415 replies to this topic

[sen_Vahan]

Talkng to my friends at Moscow Universities I get to know that they did not go home (to Armenia) for a long time. Why? Because they will be forced to join the Army Forces right after the arrival in the Airpot Zvartnoz. One way to overcome this problem is to pay money(illegaly).
What's that a corrupted patriotism or a manifestation of the "equal rights of all the citizens"?

Another person working in Petersburg told me after a vacation in Armenia that he will never go to Armenia again. Why? "There is a corruption beggining the Airport Zvartnoz. After the arrival you feel yourself an enemy of your own country. It is good for foreign people to go to Armenia but not for us." That what can one hear constantly from those who visit our country.

On the other hand, Armenians that go to Turkey never will tell you something like that. They like everything in that country!

When I go to Russia or US i see a lot of Armenians that TRY to speak Russian and English and ignore their fellow Armenians."Mard hayeri het piti gorts chunena":they say.
What the hell is going on? And we talk about the christianity and our old culture? Maybe we like the "idea of Armenia and Armenians" but not the people?
Vahan

[ara baliozian]

GENTLE READERS
***************************
1.
If you itch to judge a writer,
it’s safer to choose a dead one.
You never know how a living one may react.
"How dare you madam! -- how dare you criticize my books?"
an English writer is quoted as having said:
"My books are my children.
How would you feel if I were to criticize your children?"
2,
Some readers assume writers to be timid creatures
afraid to alienate or lose even a single reader.
Speaking for myself:
there is a type of reader I go out of my way to lose –
a type I call "carcinogenic agents."
3.
There is another type of reader who
after criticizing or insulting you once,
spends the rest of his life proving that
he was right to insult you.
With such a reader I can truly say that
I have achieved immortality
even if the immortality is of the negative variant.
4.
To readers you complain that I am
consistently negative, predictable and repetitive, I ask:
"Do you go to church every Sunday
in the hope that you will hear the preacher speak in favor of sin?"

[ara baliozian]

ON AN -ISM
***************************
1.
Militarism is a belief system that says, in effect:
If you can't change the mind, change the map.
2.
History tells us, sometimes it is easier changing the map
than changing the mind.
3.
I leave it to the Napoleons of the world to change the map.
All I want to do is understand myself and my fellow men.
You may now call me a megalomaniac.
4.
For every Napoleon there are thousands
with Napoleonic complexes
and millions with Napoleonic ambitions.
5.
Every child in America is brought up to believe
the Presidency is open to him;
and the President is referred to as the most powerful man on earth.
But the truth is, he is as much a prisoner of the system
as the rest of us. Perhaps even more so.
Almost every other married man misbehaves with a Monica
without making headlines in the media for months
and without running the risk of losing his job….
6.
There are stories that walk
and stories that refuse to budge.
Monica’s blow job and Condit’s affair --
the first, a victimless crime (or is it sin?),
the second, one probable victim --
are examples of stories that walk.
And now compare these two stories with our Genocide
(that claimed millions of victims).
You may now call me a cynic!
7.
And now, name an Armenian who was successful
in changing the mind of a single Armenian.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, March 03, 2002
*********************************
Armenians are stubborn, we are told.
Are we?
I am not sure.
I have my doubts.
Observe the ease with which over a million Armenians
emigrated after independence,
not only because conditions deteriorated in the Homeland
but also, and above all,
because they realized they were at the mercy
of a regime that was beyond reform.
And observe the ease with which an Armenian of the Diaspora
is alienated and opts for assimilation.
Result: in troubled times,
the scum rises to the top.
On a more personal note:
After calling my mother a whore
and accusing my grandmother of giving blow jobs to Turks,
one of my gentle readers writes:
"The problem with you is that you lack diplomacy."
Now, I know many Armenians
who after being exposed to this type of verbal abuse
by a fellow Armenian would have quit in disgust
and placed a safe distance between himself and all things Armenian.
I didn't and I don't intend to
because it is one of my pet projects
to expose Armenian stupidity against which
even the dumbest Turks cannot compete.

[sen_Vahan]

"For every Napoleon there are thousands with Napoleonic complexes and millions with Napoleonic ambitions."

You are so right! "The genius is doing what he must do, the talent is doing as much as he can, others just imitate."

You say that people in Armenia left the country after the independence mainly not because of hard situation in economy. I do not agree, as I remember the majority did it because of lack of job. Moreover, a lot of men went to Russia, US, Ukraine to work and left their families in homeland. Later they took their families to those countries after they found a good place to work.

Vahan

[ara baliozian]

Monday, March 04, 2002
********************************
1.
"The starving Armenian" has become a cliché in the West.
We reinforce that cliché when we stress the Genocide
or when we reduce Armenianism to anti-Turkism.
2.
What could be easier and dumber
than assessing others negatively and ourselves positively?
And yet, we do it all the time,
and by "others" I don't just mean Turks but the world at large,
including Armenians who don't share our fallacies and fantasies.
3.
Have you noticed that those who speak of positive or constructive
criticism
will crap on you the first chance they get
or when they think you have stepped out of
an imaginary line drawn by their warped minds?
4.
When writing against barbarians
one should wield a civil pen.
May I confess that I have not always been successful
in that endeavor perhaps because
some barbarians tend to confuse civility with weakness.
5.
To speak of patriotism and to speak the truth are not always synonymous.
On the contrary.
One could even say that the greatest enemy of patriotism
is not treason but objectivity.
6.
If and when the multiplication table becomes a political issue,
we will disagree on it too!
7.
If Armenians are smart,
why is it that there are a great many Armenians out there
(85% according to some estimates)
who don't think it’s smart being Armenian?

[ara baliozian]

DOGS
********************
1.
When a dog barks,
others dogs are sure to join him.
Likewise, when an idiot speaks,
other idiots are sure to echo his sentiments.
The same applies to partisans.
Knowing this, partisans now hide their membership
and pretend to be chezok (non-partisan).
And since they have a very low opinion of their fellow Armenians,
they think their ruse is foolproof.
P.S. I apologize to all dogs for comparing them to idiots.
I apologize to dog owners too.
2.
If reason cannot move an Armenian,
what is it that makes an Armenian think
(if you will forgive the overstatement)
that it can move the Turkish State or the U.S. Government?
I have said this before, but it bears repeating.
3.
"Armenianism is what I say it is!"
There you have it, the source of all our disagreements, controversies,
and divisions.
4.
Odars don't need to underestimate us.
We do it all the time.
5.
There is a type of Armenian
who keeps aiming at the Turks
(the focus of all his hatred and cannibal instincts)
but succeeds only in hitting Armenians.
6.
Recycled crap cannot be contradicted, only identified.

[sen_Vahan]

Dear Ara Baliozian,
In your "Unpopular Opinions" you write :".... After 600 years of brutal Ottoman tyranny, a literary renaissance in Istanbul; but after 60 years of freedom in America (and with millions spent on schools, churches, centers, libraries, museums, and university chairs) not a single Armenian-language writer or editor"
These are all facts that cannot be denied. But 600 is much larger that 60! And can I ask you what did Armenians give after the first 60 or even 160 years in the Ottoman Empire? Who knows what will happen after 300 years in the US. "Wait and see."
And why do think that years of freedom could give rise to the brilliant art? Many countries have the full freedom for many years already, do they give a great literature? Does Russia, for example, give excellent writers now? As people say there is only one writer now in Russia - Solgenizin(who was the product of 1930s) Is that possible that freedom makes things worse in that sense, make people relax? And is that possible that it is a more general problem but not only for Armenians?
Vahan

[Twilight Bark]

I offer you two possibilities:
1. He is an intellectual mouse that thinks he is a lion. In other words, he is simultaneously too simple and too arrogant to see the obvious.
2. He thinks his audience, being Armenian, is too primitive and crude to notice the silliness of his strategically inserted untruths.

Sorry I broke my pact to hold my silence. I am not sure I have a "specific reason". Vahan, it's all your fault.

[Twilight Bark]

Some of us plan to live a little shorter than that . Seriously though, in 300 years almost the entire Armenian diaspora in America will have disappeared. A sad but depressingly high probability. Unless there is a strong barrier (such as religious incompatibility with the host population) to assimilation, the Armenian-American diaspora will simply disappear as a distinct identity. Sure, the descendants of today's Armenians will be all these wonderful things, but not as "Armenians" but as "Americans". Part of the reason for it will be the shortcomings in the Armenian culture that our resident super-genius untiringly repeats. Anyway, in 300 years, the world culture may homogenize into one big blob already. My current belief is that Armenian culture deserves to remain distinct. But my belief won't tip it one way or the other .

[Hyeflyer]

T.B. In 100 years half the earths population will have lost its ethnic identity.In 200 years three quarter. In 300 we will be the united earth federation.The star wars star trek design.:)Globalization and as many seee it degeneration.But then there will be no ligitamit reason for predjudice.So then there has to be a new whipping boy.Who will it be? That could lead to a world of two legged pirhanas that are not ethnicly motivated.

[Twilight Bark]

It would be nice if it were a federation. It would imply that it had distinct parts of which it is a federation. Let's hope so.

I surely hope that humanity evolves to a stage where the absence of anyone significantly different from the "norm" is not required to keep the peace. A "peace" that is based on the elimination of cultural differences is fake and covers up the underlying ugliness that remains. Not much different from the age-old "peace by extermination". Only this time the exterminated are not individuals but their ancestral identity. If we arrive at a "world culture" that universally cherishes and celebrates differences, now that would be something.

[ara baliozian]

FRACTIONS
******************************
"I disagree with you" often means
"My set of experiences are different from yours."
I have at no time suggested that
I represent the alpha and omega of the Armenian experiences.
The best I can do,
and the best anyone of us can hope to do,
is speak of a tiny fraction of it.
Let me go further and say that
I think of the Armenian experience as a vast mosaic
of whose real size we have no conception.
Only by comparison, classification, and juxtaposition
may we be able to discern a pattern emerging.
By speaking of my own experiences
I am not in any way suggesting
they are more important, authentic or symptomatic of the whole.
None of us is qualified to make such an unwarranted assumption
and if I have ever done that in the past,
please feel free to reject my evidence as inadmissible.
On the other hand,
if I were to ignore my own experience
and accept yours as the last word on the subject,
the conclusions I reach would be more akin to fiction than reality.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, March 05, 2002
**********************************
1.
There is a type of Armenian who thinks
all it takes to qualify as a genius
is to identify himself as one,
and if he can do it with the support and blessing
of his mother or grandmother, so much the better.
Please be warned that
if you ever dare to doubt these credentials,
you must be prepared to acquire an enemy for life –
an enemy with the ego the size of an elephant
and a memory that goes with it.
2.
Differences of opinion will be found everywhere,
including the most civilized environments, as well as
the best of families and friends.
But there are differences and differences, of course.
Some of our tribal and personal differences
are more like those of crabs, scorpions,
tarantulas, and sea snakes confined in a basket.
3.
We place too much emphasis on mental or intellectual IQs
and completely ignore moral IQs.
And yet, if you think about it,
most of our problems are created by individuals
with higher than normal IQs
but with single-digit or non-existent moral IQs

[ara baliozian]

THE OTTOMAN FALLACY
**********************************
The past is one but there are many versions of it.
To say that one version is 100% true blue
and all others phony is, what I call,
the Ottoman fallacy.
But the Ottoman fallacy is not restricted to Ottomans.
All nationalist or partisan versions of the past or,
for that matter, any version that pretends to be
objective, impartial, and not dictated by self-interest,
is bound to be more or less false.
It follows, to know only one version of the past
is not knowledge but a form of ignorance or negative knowledge.
Negative knowledge is worse than ignorance
because man does not kill or die
in the name of something he doesn't know
but is more than willing to do so in the name
of negative or false or biased knowledge.
Hence the old adage:
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
A man who thinks he is committing a heroic deed
or fulfilling his patriotic duty by killing a fellow man
is one who has been exposed to only one version of the story --
a version that he has been brought up to believe
is the whole truth and the only truth
but is nothing of the kind
because the truth is known only to God
and is destined to remain beyond our reach;
and those who say they are acquainted with the truth
because they sit at the right hand of God
are the source of all lies, and by extension,
wars and massacres.

[ara baliozian]

TEST
***************
To test my loyalty as a Canadian citizen,
a loudmouth coworker once demanded of me:
"If Canada were to declare war against Rumania…or is it Aramaea?"
"Armenia," I corrected him.
"Whatever….Would you be willing to fight?"
To which I remember to have replied:
"If I were to say, yes, of course I would be more than willing to invade
Armenia and slaughter my fellow countrymen, I assume I would then qualify
as a good Canadian in your eyes. But my question to you is, Would I also
qualify as a decent human being?"

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, March 07, 2002
**********************************
Forgiving others has never been a problem with me;
forgiving myself, that’s a different story.
I doubt if I will ever be able to forgive myself
for allowing some of our wolves
(also jackals and hyenas) in sheep’s clothing
to deceive me into thinking
they were human beings open to reason,
thus lending them some degree of respectability
and indirectly contributing to man’s inhumanity to man in general
and to Armenian Ottomanism in particular.

[ara baliozian]

7 March, 2002 / P.M.
*****************************
Until the advent of the internet
Armenian writers confined their expressions of disappointment in their
fellow Armenians to diaries or letters to friends.
This is as true of Daniel Varoujan
(who once referred to our clergy in a letter to a friend
as "a nest of vipers")
to Gostan Zarian (who wrote in his posthumously published diary:
"Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another").
In this connection perhaps I should also quote
Baruir Massikian’s famous last words.
When asked by an Armenian delegation
to leave his money to Armenian foundations,
Massikian, (who, in addition to being
one of the most brilliant satirists in modern Armenian literature,
was also a wealthy lawyer),
is quoted as having replied:
"I'd rather leave it to a Cairo bordello."
One of my young readers writes:
"You must be living among some unusual Armenians
because the Armenians I know
are nothing like the ones you write about."
But what about the Armenians of Raffi,
Baronian, Voskanian, Odian, Zarian,
Varoujan, Shahnour, and Massikian?

[sen_Vahan]

To Ara Baliozian/ How about the Armenians of Raffi, Paronyan, Otyan, Massikyan,...? The faith of all these writers was very similar to the faith of their nation. Yes, we are all close-minded, as many outsiders say, but so are these writers. No? Who knows today Raffi, Paronyan, Otyan,... except Armenians(some of us do not even know them)? Maybe they were thinking about the Armenians and Armenia too much? What was the subject for Raffi, for example?Armenia, its history. Being perhaps very intelligent he was writing only about the Armenians and Armenia. I am not sure that some non-Armenian would like them. And I do not know ANY non-Armenian who reads Raffi or Otyan. Really, who cares about them, about that "narrow-minded" intelligents caring only about own nation. And the problem is that they did it without any great love to the nation, to its spirit(or maybe they did?). That is why I am thinking that they as well as many modern Armenians like only the "idea of Armenia" but not the people. And I am asking you what one should expect from young people being educated on Raffi, Otyan, Massikyan? Many generations in Armenia were educated in such a way , so what? Can we say that at least one of the writers mentioned by you might be considered as "all-Armenian" (although they were writing only about Armenians), as Russians consider for example Pushkin?
Vahan

[ara baliozian]

OPERATION TURKISH COBRA
*************************************
One of the best things that can happen to a man
is the realization that he is fallible,
he doesn't know everything because no one does,
not even the ablest pundit or historian
because the past or reality is a bottomless pit of facts and factors
not all of which can be cited, described,
classified and taken into consideration:
in short, the realization that he is a human being
with an open mind willing to learn from someone else’s experience;
a human being, moreover, who is honest and courageous enough
to confront the unknown
(as opposed to taking refuge in familiar slogans, clichés, and recycled
crap).
The worst thing that can happen to a man is the certainty
that he is smart, he knows, he knows better,
he knows everything he needs to know
because his schoolteachers or parents,
or grandparents or party bosses told him so,
and anyone who dares to disagree with him
must be either an ignoramus or a fanatic and probably both.
When that happens such a man ceases to be human
and such an Armenian turns into a Turk.
I have witnesses this phenomenon so many times
not only with individuals but also institutions
(or rather, representatives of political and religious institutions)
that I feel justified in calling it
the Armenian Routine – or is it Operation Turkish Cobra?