as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

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BROTHERS, FRIENDS, ENEMIES

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Dale Carnegie once wrote a best-selling book titled HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Had he been an Armenian, he would have written a book titled HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FRIENDS.

*

Frederic Raphael on Carnegie’s book: “Probably among the dozen most blandly wicked books ever written.”

*

Some day if I ever write my memoirs the shortest chapter in it will be subtitled “My Armenian Friends.”

*

George Santayana has said that a friend is someone with whom “we can be most human.” It follows, an enemy is someone we dehumanize.

*

Plutarch once defined a brother as someone “who has come out of the same hole.” (How about that for subtle elegance?) One could also define an Armenian as someone whose very distant ancestors were born in a valley or on a mountain somewhere in Transcaucasia two thousand years ago.

*

During the last few years I acquired two Turkish friends. At this rate my Turkish friends will outnumber my Armenian friends. To those who think the reason why I am making more Turkish friends and Armenian enemies may be because I am anti-Armenian: I suggest to confuse criticism with hostility is to subscribe to the notion that leaders and their dupes are always right and dissenters always wrong. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollah subscribed to this notion too.

*

Jose Maria Aznar (Spanish diplomat): “Why is it that we must always be apologizing to them and they never? Has anyone ever heard a Muslim apologize for having occupied Spain for eight centuries?”

*

If Alexandre Dumas’s three Musketeers had been Armenian, their slogan would have been “Every man for himself!”

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

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ON LOVE, HATE, FRIENDS, ENEMIES,

AND RELATED ATROCITIES

****************************************************

A true friend is someone who in your absence, when others speak evil of you, does not add his voice to the chorus, and afterwards does not repeat their words to you.

*

Friends play a central role in the lives of some, enemies in others.

*

If I ever see the light and am born again, I will keep it to myself and let my words and actions speak for themselves.

*

Faith tells us not to hate our enemies, and if we can’t manage that, to think of hatred not as a religious or patriotic duty but as a failing and an aberration.

*

The word heaven in a religious context is not a place but a dimension, and the dimension is not outside somewhere but (very much like the kingdom of god) within us.

*

When a Canadian writer said to a publisher she had written a book about the Armenians, the publisher said: “If it’s about the massacres, we will accept it.” There is no business like shoah business.

*

According to an American pundit in this morning’s paper: “Far too many people have already been killed for Bush and his advisers to admit that their ‘war of choice’ was all a mistake.” True. The bigger the mistake, the harder it is to admit it. If you step on someone’s toes in a crowded place you can say “Sorry!” and get away with it. But what can you possibly say for killing two million innocent civilians except “I didn’t do it!”

*

A cartoon by Bouchard depicting a slave in the middle of a Roman orgy declaring: “Someday we will all be equal and everyone will have his own slaves.”

#

[tigranisbasileus]

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

************************************************

BROTHERS, FRIENDS, ENEMIES

**********************************************

Dale Carnegie once wrote a best-selling book titled HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Had he been an Armenian, he would have written a book titled HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FRIENDS.

*

Frederic Raphael on Carnegie’s book: “Probably among the dozen most blandly wicked books ever written.”

*

Some day if I ever write my memoirs the shortest chapter in it will be subtitled “My Armenian Friends.”

*

George Santayana has said that a friend is someone with whom “we can be most human.” It follows, an enemy is someone we dehumanize.

*

Plutarch once defined a brother as someone “who has come out of the same hole.” (How about that for subtle elegance?) One could also define an Armenian as someone whose very distant ancestors were born in a valley or on a mountain somewhere in Transcaucasia two thousand years ago.

*

During the last few years I acquired two Turkish friends. At this rate my Turkish friends will outnumber my Armenian friends. To those who think the reason why I am making more Turkish friends and Armenian enemies may be because I am anti-Armenian: I suggest to confuse criticism with hostility is to subscribe to the notion that leaders and their dupes are always right and dissenters always wrong. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollah subscribed to this notion too.

*

Jose Maria Aznar (Spanish diplomat): “Why is it that we must always be apologizing to them and they never? Has anyone ever heard a Muslim apologize for having occupied Spain for eight centuries?”

*

If Alexandre Dumas’s three Musketeers had been Armenian, their slogan would have been “Every man for himself!”

#

 

 

 

 

I remember when my armenian wife said that a canadian girl converting and adopting her husband's culture is ok, because she is nothing; and then she said that it wasn't ok for an armenian girl because she isn't nothing...

 

sad, don't you think Ara?

[ED]

I remember when my armenian wife said that a canadian girl converting and adopting her husband's culture is ok, because she is nothing; and then she said that it wasn't ok for an armenian girl because she isn't nothing...

 

sad, don't you think Ara?

 

 

accourding to above statment by you, you consider someone who is nothing to be something or good enough for you to get married?

 

now, who is the sad case here??

[ara baliozian]

October 26, 2006

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DIARY

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Paul Johnson on Brahms’s Intermezzo in B flat minor: “I have a beautiful recording of it by the Turkish pianist Idil Biret, a pupil of Cortot…”

My first thought: Biret must be either Armenian or half-Armenian. Once a chauvinist, always a chauvinist.

Even when one’s mind adopts an anti-chauvinist stance, one’s gut remains chauvinist.

*

It never pays to examine too closely a man’s ancestry. If he identifies himself as a Patagonian, a Hottentot, or a Mongol, we should take his word for it. Speaking for myself, you may simply identify me as a human being.

*

Socrates said, “Of the gods we know nothing.” But if you read the Bible from beginning to end you will reach the exact opposite conclusion: Of our god we know everything and then some!

*

Memo to an Armenian writer:

If you have more than two or at most three fans, you must be doing something wrong.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, October 27, 2006

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ARMENIAN INTELLECTUALS

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During the Soviet era I wrote about twenty letters to writers in the Homeland asking if I could interview them. Only one of them replied suggesting I write a letter of congratulations on the 25th anniversary of the magazine he was then editing. I had never seen or heard about his magazine but I wrote a brief cliché-ridden paragraph, which he promptly published, and that was the only thing by me that ever saw the light in Soviet Armenia.

*

Last summer I was interviewed by e-mail by an Armenian editor in Moscow. When he disagreed with my answers, he sent follow-up question with whose answers he also disagreed. This routine was repeated a few more times. When the interview finally appeared, it bore the following Pinteresque title: “Interview with an Armenian Dissident: Incomprehensible Answers to Misunderstood Questions.”

*

Long before I met Vahé Oshagan I was told he was, like his illustrious father, partial to blunt talk, especially when dealing with lesser writers in no position to retaliate. So when I found myself seated beside him at a banquet in an Armenian community center, I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his poetry, which was not one hell of a lot; to which he said: “You and I have nothing further to say to each other.” When I got up to leave, I heard him say: “Not so fast, my friend!”

Did he get even? I no longer remember. But he did say I was wasting my time translating a phony like Zarian, and if I wanted to make myself useful I should get busy translating such worthy and authentic writers as his father.

Shortly thereafter mutual friends informed me that Vahé Oshagan’s opinion of me was so low that it could not be quoted or even paraphrased in polite society. Strange as this may seem to some readers, this development flattered my vanity instead of offending my ego.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, October 28, 2006

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THEORY AND PRACTICE

*********************************

Theory: Since you and I are Armenian, we must be brothers.

Practice: Since you and I belong to different tribes, we cannot even begin to communicate with each other.

*

ENIGMA

***************************

Being wrong I understand. What I don’t understand, and I doubt if I ever will, is being catastrophically wrong with total unawareness, like the good citizens of Athens who condemned Socrates to death with the unshakable conviction that they were discharging their patriotic duty.

*

TRANSLATION

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Perhaps a modern translation of the commandment “Love your enemy” is “Humanize yourself.”

*

HOW TO READ

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When I don’t understand a sentence or a paragraph I seldom reread it because (a) I lose interest in a writer or translator who makes no effort to make himself accessible to the general reader, and ( the certainty that someday I will read the same idea in another context more clearly expressed.

*

If an idea is good, it will be remembered, rephrased, and repeated an infinite number of times.

*

TO KNOW IS TO REMEMBER

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All so-called new or original ideas are as old as mankind. The meaning of the word “original” is going back to the origins. We sometimes forget that when we speak of the history of ideas, what we mean is written ideas. For thousands of years men could not write. That does not mean they did not think.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 29, 2006

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IF THE SHOE FITS…

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Whenever I feel mean, unforgiving, and full of venom, I ascribe it to my Ottoman heritage.

*

A false friend can be more dangerous than a mortal enemy. That’s because a false friend knows where your Achilles’ heel is and he strikes when you least expect it.

*

A false friend is one who escalates a minor disagreement to terminal hatred and verbal slaughter.

*

My false friends outnumber my enemies because being naïve and gullible (dumb for short) I have been brainwashed to believe I am smart and can’t be taken in.

*

I have said and repeated that I am smart so often that I now have no doubts on that score.

*

My position is to vulnerable and my weaknesses so many that no matter how absurd the flattery I swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

*

Because I consider all defeats moral victories, I am invincible. Or, as they say in diplomatic circles in Washington: “Whichever way the shit goes down, my ass is covered.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, October 30, 2006

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ON OBJECTIVITY

*******************************

Objectivity is like common sense: even fanatics don’t complain that they don’t have enough of it. But the truth of the matter is, we either underestimate or overestimate people, including ourselves. The aim of racism is to legitimize this widely practiced aberration.

As a child I was brought up to underestimate Turks to such a degree that I could not conceive of a day when I would read such oxymoronic phrases as “a great Turkish pianist,” or “a widely translated Turkish novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize who has been compared to Thomas Mann.”

To the same degree that I underestimated Turks I overestimated my fellow Armenians. When I finally realized that Armenians were human beings, like the rest of mankind, with their share, perhaps even more than their share, of failings, I experienced a state of shock that lasted several years during which I came close to becoming an alcoholic.

If I am too critical of Armenians today and not critical enough of Turks, it is because I don’t know and I will never know everything there is to know about them, or for that matter about myself.

Historians like Toynbee and philosophers like Sartre tell us it is impossible to know everything about the past, and history is not a story with a fixed plot but a narrative that must be constantly updated and rewritten.

As human beings we are therefore condemned to pronounce verdict only on partial and sometimes even hearsay evidence.

To rely on a politician’s version of the past is like assuming the roles of judge and jury and relying on the evidence presented by a single lawyer whose aim is not to prove the innocence of his client but to challenge the prosecution to dispel all doubt as to the guilt of the accused.

When an Armenian poet said, “Human justice, I spit on your face,” and long before him, when Dickens has one of his characters say, “The law is a ass!” they were emphasizing this very same point and the impossibility of achieving objectivity and impartiality.

Historians, even honest and well-meaning ones, are human beings like the rest of us: they may know better about some things, perhaps even many things, but they don’t know everything. We should trust their judgment on big things as much as we trust ours on little things.

Only almighty and all-known god may be objective, but as far as I know the word isn’t even mention in the Bible, where we are asked not to judge our enemies but to love them.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

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PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL REFLECTIONS

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God created the universe in his own image. Astronomers tell us there are many more stars in heaven than grains of sand on earth. And now, consider the fact that the earth isn’t even a star but a planet, and relatively speaking, about the size of only an almost invisible fraction of a dust particle. Need I say more?

*

MORE ON RACISM

***************************

In a fable by La Fontaine titled “The Wolf and the Lamb,” the wolf accuses the lamb of having spoken ill of him last year. When the lamb says he wasn’t even born last year, the wolf replies, “It must have been your brother.”

*

TURKISH PIANISTS

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I asked a professor of music if he had ever heard of a famous Turkish pianist. “Two of them,” he replied to my racist astonishment. “Is one of them good with Brahms?” I asked next. “His recording of the Intermezzi is famous,” he said after naming him.

*

As an Armenian I began to make sense of things only on the day I realized that some Turks may indeed be horrid (Turks may agree with me on this) but our own “betters” are not as good as we think they are (I don’t expect Armenians, especially our “betters,” to agree with me).

#

[ara baliozian]

20TH-CENTURY ARMENIAN LITERATURE

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A MOTHER’S HEART

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By AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN

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There is an old tale

About a boy

An only son

Who fell in love with a lass.

*

“You don’t love me,

You never did,” said she to him.

“But if you do, go then

And fetch me your mother’s heart.”

*

Downcast and distraught

The boy walked off

And after shedding copious tears

Came back to his love.

*

The girl was angry

When she saw him thus

And said, “Don’t you dare come back again

Without your mother’s heart.”

*

The boy went and killed

A mountain roe deer

And offered its heart

To the one he adored.

*

But again she was angry

And said, “Get out of my sight.

I told you what I want

Is your mother’s heart.”

*

The boy went and killed

His mother, and as he ran

With her heart in his hand

He slipped and fell.

*

“My dear child,

My poor child,”

Cried the mother’s heart,

“Did you hurt yourself?”

*

(Translated by Ara Baliozian)

#

[gmd]

20TH-CENTURY ARMENIAN LITERATURE

***********************************************

A MOTHER’S HEART

********************************

By AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN

************************************

There is an old tale

About a boy

An only son

Who fell in love with a lass.

*

“You don’t love me,

You never did,” said she to him.

“But if you do, go then

And fetch me your mother’s heart.”

*

Downcast and distraught

The boy walked off

And after shedding copious tears

Came back to his love.

*

The girl was angry

When she saw him thus

And said, “Don’t you dare come back again

Without your mother’s heart.”

*

The boy went and killed

A mountain roe deer

And offered its heart

To the one he adored.

*

But again she was angry

And said, “Get out of my sight.

I told you what I want

Is your mother’s heart.”

*

The boy went and killed

His mother, and as he ran

With her heart in his hand

He slipped and fell.

*

“My dear child,

My poor child,”

Cried the mother’s heart,

“Did you hurt yourself?”

*

(Translated by Ara Baliozian)

#

Thanks, only last week I was trying to translate this story for my American wife. I think your version does the original some justice.

[Aubépine]

This really gave me goosebumps. The original must be even more poignant.

I don't know if there is another Ara Baliozian out there, but maybe you would like to know that I stumbled upon two books of yours in our Turkish university library. I thought to myself I know that name from somewhere but I couldn't quite put a tag on it, then I remembered this forum.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

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EXPOSING LIES

*****************************

A politician is a politician regardless of nationality, and as a politician he shares more things in common with other politicians than with his own people.

*

The one endeavor in which politicians excel is making wrong appear right. In his last days, Hitler blamed not himself but the German people. Since they had failed to live up to his expectations, he is quoted as having said, they deserved to be wiped off the map.

*

We live in a world where the credibility of lies is greater than that of truth, hence the popularity of organized religions and ideologies. I am not saying all ideologies and religions are wrong. It is ideologues and religious leaders who say that. It is popes and ayatollahs, bishops and mullahs who say if you don’t trust the salvation of your soul into their hands, you are no better than a heretic and an infidel dog and will burn in hell for eternity.

Since at all times and everywhere heretics and infidels have outnumbered true believers, there must be more people in hell than anywhere else.

*

If you say I repeat myself, I will make a deal with you: on the day a preacher says he is no longer against sin, I will consider changing my tune.

*

I think it was Aldous Huxley who once observed that the earth is the insane asylum of other planets. That makes more sense to me than the idea of a compassionate and loving god being guilty of the greatest holocaust (i.e. hell) in the history of the universe.

*

Exposing lies can be a catastrophic career move.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 02, 2006

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ON WISDOM, LOVE, AND

RELATED ATROCITIES

*******************************************

Men say they value knowledge over ignorance but live as though they loved ignorance more.

*

Since our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge, in whatever we say about the visible and the invisible world (the universe and god) there will be more uncertainty than certainty. Unless mankind comes to terms with this gray area of uncertainty, we shall have wars, revolutions, and massacres.

*

There is a difference between being right and being wise. Our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century were right, but were they wise?

*

Either we de-Ottomanize and de-Sovietize ourselves or we go on confusing a dehumanized existence with survival.

*

I am afraid all this talk of Turks and massacres has turned us into pillars of salt.

*

Indians believe verbal communication is not the only way to transfer wisdom, and that being in the presence of a wise man is enough to absorb wisdom by spiritual osmosis. Perhaps our problems stem from the fact that for six hundred years we kept the wrong company.

*

One doesn’t fall in love with a person, one falls in love with an image, an abstraction, a projection, a lie, a symbol…and symbols don’t fart.

*

If I am nice in person and nasty in my writings it may be because in my dealings with my fellow men I may respect their limitations and ignorance, but in my writings I am merciless.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, November 03, 2006

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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No one, not even bosses, bishops, and benefactors, is in a position to say his definition of Armenianism is the only valid one.

*

Like war, genocide is such a colossal blunder that it must be handled very carefully, even if it means attending it “by a bodyguard of lies” (Churchill).

*

Literature and big money don’t mix. I feel ill at ease in the presence of benefactors who are constitutionally incapable of respecting anyone they can hire and fire; and I can sense this contempt even in the presence of their flunkies who are, as a rule, less diplomatic in their dealing with “honorable beggars” (Baronian).

*

You may have noticed that smart Armenian operators hide their political loyalties. I remember once when I asked a friend to which party he belonged, he replied, “I am with the good guys.” No one believes me when I say I am not just non-partisan but anti-partisan. Shaw is right. The trouble with crooks is that they assume everyone is a crook.

*

Hating the enemy is easy. Trying to understand him much more difficult. I admire people who choose understanding. But I see something inconsistent in someone who pretends to understand his enemy but hates his own brother.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 04, 2006

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VARIATIONS ON A FAVORITE THEME

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Literature is neither glorified gossip nor entertainment. Literature is more like a guerrilla campaign against a minority of cynical manipulators and a majority of unthinking underdogs who have a fatal admiration for all top dogs, including serial killers like Hitler and Stalin.

*

The greatest and most dangerous illusions are the infallibility of faith and the nobility of patriotism. To me, the statements “I am a man of faith, therefore I am wrong,” and “I am willing to die for my country, therefore I am a potential murderer,” are as valid as “I think, therefore I am.”

*

The source of wars and massacres is neither greed nor evil but love of God and Country.

*

Armenians who believe what their pundits and academics tell them resent it when Turks do the same thing.

*

Do your utmost to agree with those who disagree with you. Even if you learn nothing from them, you may learn tolerance, and tolerance is a far better means of acquiring wisdom than intolerance.

*

In time of war, fathers bury their sons. Under fascism, criminals jail law-abiding citizens.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 05, 2006

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ARMENIAN ENEMIES,

TURKISH FRIENDS

***********************************

Is there a single Armenian today who thinks Turks are better than Armenians? Likewise, is there a single Turk who thinks Armenians are better than Turks? This may suggest that nationalism and racism are inevitable facts of life, which we must never give up combating.

No doubt some Armenians are better than some Turks, and vice versa, some Turks are better than some Armenians. Which reminds me of the following brief exchange in Zabel Yessayan’s autobiographical THE GARDENS OF SILIHDAR:

“Dad, is it true that Jews are bad people?”

“There is no such thing as a bad people, my child. There are only bad men and good men.”

“What about the Turks then?”

“Same with the Turks.”

*

Are Turkish writers today better than Armenian writers? According to the Nobel committee, and now the world community, at least one Turkish writer is better than Armenian writers.

I once heard an Armenian poet and author of several textbooks say that the Nobel committee was a Zionist conspiracy. And immediately after Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize, an Armenian friend, whose patriotism is such that it would not allow him to read “enemy writers,” telephoned to inform me that Pamuk did not deserve the Nobel Prize. But then, with one or two exceptions, this has been said of all Nobel Prize winners.

*

In a recent issue of the ARMENIAN REPORTER I read a letter to the editor that said something to the effect that, if we are better, why is it that hundreds of Jews have been awarded the Nobel Prize but not a single Armenian? Will this fact convince a single Armenian that Jews are better than Armenians? I suspect it may have the exact opposite effect by reinforcing the notion that the Nobel committee is an offshoot of THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION.

*

Dissident Turkish historians today have more friends among Armenians than among their fellow Turks. Why should it be different for dissident Armenian writers?

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, November 06, 2006

***********************************

DIARY

***********************

Saddam Hussein has been condemned to death. Some see this as a major victory. I can only think of all the others in the Middle East and elsewhere who deserve to hang but who will die of natural causes?

*

We speak too much about Turks and massacres and not enough about intolerance, which happens to be the source of all crimes against humanity; perhaps because, if we speak of intolerance, sooner or later someone may ask, “How tolerant are we?”

*

If you keep asking the wrong questions, you will never get the right answers.

*

Only Armenians who know nothing about Armenian literature think my views are eccentric or anti-Armenian.

*

You cannot reason with men who are against reason.

*

In a cartoon by Wolinski, one Frenchman to another: “On account of Aznavour, Turks are threatening to boycott French goods. That’s not a problem because for some time now France has been producing nothing.”

*

“As an Armenian, I value Armenians over Turks,” a gentle reader writes. I suspect a Mongol will never say, “As a Mongol, I value the company of Mongols over Armenians,” probably because he doesn’t even know who Armenians are. And if swine could speak, no doubt they will say, “As swine, we value swine over jackasses.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

*******************************

History is made by mobs that cannot think for themselves.

*

When I knew nothing I believed everything I was told by my elders. Now that I am no longer a child I spend most of my time trying to prove that I am no longer an impressionable idiot.

*

Some of our charlatans have become such experts in their field that they now believe in what they say.

*

Who qualifies as an intellectual? Anyone who has mastered the difficult art of thinking against himself. As for patriots and propagandists: for every intellectual, there are probably a thousand or even ten thousand of them.

*

Once upon a time I espoused every fallacy, prejudice, and misconception I now condemn. I know how hard it is to see one’s most cherished ideas as products of manipulators whose aim is to convince you to kill and die for what they only pretend to believe in.

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

******************************************

HERE WE GO AGAIN

**********************************

“You don’t always practice what you preach,” I am sometimes informed by disappointed readers. To which I can only say, “Here we go again!”

First of all, I am neither a preacher nor a propagandist (same thing). If I were, I would be paid for my work. But like everyone else, including preachers and their dupes, I stand for certain things (such as tolerance and solidarity) and am against others (censorship and authoritarianism…both in the name of patriotism, of course). That doesn’t make me a preacher, just an average Joe who values common sense and decency over charlatanism.

So much for my positives. On the negative side, I am willing to concede that I have little patience with and no sympathy whatever for anonymous and faceless hoodlums who take pleasure in flinging mud at me hoping some of it will stick. They may even think if they make themselves repellent enough I may give up in disgust and fall silent. This may indeed happen some day, but not yet – at least not today and probably not tomorrow.

However, I am willing to compromise and make the following solemn promise. On the day I achieve perfection, I may see the wisdom in bullies and liars, and on the day I achieve sainthood, I may forgive and love them. In the meantime, my advice is: Don’t hold your breath!

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 09, 2006

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PROJECTIONS

**************************

Ask a poet and he will tell you we are a nation of poets.

Ask another who doesn’t much care for poetry and he will tell you we are a nation of vodanavorjis (versifiers).

Others will tell you we are a nation of speechifiers and sermonizers who can deliver more empty verbiage in five minutes than an entire contingent of Southern televangelists in a week.

A merchant will tell you we are a nation of merchants.

A pragmatist will dismiss mystics, beginning with Naregatsi (assuming he has heard of him) as worthless daydreamers.

A commissar will tell you in no uncertain terms that intellectuals are, in his humble opinion, no better than mental masturbators.

Ask me and I will tell you we are not even a nation but a collection of tribes divided by bosses (who believe to an ideology), bishops (god), and benefactors (capital). But whatever we are, we are first and foremost men of faith, even when what we believe in is unbelief. Which means we know what’s good for others better than they know themselves.

Ask me what I believe in and I will tell you I believe in the freedom to question the validity of all belief systems.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, November 10, 2006

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REQUIEM FOR A DISSIDENT

**********************************************

NOVAYA GAZETA (the Russian paper for which Anna Politkovskaya worked): “As long as NOVAYA GAZETA exists, her assassin will not have a good night’s sleep.”

*

Mikhail Gorbachev in LA REPUBBLICA (Italy): “It is clear that they wanted to silence her. It is an assault on the free press and on all those who struggle for democracy in our country.”

*

THE TIMES (Great Britain): “She was a fearless critic of President Putin and the atrocities committed by Russians in Chechnya. One of these reasons cost her life.”

*

CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy): “Europe and the United States protest, Putin is silent.”

*

EL MUNDO (Spain): “The name of Anna Politkovskaya is added to the list of assassinated journalists who defended freedom.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 11, 2006

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DIKRAN THE GREAT AND OTHER RASCALS

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Perennial victims of empires, we brag about the fact that under Dikran the Great we too had an empire. We brag even when we have nothing to brag about. The Roman Empire, like so many other empires around us, bit the dust, we like to brag, but we Armenians continue to live and prosper. What unspeakable nonsense! What verbal manure! What trashy propaganda! If half of the world today speaks dialects of Latin, can we really say the Roman Empire has ceased to exist? The Ottoman Empire lasted much longer than the Roman Empire. Are the Turks justified in asserting superiority over the Romans?

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What does it take to be an empire, beside greed and a bloodthirsty disposition? In all civilized and semi-civilized countries today there are laws that say you can’t just walk into your neighbor’s home and say, “Henceforth your property is no longer yours but mine. Disagree with me and you die!” And yet, this is exactly what empires do. Consider one of the most civilized empires in the history of mankind, the Athenian Empire. Greeks today brag about their culture as we brag about Dikran the Great. And yet, they condemned Socrates to death. As for Plato and Aristotle: they were so afraid they might meet the same fate that they spent a number of years in self-imposed exile. The Athenian Empire was based on military might, which meant war and taxation. When a city-state refused to pay its share of taxes, it was punished by ruthless massacres of civilians.

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According to our chauvinists, we are a peace loving people, hence our status as perennial underdogs and victims. What does it take to be an underdog? According to Hegel, fear of death, that is to say, cowardice.

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We like to brag not only about Dikran the Great, but also our millionaires. What does it take to be a capitalist? Exploitation. Our benefactors may not brag about their wealth but they love to make headlines in our papers and see their portraits hanging in vestibules of community centers, schools, and churches.

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We brag about Dikran the Great because we can’t brag about Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Suleiman the Magnificent. But I suggest we and the rest of the world have nothing to brag about, and whenever a tribe, nation, or empire brags, it lies.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 12, 2006

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I MAY HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE

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“You are consistently negative,” I am told again and again. “Try to be more positive.” They never tell me to be more honest, as if honesty were negative, and Turks and massacres positive.

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Some of my most faithful readers are hoodlums. Writers share this in common with bus drivers: they can’t choose their passengers.

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Jacques de Groff (b. 1924), French historian: “The mediocrity of leaders has at no time slowed down the evolution of mankind.” True, in so far as, by alienating the best and the brightest, mediocre leaders (whose number one enemy is excellence) promote the brotherhood of all men and thus accelerate the decline and ultimate demise of nations and tribes.

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If “a famous man is disgusting” (Ionesco), what could be more contemptible and repellent than a total mediocrity who thinks he deserves fame.

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When I first came to Canada, I met an Oriental carpet dealer who thought of himself as the uncrowned king of the Armenian community. Whenever he saw me he would ask, “Are you making any money?” He died bankrupt.

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Death is the first step of a long voyage, and if the voyage is into nothingness, so much the better.

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My choice of cheerful epitaph today: “Here lies a dog who barked up the wrong tree.”

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I would love the slums and gutters of my homeland more than the rivers, boulevards, and palaces of foreign capitals – if I had a homeland.

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