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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 4, 2012************************************** OPEN SECRETS**************************** On the day good Turks and good Armenians are allowed to form an alliance, all their differences will be resolved amicably and to their mutual advantage. *As for bad Turks and Armenians: all I can say about them is that they deserve one another. *Did I say good Turks and good Armenians? Make it, good half-Armenians and good half-Turks. Pure-blooded Armenians and Turks are a fiction of nationalist propaganda. They don’t exist. Very much like Americans, both Turks and Armenians have been thoroughly bastardized. Nothing wrong in that. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary! Bastardization promotes co-existence, peace, and prosperity. That’s an open secret. You want proof? Everybody wants to immigrate to America. Who in his right mind would want to move in the opposite direction?*Both good Turks and Armenians are today at the mercy of bad men who owe their position of eminence to big lies (the deification of Kemal) and fear (constant and endless talk of massacres). Nothing good can come from lies and fear. That’s another open secret.#Friday, October 05, 2012************************************* ECONOMICS 101****************************** Who understand economics? Not even economists. For every economist who says one thing there is another who says the opposite. Truman once said he would like to meet an economist with only one hand, because after each statement they make, they add “on the other hand.” *The favorite word of my professor of economics was “interdependence.” He used it in every other assertion he made. That’s because every factor in economics is dependent on another. *Corporations prosper only when the middle and lower classes can afford to buy their goods and services. The state is not a corporation whose priority is to balance books, show a profit, and to trim the fat by eliminating programs and decreasing spending. *Economics cannot be divorced from history. They are interdependent. FDR, like Obama, had to deal with depression and war. He increased the number of government programs. And it worked. Under Eisenhower (a Republican) the tax rate for the wealthy went up 91%. America survived as well as prospered. So did Europe with American help (the Marshall Plan). *Bush (II) was right when he said the wealthy don’t pay taxes because they have smart accountants who take advantage of loopholes and when they run out of them they hide their savings in offshore banks. (Does that ring a bell?)By contrast the middle and lower classes spend what they make and whenever money moves, a fraction of it goes to creating jobs and taxes. *Who understand economics? The answer is those who in the past confronted and were successful in solving the same problems that we confront today.#Saturday, October 06, 2012***************************************** WHAT’S IN A NAME?****************************** Iraklis (Greek), Hercules (English), Hercule (French), Ercole (Italian), Hergele (Turkish). Moral: One nation’s hero is another’s hoodlum.*In a book on Azerbaijan, I remember to have read once that General Antranik’s name is as well known to Azeris as Talaat is to us.*PRIDE AND PREJUDICE********************************* For everyone who brags “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party,” I should like to hear at least two who say “I am thoroughly ashamed to have been a member of a criminal gang.”* A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH**************************************** I once received the manuscript of a short story with a note that said: “Do you think I should encourage my son’s literary ambitions?” In my reply I said: "If your son is in need of encouragement, he cannot be a writer.” I had another hidden reason for saying that. Only a sadist would condemn an innocent boy to the fate of a perennial loser forever dependent on the charity of swine.#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, October 10, 2012
**************************************
DESTINY
***********************
Who is in charge of our destiny?
Surely not the regime in Yerevan
which is a puppet of the Kremlin;
and surely not our political parties in the Diaspora
that (in the words of a friend)
cannot even lead a dog to the nearest hydrant
or catch a cold in a flu epidemic.
Perhaps the right question in this context is not
who is in charge of our destiny
but do we have one?
*
We are taught to brag about our genius for survival.
What we are not told is that
the greatest challenge isn't surviving our enemies
but our own leadership.
*
I quoted a friend above.
I should have said a former friend.
My former friends outnumber my present friends
a hundred to one.
*
Last week I made a new friend.
This week he made it abundantly clear that
I will make him very happy
on the day I drop dead.
Easy come, easy go.
#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 11, 2012
********************************
WHAT HAPPENED
***************************
We should have seen it coming but we were blind.
So was our leadership. And we all know what happens
when the blind lead the blind…
*
When Raffi said, “The Ottoman Empire is no place for Armenians;
they have no respect for human life there,”
we said, what the hell does he know?
*
When Roupen Sevag’s German fiancée
visiting him in Istanbul said:
“I don’t like these Turks,” he said:
“You don’t know them, I do.
Deep down they are nice folk.
You’ll change your mind after you get to know them.”
He was one of the first to be butchered.
*
When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned:
“This time they will massacre indiscriminately,”
they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating.”
Some left, among them Siamanto,
but they found life abroad so alien that
they returned only to be slaughtered.
*
When Oshagan said “Homeland,”
he meant Istanbul.
*
It happened gradually.
It didn’t fall on us like a thief in the night.
It began fourteen centuries ago
when their Prophet dehumanized all non-Muslims
by classifying them as infidels.
*
It happened six hundred years ago
when we surrendered our fate into their hands
and said in effect:
Henceforth we will serve you faithfully and obediently.
You want our daughters? You can have them.
Our sons? You can have them too.
*
It happened when Protestant missionaries
taught us to sing “Onward Christian soldiers,”
which they (Turks) assumed to be some kind of war chant
and that we were in cahoots with the infidel West
and were planning an invasion.
*
It happened when the rumor spread
that Turkish girls in the Balkans were being crucified.
A myriad other factors contributed to the final catastrophe,
but again the accumulation of details was so gradual
and we were so blind that we pretended to notice nothing.
*
We thought if the Great Powers of the West are on our side
we had nothing to fear.
We behaved with the arrogance and stupidity of people
who assume to be invulnerable.
*
I am reminded of this arrogance and stupidity again
whenever we of the Diaspora are called “aghber”
by our own Bolshevik brothers and sisters in the Homeland.
*
An English traveler at the turn of the last century in Armenia:
“What magnificent landscapes.
What wretched people!”
*
Mart bidi ch’ellank!
#
Saturday, October 13, 2012
****************************************
ON DISAGREEMENT
*******************************
At the root of all disagreement
there is an unspoken line that says:
“You are not smart enough or good enough
to contradict what I say.”
And at the root of all megalomania
there is self-deception.
All authority is suspect.
*
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
**************************************
Muslims today treat infidels
with the same ferocity that Catholics treated heretics
in the Middle Ages.
*
BULLIES
**********************
They invent a god so that they can speak in his name.
In other words, their belief system is rooted
in their need to bully the weak and defenseless
with a clear conscience.
*
PERVERTS
************************
Religions, theology, Holy Scriptures, popes, imams, rabbis:
these things interest me only in so far as
they reveal the workings of the human mind
or rather the perversities of the human brain.
As for the nature of god and the next world:
not only do I not believe a word they say
but I am also offended by their shameless audacity
in treating me as if I were a helpless retard
in need of their charlatanism.
#
DEATH WISH
*****************************
Divisions exist because people consent to be divided;
and people consent to be divided
even when it means digging their own graves.
Freud’s death wish may also be defined as
a universal and unconscious desire
to commit collective suicide…
or self-inflicted genocide.
*
ON BEING NEGATIVE
******************************
Two questions:
When Socrates said, “Ignorance is the source of all evil,”
was he being positive or negative?
When the Scriptures say,
“Truth shall set you free,”
thus implying we are slaves of lies:
would you call that a positive or negative assertion?
*
ON MAFIAS
*****************************
Judge a tree by its fruit,
an idea by its history,
an ideology by its lies,
a religion by its mafia
and a mafia by its number of innocent victims.
#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, September 15, 2012
*****************************************
ON IDEOLOGIES & RELIGIONS
*******************************************
Sooner or later all ideologies and religions
develop a power structure;
and where power enters murder is sure to follow –
not to say war and massacre.
*
Religions may benefit individuals
here and there, now and then
but societies, never!
*
Religions have been and continue to be
as dangerous as biological and nuclear weapons.
*
Freedom of religion means
license to brainwash.
#
Friday, September 14, 2012
******************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************
There are two ways of being popular
in an environment dominated
by charlatans and dupes:
by inventing new lies and
by recycling old ones.
*
I don’t write for dupes.
I write for readers who almost think as I do.
*
Who takes Armenian writers seriously?
Not even Armenian writers.
Speaking for myself,
I have nothing but contempt for writers
who write about many things –
from the Middle Ages to massacres –
but carefully avoid our present problems.
*
If everybody loved to play the same instrument
we wouldn’t have an orchestra.
*
An Armenian reader may agree with me
on one or two points, but three points? –
that would be like a minor miracle.
#
Saturday, September 15, 2012
*************************************
GUILTY AS CHARGED
********************************
Benefactors write checks, build schools and community centers;
bishops sermonized in the name God;
bosses speechify in the name of Country and Mount Ararat;
and after leading a more or less comfortable life
they die in bed.
By contrast, successive generations of our writers
have been reduced to the status of beggars,
silenced, exiled, and murdered.
Why?
Simply because they refused to engage in deception
and to mislead the community into thinking
they never had it so good
because they are in the best of hands.
And because I write as I do
I have been called a Turk, an enemy of the people, and a ****.
*
When in his eighties Zarian died in Yerevan
after sustaining injuries in a fall,
he was sure he had been pushed and murdered
by agents of the State.
*
When Baruir Massikian,
a brilliant playwright, short story write and essayist,
who was also a successful lawyer,
was visited in his deathbed by a delegation of Panchoonies
parading as concerned community leaders
asked him to leave his wealth
to the Armenian Educational Foundation,
he said he’d much rather leave it
to whores in a Cairo bordello.
*
You may see me as a pessimist
and a dealer in gloom and doom.
I see myself as an honest witness
who refuses to commit perjury.
If that’s a crime,
I am more than willing to plead guilty as charged,
#


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wrong
19.09.2012, 13:50 #379
arabaliozian
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Sunday, September 16, 2012************************************ SUNDAY SERMON***************************** Empires are not born but made, and what makes them is vision, without which, the Bible tells us, “the people perish.” *We have perished not because the land allotted to us was stony, the climate harsh, and our neighbors bloodthirsty,but because our leadership was without vision. *Empires have risen from the most unlikely places – even from deserts and islands. I am not an imperialist. I say these things to point out the fact that our nationalist historians are first and foremost propagandists whose sole aim in life is to mislead us into thinking we have nothing to worry about because our “betters” are noble and selfless specimens of humanity as opposed to being the scum of the earth. *You don’t believe me? Listen to Zarian: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And even more to the point: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” *Like empires, cannibals are not born but made and what makes them are leaders who place their own powers and privileges above the interests of the community and the nation.#Monday, September 17, 2012****************************************** A READER WRITES****************************** “You repeat yourself. You write too much. You have too many opinions. You are on too many forums.” *That’s because I have about a dozen readers half of whom either believe nothing I say or do not trust my judgment even when I say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.To the rest I am old news because I say nothing that is new or original; I simply repeat, quote, or paraphrase better men than myself (to which charge I plead guilty as charged). *It follows I may or may not have one reader who may profit from what I say. My ambition in life is to have at least two readers before I die. On the day that happens I may consider making myself more useful in some other line of work, such as planting potatoes or bird-watching.#Tuesday, September 18, 2012************************************ WRONG QUESTIONS****************************** Do I have more enemies than friends? Wrong question. The right question is: Am I saying what must be said? *Do our fanatics outnumber our moderates? What about our dupes? Do they outnumber those who can think for themselves? Corrupt, incompetent or dishonest leaders: do they outnumber the honest ones? Do our dividers outnumber those who are of the opposite disposition? *If the alienated and assimilated outnumber those who “have Ararat in their hearts,” who is to blame? Speaking as an alienated Armenian who stays away from community centers, churches, and political parties: I hate all propagandists regardless of nationality so much so that I’d much rather deal with an honest Turk than a dishonest Armenian. I will go further and say I consider all honest men my brothers and all charlatans and crooks as my enemies. *Do our brainwashed dupes outnumber those who refuse to surrender their hearts and minds to partisans and panchoonies? To ask the right questions is the beginning of all wisdom.#Wednesday, September 19, 2012**************************************** ON BEING WRONG****************************** So what if I am wrong? Far better men than myself have been wrong. Think of Zohrab who saved Talaat’s life by risking his own. Think of our revolutionaries who on the eve of the Genocide challenged the Turks to massacre us. Think of Charents who allowed himself to be brainwashed by the Bolsheviks. Consider the case of Sylva Gaboudikyan of “Forget your mother” fame, who after the collapse of the Soviet Union declared “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party!” *If I am wrong I can be corrected. And I have been, many times. I am corrected even when I am right. When was the last time anyone dared to correct any one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? *You have nothing to fear from someone willing to admit his fallibility, and everything to fear from someone who speaks in the name of God, Country, and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.#

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22.09.2012, 14:42 #380
arabaliozian
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
****************************************
OBSERVATIONS
***********************
After telling us the Bible is the word of God
and “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”
they divide a house that is already divided
between believers and non-believers.
*
You say it’s impossible
and I say doing what must be done
creates its own energy and cunning.
*
Even as they blabber endlessly
about Turks and massacres
they tell me I am being negative.
*
Romney’s problem:
a big mouth and a bigger foot.
#
Saturday, September 22, 2012
***************************************
ON POSTERITY
& RELATED ATROCITIES
************************************
Posterity?
I am not sure about posterity.
You and I may well be our only posterity.
*
Depression?
I have been depressed most of my life
and I consider it an integral part of the human condition.
Unlike most Americans
I don’t think happiness or well-being to be a patriotic duty.
I have never been near a shrink,
nor taken a single pill.
Only the occasional drink.
*
Homeland?
I can’t imagine anyone not loving
its mountains and rivers, lakes, valleys, and forests.
Neither can I imagine anyone
not hating the former KGB agents and commissars
who are now in charge of it.
Call it treason if you like.
I call it rejection of all crypto-fascist propaganda.
I call it refusal to be the dupe of thieving charlatans,
and in that I am with the majority – namely
all those who have voted with their feet and live abroad
or they define homeland as anywhere on earth
where they are allowed to work and provide for their families.
#
Saturday, September 22, 2012
***************************************
ON STUPIDITY
**********************
Be aware of stupidity
for it is the source of all evil.
*
The problem with hatred is that
it tends to metastasize.
Hatred of the enemy
turns brother against brother.
*
More often than not
our choice is not between good and evil
but between the lesser of two evils.
*
Details are important
especially the ones you miss
or refuse to see.
*
“In the name of Allah
the Compassionate, the Merciful,
Owner of the Day of Judgment.”
I quote from memory.
I paraphrase. If wrong ascribe it to Alzheimer’s,
not to blasphemy.
*
It is hatred of the infidel
that turns Shia against Sunni
and Assad against his ownpeople.
*
From the lyrics of a popular Armenian song:
“An Armenian loves to eat (oudel)
and he eats to hate (adel).”
*
He who is blinded by hatred
believes he has 20/20 vision
and God is on his side.
*
“I am not here to bring peace but a sword.
If you don’t have a sword,
sell your cloak and buy one.”
If you can’t guess who said that,
I suggest you read the Scriptures.
*
And now let us pray!
“Our Father Who art in Heaven…”
#

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deception
26.09.2012, 14:04 #381
arabaliozian
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 23, 2012
***************************************
DECEPTION (IV)
************************
For 600 years we hated the Turks
and we had every right to do so
for what they did and kept doing to us,
but we deceived them into thinking
we loved them and we did such a good job of it
that they named us their most loyal millet (ethnic minority).
*
For 60 years we also hated
the “onion-head” Russians
but again we pretended to love them
by calling them our “big brothers.”
We went further. Much further.
We betrayed and surrendered our ablest men
to their murderers.
*
And now that we have no one to deceive
we deceive one another
and we do such an excellent job of it
that most Armenians in the Diaspora
believe when native Armenians call them “aghber”
they don’t mean “white trash,”
but “brother.”
*
We have become such habitual and expert liars that
we believe in our own lies.
Now you know why our 1% divides the 99%
and gets away with it.
They say they divide us
because they are men of principle
and gentlemen do not compromise on principles.
The fact is they divide us out of fear.
Fear of what we might do to them
when we uncover the truth.
After all, far more civilized and progressive nations than us
have beheaded, executed, and assassinated their kings.
The only reason we have done nothing of the kind so far is that
we have been duped into thinking
our leaders are not our enemies
but our heroes and saviors.
*
Armenians of the world unite.
You have nothing to lose
but your dividers and gravediggers..
#
Monday, September 24, 2012
*************************************
CHEZOKS
**********************
One of our elder statesmen
(may God have mercy on his soul,
if there is a God and he had a soul)
once wrote a book in which he blamed all our problems
on chezoks (non-partisan Armenians).
“They are neither hot nor cold,” said he.
“They are neither for nor against anything.
They don’t care.
They are useless, aimless, and purposeless.
They exist but they do not live…
they are a dead weight…”
and so on and so forth.
You may have noticed that
when our speechifiers get going,
nothing can stopping them.
Zarian knew what he was talking about when he said
“An Armenian’s tongue is sharper than a Turk’s yataghan.”
*
In my review of the book I said something to the effect that
our dividers were the real source
of all our problems, not chezoks.
In his angry telephone call
our statesman said, among other things:
“I thought you were on our side.”
“I am on nobody’s side,” was my answer,
“if only because I have done no harm.”
*
My father was a chezok
not because he didn’t care
but because he lost everything twice
and I mean that literally:
first time in 1915 during World War I in Turkey,
second time in 1941 during World War II in Greece.
As a result he spent all his time
trying to make a living and provide for his family
in alien and hostile environments.
He died in his fifties and he looked ninety.
He may not have been a great Armenian
but he was an honest man.
I wish I could say the same of our
Ottomanized, Levantinized, Americanized, and Sovietized
fellow countrymen who parade as first-class Armenians
and expect the rest of us to look up to them
as role models.
#
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
********************************************
BROTHERS
************************
There are truth-seekers and there are propagandists.
The aim of propagandists is power.
The aim of truth-seekers is exposing lies.
*
Propaganda has produced such monsters as
the Nazi who believed to belong to a superior race;
the Jew who believed to be God’s Chosen;
the English sahib who saw himself as a civilizing agent;
the child-molesting Catholic priest;
and closer to home, the Armenian patriot
with “Ararat in his heart”
who views a fraction of his fellow Armenians as “white trash.”
In America propaganda has produced the KKK
and legitimized racism;
in Russia the Big Brother (in the Orwellian sense of the words)
and the commissar.
By contrast truth-seekers have been solitary underdogs
and victims of propagandists.
Gandhi in India,
Martin Luther King in America (both assassinated),
Solzhenitsyn in Russia,
Socrates in 5th-century BC Greece and
Jesus in 1st-century Palestine.
*
How to identify a propagandist?
Easy! A propagandist is a member of an organized group
with a clearly defined agenda
which pretends to be on the side of truth
but on closer inspection reveals itself to be Big Lie.
If you are a member of such a group,
look out brother, you may well be on your way to the Devil.
*
I read the following quotation in my morning paper today:
“He who knows others is wise.
He who knows himself is enlightened.” Lao Tzu.
#
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
*********************************************
WHY I WRITE THE WAY I WRITE
********************************************
Do you really want to know
why I write the way I write?
I will tell you.
I write the way I write in defense of all Armenians
who were insulted and abused in the name
of this or that brand of patriotism
of which there are as many as there are Armenians.
*
A Bolshevik’s patriotism, for instance,
means not only love of homeland
but also loyalty to the memory of Stalin.
A nationalist’s patriotism bears all the earmarks
of racism and fascism.
*
I write in defense of all writers
who were betrayed, silenced, exiled, butchered, or shot.
I write to remind our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their dupes
that it is wrong to gauge an Armenian’s patriotism
by the degree of hatred he harbors against Turks.
I write to say that I have nothing but contempt
for the kind of Armenian who after perpetuating our problems
tells me, “We need solutions, not critics.”
My message to them is:
“If you really need solutions, hang yourself!”
*
I have no illusions about myself and my fellow Armenians.
I am fully aware of the fact that
I have as much influence on Armenian affairs
as a grain of sand on the Saharan desert.
But I write to set the record straight.
#

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29.09.2012, 15:00 #382
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Thursday, September 27, 2012
*****************************************
THEOLOGY
***************************
If God exists,
why does He go out of His way
to make Himself inaccessible and incomprehensible?
If Truth is One,
what is it that drives us to invent ten thousand lies?
If the Kingdom of God is within us,
where is the Empire of the Devil?
*
“If I cannot answer the most important question,
am I not fooling the reader?” Chekhov said.
I suspect if we ever have the Answer –
which may or may not happen in our lifetime –
we will say,
But of course!
What else?
I should have guessed.
I had eyes but couldn’t see,
ears but couldn’t hear,
and a brain but couldn’t think.
#
Saturday, September 29, 2012
*********************************************
EASY QUESTIONS / OBVIOUS ANSWERS
*********************************************
With religious leaders like popes, imams, and rabbis,
who needs religion?
With Scriptures like the Bible and the Koran
that legitimize divisions, intolerance, the persecution of heretics,
and the murder of infidels, who needs Scriptures?
With monarchs like the Romanovs in Russia,
the VIII Henrys in England,
and the French Louis who came by the dozen,
who needs kings?
With bloodthirsty dictators like Hitler and Stalin,
who needs dictators?
*
Speaking of blood:
In the Ottoman Empire it was a capital offense
to spill the blood of a present or future sultan,
so they adopted a different method to eliminate the competition:
they strangled all potential usurpers with a silk cord.
(And they say Turks are dumb!)
*
With scary presidential candidates like Romney and Ryan
who needs presidents?
Gore Vidal may have been right when he said
America will be better off without its politicians.
To the question, who will run the country, he replied:
“Swiss hotel managers.”
With historians who cover up the criminal conduct
and incompetence of the regime in power,
who needs schoolteachers who recycle propaganda?
*
I am not just asking question:
I am predicting the shape of things to come.
Neither am I a prophet:
I just use my common sense and the lessons of the past.
#
Saturday, September 29, 2012
***********************************
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
****************************************
Let’s cut the crap, shall we?
Let’s leave rhetoric to our speechifiers
infatuated with the sound of their own voice;
and let’s leave pious sentiments to our sermonizers
whose favorite mode of communication
is to say the opposite of what
they really think and feel.
*
I see Armenians as perennial losers and victims
whose secret ambition in life is to victimize,
and since they can’t victimize others,
they victimize their own.
As dupes they can’t stand anyone
who refuses to be a dupe.
As products of millennial oppression
by bloodthirsty tyrants
they see nothing morally questionable
in brainwashing the weak,
oppressing the defenseless,
and in deceiving the ignorant and the naïve.
That’s as far as their conception of patriotism goes.
*
I know what I am saying.
I have been in the belly of the beast
and I have dealt with some of our best and brightest.
I am not here to flatter our collective colossal ego
or to pretend to love you as a brother.
Neither am I here to assert my superior brand of Armenianism,
whatever the hell that may mean.
I leave that to our bosses, bishops, benefactors
and their dupes, flunkeys, and hirelings.
*
Whenever I am told to be kinder to my readers, I reply:
A nation that managed to survive the Turk’s yataghan
can survive the opinions of a minor scribbler
who is here today and will be gone tomorrow.
*
Abraham Lincoln once said:
“Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?”
I have tried that method not once or twice
but many times.
It doesn’t work.
I have had better luck with Turks.
#

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1001
03.10.2012, 14:03 #383
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Sunday, September 30, 2012************************************** 1001******************* We are a nation of a thousand and one Watergates and we are engaged in a collective and almost unanimous effort to cover them up in the name of patriotism. What follows is only one of them.*For a hundred years now we, Armenians of the Diaspora, have been demanding an apology from the Turks who not only have been stonewalling us but also calling us liars. Has anyone ever asked an apology from our former Bolsheviks in the Homeland who terrorized, oppressed, betrayed, exiled, and murdered fellow Armenians who refused to say “Yes, sir!” to the Kremlin? To add insult to injury, role models like Sylva Kaputikian openly declared to have been proud members of the Communist Party. And to think that these “authentic” Armenians call us, Armenians of the Diaspora, “trash.” If that’s what it takes to be an authentic or patriotic Armenian, I want no part of it. If that’s what living in the shadow of Mt Ararat does to Armenians, I say I will never set foot there. *So what if I will never qualify as a first-class citizen? So what if, in the words of a gentle reader from the Homeland, I am not better than “a piece of ****!” All I can say in my defense is that I have done my utmost to qualify as a human being. Can our patriotic brothers and sisters in the Homeland say as much? *To those who try to be authentic Armenians like the natives, I say: Get yourself another hobby because you will never make it. You will never rise above the status of “white niggers,” “trash,” and “****s.” Far better men than yourself have tried and failed miserably. For more on this subject read Zarian’s posthumously published NOTEBOOKS and DIARIES.#Monday, October 01, 2012************************************** IT TAKES ALL KINDS********************************** Patriotism and prostitution: in our environment they might as well be synonymous. I suspect the integrity of our patriots as I suspect the virginity of a bordello madam. *Speaking of madams: I remember to have read somewhere that the wealthiest woman in Turkey was a bordello madam by the name of Manoogian – an easy name to remember. *I once met an Armenian who knew everybody who was somebody in our communities. Privately he was full of venom about our “great” men; publicly he led an anonymous existence. What did he do for a living? I am not sure. But between the lines I gathered he was dependent on the charity of swine. *My father knew nobody and nobody was interested in what he thought. He too led an anonymous existence. His last job was that of a dishwasher in a Greek restaurant. *Once, when asked to deliver a speech, I said: “Writing is hard. Speaking is harder.” That’s when I did nothing but recycle chauvinist crapola in whatever I wrote. On another occasion when asked in the presence of an audience why I was not interested in encouraging the next generation of writes, I said: “We need readers, not writers.” You might say I belong to the haiku school of speechifying. *If I ever write another book – which I doubt I ever will – I have two tentative titles: “The Swan Song of a Jackass,” and “The Memoirs of an Anonymous Nobody.”#Wednesday, October 03, 2012************************************ BROTHERS********************************* A few years ago I lost several Armenian friends from Syria because I dared to disagree with them when they said Arabs are friendly people and they love Armenians.*Patriotism: not one of my favorite words perhaps because every Armenian has his own definition of the word whose aim is to divide the community into friends and enemies,The hidden source of this aberration Seems to be less political and more biological.*The world may be divided into friends and enemies and if you want to survive, you must kill. If you don’t kill you will be killed. Timing is of the essence. Do not procrastinate. Kill him as soon as you can. Kill him even if you don’t have a good enough reason to hate him. Kill him even if he is your brother.*I learn something every day, that’s how ignorant I am.#Wednesday, October 03, 2012******************************************* THE BEST REVENGE********************************** A French writer once said that if your wife runs away with a man, the best revenge is to let him keep her. You may call this turning the other cheek. I call it employing a lethal weapon with which to inflict maximum damage.*BIG LIES********************* No matter how big the lie, it will be believed by some. Kennedy was assassinated by the Mafia. Hitler was a Jew. Obama is a Muslim. The Russians are our big Brothers. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden was a CIA agent in disguise. There are superior and inferior races. God’s Chosen. Seventy-three virgins. Armenians are smart.*SHADES OF GRAY**************************** Our problems are as clear as black and white. If they seem more as shades of gray it’s because an entire class of academics, bureaucrats, hirelings, hangers-on, partisans and panchoonies have been brainwashed to believe their survival depends on convincing the 99% into thinking patriotism consists in being a dupe and thinking for oneself is pro-Turkish.#

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secrets
06.10.2012, 14:46 #384
arabaliozian
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Thursday, October 4, 2012************************************** OPEN SECRETS**************************** On the day good Turks and good Armenians are allowed to form an alliance, all their differences will be resolved amicably and to their mutual advantage. *As for bad Turks and Armenians: all I can say about them is that they deserve one another. *Did I say good Turks and good Armenians? Make it, good half-Armenians and good half-Turks. Pure-blooded Armenians and Turks are a fiction of nationalist propaganda. They don’t exist. Very much like Americans, both Turks and Armenians have been thoroughly bastardized. Nothing wrong in that. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary! Bastardization promotes co-existence, peace, and prosperity. That’s an open secret. You want proof? Everybody wants to immigrate to America. Who in his right mind would want to move in the opposite direction?*Both good Turks and Armenians are today at the mercy of bad men who owe their position of eminence to big lies (the deification of Kemal) and fear (constant and endless talk of massacres). Nothing good can come from lies and fear. That’s another open secret.#Friday, October 05, 2012************************************* ECONOMICS 101****************************** Who understand economics? Not even economists. For every economist who says one thing there is another who says the opposite. Truman once said he would like to meet an economist with only one hand, because after each statement they make, they add “on the other hand.” *The favorite word of my professor of economics was “interdependence.” He used it in every other assertion he made. That’s because every factor in economics is dependent on another. *Corporations prosper only when the middle and lower classes can afford to buy their goods and services. The state is not a corporation whose priority is to balance books, show a profit, and to trim the fat by eliminating programs and decreasing spending. *Economics cannot be divorced from history. They are interdependent. FDR, like Obama, had to deal with depression and war. He increased the number of government programs. And it worked. Under Eisenhower (a Republican) the tax rate for the wealthy went up 91%. America survived as well as prospered. So did Europe with American help (the Marshall Plan). *Bush (II) was right when he said the wealthy don’t pay taxes because they have smart accountants who take advantage of loopholes and when they run out of them they hide their savings in offshore banks. (Does that ring a bell?)By contrast the middle and lower classes spend what they make and whenever money moves, a fraction of it goes to creating jobs and taxes. *Who understand economics? The answer is those who in the past confronted and were successful in solving the same problems that we confront today.#Saturday, October 06, 2012***************************************** WHAT’S IN A NAME?****************************** Iraklis (Greek), Hercules (English), Hercule (French), Ercole (Italian), Hergele (Turkish). Moral: One nation’s hero is another’s hoodlum.*In a book on Azerbaijan, I remember to have read once that General Antranik’s name is as well known to Azeris as Talaat is to us.*PRIDE AND PREJUDICE********************************* For everyone who brags “I am proud to have been a member of the Communist Party,” I should like to hear at least two who say “I am thoroughly ashamed to have been a member of a criminal gang.”* A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH**************************************** I once received the manuscript of a short story with a note that said: “Do you think I should encourage my son’s literary ambitions?” In my reply I said: "If your son is in need of encouragement, he cannot be a writer.” I had another hidden reason for saying that. Only a sadist would condemn an innocent boy to the fate of a perennial loser forever dependent on the charity of swine.#

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destiny
10.10.2012, 14:00 #385
arabaliozian
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Wednesday, October 10, 2012
**************************************
DESTINY
***********************
Who is in charge of our destiny?
Surely not the regime in Yerevan
which is a puppet of the Kremlin;
and surely not our political parties in the Diaspora
that (in the words of a friend)
cannot even lead a dog to the nearest hydrant
or catch a cold in a flu epidemic.
Perhaps the right question in this context is not
who is in charge of our destiny
but do we have one?
*
We are taught to brag about our genius for survival.
What we are not told is that
the greatest challenge isn't surviving our enemies
but our own leadership.
*
I quoted a friend above.
I should have said a former friend.
My former friends outnumber my present friends
a hundred to one.
*
Last week I made a new friend.
This week he made it abundantly clear that
I will make him very happy
on the day I drop dead.
Easy come, easy go.
#

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Today, 14:33 #386
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Sunday, October 14, 2012
**************************************
OBSERVASTIONS
***********************************
When everything works as planned
something is bound to go wrong.
*
My conscience is clear only when I speak
against my own interests.
*
We have many answers but not the Answer,
and all our answers add up to no more than 1% of reality.
*
Our understanding of god is based
on hearsay evidence.
*
Subservience and freedom are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
After Socrates and Jesus the world doesn’t need new ideas,
only reminders.
*
Hell is an invention of bullies.
*
Capitalism: What’s mine is mine
even if most of it I stole from you.
*
Where there are innocent victims
there will also be a mafia.
#
Monday, October 15, 2012
*********************************************
MO YAN SPEAKS
***********************************
Speaking of his fellow Chinese,
Mo Yan (this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature)
says somewhere (I am quoting from memory):
“Once upon a time they were innocent,
then they became fanatics,
after which they were afraid of their own shadows,
finally they settled on being evil.”
And I reflect on the celebrated words of Confucius:
“When you see a good man, emulate him.
When you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
*
“Is democracy possible in Syria?”
asks a pundit in my morning paper.
His answer: “It seems improbable.”
*
Is democracy possible in Armenia?
Next question: Is democracy possible in the Diaspora?
What have we learned after a century of life in America?
Our political and cultural institutions function
as if all talk of human rights and free speech
were utopian or anti-Armenian concepts.
Sultanism is so ingrained in our collective existence that
we see nothing questionable or suspect
in being at the mercy of bosses, bishops, and benefactors
who behave as if they had never heard of democracy.
Mart bidi ch’ellank!
#
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
****************************************
J.S. BACH & THE BEATLES
*************************************
In their own time the Beatles were more popular than Bach.
They may still be for all I know.
It is unbelievable to what extent most men live and die
with total unawareness of their own possibilities.
*
LOSERS
**************
My defeats outnumber my victories 99 to 1,
perhaps even 999 to a fraction of 1.
In that sense I represent my nation more faithfully
than our great men most of whom, if not all,
achieved their greatness by eliminating the competition.
*
KILLERS
***********************
A serial killer is a serial killer
even if a jury renders a verdict of not guilty.
And if you say human justice may not be perfect but it works,
may I remind you that for a good number of years, even decades,
men like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler enjoyed the reputation
of great statesmen and not as dangerous serial killers or psychopaths.
In the eyes of his fellow countrymen
even Genghis Khan is seen to this day as a titan among men.
#
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
***************************************** Sunday, October 14, 2012
**************************************
OBSERVASTIONS
***********************************
When everything works as planned
something is bound to go wrong.
*
My conscience is clear only when I speak
against my own interests.
*
We have many answers but not the Answer,
and all our answers add up to no more than 1% of reality.
*
Our understanding of god is based
on hearsay evidence.
*
Subservience and freedom are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
After Socrates and Jesus the world doesn’t need new ideas,
only reminders.
*
Hell is an invention of bullies.
*
Capitalism: What’s mine is mine
even if most of it I stole from you.
*
Where there are innocent victims
there will also be a mafia.
#
Monday, October 15, 2012
*********************************************
MO YAN SPEAKS
***********************************
Speaking of his fellow Chinese,
Mo Yan (this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature)
says somewhere (I am quoting from memory):
“Once upon a time they were innocent,
then they became fanatics,
after which they were afraid of their own shadows,
finally they settled on being evil.”
And I reflect on the celebrated words of Confucius:
“When you see a good man, emulate him.
When you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
*
“Is democracy possible in Syria?”
asks a pundit in my morning paper.
His answer: “It seems improbable.”
*
Is democracy possible in Armenia?
Next question: Is democracy possible in the Diaspora?
What have we learned after a century of life in America?
Our political and cultural institutions function
as if all talk of human rights and free speech
were utopian or anti-Armenian concepts.
Sultanism is so ingrained in our collective existence that
we see nothing questionable or suspect
in being at the mercy of bosses, bishops, and benefactors
who behave as if they had never heard of democracy.
Mart bidi ch’ellank!
#
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
****************************************
J.S. BACH & THE BEATLES
*************************************
In their own time the Beatles were more popular than Bach.
They may still be for all I know.
It is unbelievable to what extent most men live and die
with total unawareness of their own possibilities.
*
LOSERS
**************
My defeats outnumber my victories 99 to 1,
perhaps even 999 to a fraction of 1.
In that sense I represent my nation more faithfully
than our great men most of whom, if not all,
achieved their greatness by eliminating the competition.
*
KILLERS
***********************
A serial killer is a serial killer
even if a jury renders a verdict of not guilty.
And if you say human justice may not be perfect but it works,
may I remind you that for a good number of years, even decades,
men like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler enjoyed the reputation
of great statesmen and not as dangerous serial killers or psychopaths.
In the eyes of his fellow countrymen
even Genghis Khan is seen to this day as a titan among men.
#
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
*****************************************
LET US REASON TOGETHER
**************************************
A Canadian prime minister (Jean Chretien)
is quoted as having said:
“I like to stand up to Americans.
It’s popular.”
We like to hate Turks.
That’s popular too.
But it’s wrong!
What have we accomplished after a hundred years of hatred?
We can’t even convince Americans to support our side.
Hating is a waste of time,
Hating nations is worse!
We should hate not nations but murderers and liars
regardless of nationality.
There are honest Turks
as surely as there are dishonest Armenians.
It is wrong to confuse a nation with its regime.
Regimes are ephemeral and transitory stages
in a nation’s life.
Neither should we confuse loyalty
or subservience to a regime
with patriotism.
Hatred may take us from A to B
but it is understand
that can go all the way to XYZ.
Hating is easy;
understanding much harder.
When it comes to politics
or any other discipline for that matter,
the easy answer is not always the right one.
In the writings of our Turcocentric ghazetajis
and readers who enjoy reading them
I see nothing but militant malice.
#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 18, 2012*************************************** A CONTRADICTION**************************** “The Kingdom of God is within you.”*“Our Father Who art in Heaven.”#EITHER/OR*********************** Someday everything will make sense. Either that or we will be beyond caring.#HOW TO RECOGNIZE A CHARLATAN******************************************** Two ways:(One) A charlatan has more answers than questions; and he has answers even to questions that have no answer.(Two) If the facts are not on his side he will invent some that are.#ANOTHER EITHER/OR************************************** We either believe the testimony of our writers or our ruling classes whose every word is contaminated by propaganda, that is to say a Big Lie.#IF…**************** If you lose an argument it doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong. It only means your opponent had a better lawyer.#SIZE MATTERS************************** Among sharks, a barracuda has a better chance to survive than a sardine.#Saturday, October 20, 2012************************************ SOLUTIONS**************************** Solutions don’t fall from heaven like manna. Solutions are hard work. But when we speak of solutions we think of the abracadabra variant whereby you deliver the right verbal formula and the problem vanishes like a puff of smoke. *For 1700 years our religion has been teaching us to love our enemies; and for 1500 years our writers, beginning with Khorenatsi and Yeghishe (two historians of the Golden Age) have been emphasizing the central role that solidarity plays in the life of a nation. I therefore feel justified in concluding that anyone who says “We don’t need critics, we need solutions!” should be classified as a habitual and compulsive liar who is out to deceive not only others but also and above all himself. *Solutions? As a nation we are like the proverbial peasant who seated on his jackass searches for his jackass. And if you say, you can’t teach love of Turks to Armenians who hate Armenians, all I can say is: “You can say that again, brother!”#ENEMIES*************************** The question we should ask is not “Why do they hate us?” but “What have we done to deserve so many of them?” *If might is right, it follows, absence of might is wrong, and if not a crime against humanity, an invitation to it.*Today I know something I didn’t know yesterday: It is not our enemies who divide us (in order to rule us); it is we who divide ourselves to be closer to the sultan and commissar, and in the Diaspora, to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.There is only one way to make it in our environment: to be a brown-noser. *I will never forget the contempt and anger in the voice of one of our elder statesmen (who was also the hireling of a benefactor), when he said to me: “Just who the hell do you think you are?”*An old lady once said to me: “When I write to the President of the United States, I get a reply. But when I write to an Armenian, I am ignored.” It was this same old lady who, after reading one of my comments against the dangers of assimilation, asked me: “What’s wrong with assimilation?” I don’t remember my exact answer then, but my answer today would be: “For some Armenians, assimilation would be a step in the right direction.”#

[ara baliozian]

LITERATURE AND POLITICS
**************************************
There are several giants in our literature;
only midgets in politics.
As for Byzantine emperors of Armenian descent
one of whom achieved “Napoleonic” stature
(according to Edward Gibbon in his
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE)
they served exclusively Greek interests
even when it meant adopting and implementing
an anti-Armenian foreign policy.
*
And if you were to drop names like
Gulbenkian, Saroyan, Mamoulian, Khachatourian and Mikoyan:
I will say that all these gentlemen were born, raised, and operated
in non-Armenian environments.
*
If so far this aspect of our collective existence
has been carefully covered up
it may be because
we continue to be at the mercy of
unprincipled and ruthless mediocrities
whose greatest enemy is excellence.
#
A QUESTION
IN THE SEARCH OF AN ANSWER
********************************************
What have we learned from our millennial history?
To say or imply that our history,
including our genocide (both “red” and “white”),
is a result of conditions and forces beyond our control
is nothing but a transparent effort
to place ourselves outside history;
to say in effect:
we had nothing to do with our blunders and misfortunes.
It was all someone else’s fault.
*
Who profits by this line of reasoning?
Who else but our own leadership
whose sole aim in life is to cover up the fact that
far from being our "betters,"
they are our worst.
*
To say or imply that
we have no control over our destiny as a nation
is to advocate a passive stance,
and worse, much worse:
it is to say that the only way to survive
in the kind of world we live in is to say “Yes, sir!”
to those in power even when they happen to be
the lowest scum on earth.
Isn’t that what we did for 600 years in the Ottoman Empire
and for more than 60 years in the Soviet Union –
two of the worst criminal power structures
in the history of mankind?
*
The real horror is not in men like Talaat and Stalin;
the real horror is in the millions who trusted them.
Zohrab, one of the smartest Armenians that ever lived,
trusting his life into the hands of his future murderers.
Mikoyan carrying out all orders faithfully
always in fear of his own life,
sleeping with a revolver under his pillow.
*
I ask again:
What have we learned from history
except to assume a passive stance
not only to alien tyrants
but also our own scumbags.
#
IF I WERE A DICTATOR
*****************************************
If I were a dictator
(which will never happen
because I don’t have a single politically ambitious bone in my body)
I would begin by saying the days of “1001 churches”
in the same city are over
as surely as horses and sabers in modern warfare.
*
I am all for a single community center
(make it, shish-kebab and pilaf joint)
instead of two, if only because our different
religious, political and cultural factions
would have a better chance to discover that
they are not much different from one another
and Armenian solidarity may not be
as utopian a concept as it is generally thought to be
by our dividers
(make it, diggers of our collective grave).
*
Why two archbishops and two cathedrals in New York City
if one will save us millions in salaries alone
(one of these cathedrals, I am told by an insider,
employs as many as 83 individuals).
*
A church is called "a house of God”
and as far as I know God has at no time demanded
that we provide Him with four of them
(Anteliassagan, Etchmiadznagan, Catholic, and Protestant)
in the same city .
*
Something similar could be said of our press.
Instead of a dozen trashy weeklies,
we could have a single professionally managed
and edited publication.
*
Instead of a hundred charitable institutions
we could have one supervised by a non-partisan
and preferably odar auditing firm…
*
But why go on with this exercise in futility
if none of these reforms will ever be implemented
by our partisans and panchoonies?
#
THE RICH & THE SUPER-RICH
*******************************************
OBAMA & ROMNEY
********************************
HONEST MEN & CROOKS
****************************************
Honest men will employ only honest means to get rich.
By contrast, crooks will employ both honest
as well as dishonest means.
That is why, Plato tells us,
crooks will always be richer than honest men.
#
ON BEING POSITIVE
**********************************
When not urged to be positive
I am accused of being consistently negative.
How do we define positive and negative?
Is speaking the truth positive or negative?
Is being objective negative?
Is flattering the ego of contemptible men
with money or power positive?
Is saying “Yes, sir!” out of fear positive?
These are not easy questions to answer
for individuals whose collective existence
has been at the mercy of bloodthirsty and ruthless tyrants
for more than a thousand years.
*
When Zarian said
“Our political parties have been of no political use to us,”
was he being negative?
When speaking of one of our national benefactors
an archbishop once said to me:
“The only reason he likes building schools and community centers
is to see his name on walls,”
was he being negative?
*
Our history, the history I was taught as a child
and the history we teach our children today
is more fiction than fact.
As recently as yesterday when I said
“Our greatest writers from Abovian to Zarian
were shabbily treated and silenced
by our own wheeler-dealers,”
a reader pointed out to me that
times have changed and we now have more freedom
than at any other time in history.
If true, the question we must ask is,
what the hell happened to our literature?
Why is it that we no longer have writers
of Abovian’s and Zarian’s stature and character?
Why is it that today even the Turks
are ahead of us in literature?
Have we finally come to realize that
no one in his right mind would adopt
Armenian literature as a career?
A final question:
Is exposing stupidity, ignorance, and filth
positive or negative?
#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 25, 2012
******************************************
DEGREES OF AWARENESS
*************************************
We may see many things
but we cannot see everything
and more often than not
what we don’t see is
what we should have seen.
*
If you want to know more about someone,
ask his enemies.
The same applies to nations.
*
Truth is nobody’s friends
and everyone’s enemy.
*
When dissidents ascribe criminal conduct
to the leadership alone, they lie.
They lie in so far as they reduce the people
to the status of automata programmed to behave
with the same degree of awareness
as ants, sheep, or a pack of wolves.
*
Even the most backward and primitive man
cannot be said to be on the same level as a beast
whose conduct is dictated by instinct alone.
*
Our dividers are as guilty as hell.
No doubt about that.
But so are their dupes,
whose IQ operates on two levels:
when it comes to judging their enemies,
they behave as if they had 20/20 vision.
But when it comes to examining their conscience,
they become deaf, dumb and stupid.
*
A headline in my morning paper reads:
“Women hold just 20% of world’s power.”
I have every reason to suspect in our case
it’s less than 0, 0001%.
#
ON THE ART OF WRITING
************************************
The less art the better.
*
Editing consists in deleting.
If you provide the key,
no need to describe the contents of a room.
*
Unless you are another Tolstoyevsky,
be more like Chekhov.
Stick to writing short stories.
The shorter the better.
*
When asked about the tempo of a song,
a French composer (may have been Gabriel Fauré)
is quoted as having said:
“If the singer is bad, the faster the better.”
*
So many mediocrities achieve celebrity these days
that the challenge is to remain anonymous.
*
Don’t make the mistake of adopting a single pseudonym
like Oshagan and Siamanto
because your readers (assuming you have any)
will forget you even when you are alive and kicking ass.
*
Leave preaching to preachers – they get paid for it.
To be an Armenian writer in this day and age
means to be an unemployed and unemployable misfit
in a land devoid of all benefits and entitlements.
*
Never underestimate your readers’ ignorance
and contempt for knowledge.
I have met elder statesmen who in a sane environment
would be classified as inbred morons.
*
Be prepared to be insulted and dismissed
as a bullshitter by bullshitters like Romney and Ryan.
*
A nation needs dupes more than it needs dissidents.
This is as true of Turks, Russians, and Yanks
as it is of Armenians – especially Armenians.
*
And now let us pray!
#
Saturday, October 27, 2012
****************************************
BROTHERS
************************
The other day a gentle reader pointed out to me that
Armenians who have were born, raised, and
lived in alien environments
for more than a century and a half
could hardly qualify as Armenian.
Some truth in that.
*
In America we have been Americanized in less than a century,
in France Frenchified, in the Balkans Balkanized,
in many other countries assimilated to the point of extinction,
and last but not least,
in the Ottoman Empire we were Ottomanized.
(on occasion I am myself been called “Baliozoghlu”
and identified as “a piece of shit”
by my brothers in the Homeland).
*
Who is an authentic Armenian?
Does he exist?
Not an easy question to answer.
If you say, surely Armenians born and raised
in the shadow of Mt. Ararat may indeed qualify
as authentic Armenians, may I be allowed to point out
they too have been to some extent
Russified, Sovietized, alienated, and dehumanized
as thoroughly as the rest of us.
*
And now, let us rise from abstractions to facts
(as our Marxist brothers used to say).
Let us consider their authenticity
in the light of historic reality.
Whereas in the Ottoman Empire in 1915
our intellectuals were betrayed by a single Armenian,
in the USSR two generations of our ablest men
in all fields of human endeavor
were betrayed and shot by our own Stalinist leadership –
the very same characters, may I add,
who are now in charge of our destiny as a nation.
*
When post-World War II Armenians immigrated to Armenia,
they were called “aghber” (trash) by these very same
authentic Armenians, and lived
(very much like themselves)
in constant fear of betrayal.
*
Which is why I feel justified in saying
nothing can be as misleading as judging a man
by his birthplace?
A man should be judged
not by his country of origin
but, in the words of a wise American,
by “the content of his character.”
The rest is propaganda.
#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 28, 2012
********************************************
ON POLITICIANS
*****************************
If you trust them,
you deserve them.
*
ON HISTORIANS
****************************
There are two kinds:
those who deal in facts
and those who deal in fiction;
and of the two,
those who deal in fiction
are the most widely read and taught in schools.
*
WHAT WE SHARE
******************************
As children we have all been brainwashed,
but as adults to remain brainwashed
is a decision we make freely and on our own.
*
IF
************
If you speak the truth to fools and liars,
they will all you a criminal
guilty of a capital offense.
Two familiar cases from the past:
Socrates and Jesus.
And if you say things like that don’t happen any more,
I will have no choice but to remind you
that persecution and injustice have been
and continue to be
routine occurrences in history.
To be an Armenian among Turks during World War I;
a Jew in Europe during World War II;
a dissident in the USSR;
a Sunni among Shias and vice versa;
a Hindu among Muslims and vice versa
after Partition in India;
a Black man in America;
and last but far from least,
to be Armenian among Armenians.
I rest my case.
Nothing further Your Honor!
#
Monday, October 29, 2012
***************************************
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
***************************************
Fools and dupes (but I repeat myself)
outnumber those who can think for themselves
a thousand to one.
It is they (fools and dupes) who make wars possible,
revolutions a necessity,
and collateral damage
(meaning the death of countless innocent civilians)
an inevitable fact of life
like tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
*
If I speak about dupes and fools
with some degree of authority
it’s because I have been one most of my life
and to some degree I continue to be one
because I think I can reason with them
and convince them being subservient to authority
and believing in their lies
is an aberration, a crime against humanity,
and an insult to God;
and when I speak of God I don’t mean
the God of priests, imams, and rabbis,
but as a point of reference,
an abstraction like infinity and eternity,
and an unknown and unknowable entity or power
that has endowed us with a brain
with which to think for ourselves
as opposed to parroting the propaganda line
of a sultan, king, emperor, and commissar –
compulsive and habitual liars all
and as such the source of all evil.
*
You want solutions to our problems?
Begin by believing nothing you are told,
including what you just read.
#
DEFINITIONS
*****************************
Prejudice: infatuation with one’s own ignorance.
*
Wisdom: awareness of one’s own limitations.
*
Patriotism: collective narcissism.
*
Barbarism: a room without a single book in it.
#
INTERVIEW
**************************
Q: How would you define a man?
A: A man is he who views reality on its own terms
as opposed through the filter of an organized religion or ideology.
Q: What’s wrong with religions and ideologies?
A: They are the source of all lies and violence – that is to say, evil.
Q: Are you saying Christianity is evil?
A: In so far it has justified, legitimized, and promoted
intolerance, prejudice, persecution, war and massacre, yes.
Q: I am a Christian and I have persecuted or killed no one.
A: That’s because you have lived on the margins of history –
a privileged position that allows you to assert moral superiority;
and to assert moral superiority is almost to justify war and massacre,
which amounts to saying, if the morally superior kills the morally inferior
he does so in the name of God or justice.
There is no greater liar than he who speaks in the name of God.
Q: Do you believe in God?
A: I believe in the Unknown and the Unknowable,
the source of all good and evil. Historically speaking
that’s what all men believed before the invention of gods,
which happens to be an extremely recent development.
Q: Am I right in assuming you don’t believe in progress?
A: Technological progress, yes; moral progress, no!
The last century has been the most morally degenerate century of mankind –
more wars, massacres, and genocides
than in all other centuries combined.
*
(To be continued.)
#

[ara baliozian]

I don’t write to entertain. I write to understand and explain reality, especially when reality is against us.
Thursday, November 01, 2012******************************************** INTERVIEW (II)*********************************** Q: Is nationalism an ideology?A: One of the worst.Q: As bad as fascism?A: Nationalism and fascism might as well be as synonymous as job-provider and blood-sucker.Q: What have you got against Romney?A: He is a hollow man. He’ll say and do anything to be president. He is as greedy about money as he is about power. Such men are the least qualified to be leaders – I am now paraphrasing Plato. He says in one of his dialogues: The more power a man wants the least qualified he is to handle it.Q: Do you believe in good and bad nations or in just and unjust wars?A: I believe in neither nations nor wars. They are fictions created by propagandists. Like Homer’s ILIAD.Q: Was Homer a propagandist?A: One of the greatest. He wrote about a war fought in defense of a floozy’s honor.Q: What about World War II?A: World War II was a direct result of World War I and to portray the Allies as the good guys is to cover up what went on in the 19th century -- imperialism, racism, slavery, the ruthless exploitation of natives and workers in general. Gandhi was right when he described the British in India as “a satanic force" -- a reminder of the fact that it was the Devil who created the 1% in his own image.# INTERVIEW (III)*************************************** Q: Let’s speak of books, beginning with your favorite writers.A: Too many to list here and I doubt if I can readily remember all of them.Q: Let’s begin with your first favorite writer.A: Dostoevky.Q: Which one of his books you read first?A: THE GAMBLER.Q: After THE GMABLER?A: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, THE IDIOT, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV…I read everything I could lay my hands on.I read them all with the impetuous greed of a teenager.Q: Have you reread them recently?A: I have tried…without much success.Q: How come?A: I first read them in Italian and Greek. In English they sound…less authentic, alien, depersonalized…Q: What impressed you most about Dostoevsky?A: His penetration of the human psyche. He humanized even ax-murderers of defenceless old ladies and child-molesters not by diminishing their responsibility but by emphasizing the forces that drove them to commit these horrible crimes.Q: Speaking of child-molesters: Do yoou think Nabokov’s LOLITA is an autobiographical work?A: Yes, of course, but only in the sense that Nabokov experienced the same feelings and thoughts as his central character. And it is to be noted that it is not Humbert Humbert who seduces Lolita but the other war around. Most readers miss that detail as I did when I first read it. Humbert is not a child-molester; it is Lolita who is a seducer of adults. Another point that is often missed: It is Humbert Humbert who pays dearly for his crimes, not Lolita.Q: Have you reread the book recently?A: Yes, several times and each time with an enhanced awareness of its many secret and subtle complexities and allusions.#INTERVIEW (IV)*************************************** Q: I know what you think about Romney – A: Wrong word!Q: Which one?A: "Think." He is not worth thinking about.Q: Could you expand on that?A: The man is so desperate that he is now promising “change” or rather the “hope” for change. Sounds familiar? He figures if it worked for the opposition four years ago it may work for him. A clear-cut case of transparent plagiarism. And he is promising not only seventeen million jobs, but “good” jobs, beginning with his own of course.Q: What about his policy on taxes.A: It’s not “if” but “when” he raises them he will call them “fees” or he will explain by saying the figures of the previous administration were doctored or cooked (figures always are) and that to balance the budget more drastic measures are required.Q: What do you think – sorry, wrong word again – about Ryan?A: A devout Catholic who owes his intellectual development (make it paralysis) to Ayn Rand -- a notorious atheist charlatan. Q: Is there anything we Armenians can learn from Americans?A: Learn from them? We could teach them.Q: Teach them? What exactly?A: Until very recently (in my own lifetime, as a matter of fact) American politics was dominated by WASPs: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt – they were all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Not any more! We were in the same place from the beginning -- with our Mamikonians and Bagratunis (Chinese and Jews respectively). One way to describe our politics is to say that it is a farce titled not ABEL AND CAIN, but CAIN AND CAIN.#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 04, 2012******************************************** INTERVIEW (V): ************************* ON NATIONALISM************************************************ Q: In our first conversation you said you are against ideologies beginning with nationalism. What’s wrong with nationalism?A: To begin with, nationalism divides mankind into them and us, and to do so it invents lies.Q: Is it a lie to say Turks and Azeris are our enemies?A: It is, yes, and an obvious one at that if only because half of them may well be half Armenian; and I doubt very much if there exists a single pure-blooded Armenian today. I have met Armenians who assert they are direct descendants of the Mamikonians, Bagratunis, and Dikran the Great. Q: So have I? What’s wrong with that?A: But none of these gentlemen was Armenian. I suggest nationalists are products of a politically controlled educational system. I further suggest politics and education are mutually exclusive concepts. A politically controlled education may even be said to be the opposite of education because it perverts the meaning of the most important words – such as right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice.Q: You lost me there.A: Cases in point. We all know that killing is wrong and yet we are taught to believe killing the enemy in the name of God and Country is not only right but the sacred duty of all law-abiding citizens.Q: But when attacked, what are our options?A: We defend ourselves, of course. We don’t have to be brainwashed to do that. It comes naturally.Q: So you are saying in some cases killing is right?A: I am also saying to kill in self-defense is one thing, to be predisposed to kill another. Eliminate predisposition and you may eliminate half of all wars. Listen, we are not here to solve all of mankind’s problems. If we succeed in taking a single step in the right direction we may earn the right to say, mission accomplished.# INTERVIEW (VI)*************************************** METAPHYSICS************************************ Q: Is death an end or a new beginning?A: Neither.Q: It has to be one or the other.A: Man is a recycling contraption, very much like Planet Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, and the Cosmos. The Sun will incinerate our planet and we will end up in a Black Hole and emerge as another galaxy or planet which will evolve a new flora and fauna. Nothing will be added or subtracted. Everything will be recycled.Q: Are you saying metaphysics is physics?A: Exactly! And there are no theories and assumptions in what I am saying. I speak of observable and verifiable facts. If the cosmos were a book, our planetary system would be no better than a comma in it.Q: What is God’s place in your system?A: God is Unknown and Unknowable, and everyone who speaks in His name is either a charlatan or a compulsive liar.Q: What if he believes in what he says?A: In Sartre’s formula: “We may believe that we believe but we don’t believe.”Q: Are you an atheist?A: No! An agnostic. I know my limitations. I don’t claim to know that which I don’t know and have no way of knowing.Q: What about prophets and saints? Were they all charlatans?A: No. I prefer to think of them as men and women who have been misunderstood and misinterpreted in their own time, and overestimated by posterity.Q: What about Moses and his Ten Commandments? Charlatan? Liar?A: A politically ambitious leader and liberator or revolutionary. Also the most frequently ignored preacher. “Thou shalt not kill!” Do we really need a prophet to tell us that? And why is it that we have more killers today than at any other time in the history of mankind?Q: What about Jesus?A: I agree with Tolstoy, Gandhi, and the overwhelming majority of mankind including Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists: he was a great teacher but not the Son of God.# INTERVIEW (VII)**************************************** THE WRITING LIFE****************************** Q: You have been writing for Armenians now…for how many years?A: Thirty give and take a decade or two.Q: Tell us some of your challenges, experiences, problems, disappointments…A: Where to begin?Q: I remember once you called one of your critics an “inbred moron.”A: That was meant as a compliment. He deserved much worse descriptive terms; and he was not a critic but a kibitzer and a self-assessed expert on any give subject – a familiar type among us. I remember once when I mentioned Zarian, one of our so-called “experts” on Armenian literature thought I was speaking of Nairi Zarian: a notorious Bolshevik mediocrity. He had never heard of the other one.Q: Am I right in assuming critics are not your favorite readers?A: Critics I don’t mind. It is commissars that I can’t stand.Q: Define commissar.A: Anyone who assume to be in a better position to know what’s good for the community and the nation and based on that absurd assumption he proceeds to issue guidelines; or anyone who assume only an idiot would adopt Armenian literature as a career – since there is no money in it. As the offspring of Levantine “starving Armenians,” we have a natural tendency to overestimate the value of the profit motive. In the United States, for instance, Zarian himself was thought to be a CIA agent; and when he returned to Soviet Armenia, where he spent his final years, it was rumored that he had become a KGB agent. I have myself been accused of being not only in the pay of the CIA and the KGB but also of the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. Some of my readers may be loud-mouth idiots but they are idiots with a rich imagination.Q: If there is no money in literature, how do you survive?A: On my savings. For ten years I worked at a variety of jobs -- from factory hand to church organist. But my greatest asset is my lifestyle – bread and books, and the books I get free of charge from the public library.#INTERVIEW (VIII)************************************* WHO IS A GOOD ARMENIAN?****************************************** Q: You have been writing now for how many years?A: About thirty.Q: And you have published how many books?A: About thirty too.Q: How many commentaries?A: Let’s say about a thousand – glor hashiv.Q: And yet you have not yet achieved the status of a popular writer.A: Why stop there? In the eyes of some I don’t even qualify as a piece of sh*t.Q: How do you explain that?A: Explanations work only with reasonable men.Q: I like to think of myself as a reasonable person.A: Sorry, I didn’t have you in mind. What I meant to say is, I doubt if my explanation will make sense to the majority of our readers.Q: Let’s have it anyway – you never know…A: The trouble with us is that we were at no time de-Ottomanized or de-Stalinized in the way in which Germans were de-Nazified after World War II. As a result we continue to be at the mercy of individuals – be they leaders, speechifiers, sermonizers, schoolteachers and academics – who continue to think and operate with the old brain. One of our elder statesmen once confided to me that some of our most influential people in our communities are in fact Turks who speak Armenian fluently.Q: Was he serious?A: Dead serious. He even lowered his voice even though there was no one around.Q: Do you believe what he said?A: It makes no difference to me if a leader is a Turk or Armenian so long as he is a decent human being. When I deal with an Armenian I don’t ask myself if he is a good Armenian. What I ask myself is, is he an honest man? Can I trust him? Does he mean what he says? I have said this before and it bears repeating: I’d much rather deal with an honest Turk than a dishonest Armenian.#

[ara baliozian]

INTERVIEW (IX)*********************************** ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION OR TURCOCENTRISM************************************** Q: If you were to condense your message in a single sentence, what would it be?A: We are not who we think we are, neither is the world what we think it is.Q: Isn’t ignorance of the self and the world a more or less universal condition?A: It is, yes, but as always there are degrees of ignorance. In our case it is more rather than less.Q: In what way our understanding of the world is different from anyone else’s? A: To begin with we rely too much on the propaganda of our speechifiers and sermonizers and less on our intellectuals. Case in point: Had we followed Raffi’s advice when he said the Ottoman Empire is no place for us because they have no respect for human life there, we would have avoided the Genocide.Q: How do we explain our exaggerated reliance on propaganda?A: Ignorance or innocence compounded by anti-intellectualism.Q: In what way are we different from Jews, among many others, who suffered similar fates?A: Jews are far ahead of us in their alliances. While Americans are ready to defend them against their enemies in the Middle East, they (Americans) have consistently refused even to acknowledge the reality of our genocide.Q: How do we overcome American anti-Armenianism?A: Not an easy question with an easy answer. All I know is that we are wasting valuable resources on genocide recognition. A genocide is like a city set on a hill; it cannot be hidden or covered up forever. We have many other serious and pressing problems in both the Homeland and the Diaspora. I grew up in a ghetto among survivors. They were less Turcocentric than Armenians in the United States and Canada today.I have every reason to suspect Turcocentrism – the fallacy that all our problems begin and end with Turks – is an illusion promoted by our ruling classes whose central concern is not to demand justice but to cover up their own corruption and incompetence.# INTERVIEW (X)************************************ TWO PROBLEMS**************************** Q: We all agree that we have problems –A: And that’s the only thing we agree on.Q: What we don’t agree on is their solutions even when the solutions make perfect sense. Divisions versus solidarity, for instance, or a free press versus a controlled press. Can you explain that?A: We are a tribal people. Our first loyalty is to the tribe or chief and not the nation which is an abstraction.Q: All nations, or even empires for that matter, begin as tribes and gradually evolve to nations. Why are we an exception to this rule?A: Some say it’s our geography – mountains and valleys, isolation during long winters, over forty more or less mutually incomprehensible dialects.Q: Do you buy that?A: No, I don’t. In the 19th century the Caucasian tribes to the north of us united under Shamyl the Avar and successfully resisted Russian expansion for several decades. But eventually they too were torn asunder by tribal loyalties, treason, and betrayal – a chapter of which is beautifully dramatized by Tolstoy in his novella and final work of fiction titled HADJI MURAD. Our Raffi may indeed be right. What makes Armenian solidarity an unattainable goal is less our geography and more our propensity for treason and betrayal.Q: Second problem, which may well be an extension of the first: a free press versus a controlled press. We all agree that a free press is more democratic and progressive than a controlled press, and yet –A: Ah! “And yet!” the two saddest words in the English language it has been said. The irony here is that our press enjoyed greater freedom in the Ottoman Empire. Baronian and Odian are unthinkable in today’s Armenian-American environment. Baruir Massikian, their only legitimate successor in the 20th-century Armenian diasporadied a thoroughly disappointed, bitter, and angry man. When a delegation of Armenian elders visited his deathbed and appealed to him to leave his considerable wealth – he was a successful lawyer in Egypt, and a bachelor– to the Armenian Educational Foundation, he said he’d much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.#TO UNDERSTAND ANOTHER IS TO UNDERSTAND MYSELF********************************************** CHINA THROUGH CHINESE EYES************************************************ “How do you see the future of China?”“Fear, worry, deception, distress, collapse.”*“We will die slowly and miserably.”*“No hope for political reform. There will be bloodshed.”*“Idiots will cause more and more people to emigrate.”*“There are too many books to read, too many people to meet, too many fun things to do. China, stay away from me.”*“When the Chinese begin to reflect on their mistakes, then China’s ‘good future’ begins.”*“China’s future will be the opposite of the present.”**Sixty years of systematic brainwashing means that at least two generations of people will continue to suffer from spiritual pollution.”#From NEW STATESMAN (London, 19-25 October, 2012): an issue dedicated to China today.)#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 11, 2012*************************************** INTERVIEW (XI)****************************** ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS******************************************** Q: How do you define a good historian?A: A historian who is critical of his own tribe, nation, or civilization.Q: Do such historians exist?A: Of course. In the 20th century there are Spengler of THE DECLINE OF THE WEST and Toynbee of A STUDY OF HISTORY.Q: Don’t they have their own critics?A: They probably have more critics than all the others combined.Q: How do you explain that?A: The obvious answer is, it may be because they have more readers than the others.Q: What about us? Do we have historians we can trust?A: We do have some historians who have been critical of our rulers and institutions. Khorenatsi comes to mind, not so much his HISTORY but his LAMENTATION.Q: And more recently?A: Most of our historians today rely more on official documents and eyewitness accounts and less on their own narrative hoping thus to avoid charges of nationalism. Such historians ignore the fact that both documents and testimonies – legally called utterances – are also vulnerable to bias.Q: Whom do we believe?A: Let’s leave belief to imams and bishops. Trust would be a more accurate word.Q: Whom do we trust then?A: If as Armenians we were to trust more our own historians, we may have to confront Turks who very much like us trust their own and reject all others as deceivers.Q: Are we to infer from what you say that we should question the reality of our genocide?A: To question it, probably not. To modify it, maybe.Q: Modify it in what sense? How?A: Only in the sense that it may not have been murder one (cold-blooded and premeditated) but somewhere between murder two and manslaughter.Q: What do you believe?A: Let’s say I tend to support the version that will allow both sides to compromise and develop a consensus. I am afraid truth and justice are utopian concepts beyond the reach of the human race to which some of us may or may not belong.Q: So many “may”s and so many doubts.A: If there is one thing about which I can speak with a minimum degree of certainty is that certainties are the source of all evil. Show me a man who believes in his own certainties and I will show a charlatan in cahoots with the devil.# INTERVIEW (XII)****************************************ON THE IRRESISTIBLE CHARM OF ARMENIANS*********************************************** Q: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.” Can you guess the source of this quotation?A: Oscar Wilde on the English aristocracy.Q: Wrong! Ara Baliozian on Armenians. What did you mean by that?A: I had in mind ghazetajis and their avid readers whose favorite subject is Turks.Q: “An ignoramus who is an expert on any given subject.”A: That sounds like me and I will not retract it. Every other day I have to deal with a reader whose sole ambition in life seems to be to assert his superior knowledge and understanding; but whose worldview has not changed since he was exposed to the platitudes of elementary schoolteachers and parish priests.Q: You don’t like Armenians very much, do you?A: I love the overwhelming majority of Armenians who are alienated, assimilated, and stay away from our community centers, churches, and interminable internecine conflicts;and I loathe people (regardless of nationality) who are convinced a good man is one who kisses ass – and kissing ass has been our destiny ever since we became subservient to foreign tyrants.Q: This ought to arouse our compassion rather than contempt.A: Have you seen Armenians at banquets? – the way they eat, sing and dance and the way they listen to the verbal garbage dished out by speechifiers who are out to sell them still another book on the massacres? But let a write make an objective observation and they cannibalize him. I am not complaining. I consider myself a lucky man. I have survived. Far better men than myself were butchered because they were betrayed to the authorities, and when they were not betrayed they were insulted, ignored, and starved. Any more questions?Q: …A: And now let us pray.# INTERVIEW (XIII)******************************************* CRITICS************************ Q: What’s your answer to those who say you repeat yourself?A: Stop reading me.Q: What about, you are consistently negative?A: It is our reality that is negative. I would be engaging in propaganda if I were to misrepresent it.Q: You write about Armenians but you are not an Armenian writer because you write in English.A: Armenian, English: these are only labels. Literature is not a national enterprise. Dostoevsky is unthinkable without Dickens. Gandhi was influenced by Ruskin and Thoreau (an English and an American writer respectively). Chekhov was influenced by Maupassant, and our own Zohrab by Chekhov. Naregatsi is unthinkable without the Bible. Plato and Marx shaped the literature of many nations.Q: You had an Armenian education. Why do you write in English?A: When I came to Canada I soon realized that no one was remotely interested in an Armenian writer, not even Armenians.Q: Zarian wrote in Armenian in America.A: That was during the Golden Age of Armenian-American literature. In my time we had already entered the Garbage Age. But even Zarian had trouble surviving in America. Not only did they refuse to publish him they also spread the rumor that he was a madman. He returned to Soviet Armenia where he was ignored and murdered – or so he believed until the day he died.Q: Speaking of Soviets: Why do you call some of your critics commissars?A: Because they issue guidelines. Individuals who would never dare to tell a bus driver or a plumber or a garbage collector how to go about their business take it upon themselves to tell me what and how to write. For every writer we are blessed with two or even twenty-two commissars. Mart bidi ch’ellank.Q: Why don’t you write more like Saroyan?A: Saroyan wrote what he thought and felt. So do I. Beyond that we share nothing in common. He was a great writer; I am a total and hopeless mediocrity. But tell me: what has Saroyan changed in our communities? Near the end of his life, when invited to visit an Armenian community center in Detroit, he said no thanks. Last time I was invited to an Armenian community center I promised to return in twenty-five years. You might say that’s another thing I share with Saroyan.Q: What’s that?A: An intolerance of shish-kebab and pilaf joints.Q: What’s your favorite food?A: Bread and olives.#INTERVIEW (XIV)***************************************** TURCOCENTRISM*********************************** Q: What is Turcocentrism?A: Turcocentrism consists in placing Turks at the center of our consciousness. For 600 years we had no choice in the matter. We have a choice today but we continue to think our central concern is to teach Turks the rules of civilized conduct even as we wallow in our own Ottomanism and Bolshevism.Q: Is there anything we can do about that?A: All problems have solutions and all solutions begin with an awareness of the problem. This is where our politicians and intellectuals have failed us. Intellectuals? Strike that. I should have said academics.Q: What is the difference?A: Academics are first and foremost careerists. They never say anything that may be against their own interests. As for politicians – or rather partisans and panchoonies – their most important project is to brainwash us into thinking we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands.Q: What is the difference between an academic and an intellectual?A: An intellectual is one who dedicates his life to ideas, that is to say, literature.Q: What is literature?A: The art of saying what must be said; the art of understanding and explaining reality. Literature is first and foremost criticism and criticism consists in exposing contradiction.Q: Such as?A: The rich and the poor. The capitalist and the proletarian. The 1% versus the 99%. Job creators versus bloodsuckers.Q: How do we reconcile these contradictions?A: Speaking for myself, I do not consider wealth or money as the source of all evil. The source of all evil is power. Which is why Marxism has also been defined as the capitalism of the state. This is also why the oppressed in communist countries are justified in saying once upon a time they were slaves, they are now slaves of former slaves.#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 17, 2012************************************ INTERVIEW (XV)******************************************* CONTRADICTIONS******************************** Q: What are some of your favorite contradictions or absurdities?A: Where to begin? Imams controlling women’s fashion. Popes getting involved in the bedrooms of the nation. Armenians who love their country but hate their fellow countrymen. Americans who are against abortion but for war. Academics with the mindset of Oriental carpet dealers. Men who pretend to belong to a superior race but who don’t even qualify as the scum of the earth.Q: How do you explain these contradictions?A: Only one possible explanation:Homo sapiens is full of sh*t .#Friday, November 16, 2012********************************* INTERVIEW (XVI)********************************* MYTHS******************************Q: Shall we discuss more of our fallacies, misconceptions, and contradictions?A: How many?Q: One or two.A: How about three or four?Q: Deal!A: We are few. We are survivors. We owe our survival to the generosity of our benefactors and the dedication of our clergy…Q: Not true?A: Lies!Q: Aren’t we few – compared to Turks?A: God did not create many Turks and few Armenians. We are not few. It is our assimilation rate that is high. And if Turks are many it’s because they are a mosaic of nations, like Americans. I once met a lady who spoke Armenian but identified herself as a Turk. She must have had an Armenian grandmother. There are thousands, perhaps even millions, like her in Turkey today. Turks are if not half-Armenian than half Greek, Albanian, Jewish, Assyrian, Arab, and so on. But then all nations are mosaics,Q: Including Armenians?A: Yes.Q: What do you say to Armenians who trace their ancestry all the way back to the Bagradunis and Mamikonians?A: I say there never was such a thing as a pure-blooded king, emperor, czar, or dictator. Once upon time they were all ambitious upstarts and bastards, very much like our own Byzantine emperors. Our Mamikonians were of Chinese descent, according to Khorenatsi; and our Bagratunis identified themselves as Jews. Pure blood is a myth created by charlatans and perpetuated by racists like Hitler who was not German but Austrian.Q: What about the generosity of our benefactors? Shouldn’t we be grateful to them? A: No, in so far as by supporting one side against another they legitimize and perpetuate divisions. The same applies to our political bosses and bishops. They might as well be foreign agents whose secret mission is to bankrupt the nation – morally as well as financially.A: Who profits by our divisions? Q: Those in power. We are dying the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts. Hence the myth, we are survivors.#FROM MY NOTEBOOKS************************************** When an Armenian is goodhe is very good;but when he is badhe is horrid.*Between a proud Armenianand a humble human being,which would you choose?*Why is it that some very smart Armenians use their brains to speak and behave like inbred morons?*Our history is clear on one point: we love our writers provided they are dead and buried. As they used to say in the Old West: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”*I understand subservience to Turks – they were ruthless and bloodthirsty buggers. I understand subservience to Russians – ditto. But subservience to Armenians? Does anyone have an answer?*If I were a schoolteacher I would begin every lesson with the words: “Remember to say I don’t know and I don’t understand at least once every day.”*I once heard a Kurd on the radio speaking about Kurdish identity and culture the same way that an Armenian does about Armenian identity and culture. As a matter of fact I thought he was an Armenian until the end when the announcer identified him as a Kurd.#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 18, 2012************************************** DARK AGES************************* After its Dark Ages the West had its Renaissance.We never had one. Our Dark Ages never came to an end. To those who say we are a wounded nation surrounded by powerful enemies,we need to be more positive in our assessment of the present situation, I say: Let’s have the truth even if it opens more wounds. We are a tough bunch. We can take it. We took it from the Turks for 600 years and from the Bolsheviks for more than 60. If being positive means covering up the criminal conduct of our dividers in the Diaspora and KGB agents in the Homeland, let us at least have the common decency not to fool ourselves into thinking we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. We are neither “azad” nor “angakh"; and we are worse than “tshvar” and “ander.” We are at the mercy of bloodsuckers who will be satisfied only if they drink our blood and reduce us to the status of a carrion.# SMART ARMENIANS******************************* Smart Armenians are a dime-a-dozen. Honest Armenians? No comment. Smart Armenians who are honest? I know they exist because I have met one or two myself.*Where does obedience end and subservience begin?*In one of his celebrated wartime speeches Churchill spoke of the beginning of the end. If an end has a beginning, it must also have a middle and an end. Where are we? Can you guess?*We need the Russians. What we don’t need is their kleptocrats. We need our own even less. That’s the solution to our problems. Solutions are a dime a dozen. Implementation is everything! Next time you hear someone say “We need solutions,” classify him under idiots.*Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside.” You may now guess the sentence that follows. America and Armenia share much more than a few letters of the alphabet.*The unspoken principle of our ruling classes: “Preach vegetarianism, practice cannibalism.”*An objective history of Armenia: Will it ever be written?And if written, published?And if published read? And if read not discarded into the nearest waste paper basket after the first page?#BROTHERS************************ You and I are brothers if only because we were both brainwashed to believe we are what we are not. Let me begin at the beginning. Like everyone else I too was brainwashed by the scum of the earth to believe I am la crème de la crème. And more precisely I was educated as a Catholic. Millions of others were educated as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Bolshevik atheists and so on. Not only were we all brainwashed but also taught to look up to our abusers as teachers and role models who allowed us entry into an exclusive and privileged club and to look down on the rest of mankind as poor buggers on their way to the devil. As Armenians we were taught to believe Turks are bloodthirsty barbarians and as Turks they were taught to believe whatever the hell they were taught to believeand to be proud of it. However, both history and science tell us after thousands of years of wars, rapes, abductions, slavery, and intermarriage, there is no such thing as a Turk or an Armenian, or a Palestinian and a Jew, but only dupes who were brainwashed to believe what they obviously were not.#REFLECTIONS OF A LOSER************************************** Once upon a time I used to get a great many letters by snail-mail most of which began with the words: “Sorry if I am late…” followed by a transparent lie. No one ever dared to say “I had better things to do than waste my valuable time on a loser.” *If success as a nation in our case means achieving solidarity, progress, peace, and prosperity, call me an orthodox pessimist. *If the Genocide failed to teach us solidarity, nothing can! If I am a pessimist it’s because I have been disappointed too many times. *I can’t imagine a day when I will come to terms with our Bolshevik brothers in the Homeland who operate on the assumption that they know better because they are more authentic Armenians. Neither can I imagine a day when I will see our Levantine dividers in the Diaspora as dedicated patriots, which is what they think – or are brainwashed to think -- they are. *And, by the way, when I speak of solidarity I don’t simply means coexistence with our brothers (fellow Armenians) but also with our half-brothers (Turks and Azeris). *Now then, gentle reader, is there any conceivable way in which you can come close to convincing me that we have the chance of a snowball in hell to succeed as a nation?#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 22, 2012
**************************************
IMMORTALITY
****************************
Yesterday I achieved immortality in the eyes of a reader:
I called him an idiot.
*
A SORE LOSER
************************
Romney is now complaining that Obama won
because he promised all kinds of freebies to Latinos,
and other minorities.
As for him, he promised nothing except
not to raise taxes on the 1%
and to look the other way as they transfer their money
to Swiss and offshore banks.
*
THE BLAME-GAME REVISITED
****************************************
We have been taught by charlatans to believe
we are a progressive nation
because we were first to convert to Christianity.
We now have another set of charlatans who tell us
Christianity is at the root of our decline as a nation.
You want to know what I think?
I think truth and charlatanism
are mutually exclusive concepts.
*
TRIANGULATION
**********************************
When I want to know more about Tashnaks
I speak with a Ramgavar and vice versa.
I prefer a contradiction to a big lie.
*
IDEAS
***********************
“A man with an idea is my enemy,” said Napoleon.
Armenians are different.
They welcome a new idea
as long as it’s theirs.
#
LET MY PEOPLE GO
*******************************
We are told, following independence
1,500,000 Armenians emigrated from their homeland to America
and a number of other countries including Turkey;
and they did this on their own initiative
without the political guidance of a Moses-like leader
who went up to the Pharaoh in Egypt land and said,
“Let my people go.”
And I cannot help thinking that
if a similar number of Armenians had emigrated
from the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century
we would now have fewer victims to lament.
*
Moral: Left to their own devices,
people will make wiser decisions
than so-called patriotic
and charismatic speechifiers and sermonizers.
I would go further and say,
our leaders may well have been at the root
of all our misfortunes.
*
Wars, revolutions, counter-revolutions, massacres,
mass deportations, purges, systematic violations of human rights:
they can all be traced to a megalomaniac,
that is to say, a psychologically damaged ego
that pretends to know better
or to speak, if not in the name of Allah
than in the name of truth
or what’s best for the people.
*
Next time such a specimen visits your community,
my advice is to stay away from him
because he is either a vampire or a grave-diggers
or probably both at once.
#
ON LITERATURE
****************************
The chances are what you were taught to believe as a child
you will continue to believe as an adult.
That’s the only way to explain why
the West is predominantly Christian
and the Middle East Muslim.
*
A hundred or a thousand great writers
cannot undo the damage done to the human brain
by a single mediocre schoolteacher, parish priest, mullah, or rabbi.
The brainwashed cannot be unwashed by reason alone.
*
Under all authoritarian systems
literature is systematically purged and distorted.
If so far Armenian literature has failed
to detribalize the nation
it’s for this reason and this reason alone.
*
Those who have been in charge of our literature
(from academics to commissars of culture)
have systematically perverted its central message.
Naregatsi is not just a religious mystic
but also an astute political commentator.
When he make a long list of his sins, failings, and aberrations
(“a wicked servant, an abusive contradicter” and so on)
he speaks not only for himself but also the nation
and its leadership.
*
There is a tragic dimension in Baronian, Odian, and Massikian’s satire.
It exposes the moral bankruptcy and degeneration
of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
*
Perhaps what I am trying to say here is that
it will take more than a messiah or a dozen of them
to put us on the right path.
If our genocide failed to teach us anything, what can?
Surely not the verbiage of a vodanaVORji or a medaVORagan.
#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 25, 2012*********************************** TO THINK MEANS TO THINK AGAINST ONESELF***********************************************As an Armenian I have no interest whatever in knowing that once upon a time we were, or we had the potential to be, a great nation. I don’t feel the need to assert superiority over any man and such need I consider racist megalomania. Once upon a time we may have had the chance to achieve greatness. If we lost that chance it may be because we are losers. Now the ambition of every loser is to be a winner in order to lord it over other losers. I want no part of that farce. All I want as a human being is to do the best I can without deceiving anyone beginning with myself.*The world is a rotten place inhabited by rotten people. Unless you have something to say against yourself, say nothing.*Honest men can be wrong too. But the dishonest, even when right, they are wrong because they exploit that single instance of honesty to enhance their credibility.*My ambition, my real ambition is to be neither popular nor great but not to give a damn about popularity and greatness.*A criminal lawyer pleading not guilty for his client who happens to be a sadistic serial killer is less dangerous to me than an academic who recycles state propaganda.*If you say the wrong thing some people will disagree with you; but if you say the right thing, many more. That’s because at all times and everywhere the brainwashed outnumber those who can think for themselves.*All power structures (be they democratic or totalitarian) support the freedom to brainwash,#Monday, November 26, 2012******************************************** ZEN AND THE ART OF KICKING ASS******************************************* Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century -- some say the greatest – was a member of the Nazi Party. *If the Gulbenkian Foundation (the wealthiest foundation in the world, it has been said) had not awarded a hefty grant to Prof. David Marshall Lang, would he have written a book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION? *Why do you think the favorite subjects of our own academics today are the Middle Ages and the Massacres? And speaking of massacres: we all know what happens to a Turkish academic who dares to speak of the recent past with any degree of honesty and objectivity. *Imagine if you can a Soviet professor of economics under Stalin teaching the superiority of the free enterprise system or an American professor in the McCarthy era teaching DAS KAPITAL.*Every academic has a sign hanging down his neck that says, “For Sale.” If on occasion I am rude, crude, or offensive it’s because Zen masters tell us kicking ass is a far more effective tool of enlightenment than kissing ass. Brown-nosers are better at teaching subservience. But I have selfish reasons for favoring the Zen method. An insulted Armenian has the memory of an elephant, and I don’t mind asserting with some degree of certainty, even pride, that I have by now insulted enough Armenians to guarantee my immortality.#Tuesday, November 27, 2012********************************* NOTES & COMMENTS**************************************** Because I was a dupe I thought I had all the right answers.*I have dealt with too many self-satisfied idiots who thought they were my betters to be even remotely tempted to assert superiority over anyone.*Whenever I entertain a positive thought about my fellow men and myself events conspire to prove me wrong.*I am much more interested in finding reasons for co-existence with our enemies than in asserting our moral superiority over them.*To say, I am an Armenian therefore I am smart is as bad as saying: I am a loser therefore I am a winner.*All belief systems rely on a propaganda line that is both convincing and flattering to one’s ego.*No matter how hard I try I cannot convince myself that to be positive means to cover up the negative.#Wednesday, November 28, 2012********************************************** ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES**************************************When those in power kill, exile, jail or silence anyone who dares to challenge their authority, they do so not only to punish the transgressor but also to intimidate all others to mind their own business. *On the day the first heretic was tortured, my guess is more than one boy or girl decided to leave theology to theologians. On the day Gandhi was assassinated I suspect more than one Indian mother was overheard advising her son to leave politics to politicians. No doubt something similar happened on the day Socrates was condemned to death, Jesus was crucified, and Joan of Arc burned at the stake. *That’s one way to explain why some animals evolved into sheep and others into wolves; also why at all times and everywhere there are more soldiers than philosophers; and why yes-men and academics outnumber dissidents and intellectuals a thousand to one.*No emperor, king, or czar, ever said to think is a criminal offense or against the laws of the land, but their actions, the policies they adopted and implemented, and the laws they enacted and enforced made that abundantly clear. Leave thinking not only to the 1% but also to the 1% of the 1%. *In his STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee explains that during the Ottoman era sultans thought of themselves as shepherds and their subjects as sheep; which may explain why Jesus is represented as a lamb. Unmask a pope and expose the sultan. Unmask a speechifier and sermonizer and expose the Judas.#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 29, 2012
****************************************
LA CRÈME DE LA SCUM
***********************************
If our political leaders in both the Homeland and Diaspora
saw themselves as we see them,
they would wither away and die a slow lingering death.
If they appear to be completely comfortable in their own skin
it may be because they have a different image of themselves.
Consider the oligarchs in the Homeland:
I have every reason to suspect
they see themselves as honorable gentlemen
that history has thrust
into their present position of responsibility
which they are discharging to the best of their abilities.
Unlike their predecessors and role models – Stalin
and his henchmen, among them Mikoyan –
they are not serial killers,
and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths
or anywhere else for that matter.
*
And I can’t help thinking of myself
when young and brainwashed.
I saw our bosses, bishops, and benefactors
in a completely different light.
Saw? Strike that. Make it,
I was brainwashed to see;
and no man can be as blind, deaf and dumb
as the brainwashed, especially when he is brainwashed to believe
he is not just smart and patriotic
but that rarest of all beings:
an Armenian dedicated to the cause of justice,
an idealist willing to die for his cause,
knowing full well that the chances of that happening
are so remote that it doesn’t even occur to him
to contemplate the possibility that he may well be
an orthodox coward whose number once concern is number one.
Or, as the Turkish saying (probably of Armenian provenance) has it:
“Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”
*
Let us catch up with reality by admitting the inadmissible:
the Soviet Union and the Levant
have produced a species of Homo sapiens
that ought to be a source of embarrassment
to all men with a minimum sense of decency.
*
This may explain why Armenians survive
only in the Levant and the former USSR.
Anywhere else they shed their identity and assimilate.
And they assimilate not because
of “cultural, economic, and political conditions beyond our control,”
but because they see the light.
*
To those who say there are some things
that should not be said in public, I say:
our actions speak louder than words.
Who we are, what we are and how we behave
are like a city set on a hill: they can’t be hidden.
Besides, what I am saying,
has been said before by far better men than myself.
I am not here to speak the unspeakable
but to paraphrase, repeat, and remind readers
who might as well be advanced cases
of artificially induced Alzheimer’s.
#
Friday, November 30, 2012
********************************************
THE MOST BEASTLY MADNESS
*******************************************
When the rich fight it is the poor who die.
When the old fight it is the young who die.
When fanatics fight it is the moderates who die.
When the mighty of this world fight
it is the powerless who die.
When the insane die…you may now finish that sentence.
*
As for American corporations:
they don’t fight because they are not people.
They let African-Americans and Latinos
do the fighting and dying for them.
(Romney, you are wrong again!)
*
In his Notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci,
who painted war scenes and invented war machines,
calls wars “pazzia bestialissima” (the most beastly madness).
*
We are told the war of Troy was fought
because a dickhead raped or fornicated with a floozy.
WWI was fought because an empty suit
(or should I say wardrobe)
was assassinated by a crazy Balkan anarchist.
World War II was fought because of World War I
which was meant to end all wars.
And more recently, consider the wars
in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Consider the Crusades and the colonial wars
conducted by the so-called civilized West
against native tribes in Africa, America, and Australia.
*
There is no such thing as a just war.
Even so-called defensive wars inevitably lead
to the commission of crimes against humanity,
such as the deportation or forced exodus
of innocent civilians which, if not ethnic cleansing,
might as well be damn close to it.
*
As soon as a war is fought
(won or lost, it makes no difference)
an entire class of men – from poets and ghazetajis
to military historians, diplomats, and wheeler-dealers, make it politicians)
start brainwashing the masses into believing
“our” side was absolutely right and
“their” side dead wrong.
*
To say with Marx that all wars have an economic reason
is to cover up the greed of a ruling class
that has the morality of cannibals
and the tactics of a pack of wolves.
#
Saturday, December 01, 2012
********************************************
CONFESSION
***********************
All dupes pretend to know better.
I am not casting aspersions.
I am speaking about myself when young.
*
CASTING ASPERSIONS
*******************************
I have dealt with enough bosses, bishops, and archbishops,
also benefactors and their flunkeys and hirelings,
to know that they think they have reached
such brilliant, perhaps even unattainable, heights of eminence
that no one in his right mind would dare to question their integrity,
of which they have none.
As for our former and present commissars in the Homeland:
I would place them in the same category
as pirates and pickpockets.
*
MORE ASPERSIONS
*****************************
All careerists are brown-nosers who know instinctively
whose ass to kiss and whose to kick.
*
The 99% are easily duped by the 1%;
but even the 1% has its 99%.
*
With old age comes wisdom.
Call no Armenian a friend
until he is dead and buried.
#

[ara baliozian]

December 2, 2012****************************************** ARE WE OUTNUMBERED?***************************************When I speak to an Armenian I am never sure if I am speaking to him or to his schoolteacher. I have no use for academics who spin massals and try to convince me that that once upon a time we were a great nation. What I am more interested in is knowing why have we fallen so low? Is military defeat the only reason of our moral and intellectual bankruptcy? If yes, why are we afraid to admit it? Do the bastards outnumber us a thousand to one?*When an Armenian sees the light, it can truly be said of him that he becomes a born again cadaver.*An Armenian philosophical assertion: I am smart, therefore I can pretend to know better.*When I read a writer I want to read someone smarter than I am; and, if not smarter than more ruthless in his treatment of our failings and contradictions. *To all our future critics I say: Don’t you worry about our sensibilities. We can take it. We are tough mothers. We took it from the Turks for 600 years; we can take whatever a scribbler can dish out.#Monday, December 03, 2012**************************************** SHOP TALK******************** You want to survive as a writer in our environment? Kissing ass is not enough. You must also say it smells like roses. You want to be perceived as a patriot? Loving your country is not enough. You must also be subservient to the leadership. Teach yourself to say “Yes, sir!” even when the right answer is “Nuts!” You want to be perceived as wise, tolerant, and virtuous? It is not enough to be these things. You must also make it abundantly clear that you owe everything to the wisdom, tolerance, and virtues of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their buffoons, namely hirelings, hangers on, flunkeys, and brown-nosers. You want to solve our problems? Pretend we have none. You want to be popular? Convince yourself and others we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. You want me to explain why I do none of these things and yet I have survived? The answer is I have done all these things, that’s why I speak with some authority on the subject. As for my survival: to die the death of a thousand cuts may also appear as survival up to the 999th cut. You want evidence? Read a history of our literature and may God have mercy on your soul, if there is a God and you have a soul.#Tuesday, December 04, 2012************************************** CAN WE LEARN FROM HISTORY?************************************************** We all know what the Turks did to us. What we need to know now is what we did or failed to do. Relax! I am not trying to assign guilt. I just want to learn from our blunders if only because I don’t want to see them repeated. *We all make mistakes. No use covering them up. To do so in an effort to appear infallible convinces no one. *Where did we go wrong? Was our blind trust in the West justified? Was the Genocide inevitable? Was it our “jagadakir” (written on our forehead)? If yes, why didn’t we see it coming? *Far from being passive victims, we did adopt and implement a policy. Did we have leaders who advocated less passion and more reason? What made us choose passion and reject reason? Who among us would dare to suggest that passion in time of crisis is a better guide to action than reason? *Obviously, as human beings we behaved as human beings, that is to say, prone to error. If we committed errors, let’s name them. We learn nothing by asserting it was all someone else’s fault. Because even as I write these lines history is repeating itself. We are experiencing another genocide – exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora. Do we repeat ourselves by saying we are not to blame because we are doing what must be done?#Wednesday, December 05, 2012***************************************** THE BRAINS & THE BRAINLESS************************************** We now have a generation of brainless political activists who believe they are the brains of the people. If they are the brains of the people, does that mean the people are brainless? What else, may I ask? *Our activists may be smart enough to think they have brains of the people but not smart enough to see the implications of what they are saying. So what else is new? *Another question: How much brains does it take to lead the brainless? Obviously, hardly any. Nothing further your Honor. *You may have noticed that when an Armenian assesses himself as smart, he also gives himself the license to speak and act like a certified moron. *If the people are brainless, it follows they will be stupid enough to believe everything they are told. *Still another question: If our political activists shed their blood for freedom, as they claim to have done, why is it that they are now afraid of free speech? (This final question comes with the compliments of the late Jack Karapetian, a.k.a. Hakop Karapients, distinguished author and broadcaster. *During the last century we have suffered two calamities, the other being an educational system and a press controlled by political activists. This is as true of the Homeland as it is of the Diaspora. We now also have a generation of dupes who believe everything they are told.#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 06, 2012************************************* ELIMINATION*********************************** Who is responsible for the present global economic crisis? If you say that’s not an easy question to answer, I say: Nonsense! Let’s proceed by the method of elimination. It wasn’t you and me. It wasn’t plumbers and taxi drivers. It wasn’t the homeless, the poor, and the unemployed. Neither was it the middle classes. That takes care of the 99%. See what I mean?*Who is responsible for the Genocide? That’s an easy one if only because our academics have published a thousand books on the subject.What about the books of their academics? What academics? You mean hirelings of the régime, brown-nosers of the state, Kemalist charlatans. *Who is responsible for the mass exodus from the Homeland or “white massacre”? Surely not the Armenian whose sole aim in life is to work and provide for his family! *Who is responsible for the high rate of assimilation in the Diaspora? That’s an easy one too if you happen to be a brainwashed dupe: “cultural, political, and economic conditions beyond our control.”*Moral I: Don’t believe everything you are told. Moral II: Bastards know how to take care of their own.#Friday, December 07, 2012************************************ INVESTIGATIONS************************ Whenever I say anything remotely critical of Armenians I am accused of hating myself, as if it were the patriotic duty of every Armenian to be a narcissist.*Our problem, our real problem is not assimilation but dehumanization, which may happen in New York City as surely as in Yerevan. *You may have noticed that fund-raisers don’t like speaking about corruption. That would be like biting the goose that lays the golden egg. *We have not beheaded a single king. I consider that to be a serious failing on our part. *National benefactors die disappointed men. Partly their fault. They like to surround themselves with brown-nosers,and after 600 years of subservience to Turks we easily qualify as the best brown-nosers money can buy. I am now paraphrasing one of our elder statesmen, in case you thought I was an investigative reporter. *Investigative reporters cost money. They have expenses. We can’t afford them. We can afford bishops and archbishops by the dozen but not a single investigative reporter. For most of my dissenting view I rely on the wisdom and experience of our elder statesmen (may they rest in peace).#Saturday, December 08, 2012*************************************** INVESTIGATIONS (II)*********************************** Has anyone ever bothered to calculate the millions we could save if we had one cathedral instead of two, or one church instead of four? -- millions with which to feed the hungry and house the homeless? *A cathedral or a church is first and foremost a house of God. We believe in the same God (or in the absence of the same God, if you are an atheist); we read the same Bible; we sing the same hymns or sharagans. We all agree that God is neither a Catholic nor a Protestant, or for that matter, neither an Etchmiadznagan nor an Anteliassagan. *Let’s adopt a gradual approach. Let’s reduce the number of churches to one in which we could have a separate service for each denomination, so that members of one denomination coming in would meet members of the opposition going out, which may give them an opportunity to realize that they are not much different from one another notwithstanding the lies of our dime-a-dozen shit-disturbing propagandists -- if you will forgive my French.*Speaking of lies: I was brought up as a Catholic and I was taught to believe Martin Luther had divided the Church in order to fornicate with a nun. *And speaking of fornication: An Irish Catholic priest to a little girl after Sunday school: “Tell me child, what do you want to be when you grow up?” “A prostitute.” “What did you say?” “A prostitute.” “Thank God for that. I thought you said a Protestant.” *Moral I: To divide a community is almost to commit “white massacre.” Moral II: If we have a single house of God as opposed to four we may cease being a joke in the eyes of the world.#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 09, 2012
***************************************
CHAPTER & VERSE
*******************************
Speaking of an elder statesman,
Puzant Granian (may he rest in peace)
once said to me:
“He was so naïve that I once heard him say
'Churchill does not lie.'"
There you have it in four words:
the fallacy of our revolutionaries:
“The West does not lie.”
*
Poor Armenian revolutionaries.
After 600 years of subservience to a bloodthirsty tyrant
what did they know about politics and diplomacy –
that is to say, the real world?
*
But the more relevant question to be asked is:
“What have they learned?”
And if they have learned nothing,
can they even lead a dog to the nearest fire hydrant?
Can they even read and understand
what they are reading?
*
Last Saturday I saw on Armenian television
another one of our dime-a-dozen elder statesmen
bragging about our translation of the Bible –
“the Queen of translations.”
Instead of bragging he should have asked:
What have we learned from the Bible?
Do we read it?
And if we read it,
can we understand what it says?
*
“When the blind lead the blind
both shall fall into the ditch.”
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“Without vision the people perish.”
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
“Put not your trust in princes.”
“A fool’s mouth is his destruction.”
“Can two walk together except they be agreed?”
“He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.”
“The wages of sin is death.”
And I could go on and on…
#
Monday, December 10, 2012
***************************************
LABELS
***********************
After millennia of wars, deportations, abductions,
rapes, and mixed marriages,
mankind has been so thoroughly bastardized that
whenever I am introduced to a fellow Armenian,
I ask myself: what do I share in common with this fellow?
And more often than not the answer is “Nothing!”
His mother tongue and mine may be the same
but his favorite medium is Russian and mine is English.
*
It has been said that if the history of mankind
were 24 hours long,
we may be able to trace our ancestry for a few seconds
or even a minute or two,
but beyond that it’s Bagratunis and Mamikonians
(Jews and Chinese respectively).
*
If a man does business with Armenians
or lives in an Armenian neighborhood
and doesn’t know who and what he is,
he will identify himself as an Armenian.
The same applies to Turks, Americans, Australians,
and in general all other tribes, nations, and empires.
*
We are Christians not because Christianity is the best religion
or it makes more sense than all the others,
but because that was the only religion we were taught as children.
*
The only legitimate and verifiable label I recognize is “human being,”
and so few qualify. As for Homo sapiens:
since what we don’t know outweighs what we know a million to one,
a more accurate label would be Homo ignoramus.
*
Speaking for myself:
I have said this before and it bears repeating:
on a good day I can trace my ancestry all the way back to my father.
*
You have every right to find me unreadable.
I rate objective judgment above flattery and propaganda.
#
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
**************************************
LEADERS
*********************
My ambition in life:
to convince my enemies that we have many more reasons
to be the best of friends.
(This tactic doesn’t always work with Armenians.)
*
Every time you say “Yes, sir!” to a liar,
you dig a deeper hole for the truth.
*
Every time you put your trust on a bad leader,
you raise another obstacle on the path of a good leader.
*
Let others speechify and sermonize about our heroes and martyrs.
I will continue to write about blunders and their innocent victims.
*
It has been said that a competent leader is first and foremost
a consensus seeker. You may now draw your own conclusions.
*
Let’s not fool ourselves:
our leadership is as keen on divide-and-rule tactics
as our worst enemies.
*
A divided nation is on its way to the devil.
Only idiots refuse to see this.
And when idiots are in charge
the result may be another genocide.
#
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
******************************************
LITERATURE & POLITICS
**********************************
Reason tells us there is strength in unity.
It follows; reason has at no time played a central role
in our political affairs.
*
It can truly be said of us that our literature
has shaped nothing and no one except
a handful of scribblers, versifiers, daydreamers,
and mental masturbators.
*
What has been the role of our political leaders?
The answer is and must be that of gravediggers.
*
“Let us not deceive ourselves” is a favorite line of mine.
But even as I write I go on deceiving myself into thinking
my words may be read, and if read may make a difference.
*
I am told I am too extreme and inflexible in my views,
intolerant of alternative ideas,
reluctant to engage in dialogue,
unable to compromise.
Which raises the question:
Is compromise possible with charlatans
who do not even acknowledge your existence?
Or with wheeler-dealers who have silenced
far better men than myself?
Can one negotiate from a position of non-existence?
*
So many readers disagree with me that
whenever on those rare occasions
someone agrees with me
my first reaction is to think
I must have said something wrong.
*
Our educational system is at the mercy of dupes of former dupes
whose most important project is to create
a new generation of dupes.
*
If the Genocide taught us nothing
it only means that we are unteachable.
#