ara baliozian

Saturday, April 13, 2013 ************************************* SERMON ************************** In what way am I morally superior to a cold-blooded killer if I harbor a killer within me? In what way are Americans morally superior to Muslims if they (Americans) have killed more Muslims than Muslims have killed Americans? In what way Muslims are morally superior to Americans if the only reason they have killed fewer Americans is military inferiority? * Closer to home: we have been so busy exposing Turkish criminal conduct that our own moral status has become an alien dimension. As Zarian would say: “Danger, danger, danger!” * There is only one way to feel morally superior and that is (to echo Saroyan) by feeling sorry for the morally inferior. * The Scriptures tell us there is no difference between an adulterer and a man who lusts after another’s wife. Likewise there is no difference between a killer and a man who preaches hatred and revenge which he identifies as justice. * Perhaps what I have been trying to say here is we all swim in the same sh**! # Saturday, April 13, 2013 *********************************** THEOLOGY ********************** The aim of human speech is to say one thing and do the opposite: to say God is love and truth and to worship lies and the Devil; to say “Thou shalt not kill” and to go to war; to call Diasporan Armenians “aghber” (trash) and to behave like trash. Theologians and sermonizers are familiar with this phenomenon but prefer not to speak about it. * THERE WILL BE BLOOD ******************************** As soon as the Kremlin realizes the present regime in Yerevan to be a liability, it will replace it with another. Will anything change? It remains to be seen. “No one gives up power without a bloody fight,” Hegel tells us. Is he right? We may have an answer soon. * DOES POWER CORRUPT? ********************************* Power does not corrupt. It only exposes the corruption that was already there. * AMERICA AND ARMENIA *********************************** Unhappy is the nation whose two most important sources of education are TV ads and state propaganda. # FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* In life nothing works as planned. An honest autobiography would be a long list of disappointments. * My first book was a best-seller. My second book was banned. That’s when I knew I was on the right track. * We adopt a belief system because we are told all the others don’t make sense. * If you write in defense of dupes, deceivers will conspire against you. # REMEMBER! **************************** Patriotism is the favored word of tyrants. * Political parties need honest men as surely as religions need saints. * “A man of principle is a majority of one.” # Saturday, April 13, 2013 ************************************** SITUATION / SH*TUATION ************************************* In the eyes of the world our regime in Yerevan has lost its virginity. The people are against it. But even if replaced nothing will change. * Believe nothing you are told. There are no good guys in politics. Power prostitutes. * Some of our greatest brains praised Lenin and Stalin. Even our best and brightest are no better than a bunch of dupes. * Where there is too much talk of freedom and independence, oppression is sure to follow. * Throughout our millennial history foreign tyrants have always relied on their Armenian collaborators to moronize the people. # TURCOCENTRISM REVISITED ******************************************* In Turcocentric circles I am know only as someone whom Turks like to quote. All I can say in my defense is that the Devil too can quote the Scriptures. Does that mean the Good Lord is pro-Devil? * I gladly admit to being not a Turcocentric but an Armenocentric writer. So were Baronian and Odian; or for that matter Zarian and Massikian; and before them Naregatsi who in his LAMENTATION blames no one but himself for his many failings and transgressions. * A human being is not a lump of clay at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The Turks did not recreate us in their own image. We consented to be recreated. That is worth repeating and emphasizing. We are what we have become because we chose freely to be who we are. The rest is propaganda and our favorite sport: the blame game. # DIARY ******************** “I enjoy reading you.” I am less interested in your enjoyment and more in your torment. I don’t write to entertain. Flattery is as irrelevant to me as the words of a brainless critics or dupe who believes what he is told especially what he is told flatters his ego. * In Deirdre Bair’s SAUL STEINBERG: A BIOGRAPHY I am informed that if you are depressed you can go to the nearest emergency and ask to see a shrink. This may be common knowledge but it’s news to me. * I remember once when asked by a French friend if I have ever been analyzed I said something to the effect that analysis is for the bourgeoisie and that as a perennial slum-dweller it has never even occurred to me to visit a shrink. I was astonished when he informed me that in France analysis is available to everyone free of charge. * Perhaps deep inside somewhere I continue to be a subject of the Ottoman Empire where the insane were treated like criminals. #

Monday, March 25, 2013 ************************************* NOTES & COMMENTS ******************************* If both sides believe Truth to be on their side it must be a Big Lie. If both sides believe God to be on their side, it must be the Devil. In a historic context Homo sapiens may be defined as a being who cannot tell the difference between God and the Devil. * Q: Is it true that you are more critical of Armenians than of Turks? A: As an Armenian I criticize Armenians. I leave to Turkish critics the task of criticizing their own. * When tyrants silence writers, they invariably target the best. * The reason I am a pessimist or see the dark side of things is that I refuse to be moronized by the 1%. * In murder it may be “cherchez la femme.” But in war and crimes against humanity it’s cherchez moral and intellectual hoodlums parading as statesmen. * The 99% don’t make history; they only suffer it. # ***************************************** NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS OR GENOCIDE BY OTHER MEANS ************************************************** Learning also means unlearning what you were taught as a child. Loving your people also means hating their enemies. The average dupe loves to brag about the lies he has been taught as a child and to ignore the evidence to the contrary. * We in Canada are brought up to brag about our multiculturalism and to forget that there was multiculturalism in the Ottoman Empire too; so much so that after 600 years of “brutal oppression” we produced literary giants like Baronian, Odian, Zabel Yessayan, and Zohrab. * Now then, name a single Canadian-born Armenian who is capable of writing a single decent line in his mother tongue. * I have heard smart Canadians define multiculturalism as “let them dance.” Obviously because they can read between the lines of their state propaganda better than outsiders like us. * In the obituary of the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, I read the following this morning: “He spent much of his adult life in the United States but resisted literary honors from a government he refused to accept.” In other words, he refused to be taken in by a policy of genocide by other means. * If you want to read more about the many ways the 1% has of misleading, deceiving, confusing, bamboozling, flimflamming, exploiting, and hoodwinking the 99% read MYTHOLOGIES by Roland Barthes. # IDIOTS *********************** Armenians who say there are divisions everywhere are simply parroting the words of an idiot whose sole aim is to explain and justify his own powers and privileges. * There are divisions even in the most advanced democracies? It is equally true that, unlike us, advanced democracies have a centralized power structure because they have been successful in overcoming their tribalism, namely the misconception that my political party, my church, my backyard and my chickens matter more than all others. * There are divisions everywhere? There are also rapists and murderers everywhere. Should we therefore accept them as inevitable facts of life and adopt a live and let live stance in the name of compassion, tolerance and patriotism? * There are divisions everywhere? There are also crooks and idiots everywhere. Does that mean we should allow them to be in charge of our collective destiny? # Wednesday, March 27, 2013 *************************************** MEMOS TO MYSELF ********************************** Political leaders prefer dupes to dissidents. * The plea of not guilty may be available to dupes but not to their deceivers. * Power corrupts, weakness castrates. * On the art of writing: the less art the better. * To write too much is not a sin; to discard too little is. #

Sunday, February 24, 2013 *************************************** TRUTH AND LIES ******************************** We love the truth and hate lies or so we say and like to believe. But truth is one and elusive and lies are real and without number. * The 99% don’t think. They let the 1% do the thinking for them. Until very recently the 99% didn’t even know they were 99%. * The 1% may know better but to know better is not the same as to know. The 1% is the most dangerous people on earth. * We are not survivors. We are dead men walking. So is all of mankind. * The real aim of justice is to legitimize injustice. Slavery and the torture of heretics were as legitimate undertakings as the massacre of innocent civilians was and continues to be today. * Our real enemies are not other people. Our real enemies are politicians beginning with our own. * Literature is powerless against propaganda. A ballpoint pen is not mightier than a tank. Writing is a waste of time. # Monday, February 25, 2013 ************************************************ ON BEING SMART AND PROGRESSIVE **************************************************** History is not written but rewritten, and rewritten history is a political tool. * Where politics enter, deceivers and dupes are sure to follow. * We like to believe we are smart and progressive and that it was these two attributes that allowed us to foresee the advent of Christianity as a universal religion. The question is: Why is it that we failed to foresee the Genocide? * Not only did we fail to foresee it, we also ignored the warnings of those who did. “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” some said; and “the Turks wouldn’t dare!” said others. * One is therefore compelled to conclude that being smart and progressive are not permanent but ephemeral conditions and worse: even the smart can be systematically moronized. * Now then, imagine if you can a political candidate running for office on a platform that says we are or have become a bunch of moronized dupes. My progressive instinct (whatever traces are left in me) tells me such a candidate will have a far better chance to be elected if he runs as a deceiver and treats his supporters as dupes by saying they are the opposite of what they really are– namely smart and progressive. # Tuesday, February 26, 2013 ************************************** HOMO IGNORAMUS ******************************** Turks are brought up to believe they are noble specimens of humanity and it is their patriotic duty to be proud of who they are. * Armenians are brought up to believe they are smart, progressive, civilized, compassionate and so on and so forth and an Armenian who is not proud of his identity must be classified as the lowest scum on earth. * More often than not conflicts and disagreements arise from the clash of two sets of lies as opposed to lies and the truth. The bigger the lies the more ferocious the disagreement. Hence Voltaire’s dictum: “Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.” * The biggest and most universal lie is to speak in the name of God (in theory) and to do the Devil’s work (in practice). * Religious and political leader may disagree on many important issues but they are unanimous in the necessity of brainwashing children and deceiving the masses. * More often than not our choice is not between a lie and the truth but between a lie and a bigger lie. # Wednesday, February 27, 2013 **************************************** THEORY AND PRACTICE ****************************************** God is love. Justice for all. All men are created equal. Generalities, abstractions, and theories are one thing, reality another. * The unspoken aim of all ideologies, belief systems, and political parties is to moronize the masses and turn them into dupes. * Justice favors the mighty. Justice is on the side of top dogs. Justice is with the more competent lawyer or dream team. Justice is for the 1%. Justice is anything but justice. Justice is full of holes. * Marxist theory contradicts Marxist reality. Communism is state capitalism. Or, in the words of a Polish slogan: "In capitalism man exploits man. In communism it’s the other way around." * To the 99% I say: Don’t be duped by the 1%; and it makes no difference if his first name is Serge or Raffi. # Thursday, February 28, 2013 ******************************************* THE MORE THINGS CHANGE… ******************************************* Nothing changes. Life continues to be one damn thing after another. Everybody tells a writer what to write and writers tell everybody what to think. Result: no one profits from the other’s advice. There you have it: a profile of our history and culture. * Our destiny as a nation has been shaped not by statesmen or philosopher-kings but by sultans, shahs, *****s, padishahs, czars, commissars, our own wheeler-dealers, and mass murderers like Abdulhamid II, Talaat and Stalin. The only variable in this equation has been the number of victims per year. * Will anything change in the foreseeable future? Can anyone see the distant glimmer of a light at the end of our endless tunnel? You say we have survived and we will continue to bugger on – or is it buggered on? You may call it survival if you are so inclined; I call it the death of ten thousand cuts. # Saturday, March 02, 2013 ************************************ ON PRIDE ************************ If proud Turks, Armenians, Americans, Germans, Greeks, Russians, Jews, and the rest of mankind were to spend five minutes reflecting on their own failings, blunders, and unsolved problems, they would have a thousand reasons to be humble and not a single reason to be proud. * If you were to say Russians could be proud of their literature, I would say, if we were to take a closer look at the lives of their great writers we would discover that most of them were persecuted, excommunicated, misunderstood, rejected, exiled to Siberia, murdered and on the whole treated the way most other nations, including Armenians, have treated their own great writers and thinkers beginning with Greeks and Socrates. * Why do nations treat their best and brightest abominably? The answer must be, because those in power are almost always hopeless mediocrities and moral midgets whose greatest enemy is excellence. To cover up their status as nonentities they preach, promote, and legitimize pride, that is to say, prejudice and contempt for others and ultimately hatred, war, and massacre. # Saturday, March 02, 2013 ******************************************** ON NATIONALISM ***************************** The first time I heard a Canadian say “We stole the land from the Indians fair and square,” and no one contradicted him, I remember to have thought: “So it is possible to be objective about one’s homeland without being accused of treason!” * One way to judge your degree of objectivity is to consider the distance that exists between your infantile illusions and adult convictions. The greater the distance, the more objective the judgment. * How did Urartu become Armenia? Was it marriage or rape? * An empire without plunder is like an omelet without eggs. * In the 19th century nationalism made perfect sense because it was an ideology that opposed imperialist oppression. * An infallible dupe is a contradiction in terms, and yet, there are so many of them! #Sunday, March 03, 2013 ************************************** HISTORY: WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN **************************************************** When Madoff and his most important clients were identified as Jews, my first thought was: “They trusted Madoff; they did not trust Jesus.” * Has anyone ever written an autobiography in which the stress is not on what was done but on what was not done out of ignorance, stupidity, and fear? Sartre came close with his memoir, WORDS, whose final message is: literature is a useless passion and writers are dreamers who hate to give their infantile illusions. * What happened to Urartu? Until the appearance of the Armens, Urartu was an empire that successfully resisted one of the mightiest military powers in the history of mankind, namely the Assyrians next door. * When the Armens appeared from the West they were either welcomed or tolerated; and that, in retrospect, may have been the worst political blunder Urartu made. * For unlike Urartians, Armens were not warlike and, to compound the felony, their sense of solidarity was deficient. Again unlike Urartians, they were not a single entity with its own clearly defined ethos and character, but a collection of wandering tribes that either refused or could not give up their tribal ways. The rest, as they say, is history. * And that is the kind of unwritten history I would like to read – a text in which the emphasis is on blunders as opposed to victories, be they military, moral, or imaginary. A text moreover in which all facts would be as clearly seen and accessible as traffic signs. # Monday, March 04, 2013 ************************************** ENCOUNTER WITH A PARTISAN ****************************************** One of our elder statesmen came to see me once. During the course of our conversation I noticed two things: (a) he didn’t agree with my definition of words, and ( he couldn’t stand being contradicted. At one pointed he even raised his voice and lost his temper reminding me of the Chinese dictum “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.” * I never saw him again. Shortly thereafter he died (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul). * Who among us will dare to suggest that (a) in political action we have been consistently guided more by reason and knowledge and less by emotion and ignorance; and ( emotion is a more reliable guide to action than objective judgment, knowledge, and understanding? # Tuesday, March 05, 2013 *************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************* Dashiell Hammett on speechifiers: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” * Syria today: what happens to a country whose leaders cease to think of themselves as public servants.” * Armenia today: Syria without the bloodshed. * A world without Turks: What a subject for an Armenian science fiction novel! * When God created angels, he also created devils, which may suggest God rates balance or equal opportunity above love, truth, mercy, and justice. * He who trusts liars cannot be an honest man. # Wednesday, March 06, 2013 ****************************************** AS I SEE IT ************************* Individually we have excelled in all fields of human endeavor; collectively we have developed the profile of useful idiots. For 600 years we were faithful servants to Turks and for 60 years little brothers to Russians. * To console ourselves we count the number of tribes, nations, and empires that have ceased to exist. * What matters in writing is to say what everybody thinks but refuses to say it. * No one knows all there is to know or, for that matter, knows enough to form an infallible opinion. * There is an old saying: “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see your enemy’s carcass float by.” The opposite is also true: the carcass may be yours and the fellow by the river your enemy. # Thursday, March 07, 2013 ************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* Our enemies come in all sizes and shapes but their favorite disguise is as Armenian political leaders. * At the beginning the Turks were few and we many… * I do my utmost to avoid my fellow Armenians. I can deal with them only in my writings which I do at a safe distance. * I became an atheist on the day I realized God was not on my side. * Of how many Armenians I could say, “To contradict is a temptation he cannot resist.” * Isolated voices of dissent have no effect on a brainwashed majority. * Madmen at the top outnumber madmen at the bottom. * We were defeated by our enemies, destroyed by our own leadership. # Friday, March 08, 2013 **************************************** PREDATORS **************************** With the blessing of a bishop, a regular paycheck from a boss or the financial support of a benefactor, any idiot can assert moral, intellectual, and patriotic superiority. There you have it: the profile of an average fund-raiser, Turcocentric ghazetaji, academic, speechifier and sermonizer whose main function is to brainwash children and to convince the masses that they never had it so good because they are in the best of hands. * In the 19th century we were “sheep without a shepherd” (Raffi). Today we are sheep at the mercy of wolves disguised as shepherds. * Our elites are the scum of the earth. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************* After we were overrun by barbarians we became barbarians. Some day we may be civilized. But that is only a hope and hope is not a policy. * To be an authentic Armenian means to be constantly engaged in shedding the impurities of alien cultures. * To paraphrase a Mexican saying: “Armenians: so close to Turkey, so far away from God. * “Because we hate to say we don’t know and we don’t understand, we have created gods, angels, devils, and life after death –a veritable Tower of Babel without foundations. * I don’t write for my friends; I write against my enemies beginning with myself. * People tend to be more fanatical when they are wrong. One could go further and say, fanatics are wrong even when they are right. # Sunday, March 10, 2013 **************************************** QUESTION ************************* The average patriotic Armenian sees himself through the eyes of our historians, speechifiers, and sermonizers. I see myself as a member of a perennially divided nation that has suffered a long series of defeats – some of them catastrophic – and continues to be at the mercy of corrupt and incompetent leaders who appear to be more interested in their own powers and privileges than in the welfare of the people. * Now then, gentle reader, tell me who is closer to reality? Who is more objective? Whose judgment is more to be trusted? Finally, who is more patriotic -- the dupe who believes everything he is told or the other, who thinks twice before saying “Yes, sir!” to someone whose number one concern is number one? # Monday, March 11, 2013 *************************************** AS I SEE IT *************************** To be objective means to ask: What if what others (including our enemies) think of us has more merit than what we think of ourselves? * “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.” PROVERBS, 23:9 * How could I have said or done that? Happy is the man who doesn’t ask that question at least once every day. * The longer I live the greater the distance between my countrymen and myself. * After the break-up of the Soviet Union, we are told, over a million Russians emigrated. Which raises the question: Is Armenia on its way to becoming a no-man’s land? # Tuesday, March 12, 2013 ************************************* SLAVES ******************* A thousand years of subservience to bloodthirsty tyrants has taught us to value pilaf and shish-kebab above ideas. We even have a popular saying to that effect that has been quoted to me on several occasions by my critics: “You cannot cook pilaf with words.” * If you say, “What choice did we have?” I will invite you to reflect on the following words of William Pitt: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” The creed of slaves! Some words are worth repeating even when they cannot produce a single spoonful of pilaf. * Mankind may be divided into masters and slaves and the ambition of every slave is to be a master. This has been said before but it bears repeating. Moral superiority is a fiction of our collective imagination. * An empty bag cannot stand upright. Likewise, an empty brain cannot be right. # Wednesday, March 13, 2013 **************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ********************************* Good laws are useless in a country of bad judges. * The truth is never in the lines but between the lines – unseen, unread, ignored. * Lies come in all sizes and shapes – small, white, big… and worst of all, propaganda. * Disagreements are almost always between dupes and opponents of propaganda. * Armenians and Turks agree on nothing because they continue to trust their propagandists more than their dissidents. * We are divided because we see all our hidden failings in the opposition. * I judge my success by my degree of popularity: the less popular I am, the better I feel. * We are not what we could have been. After centuries of subservience we are not even the shadows of what we could have been. # Thursday, March 14, 2013 **************************************** WORTH REMEMBERING ******************************** Two things that we forget at our own peril: (one) a belief system can be as misleading as a big lie; and (two) where there are sheep there will be wolves. * To have all the answers is a luxury only dupes and fanatics (but I repeat myself) can afford. * Our understanding of history is never finished, only interrupted. * There is a good reason why we prefer to speak more about the past and less about the present. We can blame the past on our enemies… # Saturday, March 23, 2013 *********************************** PROBLEMS ******************************************** The source of all our problems, too much history – and bad history at that. * Brainwashed dupes are blind to contradictions. They would be fully justified in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. * The road to hell is paved with propaganda. * Seeing the invisible and questioning the infallible – that indeed is the aim of literature. * Armenia’s destiny is now in the hands of thieves, liars, and brown-nosers. In short, nothing has changed and it’s business as usual. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* SATANIC RELIGIONS ******************************* When Salman Rushdie published his SATANIC VERSES many intellectuals, diplomats and politicians in the West sided with the imams who issued a fatwa (or contract) on him on the grounds that he was guilty of insulting “a great religion.” But there is no such thing as “a great religion.” It is a mistake to judge the magnitude of a religion by the number of its adherents or dupes. One could go further and say the greater the religion the greater the number of its victims, or crimes against humanity, or death of innocent civilians. Think of what’s happening today in Syria. And consider the number of victims of illegal abortions and AIDs in South America and Africa all because the Catholic Church refuses to sanction the use of condoms and legal abortions. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************* DANGEROUS WORDS ******************************** The two most dangerous words in the world: “I believe.” * Like most people I too was brought up to respect men of faith. I now view them as potential criminals without a conscience. * As a child I too subscribed to many fallacies one of them being all Armenians to be my friends. * Half-truths can be as dangerous as big lies. * Any one who claims to have found the truth is an enemy of mankind. * Once upon a time, for every faithful member of the Communist Party in Soviet Armenia, there was a “chic Bolshevik” in America who believed Russians to be our big brothers. Speaking of such a specimen a friend once said to me: “I don’t blame him. He was sincere in his beliefs.” I know now that to be sincere in one’s beliefs is the same as pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. * If you say “I know many men of faith who have harmed no one,” I say, when we speak of faith and belief systems in a historic context, we mean not the sheep but the wolves; we mean not the meek and the humble who believe what they are told but the policy-makers. * In a historic context the meek and the humble might as well be anonymous, irrelevant, and marginalized to the point of disappearance. # Monday, March 18, 2013 ************************************** A BILLION CATHOLICS ************************************ Q: There are a billion Catholics in the world, and yet you expect me to believe they are all wrong and you are right? A: Why not? There are a billion Muslims in the world and you expect me to believe they are all wrong. Q: You may have a point there… A: Listen, when it comes to belief systems, numbers are meaningless. All religions are minority religions. The overwhelming majority of mankind is neither Catholic nor Muslim but Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Mormon, and so on. Q: But you are against all of them, right? A: When it comes to belief systems I say to each his own. What I am really against is brainwashing children. I will go further and say I consider brainwashing children if not a crime against humanity than the source of intolerance and countless wars and massacres. # Tuesday, March 19, 2013 **************************************** GREAT IDEAS **************************** Great ideas are conceived by great men, implemented by nameless mediocrities, and perverted by faceless nonentities. That may explain why if a belief system preaches love it ends up practicing hatred; and if it preaches communism it ends up practicing state capitalism. * Sooner or later all belief systems and ideologies degenerate to the point of becoming their own contradictions because where power enters, greed is sure to follow; and when greed becomes the driving force nothing good survives. * Martin Luther was right when he said you don’t need the Pope to go to heaven; all you need is a copy of the Bible. But he was wrong when he failed to predict the advent of televangelists. * And speaking of bloodsuckers: Republicans tell us the 1% are job creators even when recent history tells us they are job killers; and if they create jobs they are not motivated by altruism but by self-interest, that is to say, greed, and where greed enters catastrophe is sure to follow. * I therefore feel justified in saying, if you ever come up with a great idea, mankind maybe better off if you keep it to yourself. # Wednesday, March 20, 2013 ************************************ FOR THE RECORD ****************************** Q: Let me begin by quoting some of your critics. Are you a denialist? A: No! Q: A self-hating Armenian? A: I can’t say I am particularly fond of myself, no. Q: Why not? A: Because like most Armenians I allowed myself to be moronized by morons. Q: Do you hate Armenians? A: Only the shish-kebab and pilaf variants, Turcocentric ghazetajis and their dupes. Q: Turcocentrism: could you define the word for us, please? A: The misconception that all our problems begin and end with Turks. Q: Isn’t the recognition of the Genocide a central issue? A: So is the responsibility of our leadership that promised freedom and our historic lands and delivered the hell of massacres followed by dispersion, division, alienation, and assimilation or bloodless slow-motion genocide. It seems to me, it is dishonest to emphasize their responsibility and cover up our own. Q: How do you explain our survival? A: You call it survival; I call it the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts. Q: So far you have said nothing positive. A: The only positive I can think of is our literature. Notwithstanding the fact that our ablest writers were either systematically slaughtered or silenced for refusing to moronize the people by recycling the propaganda of foreign and domestic apes, they carried on. They are our greatest heroes and our only hope. # Thursday, March 21, 2013 ***************************************** ON GOLDEN AGES ****************************** The trouble with golden ages is that they don’t last and they are not even golden. This is as true of the Greek Golden Age (5th century BC) as it is of our own (5th century AD). As for the American Golden Age: they don’t have one. Their brief history may be divided into two distinct periods: barbarism and neo-barbarism -- (I am now paraphrasing better men than myself). * Both Socrates and Dostoevsky were condemned to death for exercising their fundamental human right of free speech. The execution of Socrates was carried out; Dostoevsky’s wasn’t because seconds before the execution the Czar sent a messenger with a pardon. The experience so traumatized Dostoevsky that he became more Czarist than the Czar. In today’s parlance, he was born again as a member of the Tea Party. * As for our treatment of our own writers: it has been more Ottoman and Stalinist than Armenian. Like the rest of mankind we too appear to be infatuated with our own limitations, prejudices, and ignorance. * American writers are seldom silenced by repressive administrations; they prefer to silence themselves by committing suicide or becoming alcoholics or drug addicts. # Friday, March 22, 2013 ************************************** WAR OF WORDS ******************************** Turcocentrism is a recent misconception or fallacy. It is absent in the works of Baronian and Odian, and more recently in Arlen and Saroyan. There is even a key passage in Saroyan where he states we should feel sorry for Turks. * Turcocentrism is less an ideology and more a tool of propaganda whose ultimate aim is to convince dupes there is nothing wrong with us because we are role models of what a nation should be – united against all enemies foreign and domestic and immune to corruption, therefore morally superior. It further states, whatever problems we have we must ascribe to Turks. If it weren’t for Turks we would now be living in our own Eden happily ever after. * To combat this propaganda line Turks have come up with their own whose aim is to convince their dupes that like all truly civilized and progressive people Turks are against violations of fundamental human rights, except when they do the violating; and they have always been against murdering defenceless civilians except when they do the murdering. # Saturday, March 23, 2013 ************************************** DEAD OR ALIVE? ************************************ The King is dead. Long live the King. Stalin is dead but Stalinists continue to rule. Jesus was crucified but supporters of crucifixion are very much alive. They may no longer use trees, hammers and nails but they exist as surely as racists in post-Civil War America. * Nothing bad ever dies. Moral progress is an illusion. There is no such thing as collective enlightenment. Instead of a single sultan we now have many mini-sultans, and we cannot say “Forgive them, Lord, for they don’t know what they are doing,” because they are too damn smart to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance. #

Sunday, February 17, 2013 ***************************************** US/THEM **************************** As a child I was told many things that as an adult I rejected. As a Catholic I was brought up to believe the only reason Martin Luther had divided the Church was to fornicate with a nun. * More often than not the hidden aim of all categories, differences, and labels is to assert some kind of phony superiority. * Shaw once said that the reason why he was successful in creating believable female characters is that he did not think of women as different from men. When the French say “Vive la difference!” I have every reason to suspect they have in mind only anatomical differences. * An old lady from Kharpert once told me they viewed women from Izmir (Smyrna) as sluts because they (Izmirtsis) used make-up; and a woman from Izmir once told me they view Kharpertsis as Kurds. For every label there will be a counter-label. * Native-born Armenians versus Diasporans (or aghber = white trash). As a non-native Armenian I suspect native-born Armenians to be former Bolsheviks, even Stalinists. * We are all brought up to look down on our fellow men for reasons that on closer inspection reveal themselves to be based on ignorance, prejudice, fear, and fallacies. I feel therefore justified to formulate the following categories of my own: human beings who view their fellow men and women as equals and dupes who suffer from a psychological aberration known as infantilism which consists in clinging to illusions, lies, and prejudices instilled in them when they could not yet think for themselves and whose hidden aim is to make them feel superior or privileged. # Monday, February 18, 2013 ******************************************* FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************* Why is it that people who view abortion as murder don’t see war as murder? * The Enlightenment did not put an end to the Dark Ages; neither did Christianity expose false gods. * Whenever a reader calls me pro-Turkish I know he has run out of arguments. If memory serves, it was Goebbels who said: “Making noise is an effective means of opposition.” * As a pessimist I hate to be right. * Because I make Armenianism (its cheap, loathsome variant) look hateful, I am accused of hating myself. * Be a dupe, join a group. * The contempt of idiots and fanatics is as valuable an asset as the affection of good men. * When Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is within you,” the rabbis thought, there goes my bread and butter. * Among us success is harder to survive than failure. * In real life all stories have an unhappy ending if only because at the end everyone dies. # Tuesday, February 19, 2013 ***************************************** ON PATRIOTISM ************************************* The most patriotic Armenian is neither the devout church-goer nor the dedicated partisan but an honest man. * If you can’t think of me as a critic (someone who exposes contradictions) think of me as the devil’s advocate. As far as I know no one has ever identified a devil’s advocate with the devil. * Where there is money there will be prostitution in one form or another; and where there is patriotism, there will be treason, and more often than not it will the real traitors who will accuse the real patriots of treason. * Armenians who criticize no one and nothing (except perhaps Turks and Kurds) will criticize critics and their favorite mode of criticism will be slinging mud in the hope that some of it may stick. * Our critics – and we have had our share of them – have made no difference in our collective existence probably because our idiots outnumber the rest 99 to 1. I may be wrong in this. The correct ratio may well be 98 to 2. # Wednesday, February 20, 2013 ****************************************** WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING ************************************** “In their place I would have done a better job.” That’s not what I have been saying. What I have been saying is having committed blunders I would not spend the rest of my life trying to cover them up in an effort to project a positive image. Neither would I declare myself to have been a proud member of the Communist Party (as Sylva Kaputikian is said to have done). or any other party, for that matter. Or having divided the community I would not portray myself as a statesman of vision whose number one concern is the welfare of the nation. Neither would I judge a regime or a power structure by the number of privileges and powers it bestows on me and to hell with everyone else. As for brainwashing children into believing we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands: I would consider that adding insult to injury and raising another generation of brainwashed idiots. Now then, go ahead and accuse me of making too many demands on our “betters” who may not be perfect but are doing their best under difficult conditions: and if you believe that you will believe anything! #

Thursday, February 14, 2013 *************************************** WHO LOVES ARMENIANS? **************************************** In his youth Zarian loved Armenians because he saw himself as a messianic figure and his fellow Armenians as a crucified nation. In his old age he saw himself as a victim of intolerance and envy, and he died with the conviction that he had been murdered. * Saroyan loved the whole world including Armenians but he couldn’t stand his own family including his half-Armenian son and daughter. * Michael (GREEN HAT) Arlen loved his fellow Armenians too but he warned his half-Armenian son to stay away from them. The son followed his father’s advice with only one interruption that lasted long enough for him to write PASSAGE TO ARARAT that became a best-seller. * Because I hate myself, some of my critics tell me, I am in no position to love or understand my fellow Armenians, and armed with that conviction they feel justified in calling me “son of a Turkish whore,” among other abusive terms. * I have noticed that Armenians who speak endlessly of love are the least lovable specimens and though I have tried very hard to love them I have failed. But that’s my fault rather than theirs. # Saturday, February 16, 2013 ***************************************** LIES, BIG LIES, AND CONTRADICTIONS ***************************************************** In politics don’t judge the man, judge the men behind the man. * The same Leonardo who said war is “pazzia bestialissima” (the most beastly madness) also designed war machines. * Even Jesus failed to unmask Judas until it was too late. * If Zohrab was Talaat’s dupe, who among us will dare to say he is nobody’s dupe? * One reason I keep coming back to dupes is that I have been one most of my life… with no end in sight. * If I were to make a list of Big Lies we believed in, I would begin with “The Turks would not dare to massacre us,” and end with “Russians are our Big Brothers.” * To preach love and legitimize hatred is a contradiction, and yet most religious leaders appear to be unaware of this fact. * Love of God (religion) and love of homeland (patriotism) have justified more crimes against humanity than hatred of the Devil. # Saturday, February 16, 2013 ****************************************** WHO LOVES ARMENIANS? (II) ************************************** There are systems of ignorance as surely as there are systems of knowledge and we choose both by the degree of flattery they contain. * Christians believe they are worthy of the Crucifixion, Jews believe they are the Chosen, and Muslim believe non-Muslims to be “infidel dogs.” * What about Armenians? To begin with we don’t much care about Turks, Kurds, Azeris, Georgians, “onion-head” Russians, and the so-called “civilized West” which fought its lousy World War I instead of coming to our aid. Neither are we fond of Protestants and Catholics even when they happen to be fellow Armenians. Native-born Armenians look down at Diasporans (“aghber”) -- I have myself been called “a piece of shit” by a fellow Armenian born and raised in the shadow of Mt. Ararat. * Who loves Armenians? Not even Armenians. As the popular refrain has it: “Mart bidi ch’ellank!” Literally: “We will never acquire the status of human beings.” #

Sunday, February 10, 2013 ****************************************** HOLY BOOKS ********************** We all have our own. To some it’s the Bible, To others the Koran, to still others the UPANISHAD. In my twenties my holy book was Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN in which there are endless arguments about all the important issues in life. The two fictional characters who engage in these arguments are Naphta (authoritarian, mystical, fascist) and Settembrini (a liberal humanist). The arguments are so convincingly done that at the end you cannot tell who is right and who wrong. * In my thirties my other holy book was Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS (volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY) in which ideas about the past, that is to say life, are carefully analyzed and discussed at considerable length. * It is to be noted that Mann’s character of Naphta is based on the famous communist critic and philosopher Lukacz with whom he was personally acquainted (Lukacz was later to write a book on Mann); and in RECONSIDERATIONS Toynbee quotes many of his critics except Hugh Trevor-Roper whose attack on him was so ruthless and rude that its intent was not to question Toynbee’s ideas but to destroy him personally. * Also to be noted, both Mann and Toynbee were great readers of the Bible. Mann even wrote his longest book, the tetralogy JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, based on an episode in GENESIS. * When told the Bible was written by the Holy Ghost, Shaw is said to have replied, “All books are written by the Holy Ghost.” What about LOLITA, one is tempted to ask. LOLITA too, Shaw would have replied (the book was published after his death) because THE SONG OF SONGS in the Old Testament fully qualifies as an erotic rhapsody in which, Hebrew scholars tell us, there is even talk of oral sex – obviously lost in translation. # Monday, February 11, 2013 ************************************* SOUND BITES *************************** * COMMON KNOWLEDGE ********************************* “The small state, racked by internal dissension, invites the foreign conqueror.” This is a line that occurs in a short story by Mary McCarthy. I quote it to point out the fact that far from being the best and the brightest, we are a cliché known by all except us. That’s how cunningly and thoroughly we have been brainwashed. * SUICIDE **************** Instead of blabbering endlessly about murder, we should speak of suicide by a thousand self-inflicted cuts. * THE ENEMY *********************** He who is his own worst enemy does not need an enemy. * THE WAY OF THE COMMISSAR **************************************** You don’t like what he says? Shoot him. You can't shoot him? Silence him. You can’t silence him? Call him “son of a Turkish whore.” * TRANSLATION *********************** “A government by the people for the people.” Translation: “A government by the mafia for the mafia.” * WORDS ******************** Instead of analyzing my words teach yourself to analyze your actions. Unawareness, according to Freud and Jung, is the source of all evil * PROPAGANDA ************************** The real aim of propaganda is not to misrepresent lies as truths but to moronize the people, and the most effective way to moronize the people is to call them seven times smarter than Greeks and Jews. # Tuesday, February 12, 2013 *************************************** CONTROL FREAKS **************************** The Pope telling Galileo what to think and imams telling women how to dress spring from the same source: ignorance, arrogance, and greed for power. * Unmask religion and expose the primitive in man. * If you cannot deal with reality, invent your own fiction. * A man of faith believes his faith to be infallible and with God on his side he can do no wrong. This fallacy has claimed more innocent lives than any other. * There are as many paths to God or Truth as there are human beings. To say otherwise is to legitimize intolerance and ultimately war and massacre. This is not theory but reality, that is to say, history. * The same applies to patriotism. There are as many variants of patriotism as there are patriots. To say, suggest, or imply that your kind of patriotism is better than mine or anyone else’s is to justify all kinds of aberrations, including crimes against humanity. * To say my faith, my God, my Truth and no other is to be on a path that leads not to God but to the Devil. # Wednesday, February 13, 2013 ******************************************* NOTES & COMMENTS ********************************* The phoniest Armenians are those who never miss an opportunity to assert their superior brand of patriotism. * As children we are taught big lies and forbidden to speak little ones. * Because I expose contradictions I am told I hate myself. * The biggest lies are fractions of the truth. * In a trial by jury, the function of the jury is not to separate the guilty from the innocent but to decide which side has the more competent lawyer. * Nationalist historians are not liars; they only emphasize the positive and cover up the negative. I know how that’s done because I have done it myself. See my ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY & CULTURE. #

Thursday, February 07, 2013 *************************************** NAMING NAMES ***************************** Q: You never name names. Why? A: In our environment naming names doesn’t work. Q: What do you mean it doesn’t work? A: Last time someone named names he was taken to court, his sources evaporated, he was found guilty, he suffered a stroke, and shortly thereafter he died. Q: His sources evaporated, how? A: They refused to testify in court. Q: Why? A: Obviously they didn’t want to lose their only source of financial support. Q: I see. A: That’s the way it has always been in our environment: those in power and the establishment in general have been invulnerable. This was true even in the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union. Even on the eve of the Genocide there were Armenians – and I don’t mean dupes -- who worked for the Ottoman and Soviet administrations, which means they supported the Sultan and the Young Turks. Krikor Zohrab, an eminent lawyer, diplomat, and intellectual leader was one of them – he was a close friend and supporter of Talaat who had him murdered in cold blood. I am myself personally acquainted with writers who make a comfortable living as secretaries of bishops. Do you think they will even consider testifying against their only source of income and start looking for another job? Who would hire them? Armenian writers are not exactly in great demand in today’s marketplace. But all that is theory. In reality it has never happened. We don’t have a system or cultural environment that supports individuals who place truth or principle above self-interest. And we have always had ruthless manipulators willing to take advantage of this situation. # Friday, February 08, 2013 *************************************** ON READING ************************** Q: What are some of the books you have reread more than twice? A: Lesley Blanch’s SABRES OF PARADISE, Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS (volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY), and Sartre’s WORDS. Q: A strange trio. A: I forgot Nabokov’s LOLITA, and of course Zarian whom I have translated into English, and to translate a book is equivalent to rereading it ten times if not more. There may be others but these are the ones that come readily to mind at the moment. Q: What is it about Zarian that fascinates you? A: His daring and uncanny ability to say what you almost think…and his unique grasp of reality. Q: What about books that have changed your worldview? A: Dostoevsky’s IDIOT, Turgenev’s FATHERS AND SONS, and Suzuki’s INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM, all of which I read as a teenager -- and Plato’s DIALOGUES. Also Shaw’s plays, or rather their prefaces which are longer than the plays themselves. And Thomas Mann’s MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Q: Do you have a favorite genre? A: All of them – fiction, essays, biographies, memoirs, diaries, conversations, crime novels, encyclopedias… everything but poetry. I don’t remember to have ever read a collection of verse from beginning to end. Isolated poems now and then, here and there, but Milton, Dante, and T.S. Eliot, no! As for Pushkin: I might as well be deaf, dumb, and blind. I have always suspected that in poetry manner is more important than substance. Q: Do you think Armenians read enough? A: Somewhere Zarian says that what Armenians preferred to read at the turn of the century in Istanbul were best-sellers like Zevaco and Eugene Sue – whom no one reads these days. I know Armenians who love books for purely cosmetic reasons, to make an impression on visitors. I am beginning to suspect an Armenians’ greatest enemy is neither the Turk nor his fellow Armenian but the written word. # Saturday, February 09, 2013 ************************************** FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE ********************************** Gandhi once said you can evaluate a civilization by the manner in which it treats its animals – and, I would add, its writers. If you make a list of our writers you will be astonished to discover an astonishing number of them were either silenced, ignored and exiled or betrayed to the authorities, murdered and committed suicide. * Armenia has been called “the cradle of civilization” by an Irish academic who enjoyed the financial support of the Gulbenkian Foundation, the wealthiest foundation in the world, it has been said. But it would be even more accurate to call it its grave. * And speaking of Gulbenkian: Why did he leave only 7% of his wealth to Armenians? Did he know something we don’t know? Did he guess that if he were to leave all his wealth to Armenians, 93% of it would end up in the wrong pockets? I am not casting aspersions, just asking question and searching for answers. #

Sunday, February 03, 2013 ****************************************** DEAD END ********************* If I criticize the 1% it’s because I am on the side of the 99%. If I don’t enjoy the support of the 99% it may be because the secret ambition of most of them is to join the 1%. * Freedom of religion also means the freedom to brainwash children. If we don’t see the harm in that it’s because we live in a world in which subservience is valued more than freedom, intolerance more than tolerance, revenge more than justice, and ultimately war and massacre more than peace and coexistence. * On the day we learn to think for ourselves we may have a better chance to achieve solidarity not only with our brothers but also with our enemies. * Always treat today’s enemy as if he were tomorrow’s friend. * If I am different it’s only because I rely more on my own thinking than on the thinking of empty suits and bearded charlatans who make a comfortable living by deceiving the defenceless and the ignorant. # Monday, February 04, 2013 ***************************************** SOUND BITES ******************************** If Christianity has legitimized intolerance, persecution, torture, war and massacre, can we really say “There are good religions?” * I don’t believe in optimism. Hell, I don’t even believe in pessimism. In pessimism we construct a narrative that makes sense. But evil is incomprehensible. So is reality. That’s why every historian creates his own version of the past. * Does it make sense to say what’s theirs is bad and what’s ours is good when that’s exactly what they say too? * If you make a list of writers who preferred exile to life in their own homeland, you may end up with a who’s who is contemporary literature. * Our reality is so unbearable that my objectivity is sometimes confused with self-hatred. * “When we kill them it’s good; when they kills us it’s bad.” What’s the difference between this mindset and the one expressed by an African tribal chieftain quoted by C.G. Jung in his memoirs: “When my enemy steals my wives, it’s bad; when I steal his it’s good.” * To those who say “I don’t agree with you. Human beings are better than that; so is life.” All I can say is: “Enjoy your innocence (or is it ignorance?) while you can. It won’t last.” * How often do I find myself saying: “I would have agreed with you thirty years ago.” # Tuesday, February 05, 2013 ************************************** COMMISSARS OF CULTURE *************************************** Q: Who are they? Could we have a definition? A: They are Armenians who know what must be said and done but who want someone else to do it for them. Q: Why? A: The obvious answer is, they don’t know. They only pretend to know. They are bluffing. Just like their role models in the USSR who trusted Stalin more than Solzhenitsyn. Our commissars today trust more our bosses, bishops, and benefactors than our writers. Q: Why do they? A: My guess is they believe literature to be a dead end. No money in it. No power. No future. Our history is clear on this point: To write for Armenians is a waste of time. Q: Knowing this you go on writing, why? A: A good question, but I have a better one for you: Why do Armenians who are brought up to believe they are smart, progressive and civilized choose to behave like inbred morons when it comes to politics and collective action? More precisely, why do they support our dividers and grave-diggers? Q: You must have an answer to that question. A: I don’t! Unless of course we say they behave like morons because they are in fact morons. Q: I wouldn’t describe that as a diplomatic explanation. A: Literature is not diplomacy. Neither is it a profitable enterprise unless of course you decide to write about the Middle Ages and the massacres. But that’s a subject for another conversation. # Wednesday, February 06, 2013 ******************************************* ON BEING AN ARMENIAN WRITER ******************************************** Q: What are some of the positives and negatives in being an Armenian writer? A: Positives? None! Negatives? To begin with you work for nothing; you are treated like an unemployed and unemployable misfit, a mental masturbator; morons take it upon themselves to tell you what to write and how to write it; and worst of all, you are dependent on the charity of swine. A: Aren’t you afraid that by using angry words you may run the risk of undermining your own objectivity? A: I am more than willing to take that chance. Those who are against me will be against me even if I were to speak like an angel. And I have every reason to suspect if so far Armenian writers have been ignored it’s because they were afraid to go down into the gutter where our self-appointed “betters” and their dupes live. Some day if these gentlemen are unmasked, they will be exposed as bottom-of-the-barrel egomaniacal sociopaths and bullies who operate on the assumption that they know better and our only option is to say “Yes sir!” Q: "The Sultan is dead, long live the Sultan?" A: That’s true for Ottomanized Armenians. For Sovietized Armenians it’s “Stalin is dead, long live our commissars!” Q: Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel? A: For me, no! For those who may follow me, maybe. You never know…anything is possible. And they say I am a pessimist. What the hell do they know? #

Thursday, January 31, 2013 ********** …AND SO IT GOES ********** The aim of politics is power. The aim of literature is understanding reality. When the two meet, literature loses. And when literature loses, murder, war, and massacre become inevitable. * Writers are dreamers? Yes, but only in so far as they think they can survive in a fascist environment. * The attitude of the average dupe towards literature? “He is a writer? An Armenian writer? He must be a daydreamer. Let’s have some fun with him.” * Armenians are different from Turks? In their treatment of dissent they might as well be identical twins. * Dupes rate the lies of propaganda above the truths of literature. * One reason why our dividers are more popular than our dissidents is that the IQ of the average Armenian is a negative digit; which is why he is constantly reminded he is smart. * One of my most dedicated readers is a Second-Amendment gun nut and racist who thinks he fully qualifies as a commissar culture and based on that assumption he issues daily memoranda reminding me that unless I follow instructions I will never amount to anything. * When reason meets prejudice, reason is bound to lose. So what else is new? Mart bidi ch’ellank. # Friday, February 01, 2013 ********** AS I SEE IT ********** Some lies are so transparent that they might as well be confessions. * There are no more deep truths, only platitudes in fancy uniforms. * There are Armenians today who are pro-Assad. I have met some of them myself. What’s next?– being pro-Talaat? * To those who demand that I explain my explanations, I say: I have already done so in the past and I will again in the future. * Toynbee:“Comprehension sometimes consists in just a correct understanding of questions that are unanswerable." # Saturday, February 02, 2013 ********** ON OUR 1% ********** Why did Raffi say “we are sheep without a shepherd”? Why did Avedik Issahakian call our leaders “brainless”? And why did Zarian call them “useless”? Were all three wrong or dupes of enemy propaganda? * Baruir Massikian, a successful lawyer in Egypt in addition to being a brilliant writer: as he lay dying in hospital he was approached by a delegation community leaders who suggested he leave his considerable wealth (he was a bachelor) to an Armenian educational foundation. His reply:“I’d much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.” Was he anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish?– two charges that are leveled against anyone who dares to refuse being a dupe. * Why do our academics prefer to write about the Middle Ages and the Genocide? And why is it that whenever someone tries to expose the corruption and incompetence of our 1% he is insulted by our superpatriots and experts on any given subject? * Please note that I am only asking questions. I am not making dogmatic assertions whose sole intent is to divide the community into members of the club and alienated degenerates. * I repeat myself and the 1% does not? * In the opinion page of my local morning paper a pundit begins his commentary with the following words: “We live, breathe and exist in an age of apocalyptic uncertainty.” If you were to ask one of our pro-establishment propagandists, my guess is he would say: “We never had it so good because we are in the best of hands.” #

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 ***************************************** SMART ARMENIANS ********************************** A smart Armenian is first and foremost a self-assessed Armenian and in all self-assessments propaganda speaks louder than reality. * Whenever I speak of reality I am accused of being pro-Turkish probably because for 600 years our reality was not ours but theirs. When it came to the most important decisions in life, it was they who made them. We had no choice but to say “Yes, sir!” They dished it out and we took it. And when our revolutionaries decided to change that, we all know what happened next: reality turned against us. * How long before we create our own reality? My only tentative answer: I may not live long enough to see it. * I have dealt with many self-assessed smart Armenians and they were all idiots. So was I for most of my life. Everything I say about Armenians is based on self-analysis. * Gentle reader: If you think what I say does not apply to you because you are different, I am more than willing to apologize. Every rule has its exceptions. I have even heard it said that it is exceptions that certify the legitimacy of a rule. My hope is that really smart Armenians will decide to step forward and get involved in our community affairs instead of conducting an underground existence. * Did I say really smart Armenians? Strike that. Make it honest Armenians. Because it doesn’t take a high IQ to see that we are on the wrong path and on our way to the devil. * A warning: If you are an honest Armenian and decide to be pro-active, don’t be surprised if accusations of pro-Turkish sympathies are hurled against you by moronized self-assessed Armenians. # Monday, January 28, 2013 **************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ************************************** Propaganda is as addictive as nicotine, alcohol, and opium. * The hidden message in all propaganda is, what you think is right and anyone who dares to disagree with you is an enemy agent. * Now Barabbas was a publisher and Cain a fascist. * Speechifiers and sermonizers end up believing in their own speeches and sermons. Arguing with them is like trying to enlighten a source of light. * There are times when I get so depressed by my fellow countrymen that the thought of death cheers me up. * Dissent means questioning the integrity of individuals who believe in their own infallibility. * Propaganda sticks to children like crazy glue. # Tuesday, January 29, 2013 ************************************ IRRELEVANCE ******************************** Even in a land of the brave and the free there will be cowards and slaves; and if not slaves to human masters than slaves to ignorance, prejudice, and lies. * Our men at the top know that the best way to avoid international scrutiny is by achieving irrelevance, and irrelevance is thrust on some as greatness is thrust on others. * Who after all gives a damn about Armenia? Not even Armenians. Who gives a damn about our 1,500,000? Not even Obama. Who gives a damn about our ongoing “white genocide” (exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)? Not even our superpatriots who prefer to speechify about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. * God’s existence is as great a mystery to me as the Devil’s? # Wednesday, January 30, 2013 ***************************************** JESUS, MARX, FREUD ******************************** All of Freud may be said to be an expansion of the Biblical dictum: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Or, the resolution of all your inner conflicts and contradictions are in your unconscious. * When Marx said “I am not a Marxist,” he was in a way questioning the legitimacy of all ideologies or closed systems of thought. * Einstein proved that all our fundamental assumptions about time and space are wrong; nothing is what it seems; a great deal of reality may be comprehensible but not everything. There are things we may never understand and explain. * What has been the most important contribution America has made to the world? Double-talk. To assert “All men are created equal,” and with the full cooperation of the Church to legitimize slavery. * What about Armenian contributions? Inbred morons pretending to be smart. * If the Kingdom of God is within you, so is the Empire of the Devil. #

Thursday, January 24, 2013 ************************************** WHY DO I GO ON WRITING? ************************************ That’s a question I ask myself again and again and I always come up with an answer that may make sense to me but no one else. * I write to settle a score, beginning with myself. I feel partly responsible for our leadership. I supported it for a number of years. I kissed its ass when I should have kicked it. * Our divisions go so far back in history that they have become invulnerable to dissent and criticism. It is also true that if a system is rotten it will fall if not tomorrow than the day after. Isn’t that what happened to monarchy, fascism, and Stalinism? * The reason our divisions have survived is that we have lived on the margins of history; and they have not so much survived as they have become, in Toynbee’s classification, fossilized. They are dead men walking. Case in point: by failing to unite the Armenian vote in America, our leadership has condemned itself to be a silent scream. No American presidential candidate will ever take us seriously so long as we divide our vote evenly between Republicans and Democrats. * As for our Turcocentric ghazetajis who pretend to be defenders of the Cause: so far all they have succeeded in doing is drive the Cause to a dead end. Their unspoken or real aim is not to get justice but to cover up the incompetence of the empty suits they work for. * A final note on Turks: they are not all butchers and murderers; they have their share of both as surely as we have our share of traitors, collaborators, and cover-up artists, # Friday, January 25, 2013 ***************************************** PARADOX *********************** We think with someone else’s thoughts and we believe by adopting someone else’s belief system. When it comes to the two most important things in life – thinking and believing, or that which makes us human -- we are more like apes than men. I think therefore I am not. * Our disagreements and conflicts are not ours but someone else’s. Neither are our wars. Only our victims may be said to be ours. * Absurdity is not a philosophical abstraction; it is embedded in our daily existence. * Question all certainties. Reject all dogmatic assertions. And never forget that what you borrow is not yours. # Saturday, January 26, 2013 *************************************** AS I SEE IT *************************** Our most popular school of criticism consists in slinging mud (such as pro-Turkish) hoping some of it will stick. * Identifying blunders in others can be useful only if it may help us identify our own. * Thirst for fame is the surest symptom of mediocrity. * Only pathological liars with political ambitions rewrite history in order to project a positive image. * A book is called bad or dangerous if it proves what you believe to be true is a lie. #

Sunday, January 20, 2013 *************************************** LIFE AND LITERATURE ********************************** Sartre is right. Literature saves no one. As a boy I entertained messianic ambitions. I know now that I cannot even make a discernible contribution to its salvation. * All I have been doing so far is drop a tiny pebble – or is it a feather – in the ocean of our millennial literature. * Compared to the sum total of my predecessors – from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi and from Abovian to Zarian – I am nothing. If they made no difference, can I ever hope to do any better? * Why do I go on writing? The only answer I can come up with is, to kill time and in the process to make a handful of friends who see things as I do. * The human body consists of billions of tiny particles working in harmony. There is life after death provided we don’t identify life as consciousness. * How much of “me” is in the cosmos? Or rather, how much of the cosmos is within me? Everything except my consciousness. If asleep I keep only a fraction of my subconscious (namely, the part that dreams) dead I keep nothing or the same degree of awareness before I was born. * Eternity exists but not as “I” but as something entirely different. How different? We will have the answer to that question only after we die. # Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ****************************************** PARANOIA ********************** For repeating what far better men than myself have said in their effort to solve our problems I am described as a pro-Turkish enemy. * They say nations have the leadership they deserve. No one deserves our leaders except perhaps Turks. * Propaganda is the opium of the people. * Where the dominant mindset is shaped by propaganda, there can be no progress, only gradual decline. * What a book one could write titled: ARMENIANS: SLAVES, VICTIMS, DUPES. * To be infatuated with one’s own prejudices is like compounding a felony. * The history of our literature is clear on this point: We don’t hate those who deceive us, only those who try to enlighten us. # Tuesday, January 22, 2013 ****************************************** REFLECTIONS **************************** There is nothing wrong in saying you were wrong. It means you are willing to move in the right direction. * An unspoken Armenian motto: “If you cannot reason, make a noise.” * A verbal avalanche is not always a valid counter-argument. * Depth and a facility with words are mutually exclusive concepts. * In our environment the more arguments you win the more enemies you make – enemies who will call you pro-Turkish because they cannot think of a worst insult. * We owe all wars and massacres to the propaganda of the 1%. # Wednesday, January 23, 2013 ************************************ AS I SEE IT ************************ If I believe in the absence of God I must also believe in His presence elsewhere. * In an environment where belief in propaganda is the norm, criticism of propaganda will be seen as a capital offense. * When I said I had been a dupe most of my life, a reader demanded: “How do you know you are not one today?” I don’t, and the moment you help me unmask my deceiver I may have a better chance to see the light. * The true atheist is not he who denies His existence but he who speaks in His name. * Dupes come in all sizes and shapes. In the latest issue of PARIS-MATCH I read the following headline: “Even Steve Jobs, creator of Apple, was victimized by a medical charlatan.” * You can recognize a charlatan by the fact that he proceeds from a position of infallibility. #

Thursday, January 17, 2013 ************************************** PHOBIA ************************** Because I am against divisions and dividers on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” I am identified by some readers as an enemy motivated by “self-hatred.” The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say but to discharge verbal manure – in the words of one such critic from the Homeland: “You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!” * The fact is, our dividers divide us not because they think divisions are good for us or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas but because that’s how they make a living. Divisions are their bread and butter in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige. To attack their source of income or to expose them as charlatans, as they see me doing is almost to condemn them to starvation. * If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché, fear of starvation must be a phobia shared by all dividers who must know they can’t fool all the people all the time and anyone who can think for himself will sooner or later identify them not as the saviors of the nation but as its gravediggers. # Friday, January 18, 2013 **************************************** EXTRAPOLATING ********************************** Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it. It’s much worse! If for a hundred years after our genocide we have failed to develop a consensus, can we even dare to hope that some day jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs? * We live in a world where everyone thinks everyone else has been brainwashed and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation. In such an environment World War III, that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable. This is now as clear to me as daylight. What is the solution? There is none! * When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus. And when Armenian meets Armenian – you may now draw your own conclusions. The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind and by the time our superpatriots realize we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text it will is too late. * In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world has already committed murder and suicide in the name of a dehumanized god that rules over a dehumanized mankind. * There is a 1952 French film titled NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins). If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution on one level and World War II on another. I know now that it deals with the world in which we live. # Thursday, January 17, 2013 ************************************** PHOBIA ************************** Because I am against divisions and dividers on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” I am identified by some readers as an enemy motivated by “self-hatred.” The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say but to discharge verbal manure – in the words of one such critic from the Homeland: “You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!” * The fact is, our dividers divide us not because they think divisions are good for us or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas but because that’s how they make a living. Divisions are their bread and butter in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige. To attack their source of income or to expose them as charlatans, as they see me doing is almost to condemn them to starvation. * If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché, fear of starvation must be a phobia shared by all dividers who must know they can’t fool all the people all the time and anyone who can think for himself will sooner or later identify them not as the saviors of the nation but as its gravediggers. # Friday, January 18, 2013 **************************************** EXTRAPOLATING ********************************** Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it. It’s much worse! If for a hundred years after our genocide we have failed to develop a consensus, can we even dare to hope that some day jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs? * We live in a world where everyone thinks everyone else has been brainwashed and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation. In such an environment World War III, that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable. This is now as clear to me as daylight. What is the solution? There is none! * When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus. And when Armenian meets Armenian – you may now draw your own conclusions. The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind and by the time our superpatriots realize we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text it will is too late. * In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world has already committed murder and suicide in the name of a dehumanized god that rules over a dehumanized mankind. * There is a 1952 French film titled NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins). If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution on one level and World War II on another. I know now that it deals with the world in which we live. # Saturday, January 19, 2013 ***************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ***************************** The shortest list in the world, that of Armenian statesmen. * The least quoted document in the world: the Armenian Constitution. Speaking for myself, I don’t even know if it has a single Amendment. * How many Armenians? Hard to say. What if most Armenians are ashamed to identify themselves as Armenian? * More often than not Armenian readers disagree less with my ideas and more with my right to think. * Where there is too much propaganda there will be too little free speech. * Silence reason and usher in insanity. Silence dissent and tyranny is sure to follow. * An Armenian is a white Negro to another Armenian. * Some of my readers want me to write about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat and nightingales serenading the moon so that they can safely ignore me. * Two recent books of great photographs: KARSH: BEYOND THE CAMERA, Selected with an Introduction and Commentary by David Trevis, and KALOUST: RETROSPECTIVE (Toronto Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society). #

Sunday, January 13, 2013 *********************************** ACTION ********************* We didn’t have to rise against the Sultan to topple him: the Young Turks were going to do that for us. As for the Young Turks: Kemal was going to deal with them in his own time. And Kemal had his own nemesis and killer: booze. * We were wrong again when more recently we adopted Palestinians as our role models and engaged in random acts of assassination. * When I say “we” I don’t mean the majority of the people who after long centuries of subservience under brutal tyrants learned to wait, but a non-representative group of self-appointed “freedom fighters” (in their own version of the story) and terrorists (as others, not all of them odar, saw them). * For once history was on our side but we were too blind to see it; and “when the blind lead the blind…” * Moral: Sometimes inaction is the best action. * Moral II: “Nothing can be as terrible as ignorance in action.” # Monday, January 14, 2013 ************************************** RECAPITULATING ******************************* In politics and diplomacy objective judgment is better than emotional involvement. The Brits are right: there are no friends and enemies in politics; only interests. * Anger is a short madness. So is hatred and in general all emotions that cloud and distort one’s judgment. * There are two kinds of leaders: the competent and the incompetent. Avedik Issahakian is right: we have been cursed with earthquakes, a bad neighborhood, and fools as leaders. * The astonishing ease with which a fool will convince himself or allow himself to be brainwashed to believe he is smart. * Memo to our leaders: Unless you study history and learn from your blunders, you will be a curse not a blessing to you nation. * Our enemies, our real enemies are neither Turks nor Russians but Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians. * Q: The brainwashed: are they men or apes? A: Apes who speak like parrots. * In an article dealing with the leadership of native Indians in Canada I read the following words in this morning’s paper: “mismanagement, misappropriation, incompetence and poor accountability.” Poor Indians. Poor Armenians. # Tuesday, January 15, 2013 ***************************************** CALLING A SPADE A SPADE *********************************** All power structures engage in propaganda, including the Catholic Church. As a child I once met Cardinal Aghajanian who handled Vatican’s propaganda department– identified as “propagation of the faith.” He was a sweet old man, all smiles and small talk. * The aim of propaganda is to legitimize political gangsterism by moronizing the masses. Like all Armenians I have been exposed to my share of speechifiers who engaged in partisan propaganda. It didn’t even occur to me to question their integrity. * Propaganda and commercial advertising might as well be twins. The aim of advertising is to sell more products by emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative, like cancer in tobacco. * The hidden aim of political propaganda is to raise another generation of killers. * Dupes of propaganda come in all sizes and shapes, including highly intelligent men with impeccable credentials. Two cases from the Vietnam era that come readily to mind: George Romney (a governor as well as a presidential candidate, very much like his son Mitt) and Robert McNamara, one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.” Romney admitted publicly to have been “brainwashed” (his word) and McNamara acknowledged his blunder in his war memoirs. * Remember, no one can claim a monopoly on truth. If you want to be born again as a human being as opposed to a moronized dupe, reassess periodically your fundamental assumptions and the dogmas of your belief system. # Wednesday, January 16, 2013 **************************************** STATUS QUO ************************* Three generations of our ablest men have lived and died trying to solve our problems. Result? We now have a generation of dupes who believe we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands and that our greatest problem is a handful of malcontents whose sole aim in life is to promote gloom and doom, pessimism, negativism, and defeatism. * And then there are the brainless who think (if you will forgive the overstatement) just because they have a computer they are also entitled to have an opinion. Or, in the words of an eminent Canadian poet (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul) “just because they have an asshole, they must also have an opinion.” * To say we are free to subscribe to a belief system of our own choice even when it is a false one is like saying we are free to choose slavery. Or again, if I believe my lie to be the truth, no one is in a position to tell me otherwise because I know what’s best for myself. * When this kind of mentality because the dominant mindset, genocide becomes not a possibility but a certainty. * When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned “This time they will slaughter us indiscriminately,” they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” thus implying they knew better. What has changed? #

Thursday, January 10, 2013 **************************************** SURVIVORS ************************ To understand history you must first understand the history of historians and their criteria for selecting facts. * The Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse: a regime of degenerate sultans, ruthless bloodthirsty buggers clinging to power by massacring innocent civilians by the thousand. Can you imagine anything more repulsive? – except perhaps a regime of former KGB agents. * It is to be noted that sultans were both political as well as religious leaders -- the equivalent of emperors and popes. My question is: why would a religious leader need a harem of a thousand concubines most of them, like himself, the offspring of “infidel dogs"? * The hardest thing in the world: to be an Armenian without making enemies. The easiest: to make enemies – enemies who have no interest in understanding what you are saying and why you are saying it. What they hate more than anything else, it seems, is your right to say what you think. * We fool ourselves when we say we are survivors. The real survivors are the Sultan and Stalin. # Friday, January 11, 2013 ************************************ NATIONAL HONOR ******************************* When was the last time any one of our former KGB agents in the Homeland and merchants in the Diaspora dared to utter the words “national honor”? * Thomas Jefferson: “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” * Now listen to our Raffi saying the same thing with fewer words: “Merchants are men without a country. Profit is their only homeland.” * Instead of Goya Aivazovsky; and instead of Shostakovich, Khachatourian. * Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” * If I am a second-rater it may be because our first-raters have been systematically silenced by KGB agents and merchants. Armenian literature has been an endless war on two friends. * They don’t like what I say because I don’t write what they think. They think? Strike that. Make it, “they think they think.” * They resent me because I refuse to behave like their unpaid secretary taking down their unspoken words. * An American on America, a Russian on Russia, a German on Germany: Don’t expect to hear the truth unless of course they are dissidents: Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Mann. # Saturday, January 12, 2013 ************************************ FASCISTS ******************** When Hitler lost World War II he blamed it on the German people. That’s the way it is with all fascists – they never make mistakes. * When Romney lost the election he at no time blamed it on his ineptitude and verbal blunders. * To this day our own revolutionaries expect us to believe their operation was a success even if the patient died. * Turks worship Kemal and they have every right to: after degenerate sultans any half-assed boozer and fornicator would be seen as a great statesman worthy of universal adulation. * The common language of all political leaders is the same – propaganda, based on the assumption that the masses are so dumb that they will believe anything they are told. * To this day Jews believe they are the Chosen; Brits believe they were born to civilize the rest of the world; and Armenians believe they are smart. * Speaking for myself: I believe only idiots fall for a propaganda line that flatters their vanity. On the day this is understood, mankind will be born again. #