ara baliozian

BULLIES *********************** In their efforts to make me feel as a failure (as if I were unaware of the fact) some of my gentle readers enjoy reminding me that I have failed to changed anything (as if I didn't have eyes with which to observe the disaster area that is our collective existence) – notwithstanding the fact that I have said again and again that it is not my intention to change anything; and if some day a miracle happens and things change, I will not think that it was as a result of my efforts and the efforts of far better men than myself beginning with Movses Khorenatsi…. I write not to change things but to give our bullies something to think about, to have second thoughts, so to speak, to hesitate before they make a spectacle of themselves; and even if they hesitate for a fraction of a second, I shall consider my mission accomplished. That may be a very poor substitute for justice, granted; but it is better than the total triumph of ignorance over knowledge, and it is less than the unconditional surrender of honesty to charlatanism. To those who say: "If a bully wants to make an ass of himself in public, why obstruct his path? Why do him that favor? Let him go ahead and make an ass of himself and let us enjoy the spectacle by having a good laugh!" Again, I doubt if I have the power to obstruct anyone’s path. A bully will be a bully and he will continue to make an ass of himself in public. All I may succeed in doing is introducing a tiny worm of doubt in his mind (if you will forgive the overstatement); so that next time he insults, threatens, or brags he may ask himself: "What if I am exposed as a coward or an ignoramus or a phony?"

Sunday, March 17, 2002 ***************************** 1. Even a Turk can love another Turk who agrees with him, or flatters his vanity, or kisses his ass…. 2. We are not as smart as we think we are, and they are not as dumb…. Neither are we as progressive, civilized, tolerant, Christian, and lovable as we would like or we pretend to be. 3. A reader comments: "Your message hasn't changed during the last twenty years that I have been reading you; neither has our situation." The same could be said of the message of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors; or sermonizers, speechifiers, and propagandists. And what about our Genocide and Hai Tahd? After hundreds of books, thousands of articles, and millions of dollars, how many minds have we been successful in changing during the last hundred years? And what about the law of the jungle after two thousand years of Christianity? 4. To recycle propaganda means to allow others to do your thinking for you; which also means to abdicate your responsibility as a human being and to repudiate one of the most precious possessions that God or the forces of the universe have endowed you: your brain.

HOOLIGANS, ORIENTAL CARPET DEALERS & GRANDMOTHERS ************************************** 1. God save the nation whose hooligans are commissars of culture (self-appointed), Oriental carpet dealers are statesmen (self-assessed), and grandmothers its main source of wisdom. 2. What happens to a commissar of culture after he is successful in exterminating culture? It depends: if he is a Russian, he goes out of business because the Empire collapses; if he is an Armenian, he becomes an expert on any given subject and acquires messianic ambitions. 3. What happened to Armenian literature after the generation of Oshagan, Zarian, and Shahnour? To put it more bluntly: Why are Armenian writers on the list of endangered species, perhaps even extinct? Because to be an Armenian writer means being dependent on the charity of swine and being exposed to the verbal abuse of hogs. 4. Why so many grandmother stories? I once asked Dr. Leo Hamalian, editor of ARARAT Quarterly. "Because," he explained, "grandmothers have played a central role in our consciousness." That explains the general senility of our present state, I thought. 5. Some very strange things happen when man meets computer: a partisan turns into Napoleon, a skinhead sermonizes like a bishop, a peddler pontificates like a national benefactors, a prince turns into a toad, and an Armenian into a Turk – but never the other way around.

THE GENOCIDE: AS I SEE IT ************************************ 1. The problem with Genocide historians and historians in general is that they rely too much on official documents, diplomatic exchanges, statistics and press reports, and tend to ignore the complexities and nuances of the real situation -- a situation that was the result of six centuries of coexistence. 2. In Krikor Zohrab’s and Zabel Yessayan’s realistic fiction and autobiographical writings, for instance, the educated Turks and the educated Armenians might as well be interchangeable, and the Turks appear to be as deeply concerned about justice and human rights issues as the Armenians. By contrast, in Voskanian’s, Baronian’s and Odian’s writings, Armenians are depicted as arrogant, vain, greedy, and intolerant quasi-Turks. 3. The Genocide was provoked and perpetrated by outsiders and more particularly, by Armenians from Tiflis and semi-Turks from Salonica whose grasp of the real situation ignored all nuances and complexities; and what provoked the Turks was not Armenian demands for human rights but their territorial ambitions. 4. In the Zohrab-Chobanian correspondence, Chobanian’s warnings from Paris go unheeded. Like Roupen Sevag, Zohrab was sure in his understanding of the real situation and the Turkish temperament (even after the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 and 1909 massacres about which he wrote extensively). 5. When Raffi warned (long before the massacres – Raffi died in 1888) that the Armenians had no future in the Ottoman Empire, he too was ignored in the same way that Zarian’s warnings were dismissed by Charents, Zabel Yessayan and Totovents (all three victims of Stalin’s purges) as the ravings of a "bourgeois nationalist," which suggests that Armenian intellectuals are as open to dialogue as our political partisans.

Friday, March 15, 2002 ****************************** 1. Why is it that to most of us, being right is more important than being fair, or objective, or truthful? 2. When there are two or more theories or explanations, man will always choose the one that is more flattering to his vanity even if it is the least plausible. 3. History as written by ideologues or nationalists is another way of preaching to the converted. 4. Where the ego enters, lies are sure to follow. 5. On the day man learns to think against himself we will have a better chance to settle differences by means of dialogue and compromise as opposed to wars and massacres.

Neither philosophy, nor religion, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor interest will ever govern nations or parties against their vanity, their pride, their resentment or revenge, or their avarice or ambition. --John Adams

QUESTIONS ( or DZOUR NESDINK, SHIDAG KHOSINK) ****************************************** 1. Oshagan said: "Our revolutionaries didn't have a chance because they formed only tiny islands in an Ottoman sea." My question is: Did we have to suffer a genocide to make that earth-shaking discovery? 2. Zarian said: "Our political parties have been of no political use to us." We have been blabbering about Hai Tahd and historic Armenia for the last hundred years without annexing a single inch of soil. What are our chances that in the next hundred years the world will see the light and say: "Historic Armenia belongs to Armenia!" and the Turks will agree? 3. If we are smart and Turks are dumb, why is it that Zohrab (one of the smartest Armenians that every lived) saved Talaat’s life by risking his own? 4. If Turks are evil, why is it that Roupen Sevag said to his German fiancée: "You don't know Turks. Deep down they are nice folk." 5. If we didn't have a chance then, do we have one now? 6. Can we learn from our past blunders without admitting them first? 7. If we were right and the rest of the world wrong, do we have the qualifications to reform the world or, for that matter, the Great Powers and Turkey?

several readers have asked me where they can get a copy of Kardash's SAVAGE CHIC. The book was privately printed and no price is mentioned. Your best bet is to write to narek.com or abrilbooks.com

CLEOPATRA’S NOSE ***************************** Who or what makes history? We don't know. Nobody does. There are many theories, all of them controversial. If we say history is the will of God unfolding, then we must ask: Can a genocide be an expression of God’s will? If yes, what kind of God are we dealing with? If God is love, can He will evil? If we say great men make history, then what happens if an Oswald guns down a Kennedy? Does it mean an anonymous misfit today has as much power to make (or unmake) history as the most powerful man on earth? "When destiny has accomplished its purpose in me," Napoleon once said, "a fly may suffice to destroy me." Tolstoy believed history is the accumulation of many invisible forces. Pascal said Cleopatra’s character was not as decisive in the making of history as the shape of her nose. (Imagine, if you can, a Caesar or an Antony being seduced by a Cleopatra with a Karl Malden schnozzle.) If Helen had been blind in one eye, what would have been the shape of Greek history and literature (minus Homer who was blind in both eyes). The cover of a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine may have aroused more world sympathy for Afghan refugees than all the Afghan warlords put together. If some day Karabagh becomes an international diplomatic football and TIME or NEWSWEEK publishes on its cover the picture of a 14-year old Azeri refugee with piercing blue-green eyes, you can kiss Karabagh goodbye!

BEAUTIES ************************** In her READING CHEKHOV (New York, 2001), Janet Malcolm devotes several pages to a short story titled "The Beauties," whose central character is a 16-year old Armenian girl of such dazzling beauty that the narrator has a near-death experience. Writes Chekhov (as quoted by Janet Malcolm): "Whether it was envy of her beauty, or that I was regretting that the girl was not mine, and never would be, or that I was a stranger to her; or whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty was accidental, unnecessary, and, like everything on earth, of short duration; or whether, perhaps, my sadness was that peculiar feeling which is excited in man by the contemplation of real beauty, God only knows." In his SAVAGE CHIC, Kardash Onnig describes a similar experience in the presence of a 14-year old Armenian girl by the name of Nora: "Her eyelashes moved up and down like butterflies," he writes, "her eyebrows met like Frida Kahlo’s and she had a soft smile and a voice that could melt even my heart…. She stood there in the middle of the room with a proud smile…tears filled my eyes [and] through my tears I saw an angel thanking me." And I can't help thinking that whenever a friend of mine returns after a visit to the Homeland a born again patriot eager to dedicate his life to the welfare of his people he is moved neither by the landscape nor the deplorable conditions of his fellow countrymen but by an angelic apparition similar to those experienced by Chekhov and Kardash.

TRIBALISM IN ACTION ****************************** 1. After our Golden Age and Silver Age we must now be at the summit of our Garb Age – and as Zarian suggests somewhere, it’s not even garbage picked up from our own streets. In the Homeland we are at the mercy of neo-commissars; in the Diaspora, mini-sultans. 2. It is to be noted that the only time Onnig Kardash mentions Armenian writers in his diary (SAVAGE CHIC) is to say that they either promote racism (Zori Balayan) or they were murdered by their fellow Armenians (Charents, Baruir Sevag). 3. Another revealing detail from Kardash’s book: every Armenian tribe thinks of other tribes as second-class citizens. Armenians in Yerevan view Karabagh Armenians as descendants of Albanians, and Karabagh Armenians have an equally uncomplimentary view of Yerevantsis; and both view Armenians from the Diaspora as milch cows. Why should we be surprised if Greeks call Armenians Turkish gypsies and most odars cannot tell the difference between Armenians and Rumanians? 4. The nastier the person the more pronounced his need for flattery or everything that will cover up his nastiness.

TOO MANY DEMANDS ***************************** 1. In the mail today two Armenian weeklies. In one of them I read an editorial urging us to read more Armenian poetry. In the other I read an interview with an Armenian writer suggesting we organize more literary activities and lectures by Armenian writers. It seems to me that’s making too many demands on the community. All I ask is that we not bury writers when they are alive; let’s at least have the decency to wait until they are dead. 2. Whenever I see the photo of an Armenian writer in the company of a boss or bishop, I can't help thinking, "There goes the neighborhood." 3. The easiest thing in the world is to locate an expert (and to ignore a thousand others) who support your views and forever after to think that you are the alpha and omega of wisdom. 4. There is a type of loud-mouth arrogant idiot who will be silenced only by life, that is to say, the reality principle, that is to say, death. Words and ideas will have no effect on him. I believe in Gandhi’s dictum that "No one is beyond redemption," but I am also humble enough to admit that in the redemption business I happen to be a total failure.

SOLUTIONS ************************* Again and again we hear the cliché: "We know what our problems are. What we now need is solutions." When a dishonest man delivers that line, what he really needs is a solution that will not expose his charlatanism. When a chauvinist mouths that cliché, what he really wants is a solution that will allow him to continue thinking, feeling, and speaking like a loud-mouth racist ignoramus. When a partisan repeats that line, the only solution that he will find acceptable is to be told that every Armenian should join his party, drop his pants, and bend over. What is a solution? It is not a chemical compound or a verbal formula that if applied to our problems will usher in a new Golden Age. A solution is an idea and if you are in need of ideas read Plato or the Scriptures. Read political scientists, statesmen, thinkers. There are thousands of ideas out there. When it comes to ideas we might as well be millionaires starving in a supermarket. The only reason that we pretend to be in need of solutions or new ideas is that we have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by fools and fanatics whose sole aim in life is the acquisition of power rather than the welfare of the community and the nation.

MORE QUOTATIONS FROM KARDASH ONNIG’S "SAVAGE CHIC" ******************************************* "One day Rafig [a war hero] and I took eleven kids, ages six to sixteen, to a picnic. Rafig told the children the story of how he caught an Azeri with a mouth full of gold teeth (he always looked for the ones with plenty of gold teeth), tied the guy down, pulled all his teeth out, gave him a shovel to dig a deep hole while blood poured out of his mouth, then smashed his head with the shovel, cracking it open, and buried him in the hole. The kids all listened with fascination." *** "…an Armenian-American professor set out to walk from Lachin to Shushi, a distance that would take two hours to cross by car. Along the way he was invited to the home of a villager. In conversation the villager, having gotten quite drunk, began to tell of his heroic war days. And the two got into some argument about an issue. The Artsakhi got so physically abusive that the American was forced to take out his mace and spray it on his face. At that point the villager, blind with rage, asked his wife to get him a knife and he stuck it into the guest’s stomach and killed him." *** "Among the guests are 100 or so Diasporans from the United States, the Middle East and Europe. One after the other, pompous Armenian and Artsakhi academicians give speeches like orators, and if you listen to what they are saying it is total bullshit, propaganda and self-justification, naked lies."

Monday, March 11, 2002 ******************************* 1. A man with a big mouth doesn't need a rope to hang himself or a shovel to dig his own grave. 2. To qualify as a chauvinist in the eyes of a chauvinist not only must you kiss the establishment’s ass but his own. 3. If you think A and I think C, the truth may be in the neighborhood of B or somewhere beyond Z. 4. You say you are free but all I see when I look at you is the invisible ring in your nose and the harness on your back. 5. I don't know what’s it like teaching in a kindergarten but it can't be much different from writing for Armenians. All children are children but not all adults are adults. 6. When wolves and jackals rise to the top, vegetarians have no choice but to avoid them. Hence, our high rate of assimilation. 7. Whenever a phony is silenced, two more take his place. And I remember one of our elder statesmen’s advice: "Never explain. Never argue. F*** them!" To which I remember to have retorted: You mean I should follow the example of our bosses and bishops?"

Sunday, March 10, 2002 ********************************* 1. If I want to read about deep ideas and noble sentiments I consult the Scriptures or Plato. All I ask from an Armenian writer is honesty. We have too many brilliant intellects (most of them self-assessed, of course) but not enough honest men. Honest men like Kardash Onnig. 2. After witnessing a confrontation between a couple of sloppy garbage collectors and a fastidious old lady in Yerevan, Kardash Onnig quotes one of the men saying: "The Turks should have put an end to this Armenian race when they had the chance." [sAVAGE CHIC: A FOOL’S DIARY OF THE CAUCASUS, page 22.) Now, we have all had similar feelings at one time or another, but how many of us has had the courage to say so? 3. In the U.S. you have the heroes of September 11 and you also have the bloodsuckers of Enron. It is the same with us. With one difference. Our bloodsuckers continue to be in charge of our destiny. 4. The only way bloodsuckers can survive and prosper is by pretending to be more patriotic than the rest of us. 5. If you mention bloodsuckers in the presence of bloodsuckers, you can be sure of one thing: they will accuse you of anti-Armenianism.

AN HONEST ARMENIAN *********************************** "As for the 200,000 Artsakhis who once called Mountainous Karabagh home, only 100,000 sill live in liberated Artsakh today. Those who escaped did not do it out of fear of Azeris, but out of fear of their crazed fellow Artsakhis…. Armed with religious bigotry and raw animal instinct that has no conscience, no mind, no intellect, no spiritual consciousness or simple common sense, these are people at their most primitive animal state. They can kill with their bare hands, wash their hands in a brook, eat khorovadz and have sex afterwards." I am quoting from a book titled SAVAGE CHIC: A FOOL’S CHRONICLE OF THE CAUCASUS by Kardash Onnig (133 pages, Privately printed: P.O.Box 145, Stanfordville, NY 12581). Born in the Middle East, now living in New York, Kardash Onnig is an artist who in 2001 spent five months in Artsakh as an artist-in-residence. SAVAGE CHIC is a diary, a travelogue, a meditation on what it means to be an Armenian ("Armenians and Armenian culture continue to evolve… a traditionalist Armenian is a dead Armenian"). SAVAGE CHIC IS an honest book by an honest Armenian. When was the last time I wrote such a phrase (an honest book by an honest Armenian)? I don't remember. My guess is, this is the first time. I urge everyone to read it. I would like to quote entire pages but that would be unfair to the author and his editor (Ishkhan Jinbashian). Allow me to conclude with another brief quotation which speaks volumes: "I have served children in America, I have served them in Artsakh, and I will serve them in Azerbaijan, with equal love and equal care, as I have loved my own son."

quote:Originally posted by sen_vahan:To Ara Baliozian/ How about the Armenians of Raffi, Paronyan, Otyan, Massikyan,...? The faith of all these writers was very similar to the faith of their nation. Yes, we are all close-minded, as many outsiders say, but so are these writers. No? Who knows today Raffi, Paronyan, Otyan,... except Armenians(some of us do not even know them)? Maybe they were thinking about the Armenians and Armenia too much? What was the subject for Raffi, for example?Armenia, its history. Being perhaps very intelligent he was writing only about the Armenians and Armenia. I am not sure that some non-Armenian would like them. And I do not know ANY non-Armenian who reads Raffi or Otyan. Really, who cares about them, about that "narrow-minded" intelligents caring only about own nation. And the problem is that they did it without any great love to the nation, to its spirit(or maybe they did?). That is why I am thinking that they as well as many modern Armenians like only the "idea of Armenia" but not the people. And I am asking you what one should expect from young people being educated on Raffi, Otyan, Massikyan? Many generations in Armenia were educated in such a way , so what? Can we say that at least one of the writers mentioned by you might be considered as "all-Armenian" (although they were writing only about Armenians), as Russians consider for example Pushkin? Vahan Writers like Raffi and Baronian and Zarian are valuable because they make a contribution to our understanding. the fact that very few people read them means nothing. Very few people have read Karl Marx, and yet he changed the political map of the world. / ara

GOOD QUESTIONS ************************* In a recently published book about the children of Nazi leaders titled MY FATHER’S KEEPER, Stephan Lebert writes: "What does it mean for this country called Germany that those responsible for the Third Reich, and their fellow travellers and accomplices, to have had children and grandchildren to whom they have handed on their aggressions, their cowardice, their capacity for atrocity, their secrecy and their mechanisms of repression?" Similar questions could be asked of the present-day Turkish leadership, and with some variations, of our own. What does it mean for our leaders to have had children and grandchildren to whom they have handed on their intransigence, their ignorance of international diplomacy, their dogmatism and their inability to admit error and to engage in dialogue, their secrecy and their intolerance of dissent and criticism? In short: What have they learned from the Genocide beside lamentation? And if a genocide cannot teach them anything, what can?

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

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

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

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

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

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