire!" he started yelling and running up and down the street, "Help! Help! Please, call 911. Fire. Help. Please. 911!" But nobody did a damn thing. Instead he heard such comments by neighbors and passersby as, "We heard you the first time. Relax. Help is on its way. Don’t be such a pessimist. Be more constructive. Be more optimistic. Things are looking up. You are repeating yourself. You sound like a broken record. Don’t raise your voice, we are not deaf. We can see the fire, we are not blind. You sound monotonous. Such an alarmist! Enough is enough. Shut up! Ignore him…"
What happened next is easy to guess. The fire spread and the whole neighborhood burned down.

Moral I: If your house is on fire and if you live in an Armenian neighborhood, don’t repeat yourself and be more constructive.

Moral II: If you are a neighbor, ignore the message, ignore the messenger, but don’t ignore the context, especially if you are yourself part of it.

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#27 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 05:56 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 30, 2001 12:25 PM
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REPLY
*********************
Once in a while, one of our phony patriotic imbeciles (of whom we have our share) takes it upon himself to accuse me of anti-Armenianism, and no matter how often I am advised by friends not to dignify such meaningless nonsense with a reply, I cannot resist the temptation of reiterating my position.
If you are for freedom of speech, you will be against censorship (and we have more than our share of it, as everyone ought to know by now).
If you are for democracy, you will be against fascism (ditto).
If you are for honesty, you will be against crooks and charlatans (ditto).
I could make a much longer list but you get the picture.
In short, I can’t be anti-Armenian for the simple reason that I am anti-many things regardless of national origin. To put it more bluntly, I write the way I write to remind our self-satisfied swine that they are not God’s gifts to mankind and if they continue to engage in charlatanism, they must be prepared to be exposed for what they are.
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#28 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 06:05 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted July 12, 2001 06:56 AM
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INTERCHANGEABLE UNITS
*********************************
After reading a nasty comment by a Turk about one of my recent essays wherein the word genocide may have occurred – and when I say nasty, I mean boiling with hatred and bristling with four-letter words…I mean verbal massacre… -- I was tempted to reply and inform him I am personally acquainted with several Armenians just like him and I would be more than happy to introduce him to them. But remembering de Gaulle’s dictum – "Nothing enhances authority better than silence" – I ignored the bastard. But if he writes again, I may ignore de Gaulle…
Moral I: Nasty Armenians and nasty Turks: they might as well be twins when it comes to style and content.

Moral II: (To paraphrase Lenin): A skinhead is a skinhead regardless of national identity.

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#29 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 06:36 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted July 03, 2001 06:46 AM
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AS I SEE IT
************************
A pervert is also someone who perverts the meaning of what he reads.
If you want to love a man, talk to his friends.
If you want to hate him, talk to his enemies.
If you want to understand him, talk to both.

To choose America as our enemy amounts to certifying our status as perennial losers. There is an old Egyptian saying (which I just made up): "Tackle the rat in your own backyard before you decide to wrestle with the crocodile in the Nile."

A reader writes that my writings give him a headache. I could make a long list of Armenian writers who were starved, murdered, committed suicide, had heart attacks or died of cancer. What’s a little headache?

It’s easy to have all the answers if you have not yet begun asking the right questions.

A reader once accused me of dehumanizing my fellow Armenians. Whereas one of my most frequent reproaches to myself is that again and again I have attempted to humanize them by trying to reason with them and again and again I have been disappointed, insulted, torn to shreds, and cannibalized.

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#30 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 07:04 AM

ara baliozian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 02, 2001 06:54 AM
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KILLERS
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I don’t write for the living but for the dead, and I speak in the name of all those writers who were silenced by commissars: Soviet commissars with a license to kill, diasporan commissars (not all of them members of the ADL or ARF) whose words were "sharper than a Turk’s yataghan" (Zarian), and readers who killed with their apathy: the kind of apathy whose message is: "We don’t need you because we know better," or "We have no use for you because we find you depressing," or again "We wish to be entertained and flattered not criticized and exposed for what we really are: murderers of writers and killers of dreams."
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#31 MJ

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Posted 01 September 2001 - 08:11 AM

Ara Baloizian
Member
Member # 271
posted August 13, 2001 07:08 AM
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JACKASSES, LEND ME YOUR EARS
****************************************
When I express an honest opinion
and an honest man agrees with me,
I feel good;
but when a dishonest man disagrees with me,
I feel better.
Why should I care to have the agreement of a dishonest man?
I am sure, if I were to write like an ape or a jackass,
I would have the agreement of apes and jackasses.
And if I were to parrot the views
of a boss, bishop, or benedefacator,
I would have their agreement too...
not to say the support
of their hangers-on, hirelings and yes-men.
Like all nations around the world
we too have our share of fools and dupes
who have not yet acquired the skill
to think for themselves;
also bloodsuckers and parasites
who praise the nation publicly and bury it privately.
On the day I have their agreement,
I shall consider myself on the way to the devil.
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[/b]ara baliozian[/b]




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