MJ

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 10, 2001 07:08 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBSERVATIONS ***************************** Some of my readers accuse me of using too much vinegar and not enough honey. "Honey," they like to remind me, "catches more flies." To them and to everyone who believes in the wisdom of the ages, there is a Spanish proverb that says: "Haceos de miel, y os comeran las moscas" (Make yourself honey and the flies will eat you). We speak too much of genocide and not enough of genosuicide. Genocide is what happened to us at the turn of the century in the Ottoman Empire. Genosuicide is what’s been happening to us since. Eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not insult if you can criticize." Twelfth Commandment: "Thou shalt not criticize to prove that you are ahead of the game because our problems are not games." I have been publishing critical articles for at least two decades now and I have never – repeat, never! -- heard a decent Armenian saying that he is offended by my criticism. On the contrary!…. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 27, 2001 07:04 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON PRESTIGE /Wednesday, June 27, 2001 ********************************************* "Your kind of criticism harms our prestige as a nation," I am warned once in a while. Maybe so, but the harm done by silencing dissent could be much more dangerous, not to say lethal, to our survival as a nation. The nation is a much larger concept than those I criticize and a thousand like me put together. Who would benefit if I were silenced? The people or those in power? When a friendly reader quotes me he identifies me as a "prominent writer"; but when a detractor mentions me he calls me an "idiot," a "moron," a "jerk," and a "shithead." As far as I know, no one has ever bothered to call me "a concerned citizen." A nation’s prestige cannot be so fragile as to be irreparably damaged by the words of a single…concerned citizen. No one in his right mind would ever confuse those in power with the people or the nation. Schopenhauer: "We pay an attention to the opinion of others which is out of all proportion to its value." Goethe: "The world goes forward only because of those who oppose it." -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 25, 2001 07:23 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REFLECTIONS OF A CONCERNED CITIZEN ******************************************* Writing for Armenians is a dead end. Nobody ever wrote for Armenians and amounted to anything. Others see this as a warning and eventually quit. I see it as a challenge and I persevere. The distance between what we think we are and what we are is about the same as that which exists between reason and insanity. When, during a conversation with a friend, I explained how the secretary of one of our national benefactors had gone around convincing our editors not to publish my commentaries, he (my friend) said: "He can’t do that! This is a free country." Yes, I thought, a free country with fascist Armenian pockets. I went into writing for the wrong reasons (to achieve fame and fortune) and I got out of it for the right ones (to become a concerned citizen). My detractors sometimes identify me as a poet and a philosopher, meaning, an idiot with his head in the clouds. They would never identify me for what I am (a concerned citizen) because if there is one of us, there may well be many more. As for poets and philosophers: they might as well belong to the lunatic fringe. The average Armenian may have no problem naming three Greek philosophers, or even three French, English, and German ones. But three Armenian philosophers? -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 25, 2001 11:05 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBSERVATIONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ***************************************** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SICK AND TIRED ******************************* Whenever an Armenian uses that expression (as in "I am sick and tired of critics!) I cannot help reflecting: Looks like we are going places. With a little more effort, we may even drive them insane…. THREE ARMENIAN DEFINITIONS OF DIALOGUE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ --An exchange of insults. --Two monologues that never cross. --A form of verbal contest whose aim is to eviscerate and dismember the opponent. IMPOSTORS ************************* There are Armenians who are Armenians and there are Armenians who impersonate being one; but since the authentic Armenians are too busy being what they are and have no time for clear definitions of what it means being Armenian, the impersonators make a better job of it: all they have to do is select and adopt a few obvious symbols and clichés (Mt. Ararat, the massacres, Saroyan… and above all, the defense of everything and anything that is Armenian, including corruption, incompetence, prostitution, graft, larceny, intolerance, and fascism). INTOLERANCE *********************** History tells us intolerance is as old as mankind and it has claimed millions of victims; common sense tells us you cannot appease intolerance, only expose it; and common decency tells us to silence those who expose intolerance is to promote criminal conduct. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 19, 2001 10:52 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES / COMMENTS ******************************* Most Armenians are smart enough to see they are contradicting themselves but their ego makes them temporarily blind. I write for the same reason that jungle beasts mark their territories, mutts raise their hind legs against fire hydrants, and benefactors raise walls with their names on them: to say KILROY WAS HERE. In a Jewish anthology I came across the following joke: When a man in an overcoat flashes a Jewish woman in the garment district of New York, she says: "This you call a lining?" According to Valery Larbaud, "The rich are morally castrated; the poor are castrated in all respects"; and "Seek out friends who contradict you provided they do so without passion." Elsewhere he calls people who live in diaspora "cosmopolitans of misery." If you say the earth is round, you will make enemies among those who believe it is flat. The truth shall set you free, we are told; what we are not told is that it will also make you hateful in the eyes of dupes who prefer to live in a world of fallacies and lies. Everything comes with a price: why should truth and freedom be exceptions? -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 31, 2001 07:15 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON ARMENIAN LITERATURE ***************************************** Only after the private diaries and correspondence of our writers are published may we know what they really thought of their fellow Armenians. The very few samples that I have read (notably the letters and diaries of Daniel Varoujan, Gostan Zarian, and Hagop Oshagan) present a grim and an almost schizophrenic picture. To survive in the jungle of our communities, these writers had to conform and be subservient. They could attack defenseless, solitary and harmless writers mercilessly (as Oshagan did again and again) but if they ever dared to direct their critical fire on anyone else (as Zarian did) they were swiftly punished, silenced and alienated. As for public support: it has been and continues to be an absent factor in our collective existence. With public support, Armenian literature could have produced such international best-sellers as Arlen, Saroyan, Adamov, Berberova and Troyat; but without public support it is destined to remain, in the words of Baruir Massikian, "a vast cemetery," occasionally visited by an eccentric reader but ignored by the vast philistine majority and the world at large. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 21, 2001 11:12 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A QUESTION AND ITS OBVIOUS ANSWER **************************************************** It is the easiest thing in the world for two Armenians to get together and to agree that the Turks are guilty of genocide. Likewise, it is the easiest thing in the world for two Turks to get together and to agree that the Armenians are dead wrong. Both Turks and Armenians have been doing this for such a long time that it has become second nature. It should be easier to convince both Turks and Armenians that, as human being, they are fallible as well as prejudiced observers and that their testimony is worthless if not judged by an impartial jury – but a jury not of their peers (which would never agree on anything) but a jury of non-Armenians and non-Turks. Why is it that so far both Armenians and Turks (or, for that matter, Israelis and Palestinians, Hutus and Tutsis, Pakistanis and Indians, Japanese and Koreans, among many others) have agreed only on not resorting to this kind of arbitration? The answer is and must be: Because all men, regardless of national origin, are committed more to their own lies than to someone else’s truth – one of the biggest lies being: Truth and God are on our side, we are without prejudice, and we have at no time committed a blunder or massacred innocent women and children. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 20, 2001 07:11 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VERBAL CRAP ************************* To say that the Turks are bloodthirsty savages is to recycle partisan propaganda and I have no interest in recycling anyone’s propaganda. The question I would like to see answered is: Why is it that Arnold J. Toynbee, one of the greatest historians of our time, who knew all about the genocide having written the first book on the subject, changed his mind and said Armenians had been wrong in making territorial demands on the Turks and that the genocide – which he at no time denied – had been an inevitable, if not justifiable, reaction to this Armenian blunder. Likewise, to say that the Jews deserve to be hated because they are intrinsically evil (having crucified Christ or committed some other real or imaginary transgression) is to recycle Nazi propaganda and I have no interest in doing that either. What I want to understand is, why is it that Jean-Paul Sartre, the foremost French philosopher of the 20th century, wrote a book on the subject in which he asserted envy to be the root of anti-Semitism. Whenever a Frenchman or any other non-Jew fails in life, he said, he finds in Jews a convenient scapegoat. And finally, to say that right and wrong are as clearly discernible as black and white and anyone who doesn’t agree with me – even when he happens to be an eminent historian or philosopher – is a pervert, an eccentric, or an idiot – is to recycle philistine nonsense and to wallow in someone else’s propaganda, that is to say, verbal crap. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 17, 2001 11:17 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAVEAT ******************* When I express my views I don’t mean to say this is how reality is but this is how I see it: this is my experience and perception of it. Opinions, views, words and ideas are not and cannot be doubles of objects in the external world, neither can they be fragments of reality. Reality is one; views many. Two Armenians may subscribe to not just two but twenty-two opinions. It is not unusual for an Armenian to express one view today and its exact opposite tomorrow when involved in another argument. Twenty-two therefore may well be not poetic license but a conservative estimate. Next time you disagree with me, don’t behave as though it were the end of the world. Instead, try to express your own view as honesty as you can, provided of course you don’t parrot hearsay clichés and recycle chauvinist crap – that way lies not dialogue but two monologues that are destined never to cross. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 13, 2001 11:01 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHARLATANS *********************** No one likes a charlatan, not even charlatans. Given a choice between an honest and a dishonest politician or lawyer (assuming of course they exist in this day and age), a charlatan will invariably choose the honest one. The same applies to doctors, plumbers, salesmen, friends and associates. The only time charlatans will conspire and cooperate with one another is when they want to deceive, mislead and exploit the naïve, the innocent and the inexperienced. I speak as an authority on the subject because I too was brought up to be a charlatan. I had an Armenian education. How to recognize a charlatan? Easy! Call an honest man a charlatan and he will shrug his shoulders, turn his back, and ignore you. But call a charlatan a charlatan and he will curse the day you were born. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted July 13, 2001 06:58 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON SELF-CRITICISM ******************************** To those who tend to confuse self-criticism with anti-Armenianism, let me say that once upon a time I was myself the kind of Armenian I criticize, and when I say once upon a time I don’t mean thirty or forty years ago but as recently as yesterday. I too was brainwashed to be a chauvinist, that is to say, a propagandist and a liar; and for a long time I thought the aim of recycling chauvinist crap was to make a good impression on odars. I know better now. I know that odars are not easy to fool. We can only fool ourselves; and fooling ourselves is the easiest thing on earth because to have had an Armenian education means to have been carefully trained to be a dupe. And if you were to tell me you had an entirely different education, I will say, Rejoice! Because you may consider yourself a member of an extremely tiny and privileged group of whose existence I was not even aware until now. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 26, 2001 06:59 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, June 26, 2001 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ DEMOCRACY VERSUS FASCISM *************************************** In a democracy the State serves the people and all those in positions of power are called public servants, and as such, are accountable to the people and its representatives. In an authoritarian, despotic, or fascist environment, the people serve the State even when the State happens to be in the hands of a pathological liar, a serial killer, or a lunatic. In a democracy the people are educated to value freedom, self-reliance, tolerance, and respect for fundamental human rights. In an authoritarian state the people are indoctrinated to respect authority and, when that doesn’t work, terrorized into subservience. Armenians who are critical of American democracy and support Middle-Eastern despotism engage in double-talk because they enjoy all kinds of freedoms (including the freedom to criticize the State), none of which would be available in Saddam’s Iraq or Ayatollah’s Iran, or in an environment where children are brainwashed to believe being a suicidal fanatic and engaging in acts of terrorism (by killing innocent women and children) is a spiritual privilege and a heroic deed that will be awarded with eternal bliss. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 24, 2001 12:33 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ARMENIANS AND ODARS ********************************* If you ever say anything remotely critical or negative about Armenia in the presence of a couple of Armenians, one of them is sure to mention a corner of the world in which things are much worse. Fragrant latrines? When was the last time you walked past a pissoir in Paris? Unsanitary hospitals? Let me tell you what happened to my grandmother in a Canadian hospital. Corrupt police? Obviously, you have never been to Mexico City. Incompetent bureaucracy? Things are much worse in Moscow. Assassinations? The situation in Georgia is twice as bad. It follows that, before we criticize our homeland, we should criticize cops in Moscow, muggers in New York City, druglords in Colombia, outhouses in Uzbekistan, hospitals in Timbuctoo, jungle tribes in South America, and the air conditioning system in hell…. It also follows that, only if perfection is achieved in the rest of the world may we consider listening to criticism by malcontents and unpatriotic scum; only then may we make an effort to improve things. Until then, the message to our critics is: Get off our case, mind your own business, shut up! I have heard many Armenians use this line of defense or rather, counter-attack – but may I confess, I have never heard an odar say: "Our failings may be many but things are much worse in Armenia"; and I doubt very much if I will ever hear a Kurd or a Bedouin say, "Our outhouses may not qualify as tourist attractions, but when was the last time you walked past a latrine in Yerevan?" -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 06, 2001 06:46 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THREE KINDS OF LIES ******************************** Plato explains somewhere that there are three kinds of lies: the garden variety fib (the kind that Washington junior refused to speak after vandalizing one of senior’s favorite fruit trees); propaganda (or lies spoken by the State for the "good" of the people); and the lie in the soul (when the liar believes in his own lies). The third kind, Plato tells us, is the most dangerous of all. It follows that, such things as sincerity, commitment, and faith can be worthless, even dangerous, commodities if their source is a lie a false god, a twisted ideology, a demagogue, or, for that matter, the individual or collective self (by individual self I mean the ego, and by collective, any fraction of mankind, such as political party, social class, or nation). It also follows that, when someone uses the expression "I sincerely believe in this!" he may not be enhancing the validity of his credo but simply admitting to being a gullible fool. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 06, 2001 06:46 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THREE KINDS OF LIES ******************************** Plato explains somewhere that there are three kinds of lies: the garden variety fib (the kind that Washington junior refused to speak after vandalizing one of senior’s favorite fruit trees); propaganda (or lies spoken by the State for the "good" of the people); and the lie in the soul (when the liar believes in his own lies). The third kind, Plato tells us, is the most dangerous of all. It follows that, such things as sincerity, commitment, and faith can be worthless, even dangerous, commodities if their source is a lie a false god, a twisted ideology, a demagogue, or, for that matter, the individual or collective self (by individual self I mean the ego, and by collective, any fraction of mankind, such as political party, social class, or nation). It also follows that, when someone uses the expression "I sincerely believe in this!" he may not be enhancing the validity of his credo but simply admitting to being a gullible fool. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted July 08, 2001 11:07 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q/A (ii) *************************** You wannabe an Armenian writer? Easy! Here is what you do. First, make sure you have a steady income, because there is no money in it. Second, if you have an ego, starve it, kill it, shoot it, hang it, bury it, dig it up and stone it to death. Because if you don’t, your readers will be more than happy to do it for you. Third, be prepared to be called a fool by fools, an idiot by idiots, and a moron by morons. Fourth, don’t be surprised if you are identified as an agent of Ankara and a hireling of the CIA. Last but far from least: be prepared to be misunderstood. Somewhere someone may discover a method of communication that will eliminate all possibility of misunderstanding; but so far and throughout our millennial history such a one has not yet made an appearance among us or anywhere else for that matter. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 03, 2001 10:41 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REQUIEM FOR AN UNKNOWN VICTIM ****************************************** One of the victims of our Genocide that is never mourned or even mentioned is our loss of self-objectivity or the ability to view the world and ourselves with honesty. Our pre-Genocide writers in Istanbul wrote with greater courage and honesty than our ablest writers today. If Hagop Baronian came back to life and wrote as he did then he would be lynched by a mob of bosses, bishops, benevolent benefactors and their assorted hirelings, hangers-on and flunkies. And worse, he would be silenced, ignored, and buried alive, very much like Baruir Massikian (1912-1990) who is ignored not only by our establishment types but also by our so-called literary historians and critics. In his voluminous texts on modern Armenian literature, Minas Tololian mentions Massikian’s name only once and that in a list of other completely negligible and forgotten writers. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 13, 2001 10:48 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON EDUCATION +++++++++++++++++++++ Prejudice is a byproduct of ignorance. Education is our only solution. No one in his right mind would contradict the above two statements. The question is: How do we go about changing our educational system, which has been and continues to be controlled by our political and religious institutions (which happen to be the sources of our prejudices). Khachatur Abovian (1805-1848) tried it and he was driven to suicide. In order to survive as a schoolteacher and writer, Oshagan (1883-1948) had to flatter the egos of bishops and attack those (like Zarian) who dared to adopt an anti-establishment stance. Raffi (1835-1888) put it best when he said: "There is something fundamentally wrong with our educational system because we concentrate on our children and neglect the community as a whole. We should be busy teaching every member of the community to develop his mind and to shed his prejudices and misconceptions. We should give them books to read. A good book can save a nation. But a people that does not like to read cannot be educated." What happened to Raffi? A wealthy Armenian merchant hired a Kurdish bandit to assassinate him. But when the Kurd realized his target was a harmless scribbler, he refused to carry out his assignment.. Moral of the story: Sometimes an Armenian merchant can be more dangerous than a Kurdish assassin. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 17, 2001 07:36 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ***************************************** Lincoln was wrong: you can fool only one person all the time: yourself. We don’t burn books; we prefer to bury writers. Whenever I am asked what I do for a living, I say I am unemployed. For some reason, I find that a more dignified tag than identifying myself as an Armenian writer. If any one of us on this forum became president of Armenia tomorrow, we would have no more problems on the day after. It has happened more than once that those who develop an intense dislike of me become my most faithful readers. Once upon a time a good day was one in which I produced a good line. Now it is one in which I succeed in offending a bigot. To paraphrase an old slogan: A day without a mad bigot is a day without sunshine. Sometimes I cannot help suspecting that our leaders behave as if their unspoken slogan were: "From defeat to defeat until the final catastrophe"; or is it - "From catastrophe to catastrophe until total annihilation." When asked whether or not I am proud to be an Armenian, I say, I am surrounded by so many proud Armenians that I prefer to be a humble one. When a brown-noser adopts a critical stance, you can be sure of one thing: he will not criticize the leadership but the people, because to criticize the leadership would amount to biting the posterior that lays the golden egg. Sartre: "Literature unveils to readers their own situation in order that they themselves may assume its responsibility." I have always been suspicious of people who brag about their own real or imaginary assets. He who says "I am smart," seldom is. He who says, "I am wealthy," never is. And he who says "I am an honorable man," or "I am a patriotic Armenian," is either a charlatan or a bloodsucker. It is not easy reasoning with a man who calls you an idiot. As for the man who threatens to kill you: I have every reason to suspect, if he realizes his ambition, his lawyer will plead insanity, and he will be absolutely right. I have known many charlatans but I have never heard any one of them admit to being one. Charlatanism and confession are incompatible concepts. Murderers may confess; charlatans, never! G.K. Chesterton: "Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted May 27, 2001 11:58 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OF VEGETARIANS AND CARNIVORES ************************************* Our victims, we are brought up to believe, are an irrefutable proof of the fact that we are morally superior, and every other odar is either a bloodthirsty barbarian or a hypocrite with a forked tongue. In the words of a reader: "We Armenians were never taught to lie, cheat, and kill." It follows, it must be in our DNA to be compassionate and honest. It never occurs to us that this line of thought may well be dangerous nonsense because (in addition to being a big lie) it may certify our status as perennial victims, for the simple reason that, if we are like sheep among wolves, then it is our destiny to be devoured by carnivores. This may well be one reason why the overwhelming majority of Armenians reject their identity and opt for assimilation. Why would any sane person willingly accept to play the sheep in a world of wolves? "There is only one way to live in this world," Raffi warned us in the 19th century, "to be a wolf among wolves. If you lower your neck someone is sure to step on it." And: "If you want to live, you must struggle. Assuming a passive stance amounts to committing slow suicide." One could also add: Confusing subservience with moral superiority is bad enough; what is infinitely worse is accepting our subservience as a permanent condition or jagadakir (destiny – literally, a sentence written on our forehead). -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 18, 2001 11:22 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LATER, THE SAME DAY ********************************* According to a recent sociological study, you can tell how progressive a society is by its numbers of bohemians (poets, artists, actors, etc.) and sexual deviants (homosexuals and lesbians): the first are an index of creativity, the second of openness. An Armenian-American poet, after a meeting with one of our national benefactors, wrote me a letter in which he said: "He (the benefactor) told me we Armenians have no use for poetry and that poetry was for desert people like the Arabs." And I remember to have thought: There goes half of Armenian literature down the tube! Saroyan knew what he was talking about when he rejected the Pulitzer Prize with the words: "Business has no business in literature." Literature reminds us that some of our most cherished and daring thoughts are nothing but faintly audible echoes of distant thunder. "Nothing will change," I am reminded again and again as if I needed to be reminded. But I also know that, after suffering in silence for centuries, people have decided to act. Revolutions don’t happen every day but they do happen once in a while. History is clear on this point and life unpredictable. We cannot go on ignoring the laws of nature, the dictates of history, the demands of common decency, and the voice of the people forever. When one of our chauvinists praises Armenia and Armenians to the skies but prefers to live among odars in the Diaspora, I have every right to suspect that he speaks with a forked tongue. Call me a cynic, but whenever I have a choice between the words and actions of a baloney artist, you may depend on my making the right choice. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 09, 2001 06:05 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE DEATH OF AN ILLUSION ************************************* What I say is so obvious and accessible that my first reaction to criticism is disbelief; and I cannot help suspecting that those who express disagreement must have ulterior motives: they are defending their boss (or source of income), or the memory of a schoolteacher or some other father figure who was successful in convincing them we are beyond criticism; or, since we are as good (or as bad) as the rest of mankind, we have no use for critics, only brown-nosers may apply. I don’t mind admitting that once upon a time I too was taken in by these shameless lies, until it became increasingly difficult to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and the experience on my own skin. There is a passage in the Bible that says and I will now paraphrase: "When I was a child I played with toys, but when I grew up I put my toys aside." This may sound as the obvious thing to do, but it is astonishing how many adults opt against it, perhaps because, in the words of Arthur Koestler, "Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion," and, it follows, more difficult to come to terms with. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted June 20, 2001 06:56 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES / COMMENTS ******************************** As long as we have patriotic Armenians willing to contribute to the welfare of the nation, we have nothing to worry about. But as long as these same Armenians express indifference or even contempt towards all forms of criticism and dissent we have a great deal to worry about, namely: intolerance, violations of fundamental human rights, and fascism. Writing for Armenians and being exposed to their verbal venom has made me realize that we all harbor a killer and, in the words of Shahan Shahnour, "our greatest enemy is not the Turk but us." In times of peace and prosperity we tend to forget that the world is a very scary place. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to love my neighbor but for all I know he could be a serial killer. And nothing would give me more pleasure than to love my fellow Armenians but for all I know they could be my future executioners. Socrates tells us a man who is aware of his ignorance is wiser than a man who is not, and that false knowledge is the source of all evil. In our case false knowledge consists in thinking that we know better because we are better. A friend writes: "I still hope and wish as you do that perhaps, some day, there will emerge some kind of leadership not based on money but an ethical, moral, and basically pragmatic political know-how." To which I can only say, Amen! Nothing can reveal a man’s character as drastically as money, power, and anonymity. Anonymity or the use of aliases, it seems to me, is for criminals, but I also believe by making us more transparent, it eliminates a considerable amount of misleading chitchat and mumbo jumbo. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 28, 2001 07:07 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON NATIONAL IDENTITY AND OTHER SHIBBOLETHS *********************************** The most illuminating and brilliant remark about national identity was made by a French writer of Jewish descent, who, when asked by a journalist in what way his Jewish heritage had influenced his life and work, is said to have replied: "It changed the manner in which I take a crap." When two schmucks agree, they assume they have achieved national consensus. To contradict not out of conviction but for the pleasure of contradicting: I call this a quintessential Armenian vice. The longer I live the more doubts I have. I miss the good old days when I knew everything I needed to know and I had all the answers. If you say something remotely intelligent, don’t be surprised if you are contradicted by imbeciles. This is a free country and you may subscribe to the lie of your choice. -------------------- ara baliozian

ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 25, 2001 07:09 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES / COMMENTS ***************************** To the man who tries to achieve excellence, nothing should be more alarming than the approval of the mediocre. History has been defined as one damn thing after another. Our history may be defined as the same damn thing all the time. I don’t see why I should trust the judgment of a man who holds the same views that I held forty years ago, views that were not mine but those of a schoolmaster who was employed by a power structure (political party or organized religion) with a clearly defined agenda whose central concern was not truth but power. Venetian saying: "The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health, the lawyer’s his fortune." Alexander Dumas fils: "I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest." -------------------- ara baliozian