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#1 ara baliozian

ara baliozian

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Posted 07 June 2001 - 05:56 AM

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
************************************
At the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire Armenian writers published under such pseudonyms as Indra, Siamanto, Oshagan, and Varoujan. One reason: fear of the Sultan’s secret police. (A useless precaution, because, as we all know by now, on April 24, 1915 they were all betrayed to the police by an Armenian informer and thus became the first victims of the Genocide.)
Today many Armenians on the internet also write under false names, and why? Is it fear? Fear of what? When asked this question, a friend explained: "Fear of crazies – there are all kinds of them out there!" By crazies I suspect she meant irresponsible and cowardly riffraff who use the internet as a verbal garbage dump. Some of these Armenians, who pretend to be more patriotic than the rest of us, are not satisfied with a single alias but adopt as many a dozen, perhaps because deep inside somewhere they know what they are doing is so despicable that by ascribing it to several sources they hope to minimize their own responsibility.
The Armenian writers of Istanbul were wrong in overestimating the loyalty of their fellow Armenians. Our riffraff today are wrong in underestimating our intelligence and in doing so they have redefined chauvinism as love of country and contempt of countrymen.
We sometimes brag about our genius for survival. What we choose to ignore however is that it is not the best but the worst that may have survived.

#2 nairakev

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Posted 07 June 2001 - 07:44 AM

quote:
Originally posted by ara baliozian:
Today many Armenians on the internet also write under false names, and why? Is it fear? Fear of what? When asked this question, a friend explained: "Fear of crazies – there are all kinds of them out there!" By crazies I suspect she meant irresponsible and cowardly riffraff who use the internet as a verbal garbage dump. Some of these Armenians, who pretend to be more patriotic than the rest of us, are not satisfied with a single alias but adopt as many a dozen, perhaps because deep inside somewhere they know what they are doing is so despicable that by ascribing it to several sources they hope to minimize their own responsibility.


ara, honey!
I know no one who might be an armenian writer besides you.
Do you suspect someone?
I don't. Besides I really think that the times and circumstances were different. We are in a cyber-discussion forum here. And not in Istanbul of 1915.
Ara Baliozian - is this your pseudo? I don't really care who is he on the net.
What counts is what is posted. There is no such a thing as classic identity on the web. Some build there identity through an innovative story-telling language, some build brand new caracters (personages) from scratch. Some prefer to keep their real names and real way of talking. So who cares, actually, who you are? I don't.
What do you do, that actually counts more for me!
Voila...




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