as i see it - Pt. IV

ara baliozian · October 16, 2010

Thursday, October 14, 2010

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WOUNDED ANIMALS

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To the gentle reader who described me as “a wounded animal,” I say:

If centuries of abject subservience to brutal regimes have not left permanent scars on your soul (if you will forgive the overstatement) you must be a superman.

And if you claim to have at no time been mortally wounded by your fellow Armenians, you must be a habitual liar.

Since I have never met a superman and I have met many liars, I have no choice but to assume you are one of those liars who will say anything to assert their superiority over their fellow Armenians.

*

In this morning's paper there is a long article on Armenian criminals in America. Its first paragraph reads:

“A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat the government medical insurance program Medicare out of $163 million US, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. Authorities said Wednesday.”

We are further informed that an Armenian criminal boss is known as a “vor,” probably because all he does is sit on his fat posterior and let his underlings do the dirty work.

*

The questions to be asked at this point are:

Is there a single former Soviet citizen today who does not bear permanent scars inflicted on his soul by the Stalinist system?

How many “vors” are there in the Yerevan bureaucracy today?

What are the chances that an honest Armenian will emerge from the swamp and reach the top? -- or is that a utopian daydream on my part?

#

Friday, October 15, 2010

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NOTES ON OBJECTIVITY

AND DISSENT

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Objectivity is an asset, not a liability.

*

Where there is an absence of objectivity,

blunders are sure to follow.

*

To see things as they are

is better than to think of them as we would like them to be.

*

A Christian can't be objective about Christianity

in the same way that a Taliban mullah

can't be objective about Islam.

*

To say that in matters of faith objectivity is irrelevant

is to surrender reason to the forces of darkness

– the source of all violence.

*

Dissent does not have to be infallible in order to be necessary.

*

Power without dissent digs its own grave.

*

Our intolerance of dissent is a legacy

of our Ottoman and Stalinist past.

*

Only the brain-dead are against dissent and free speech.

*

When the brain-dead lead the brain-dead

they don't fall into the ditch

because their skeletons are already buried there.

*

Men of power do not welcome dissidents;

they prefer dupes with a negative IQ

whose favorite expression is “Yes, sir!”

#

Saturday, October 16, 2010

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FUND-RAISERS

& RELATED ATROCITIES

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No activity has been more abused among us

than fund-raising.

*

To say of someone that he has the integrity of a fund-raiser

amount to calling him white trash.

*

The greatest beneficiaries of fun-raising

are the fund-raisers themselves.

*

I have yet to meet a fund-raiser

who placed the welfare of the people

above his own fat income.

*

I loathe fund-raisers as much as I loathe pimps --

and I say this with the full awareness

that I am being unfair to pimps.

*

Which reminds me of the line:

“Please, don't tell my mother I am a lawyer:

she thinks I am a pimp.”

*

Shakespeare: “Let's begin by killing all the lawyers.”

*

Dante: If he didn't dedicate an entire circle

in his INFERNO to lawyers, he should have.

*

To the lawyers and fund-raisers on this forum

(if there are any) I say:

“Present company suspected.”

*

I rest my case.

Nothing further, your Honor.

#

ara baliozian · October 20, 2010

Sunday, October 17, 2010

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LIARS AND MEGALOMANIACS

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When what I say is ignored or rejected,

I have no choice but to repeat myself in the hope that

I may have better luck next time.

After all, Rome wasn't built in one day.

*

I agree with our revolutionaries in so far as

they said enough is enough!

After six hundred years of subservience

we have earned the right to revolt.

I disagree with them – and do so violently – in so far as

they were the first to abandon ship.

*

For saying the obvious,

I am now told I am wrong by individuals

whose incompetence is exceeded only

by their cowardice.

*

In the eyes of the infallible,

you will be right only when you parrot their lies.

*

If you can't convert them, make them mad.

That's my motto.

An Armenian writer is judged

by the number of enemies he makes.

The more, the merrier.

*

What have they learned from their failures?

Nothing. Less than nothing!

Only to rewrite history – which is another thing

they share with Turks.

*

Never parrot the line or recycle the propaganda

of individuals who consider themselves infallible

(they are liars)

or pretend to speak in the name of the Almighty

(they are megalomaniacs).

#

Monday, October 18, 2010

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BIAS VERSUS OBJECTIVITY

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After disagreeing with my views on objectivity,

a reader writes to support the thesis that bias is inevitable and objectivity impossible.

Objectivity, like truth, may indeed be unattainable.

That, however, does not mean we cannot travel in its direction;

or bias is a terminal condition, and once biased, always biased.

*

Consider the following cases of bias:

Germans asserting they belong to a superior race,

and Jews believing they are the Chosen People.

Now contrast these two cases of bias with Toynbee's objective assertion that both Germans and Jews owe their fictional privileged status to no one but to their own narcissism.

*

Closer to home:

I know what it means to be brainwashed (and therefore biased),

and I also know what it means to replace bias with objectivity.

As a child I was biased.

As an adult I have become more objective.

*

Some Turks believe the Genocide to be a fiction of our imagination, and that it was not Turks who massacred Armenians, but the other way around.

By contrast, Armenians believe Turks massacred as many as two million Armenians.

Now suppose these Turks and Armenians appeal to a panel of outsiders with no ax to grind to study the matter and report back. And suppose after a year of deliberation and consultation with experts in the field, this panel reports back and submits its findings, after which Turks are willing to concede that as many as 300,000 Armenians may have been massacred, and Armenians are willing to lower the number of victims from 2 million to 1.5 million. We can conclude that both sides have taken a step in the right direction.

*

And now suppose that a hundred years hence the study of history will be so refined and developed that there will no longer be Armenian and Turkish, or for that matter, Russian or American, history textbooks but a single textbook agreed upon by a panel of international academics. I suggest such a textbook will have taken still another step in the direction of objectivity.

*

Bias may be said to be of two kinds: the kind that is a Big Lie (which can be exposed) and the kind that is inevitable (which can be corrected).

As things stand, all textbooks by nationalist historians – be they Turkish, Armenian, or Hottentot – are no better than propaganda whose intent is to legitimize a power structure, deceive the people, and brainwash children in order to prepare them to fight another war.

#

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

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OBJECTION!

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One of my gentle readers has taken it upon himself to straighten me out on the subject of lawyers by sending me a three line message which contains one insult and two curses.

Zarian is right: “An Armenian's tongue can be sharper than a Turk's yataghan.”

Since this is the first time I hear from this reader -- (let's call him Jack S. Avanakian not because I don't want to identify him but because I did not burden my memory with his name), I should be flattered in the knowledge that he agrees – or at least he does not disagree – with everything else I have been saying. But flattered, I am not!

I may not believe in curses, but neither do I welcome them.

May I assure Jack S. Avanakian and all lawyers in general that they have had a bad press long before I was born, and insulting me will do nothing to improve matters.

*

In my time I have dealt with several lawyers – probably more than my share – and one of them was indeed a fine gentleman (may he rest in peace) perhaps because there are good men everywhere, including Turks.

If I emphasize the dark side of things -- if I choose to expose the negative, as opposed to extolling the positive -- it may be because as an Armenian I refuse to adopt Saroyan (who pretended to love mankind but couldn't stand his own children) as a role model.

*

There are good lawyers as there are honest politicians out there somewhere. That, however, does not diminish the accuracy and relevance of Raymond Chandler's unforgettable observation, “The room was as dark as the prospects of an honest politician.” And if I have nothing good to say about them it's because we Armenians collectively have been perennial double victims of alien as well as our own political leadership.

*

Speaking of politicians: the fact that a great many of them are lawyers doesn't make them more palatable to my taste. But that's neither here nor there. What I find most repellent about lawyers is that they care more about the Law and less about Justice. And what has been the contribution of the Law in history – from the execution of Socrates and the Crucifixion of Christ to such more recent crimes against humanity as our Genocide, the Holocaust of the Jews, the countless violations of human rights against the Blacks in America, and the Gulag in the USSR (all of which were committed in the name of the Law)?

Throughout history, the Law has always acted as an arm of those in power (be they capitalists or commissars) even when they were no better than crminals.

*

If Jack S. Avanakian is not careful he may provoke me into saying that lawyers have been as bad as those whose interests they serve and whose powers they defend and legitimize. Sultan Abdulhamid II, Talaat, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao may be dead and buried but their offspring can always rely on lawyers to defend them even if they are as guilty as serial killers.

*

It would be no exaggeration to say that at the root of all injustice there will be a lawyer. And if there is more justice today in both Russia and the United States it's because of dissident writers like Solzhenitsyn and preachers like Martin Luther King, not lawyers.

#

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

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REFLECTIOONS

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If at the end of an argument neither side has moved an inch, they must be either Turks or Armenians.

*

You want to be a writer? Write a single honest line and you will be attacked by so many charlatans that you will spend the rest of your life replying to them and in the process exposing their dishonesty. Yes! -- all it takes is a single honest line.

*

We are told love is better than hatred. What we are not told is that it is wrong to love that which is deserving of our hate – things like lies, prejudice, greed, war, and massacre.

*

We are taught to love our homeland and fellow countrymen. What we are not taught is that singling them out as more deserving of our love than all others may have some undesirable consequences – among them xenophobia, chauvinism, racism, double-talk, cynicism, and ignorance of the world.

*

There is nothing wrong in being wrong. But there is something horribly wrong pretending to be infallible.

*

Philip Roth had to write PORTRNOY'S COMPLAINT to be hated by his fellow Jews. All an Armenian writer has to do is to say 2+2=4.

*

It's good to know that I live in a country where capital punishment by crucifixion or the death of a thousand cuts have been abolished. But as Antranik Zaroukian says somewhere, you can always rely on your fellow countrymen to find another equally painful method of execution.

#

ara baliozian · October 23, 2010

Thursday, October 21, 2010

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LAMENTATION

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The lies that flatter us

cease to be lies and don the vestments

of self-evident truths.

It is this that allows our phony patriots

to declare pride in their Armenianism

momentarily forgetting that our past

is nothing but a concatenation

of defeats, subservience, degradation, and massacre.

As for the empty boast, “We survived!”

I say, the worst, yes.

The best no!

Ottomanism and Sovietism, yes;

Armenianism (assuming such a thing exists,

and if it does we can recognize it when we see it)

certainly not!

*

Unhappy is the man

whose sole source of pride is propaganda;

and unhappy is the nation

whose leadership's central concern

is to moronize its children.

*

I sense the disintegration of our communities

by the fact that in the company of my fellow countrymen

I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

*

How many bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs do we have today?

I don't know and I don't care to know.

But I do know that you can count the number of intellectuals

on the fingers of one thumb.

There is money in charlatanism,

only unemployment, insults, and starvation

in dedication to ideas and principles.

#

Friday, October 22, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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There are less than 3 million Mongols in Mongolia today. But there are as many as 60 million Turks (former Mongols) in Turkey. There is only one rational explanation for this glaring disparity: rape and concubinage (legally sanctioned rape).

*

Has anyone ever read a Mongol poet or novelist? One is therefore justified in wondering to which fraction of his DNA does Orhan Pamuk owe his Nobel Prize?

*

I know now that everything I was taught as a child – except perhaps the rules of grammar – was wrong.

And speaking of grammar: There is a saying in French to the effect that even kings must obey the rules of grammar. And yet, Frederick the Great couldn't even speak German fluently, and the several books he authored (some with Voltaire's help) were written in French.

*

When we speak about the meaning of life, what we really mean of course is the meaning of death, or rather its meaninglessness.

*

Once upon a time when Turkey was discussed in diplomatic circles or in the international press, Armenians were also invariably mentioned. Just finished reading a long commentary on Turkey in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper in which Armenians are nowhere to be seen. We appear to have lost our relevance. Either that or we have ceased to be a political football.

*

If you pretend to know more than you do, sooner or later you will run into someone who will call your bluff and you will be caught with your pants down.

To rely too much on someone else's ignorance is an enterprise doomed to end in failure.

*

The older I grow the more frequently I catch myself saying “I don't know,” and “I don't understand.”

#

Saturday, October 23, 2010

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LAMENTATION (II)

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To the same degree that they have been Armenianized,

we have been Ottomanized.

I see symptoms of this malaise

in all our institutions – be they political, cultural, and religious.

*

Nothing can be more depressing to me

than the spectacle of a childhood friend

turning into a hireling and mouthing the party line,

and doing so with the unshakable conviction

that he is serving the community and the nation.

So what if in the process he is also making a comfortable living?

Why shouldn't he?

Isn't it the duty of every responsible man

to provide for his family?

Why should there be a contradiction

between his duty as a husband and a father

and his patriotism?

*

Never underestimate the cunning of crooks

and their ability to behave like their own dream team

of defense lawyers.

*

For every dissident,

the Soviets had ten perhaps even a hundred commissars

and a thousand brainwashed citizens

who believed they were law-abiding citizens

and dissidents were criminals.

But ultimately what brought down the Soviet Union

was not dissent but lies.

*

When the best are marginalized,

it is the worst that reach the top.

And when that happens,

death is sure to follow.

#

ara baliozian · October 27, 2010

Sunday, October 24, 2010

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KILLERS

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The daring with which some readers challenge my views is exceeded only by the cowardice with which they say “Yes, sir!” to the most asinine lies that issue from the mouth of a boss, bishop, or benefactor.

That too may be said to be a symptom of our Ottomanism and Sovietism – or should I say, sultanism and Stalinism?

*

And speaking of sultans (may they all burn in hell!): when they demanded and got a thousand concubines, I wonder, did any one of their advisers, servants, or subjects raise as much as an eyebrow even when alone, in bed, in a dark room, after midnight, his head covered by a thick charshaf?

*

I remember once when I said something critical about a bishop, a gentle reader rebuked me with the words: “Remember, whatever he says or does, he never ceases being a man of God.”

So were the sultans – who were to Muslims what popes are to Catholics.

*

Turks believe it is the bloodthirsty and savage Armenians who massacred the law-abiding and peace-loving citizens of the Empire. That only proves that they have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they will believe anything!

*

This reminds me of the story about an Englishman who on seeing the Duke of Wellington in the street, went up to him and said: “Mr. Smith, I believe.” To which Wellington replied: “If you believe that, you will believe anything!”

And I say, if you believe the Sultan was a man of Allah, and Kemal (like Mussolini) “ha sempre ragione” (is always right) you will believe anything! And worse. Whenever a charlatan with a degree or title challenges you, you will not only drop your pants, but you will also bend over.

*

It's astonishing what a thousand years of subservience will do to a man. Unbelievable as it may seem, it may even remove surgically, painlessly, and without anesthetic, his cojones

*

If you think I am saying something that hasn't been said before, listen to Toynbee who wrote what follows half a century ago:

“In the life which Man has made for himself on Earth, his institutions, in contrast to his personal relations, are the veritable slums, and the taint of moral obliquity is still more distressing in the least ignoble of these social tenements of the Human Spirit – for instance, in the churches and academies – than in such unquestionably malignant institutions as Slavery and War.”

Translated into dollars and cents, this simply means: when it comes to lies, bishops and imams are worse than thieves and killers.

#

Monday, October 25, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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The ability to see only the dark side should be seen as an asset rather than a liability in an environment where everyone is brainwashed to see the bright side.

*

If you think I am mean, nasty, and disagreeable it may be because so far you have been exposed only to the flattery of our speechifiers and sermonizers. Speaking for myself: I believe nothing they say, and if I believe anything it's the exact opposite of what they say.

*

The aim of our educational system is to raise another generation willing to submit itself to taxation without representation.

*

There is nothing like power to awaken the Turk in us. I have yet to meet a boss, bishop, or benefactor whose secret ambition was not to be another Suleiman the Magnificent.

*

“You should change your last name – why go about bearing a Turkish label?” an old friend once demanded to know.

Change my name? I wouldn't think of it. When a telemarketer calls me on the phone and has trouble pronouncing it (and it's amazing how many of them do) I say, “Wrong number!” and hang up. It's a time-saver.

*

Mother Teresa lost her faith but kept it a secret. I suspect there is a Mother Teresa in all of us. We may have lost faith in our institutions and fellow Armenians but we like to pretend we never had it so good.

*

As children we were taught to memorize the territories conquered by Dikran the Great. What we were not taught: how much of his humanity he surrendered.

*

Mike Tyson on Hannibal: “He was very courageous. He rode elephants through Cartilage.”

#

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

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THE WAY OF THE WORLD

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Nabokov in INVITATION TO A BEHEADING:

“...but as there is in the world not a single human being who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human...”

*

To those who accuse me of repeating myself and bitching too much, I plead extenuating circumstances. And to those who urge me to be more like Saroyan, may I remind them that Saroyan too was accused of repeating himself.

*

My father lost literally everything in two world wars – first time in the Ottoman Empire, second time in Greece. My mother was educated in an orphanage run by nuns; and I was educated by monks. I was born in a ghetto and now live in a slum – according to a real-estate agent who so informed my next-door neighbor when he wanted to sell his house.

*

Sooner or later we have no choice but to come to terms with reality, or with the fact that we can't be all things to all men, and it makes no difference if, like Saroyan, you love the whole world, or like myself, you are disposed to see only the dark side.

*

Speaking of love: It is not true that there is more hatred in me than there is love. I love many people – very probably as many as Saroyan. But most of those I love were either condemned to death (like Socrates and Christ), assassinated (like Gandhi), misunderstood (like Bach) or excommunicated or exiled (like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Zarian).

*

By contrast, Nabokov was born a millionaire and died as one thanks to a little slut called Lolita. But in between he experienced a revolution (during which he lost not only his fortune but also his father to assassins), exile, destitution, and rejection. He knew what he was talking about when he spoke of scarcity of humans in the world.

*

Blessed be the condemned to death, the assassinated, the misunderstood, rejected, marginalized. and persecuted, for they shall be rewarded with love and admiration in saecula saeculorum, amen!

#

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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“Fiscal accountability,” and “Hold them accountable”:

Two expressions I should like to see more often in our press.

*

Refuse to parrot a political line and make an enemy of all parrots.

*

The challenge all politicians face is to do the opposite of what they say and get away with it. Which is why the ideal community is a collection of idiots – which is what we were trained to be under the sultans and commissars and which is what we continue to be by habit, tradition, and culture.

*

In our environment, if you prove someone wrong, you make an enemy for life.

*

Because I speak of reality, I am ignored.

Because I speak of honesty, I am insulted.

Because I call self-assessed geniuses dupes, I am hated.

*

Toynbee on Russians: “As heirs, malgré eux, of an Orthodox Christian cultural heritage, they could not find the principle of 'totalitarianism' either unfamiliar or shocking.”

Something similar could be said of Catholics, Muslims, and Armenians.

*

Where bishops and imams are popular, free speech will be an alien concept.

Where there is too much talk of God, there will not be enough talk of human rights.

Where Allah is King, dissenters will be viewed as agents of the Devil.

*

Toynbee on wealth: “In general, wealth is represented, not as a material boon to be envied and, if possible, expropriated, but a spiritual impediment to be deprecated.”

Translation: Poverty may not be a blessing, but wealth might as well be a curse.

#

ara baliozian · October 30, 2010

Thursday, October 28, 2010

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UNDIPLOMATIC OBSERVATIONS

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It is written: “He who has the gold, defines the golden rule.”

*

It is also written: “Revolutions may change the men at the top, they don't change human nature.”

*

The economic crisis engineered under Bush and embraced by Obama proves one thing: Sooner or later both capitalism and communism degenerate into gangsterism.

*

Obama's mistake was to seek the advice of men from Wall Street to fix Wall Street on the grounds that it takes a thief to catch a thief. But in this case the thieves didn't get caught; they got away with more loot, that is, taxpayers' money.

Obama behaved like Shaw's “gentleman” who steals from the poor to help the rich.

*

I have myself been called all kinds of nasty names by our bloodsuckers and brown-nosers because I refuse to play the game by their rules – that is to say, to be one of them.

*

A disgruntled insider once told me, shortly after the Earthquake in Armenia, one of our fund-raisers in New York demanded and got $100,000 salary plus expenses; and I assume he transferred the collected funds to his counterpart in Yerevan, who distributed them to his own counterparts in the affected areas, and so on.

This may explain why, disgusted by this kind of “trickle-down” charity, 1.5 million Armenians decided to emigrate to America and Turkey, among other countries, in order to find employment and support their families back home.

*

To those who tell me I should be more diplomatic in what I write, I say: Diplomats are highly trained and skilled gentlemen who get paid good money for their work. Nobody is paying me to be diplomatic.

#

Friday, October 29, 2010

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ON SURVIVAL

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Notwithstanding its countless blunders, dogmatism, intolerance and crimes against humanity, the Catholic Church has survived for two millennia. One reason why I don't rate our own survival as a worthy achievement worth mentioning or discussing. After all, the Ottoman Empire lasted longer than most empires.

*

Sometimes to survive means to be as bad or even worse than the competition. Cobras and scorpions owe their survival to their venom and not to their sweet disposition, altruism, and love of truth. To say therefore that we owe our survival (if that's what you want to call it) to our civic virtues, tolerance, and love of democracy, is to lie.

*

One reason I write short sentences and paragraphs is that I am afraid by the time I finish writing longer ones I may no longer have an audience. I am not implying I have one today – three or four readers an audience to not make – but they are better than no audience. Call it the consolation of a loser.

*

If an explanation is endorsed by a political party, it can't be right. Truth and politics are as mutually exclusive concepts as fire and water.

*

If I knew how to pray, I would say: “Please God, teach me how to forgive my own transgressions. Because then and only then I may learn to forgive those who transgress against me.”

#

Saturday, October 30, 2010

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REFLECTIONS

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If it is the dury of every true patriot to sacrifice himself in defense of his fellow countrymen, how many of our revolutionaries qualify?

I am not casting aspersions (as they say in westerns), just asking an innocent question.

*

When a member of the Party criticizes me, he does so with the certainty and daring of a prophet with 20/20 vision. But when it comes to critizing his own Party, he becomes deaf, dumb, stupid, and brain-dead.

*

The offspring of the same revolutionaries who challenged a mighty empire a hundred years ago are now afraid to challenge the shadows of their own faceless and anonymous bosses.

What a great subject for a comedy!

*

If “War is hell,” and “Hell is other people” (Sartre), it follows, peace is hell too.

*

The only way to explain and reconcile the idea of an all-loving God and the murder of an innocent child, or for that matter, the senseless death of two or seven million innocent civilians, is to think of time (be it the lifetime of a human being or that of the universe itself) in relation to cosmic time or eternity, as only a fraction of a second.

#

ara baliozian · November 3, 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

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LESSONS

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The lesson to be learned from our genocide is not that Turks are bloodthirsty savages (under certain conditions even the most civilized people on earth will behave like a primitive savage tribe) but that

(one) those in power are not always morally superior or infallible;

(two) when exposed they are not always willing to admit their blunders or the magnitude of their crimes;

(three) they can always rely on a majority of dupes to believe them; and

(four) in such a climate dissenters will be identified as traitors and enemies.

*

To those who say the difference between Turks (Asiatic barbarians) and Germans (civilized) is that Germans, unlike Turks, admitted their guilt, I say:

Germans admitted their guilt because they lost the war.

Turks refuse to admit their guilt because they won, and because history is written by the victor.

Had the Germans won, the chances are I would now be writing these lines in German and I woud be parroting the official German denialist line; and what's even worse, you would believe everything I say the way a devout Catholic today believes in the encyclicals of the Pope on the grounds that the Pope is infallible and he speaks in the name of God.

*

It is not my intention here to suggest that we have no choice but to behave like dupes. If anything, I am saying the exact opposite, namely: there is a tendency in all of us to embrace a big lie as if it were a self-evident truth.

*

At all times and everywhere, truth is well hidden from us.

What is trumpeted is only a fraction of reality that might as well be a perversion of the truth, that is to say, it is a bare-faced lie delivered by crooks whose number one concern is number one, and whose number two concern is to cover up this obvious fact. The men at the top – be they popes, imams, kings, or statesmen, are liars and he who believes them is a damn fool who deserves to be taken to the cleaners, as we have been.

#

Monday, November 1, 2010

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UNFORGETTABLE LINES

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There are some lines that once heard or read are never forgotten.

Some random samples follow:

*

Anonymous (French): “He who can kiss can bite.”

*

Anonymous (Chinese): “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.”

*

Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”

*

Anonymous (Jewish): “Sleep fast, we need the pillows.”

*

Anonymous (Turkish): “When the house is finished, death enters.”

*

Anonymous (Turkish): "Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Cat play is mouse death.”

'

Dostoevsky: “Do you realize how powerful one man can be?”

*

Anonymous (Jewish): “A girl in good shape is often the reason why a man is in bad shape.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “To the poor everyone is generous with advice.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Pigs never see the stars.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian):

“One Armenian eats one chicken;

two Armenians eat two chickens;

three Armenians eat each other.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “A dead jackass is not afraid of wolves.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Soft words can break bones.”

*

If you have unforgettable lines of your own, let's have them.

I for one look forward to hearing from you.

#

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

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A TRUE STORY

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

Once, many years ago, when a friend took me to a community center, the two things that I noticed and remember to this day are,

(one) the famous Soviet-Armenian writer who was scheduled to deliver a lecture, stank like a skunk – no doubt having taken his regular yearly bath eleven months ago; and

(two) immediately after the question period, the national benefactor who was in the audience was surrounded by a phalanx of brown-nosers – to protect him (I heard later) from direct assaults by riffraff.

Whenever the benefactor made a public appearance (my friend explained later) people would go up to him and apply personally for a grant, that is, demand cash; to which the benefactor would invariably say, “Talk to my secretary.”

*

Because I spent most of my time in solitary confinement reading, I was told again and again that one may learn a great deal from books, but one may also learn different things not available in books by meeting people – most of which, I now think, not worth knowing.

*

There is a P.S. to this story:

Shortly after independence, the famous writer was murdered by the hit men of a mafia don in retaliation of the murder of his own son by the writer's son, who after the deed went underground and, as far as I know, has not surfaced since.

*

P.P.S.

The lecture at the community center was financed by the benefactor, which may suggest, some Armenians have so much money that they don't mind investing it on crooks parading as intellectuals and role models to future generations. Either that or they (benefactors) rely too much on the advice of secretaries who can't tell the difference between an honest man and a KGB agent.

#

BOOK REVIEW

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

1001 DAYS THAT SHAPED THE WORLD.

Edited by Peter Furtado.

960 pages. New York, 2008.

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

Three randomly selected days discussed in this wrist-wrenching and lavishly illustrated tome are:

“May 1, 1274 – Beatrice Glimpsed (Beatrice Portinari inspires Dante's greatest work).”

“June 4, 1913 – Suffragette Trampled to Death.”

“January 2, 1973 – Abortion Legalized.”

*

Armenians are not mentioned.

Turks and Kurds, yes.

Armenians. no.

So much for first nation this and first nation that. Which may suggest that our propaganda is designed to deceive us and no one else.

But that's the way it is with all propaganda regardless of race, color, and creed.

No one but Jews believe they are the Chosen People.

No one but some Aryans believed they belonged to a Superior Race.

And until very recently, no one but Southern bigots believed in the superiority of “Anglo-Saxon democracy” and in the inferiority of Jews, Blacks, and Catholics – that is to say, the rest of the world.

Charity, it is said, begins at home.

So does deception, alas!

*

Closer to home:

Why is it that when people identify themselves as smart they behave like idiots?

Why is it that the lowest scum on earth identify themselves as “superior”?

If in a crime it's “cherchez la femme,” in propaganda it must be cherchez the self-evident truth that it tries to cover up.

#

ara baliozian · November 6, 2010

Thursday, November 4, 2010

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

FACING FACTS

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

When academics discuss the great achievements of Greece,

they mean of course ancient Greece.

They know, and they assume their readers also know,

that the only two thing modern Greeks

share with their ancient counterparts

is the territory and the language.

Nothing else!

During the last twenty-two centuries

Greeks have had so many conquerors –

from Macedonians and Romans

to Turks and Germans – that they have been

thoroughly bastardized.

*

Please note that I am not advocating racial purity.

What degrades and degenerates nations

is not mixed marriages

but subservience to the foreign conqueror,

which gradually evolves to

subservience to domestic wheeler-dealers

who speechify in the name of patriotism,

subservience to empty suits with fat bank accounts,

and subservience to fornicators who sermonize against sin.

*

Why do I say these things?

Simply to assert the fact that

not all Armenians are dupes

or cowards afraid to face reality.

There is hope in confronting challenges no matter how severe.

There is no hope in lies, illusions, flattery, and wishful thinking.

#

Friday, November 5, 2010

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

THREE STORIES / FIVE MORALS

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

Because 2500 years ago the Greeks condemned a thinker to death,

he became the most celebrated philosopher of all time.

*

Because 2000 years ago they crucified an obscure preacher

-- so obscure in fact that most of his contemporaries were not even aware of his existence –

he acquired billions of followers from one and of the world to the other.

*

Because the Kremlin at the apex of its power tried to silence an unknown, unarmed and peace-loving dissident by exiling him to Siberia, he was awarded the Nobel Prize and is now generally recognized as the greatest Russian writer of the Soviet era.

*

Moral I: If you want to sell toothpaste, you spend millions advertising it in the media. But if you want to promote the ideas of a thinker, reformer, or dissident, you silence him.

*

Moral II: Fascists dig their own graves because they refuse to learn from history.

*

Moral III: The easy, convenient, or obvious solution may not always be the best solution.

*

Moral IV: If you think the right thoughts in the solitary confinement of your room, you will be overheard ten thousand miles away (according to an old Chinese proverb).

*

Moral V: Actions have unforeseen consequences not always to the advantage of the actors.

#

Saturday, November 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Because I rated what I read above reality,

I fell into the same trap as Don Quixote and Madame Bovary.

That's my way of pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

Leader: I can't think of another word with more sinister historic connotations.

Why say “leader” when we can say “public servant”?

*

The first known case of compounding a felony:

After planting that damn tree in the Garden,

He introduced the Serpent.

*

Recent economic and political developments in the United States have made it abundantly clear that capitalism means free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.

*

Did you know that most of our kings were odars?

Our sons of bitches were not even ours!

*

Armenia the cradle of civilization?

There is something incongruous in grave-diggers speaking of cradles.

*

He thought diarrhea was a compulsive need to keep a diary.

*

All fascists operate on the assumption that if you deliver a lie in a loud voice and repeat it often enough, you may have a better chance to fool most of the people most of the time.

*

Something to look forward to:

a new book by Eric-Emmanuel titled

TO THINK THAT BEETHOVEN IS DEAD WHEN SO MANY MORONS LIVE.

*

To the question, “What is the difference between the rich and the poor?”

Hemingway is said to have replied "The rich have more money.”

What is the difference between winners and losers?

Winners know something losers don't, namely how to win.

We may enjoy more international support on the day we de-victimize ourselves.

#

ara baliozian · November 10, 2010

Sunday, November 7, 2010

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

ON LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP

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

There is a sheep and a goat in all of us.

We may believe what we are told

by those who know better

(or pretend to know better)

but we also entertain doubts.

*

We have more questions than answers

and no one has the final answers.

Leadership consists in dividing and deceiving.

*

Armenians and Turks share one important thing in common:

they are both dupes of their own leadership.

*

There are no good leaders;

only good public servants.

In an ideal world anyone with leadership qualities

(and I can't imagine a more repellent quality)

would be treated as a potential criminal in need of a shrink.

*

If as a community we are a disaster area today

it is because of the phenomenon known as

too-many-chiefs-and-no-Indians.

*

If there are two sides to every story,

there will also be leaders willing

to exploit the dupes of one side against the other.

Everything that is bad in life we owe to leaders;

and everything that is good to public servants.

*

As long as there are imams and popes

there will also be infidels.

What could be more oxymoronic as well as moronic

than to think the only way to assert one's own humanity

is by dehumanizing others?

*

Where am I going with this?

My aim is to understand that which is incomprehensible.

My ambition in life is to take a single step in the right direction

in a field without signs and without a center.

*

Mankind will always be at the mercy of leaders

willing to divide by stressing the interests of one side against the other.

If we could only teach ourselves

to think against ourselves.

*

To the self-righteous I say:

Get used to the idea that you may not be

as right as you think you are.

No one is – especially those who have no doubts.

In life, the questions will always outnumber the answers,

and the doubts will always outnumber the certainties.

To think otherwise is the source of all evil.

*

Who is a dupe?

If you think your leaders care more about you

than about their own powers and privileges, you qualify!

And may the Good Lord

(if He exists)

have mercy on your soul

(if you have one).

#

Monday, November 8, 2010

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

REFLECTIONS

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

While reading an article on Istanbul written by two Canadian tourists, I was wondering if Armenians would be mentioned; and sure enough they were, but not by the tourists but by an Oriental carpet dealer trying to sell them a kilim. “Why,” he demands to know at one point, “don't more Americans visit? Is it because of the Armenians who died after the First World War?” -- implying, we all die sooner or later; no one lives forever; what's so special about these damn Armenians who are out to starve me?

*

Turks say we massacred them.

Why did we do that?

The obvious answer must be: Because after six hundred years of subservience we had had it up to here! And if that's not a good enough reason, I like to know what is.

*

We say they massacred us.

Why did they do that?

Again, the obvious and common-sense answer must be: They thought if we win, they will have to be subservient to us.

Subservience may be good enough for inferior races like the Armenians, but unthinkable for those born to rule.

Which may suggest that, no matter how you slice it, they were racists and what they did qualifies as a crime against humanity.

*

What if we too are racists?

If we are, it may be because we earned the right – when we let them rape our daughters and use our sons to satisfy their imperial greed by forcing them to kill and die in their own wars.

*

The difference between Turkish and Armenian racism is similar to that which exists between murder one and self-defense. The sentence for the first is life imprisonment, and for the second, not guilty (which of course is not the same as innocent).

*

Anyone who says or implies you don't have to think for yourself because I will tell you what to think on the grounds that I know better (and this is as true of our former rulers as it is today of our Ottomanized elites), uses persuasion as surely as a castrator uses a knife, and the organ he itches to delete is much more valuable than the other one.

*

Readers who would gladly see me destroyed urge me to be more constructive.

*

Armenians are not smart.

It is my ambition to repeat that as often as our propagandists say Armenians are smart.

There is no such thing as a smart dupe.

All dupes are dumb.

*

Wake up Armenians! You have nothing to lose but your nightmares.

#

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

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

THEORY AND PRACTICE

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

If I keep things short it's because I am myself so easily bored by what I read that I have developed an acute phobia of boring my readers.

*

When fornicators preach chastity, they say: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Why should anyone be allowed to make a comfortable living by doing the opposite of what he says?

Imagine a cop who delivers lectures on law and order during the day and turns into a serial killer at night.

Imagine a political leader who promises peace and prosperity for a thousand years and delivers war and pestilence.

On second thought, no need to imagine anything, just read a history of the 20th Century.

Imagine a lawyer – strike that! Bad example.

*

No one likes to be called a crook, especially crooks.

Likewise, no one likes to be called dumb, especially the dumb.

Everyone prefers to be called smart, including the dumb – especially the dumb.

Which may explain why we call ourselves smart.

Self-flattery is as Armenian as pilaf and shish-kebab.

*

A few years ago, one of my books, titled FRAGMENTED DREAMS (out of print now), was withdrawn from classrooms because some parents thought it may lower the self-esteem of their children.

Because I judge a nation by its history as opposed to its propaganda, I have acquired enemies among Turks as well as Armenians.

Some people (present company suspected) are so abysmally insecure that they think truth, instead of setting them free (as the Scriptures tell us) will shatter their image in their own eyes.

*

As for our academics who, even as I write, are busy shaping the character and worldview of the next generation: I am acquainted with several of them and they strike me as individuals who will say and do anything in exchange of a regular salary.

*

The problem with speechifiers is that after they deliver the same speech three or four times, they start believing in their own nonsense.

No one who submits his intelligence to individuals who don't have much of it themselves (namely, bosses, bishops, and benefactors) can claim to know better.

#

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

A reader once called me “a self-appointed critic,” as if popes and imams, or for that matter, commissars and our own Jack S. Avanakians are in the habit of appointing their own critics, and unless you have a license to practice, what you say ain't worth a sh*t.

*

Speaking of his fellow countrymen, Ben Hecht once said: “The American does not aspire to overthrow the thieves and oppressors half as much as he does to become one of them.”

If you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that we are morally superior, I would like to see it.

*

Do you remember the very first question you were asked as a child? I do! “Whom do you love more, your father or your mother?” That's when I began to suspect adults are nuts.

*

Sheep go where their shepherds take them; but there is a wolf in every man, as there is a Spartacus in every slave. This is a rule with only one exception: Armenians. The average Armenian dupe is a sheep in sheep's clothing.

*

Writing for Armenians means making yourself vulnerable to the insults of readers who are equipped to understand only recycled crapola. Deviate an inch and run the risk of being called an idiot by idiots.

*

If I continue to function today it's because I work for nothing and I can't be fired.

*

Like all -isms Armenianism too has its deceivers and dupes. With one difference: our dupes don't consider themselves dupes because they think they are too smart to be dupes.

Well, I've got news for them!

#

ara baliozian · November 13, 2010

Thursday, November 11, 2010

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

BOOMERANG

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

In my morning paper today, under a headline that reads, “Ambassador blasts Austria over treatment of Turks,” I read: “The Turkish ambassador accused Austria of treating his compatriots like a virus.” Further down he is quoted as having said to the Austrians: “You must learn to live together with other people. What's Austria's problem?”

Hear. hear!

*

Everything that you do unto others, shall be done unto you.

In life nobody gets away with nothing!

*

Are you easily offended by double-negatives.

I am not.

Greeks have been using double-negatives for millennia with no discernible ill effects.

For example: instead of saying “I have nothing,” (“Exo tipota”), they say “I don't have nothing” ("Then exo tipota").

Speaking for myself:

I prefer the Greek way. It may not make sense, but then in life, what does?

*

Today is Remembrance Day – a day we remember the end of World War I and our heroes who died in defense of our country and freedom.

Today is also a day in which we are encouraged to forget that our heroes also did some serial killing of their own.

#

Friday, November 12, 2010

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

SITUATION / SHITUATION

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

The shortest poem in the world?

“Adam

Had 'em.”

(Meaning, microbes.)

*

The shortest proverb in the world?

“Kirk, krik.”

(Turkish for “Forty, broken” -- in reference to the fact that most health problems begin at forty, that is, at the threshold of old age.)

*

One of my mother's favorite sayings was:

“Kimini chok chok,

Kimini hich yok.”

(Turkish for “Some folks have too much, other folks have nothing.”)

Karl Marx in a nutshell.

*

Turks knew their onions, alright!

They conquered and ruled over many lands, and came into contact with many people and as many cultures; and because they were in a position to choose, they chose the very best – the most beautiful girls for their harems, the strongest boys as Janissaries, the most competent and gifted architects, artists, and musicians.

How much of Turkish culture is Turkish?

My guess is, no more than 1%.

*

How much of Armenian culture is Armenian?

When I compare our contemporary music, architecture, and literature to that of our Golden Age (5th Century AD) and Silver Age (late 19th Century), my guess is less than 1%.

No one wants to admit it but the evidence is irrefutable on this point: we are a nation of rejects and mediocrities -- fornicators who sermonize on chastity, enemy agents who speechify on patriotism, and bloodsuckers who raise funds for the needy.

*

It is not only Turks who are to blame, however. Before them the Byzantine Greeks did the same; and more recently the Soviets. Some of the greatest military and political leaders of the Byzantine Empire were not Greek but Armenian. Very much like Turks and Byzantine Greeks, the Soviets kept the best for themselves (Anastas Mikoyan and his brother Artem of MiG fame, Aram Khachaturian, among many others) and in successive purges systematically eliminated anyone and everyone who dared to be more Armenian and less Soviet.

*

I say these things not because I am a cynic out to promote defeatism and despair but to point out the fact that our genocide in an ongoing process that began long before we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Turks. Unless we understand this very obvious fact and we segregate the goats from the sheep, we are doomed.

#

Saturday, November 13, 2010

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

DEPROGRAMMING

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

One of the hardest things in life

is convincing a dupe that he is a fool.

*

If you don't understand yourself,

the chances are you will misunderstand everyone else.

*

If a truth contradicts another truth,

both must be lies.

*

A French thinker (may have been Voltaire) once said,

if it weren't for the miracles in the Bible,

there would be many more Christians.

Religion and magic are incompatible concepts.

*

When two belief systems clash,

their adherents would be justified in saying:

“I believe, therefore I am wrong.”

*

To those of my readers who are willing to share their wisdom with me,

may I be so bold as to suggest that

I am old enough to learn from my own mistakes,

thank you very much.

*

I should like to see academic fields

on “Armenian anti-Armenianism” and

“the flora and fauna of the Armenian psyche.”

*

If I were to write a history of our literature,

I would have to conclude it with the words:

“After surviving bloodthirsty sultans and murderous commissars,

Armenian literature expired under our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.”

#

ara baliozian · November 17, 2010

Sunday, November 14, 2010

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

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

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

In a dishonest environment nothing is as severely punished as honesty.

Socrates, Christ, Luther, Gandhi, Martin Luther King:

what was their offense?

By being honest they exposed the dishonesty of those in power.

*

What is criminal in dissent?

What else but the daring to suggest that

when the mighty of this world speak in the name of truth or God

(whom they neither know nor understand) they lie.

They say all men are brothers

but they divide mankind into those who are for them

and those who are against them.

They say God is love

but they behave as thought He hated infidels unto death.

They speak of eternal life

but what they say has the stench of death

(if not of the body than of the spirit).

*

Only damn fools persecute and kill in the name of love.

Only charlatans invent dogmas that legitimize intolerance.

If I could, I would replace the word “God”

with “the Powers that be,”

and if I knew how to pray,

I would introduce my prayers with the words:

“To whom it may or may not concern.”

#

Monday, November 15, 2010

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

SUMMING UP

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

We disagree for two important reasons:

(one) we use only an extremely small fraction of our brain; and

(two) we perceive only an extremely small fraction of reality.

Science tells us the eye is like a camera, it takes in an infinite number of details (countless droplets of water, for instance), but the brain is satisfied to see only a single occurrence (rain).

*

Disagreements will always outnumber agreements; and the agreements will likely be of the a priori kind – that is, judgments rendered before the evidence is in, or decisions based on predisposition and prejudice.

We will be predisposed to agree with friends and disagree with enemies even when friends are wrong and enemies are right.

We will be predisposed to say “Yes, sir!" to those we view as our betters, and to say “No way!” to those we believe to be against us.

Catholics will trust the judgment of the Pope as surely as Muslims will chant “Allawa akhbar! with their imams.

As a result, our judgments will be based more on hearsay and less on admissible evidence.

*

It is the absence of admissible evidence that makes wars and massacres possible. We may have the semblance of law, order, and peace where we live (only a small fraction of the world) but anarchy, insurrection, and war in the world.

The men at the top may be fully aware of what I am saying here but in politics and diplomacy self-interest and power will invariably trump reason and common sense.

*

On the day mankind is civilized, all men that place self-interest or their own powers and privileges above reason and the common good will be perceived and treated as enemies of mankind.

But as long as we place our trust more on charlatans and crooks and less on that most valuable of all possessions that God or nature has bestowed on us (our brain) we will have wars and massacres, and the first victims of our lies and misconceptions will be peacemakers and dissidents – Socrates, Christ, Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn.

*

THE MOUSE IN THE ROOM

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

A cartoon: two elephants having a drink as one says to the other: “Notice how everyone is avoiding the mouse in the room.”

*

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

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

Gore Vidal in a recent interview:

“What I like about Montaigne is that he devoted one of his greatest essays on lying, which is the American malady. If we go down crashing one day, it's because everybody lies about everything.” (NEW STATESMAN, October 11, 2010, page 27.)

#

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

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

POLITICALLY INCORRECT OPINIONS

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

Those who are against abortion are as a rule for war

on the grounds that to kill the unborn is murder

but to kill the born is one's patriotic duty.

*

To speak of organized religions objectively

is to be politically incorrect

and nothing gives me more pleasure

than to infuriate fascists – both political and religious.

*

Most believers (regardless of their belief system)

are convinced that anyone who is not a member of their club

must be either a heretic or an infidel.

*

It is a serious error in judgment

to dismiss idiots as irrelevant.

I take idiots seriously

because I take the study of history seriously.

*

If you have power and God on your side,

reason and tolerance become subversive commodities.

*

A history of human rights in a religious context

would be an endless catalogs of crimes against humanity.

One is therefore justified in suspecting that

to subscribe to a belief system

is to be a dupe and an idiot,

and a dangerous idiot at that – judging

by the number of victims

that religions have generated.

#

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

All propaganda is open to criticism

except our propaganda.

*

God created man in His own image --

except Hitler, Stalin, Talaat, serial killers, rapists,

child molesters, racists, liars, dupes...

Is that 99% or 98% of mankind?

*

I take myself seriously only when others do.

Deep inside somewhere I am flattered

when I am silenced by our bosses, bishops, benefactors,

and their hirelings.

*

As an underdog I hate no one but top dogs;

and I feel sorry for dupes who, like dogs,

will be grateful to anyone who feeds them,

thus allowing their brains

to become an extension of their intestines.

*

Nobody but Armenians believe

in the Armenian version of history.

The same applies to Turks, Americans, Zulus,

Patagonians, Bolsheviks, capitalists...

*

History may be defined as a big lie told by top dogs

and believed by dupes with single-digit IQs.

#

ara baliozian · November 20, 2010

Thursday, November 18, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When I hear a lie I instinctively guess the truth that contradicts it.

The more outrageous the lie, the more obvious the truth.

One reason I never run out of things to say

is the fact that we swim in an ocean of lies.

*

Asked to define art and its function in society,

a Brazilian painter is quoted as having said:

“I don't know. All I know is this:

art is art, or it's sh*t.”

*

One of our elder statesmen

once mentioned a distant cousin of his in Paris

who had slept with Brigitte Bardot,

implying we Armenians have another thing to brag about.

*

What if the universe, as we know it,

is only a short footnote on the main text of existence?

*

I don't believe in prophetic dreams.

But I do believe that on some subconscious level

we may grasp the meaning of our past and where it's taking us.

*

By dying we return to our pre-born state.

We continue to exist as atoms but not as consciousness.

*

Wealth enslaves man as surely as poverty.

*

One nation's dream may be another's nightmare.

*

Some of the most offensive e-mails I have received

are from academics – men with degrees in degradation.

*

It takes less than 25 years (or a single generation)

to Americanize an Armenian.

Now imagine what 600 years (or 24 generations)

in the Ottoman Empire may have done to us!

What if the Genocide is only a small fraction of the total damage?

#

Friday, November 19, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When asked why he robs banks,

a gangster is quoted as having said:

“Because that's where the money is.”

If you were to ask one of our fund-raisers

or Turcocnetric ghazetajis

why he speaks of reparations,

my guess is, he will give you the same answer.

*

When a reader insults me anonymously

I know I have hit paydirt and I dig deeper.

Intolerance is my favorite muse.

*

We are told our problems are not ours but the world's.

It is our duty therefore to educate and reform the rest of mankind,

beginning with Turks.

To which I can only repeat the words of the Duke of Wellington:

“If you believe that, you will be anything!”

*

You don't agree with me?

Our bosses, bishops, and benefactors

don't always agree with one another either.

Why should we?

*

If as an Armenian writer you can go on speaking

after you have been silenced

and surviving after you have been starved,

you have earned the right to repeat

Jimmy Cagney's famous last words in WHITE HEAT:

“Top of the world, ma!”

*

I like to quote famous men,

including gangsters and imperialist warmongers,

to underline the fact that not everything I say

springs from my own narrow and biased view of reality.

#

Saturday, November 20, 2010

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

SUMMING UP (II)

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

What I really write about when I write about Armenians is the human condition.

Why do men behave as they do?

Why do they believe and think as they do?

What are the hidden forces that shape their character and motivate their actions?

*

Nazis in Germany, Bolsheviks in the USSR, Fascists in Italy and Spain, proud Yanks in America who believe America to be “the land of the brave and the free”:

I maintain they are all dupes of state propaganda.

In “Rule Brittania” Brits sing “An Englishman cannot be a slave.”

And Armenians, who have been slaves for most of their historic existence, think by replacing the words “teshvar, ander”* in their national anthem with “azad, angakh”** they cease to be slaves.

*

I believe the function of propaganda is to enslave men, and the function of literature is to liberate them by exposing lies and illusions.

Everything I write has a single unspoken message: “If you want to be free, become aware of your present dehumanized condition of subservience.”

If you allow others to shape your thoughts, you cease to be who you really are and become a parrot; and parrots can say and repeat only two words, “Yes, master!”

God (if He exists) does not enslave men, men do, especially men who speak in the name of God – make it, especially men who lie in the name of God.

*

Once upon a time our betters were sultans and commissars, which amounts to saying, our betters were the worst scum on earth. And if you believe this is no longer the case, you will believe anything!

=======================================

(*) “Miserable, without a master.”

(**) “Free, independent.”

#

ara baliozian · November 24, 2010

Sunday, November 21, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

“You don't know how to develop ideas,” writes a reader. “You should take a course in writing.”

I have more critics than a dog has fleas.

You want developed ideas?

Read our Turcocentric ghazetajis and listen to our speechifiers: they have been developing their idea(s) since the turn of the last century.

*

“After they walk past an elementary school (or is it a kindergarten?) they brag about their degrees from prestigious universities,” one of our elder statesmen (may he rest in peace) once told me.

If our elder statesmen spoke publicly as they speak privately, I would have fewer fleas.

That's politics for you: it makes liars out of honest men.

*

“Why do you persevere if you know you can't win?”

Because I am an Armenian.

*

We were subservient to our Turkish masters for six hundred years. Is that reason enough for us to be subservient to our own masters for six thousand years?

*

I have been a dupe and I have engaged in charlatanism. That's why I have nothing but contempt for both charlatans and dupes.

*

How many times were you wrong when you thought you were right?

Never? Brother, you are in deep sh*t!

*

If you think oppression, injustice, and lies are alien concepts that apply only to others, i suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

*

What we don't know far exceeds what we know. On the day we see the light we may also see that what we called knowledge was another word for darkness.

*

Because I am Armenian, my former friends outnumber my present friends a hundred to one.

*

The dupe who recycles crapola and the smart operator who deals in the same commodity because that's how he makes a comfortable living: the world is full of them.

*

I have yet to meet a self-assessed “better” or “more patriotic” Armenian who was not certifiable.

*

With age comes wisdom. But not in politics.

#

Monday, November 22, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If most Turks and Armenians think alike it's because they trust their “betters.”

Moral I: Trust no one's judgment but your own.

Moral II: Only the worst pretend to be better.

*

If we judge men not by their words (speeches, sermons, dogmas) but by the number of their victims, we shall have no choice but to conclude that popes and imams are worse than serial killers.

*

Popes pretend to be better than imams and vice versa, and they are believed by their followers and dupes. As for their Armenian counterparts: the less said about them the better.

*

Speaking of George W. Bush's memoirs, a pundit in today's Op-Ed page writes: “Many presidents go a little loco.” So do many popes, imams, kings, emperors, czars, and chiefs.

*

“What would you have done in their place?”

How should I know? I don't even know what my own place is. I am in a search mode. And I am so busy trying to be honest in a dishonest world that I have no interest in imagining myself as a crook.

#

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The difference between them and us is that they have several dissidents, among them an internationally known Nobel Prize winner...

Among us, dissidents are as popular as Talaat, Kemal, and the Sultan combined.

*

They have one set of leaders.

With us it's more chiefs than Indians.

Some things are worth repeating – in case I have said this before.

*

If you have nothing to lose, you speak the truth.

The greater the possession at risk, the bigger the lies.

*

Whenever I am attacked or insulted anonymously

I add cowardice to our long list of failings.

*

“Your call is important to us.”

Translation: “Why don't you shut the f*ck up!”

*

The language of the poor is down to earth, simple, limited in vocabulary. Its sole aim is survival.

The language of the rich is subtle, rich, versatile. Its aim is deception.

*

Seek for the hidden contradiction and you will find it.

*

We either admit our failings or we cling to them by covering them up.

*

Our heads may disagree but our feet take us to the same destination. No exceptions to this rule.

*

We don't have a word for “gentleman” probably because we have so few of them.

What about "a man of honor"?

That's what mafiosi call their godfathers.

*

In an environment where the official line is being positive, being negative becomes as irresistible as the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

*

In defense of his self-interest, a smart Armenian will go as far as pretending to be deaf, dumb, and stupid.

Americans have given freedom a bad name. Armenians have done the same to self-interest.

*

Louis XIV once said: “I almost had to wait.”

#

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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

LAW AND DISORDER

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

In the same way that some chief executive officers on Wall Street make more money than the President of the United States, some Indian chiefs and councilors (82 of them to be exact) make more money than the Prime Minister's annual salary of $317,574, according to a published report today.

When asked by reporters how come, a spokesman for the chiefs is quoted as having said, “We don't discuss such matters with the media.”

I have had less diplomatic reactions by some of our own chiefs.

*

There is a hyena in all top dogs.

*

Abuse of power comes naturally to top dogs; and assuming a passive stances means allowing them to reinsert the knife and give it another twist.

*

Dissent is a necessary ingredient if only because it introduces a touch of objectivity and balance. Suppression or absence of dissent is invariably followed by disaster.

Because the Catholic Church failed to assess its performance objectively it spawned Martin Luther and a succession of wars and massacres; and because the Reformation failed to do the same, it spawned televangelism.

Closer to home: ...but I will let you draw your own conclusions.

#

Sasun · November 26, 2010

Just like the energizer, this thread keeps going on and on....

Happy Thanksgiving!

ara baliozian · November 27, 2010

Thursday, November 25, 2010

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

DIARY

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

After a silence of more than half-a-century, a call from an old friend (now in his 80s) .

It soon becomes apparent that he has been too busy in community affairs – church, politics, sports, fund-raising – to have read a single line I have written.

I doubt if I will hear from him again.

Why did he call?

He didn't say and I didn't ask.

Whatever the reason, it couldn't have been nostalgia.

*

Monster snowflakes.

Winter is here.

We may now look forward to Spring.

*

Reading three books:

a biography of Lesley Blanch – the author of one of the most fascinating books of all time: THE SABRES OF PARADISE, about the Caucasus, which I have read three time and I look forward to reading again if and when our library replaces its lost or discarded copy;

Antonia Fraser's MUST YOU GO? -- MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER (I have read several of his plays but none of her books);

and the memoirs of Christopher's Hitchens.

In all three books there is talk of encounters with many celebrities, including kings and queens, even emperors and empresses.

*

How many celebrities have I known? None. Only a letter from Saroyan and another from Lawrence Durrell (Zarian's name is mentioned in both).

Saroyan knew Zarian but “couldn't figure him out.”

By contrast Durrell understood Zarian and wrote about him more insightfully than any Armenian I have ever read.

*

Because we rate money above ideas, we treat our benefactors as kings and we starve our writers. If I am slightly overweight it's because I have enjoyed the financial support of the Canadian government – and not because I am an agent of the CIA, Mossad, Grey Wolves, or the KGB -- as my critics have alleged at one time or another.

I remember once when Zarian's name came up, one of our elder statesmen who paraded as an eminent teacher, poet, and critic, accused Zarian of being a KGB agent – and this in his efforts to convince me that translating Zarian was a waste of time; I should translate him instead.

#

Friday, November 26, 2010

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

DIARY

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

“Did you ever write about what that priest did to us?” my sister wanted to know last night.

“I didn't.”

“Why not?”

I had no answer.

Because I wanted to forget about it.

But how can I?

*

It happened almost a year ago.

In accordance with her wishes, Mother was cremated.

When asked to bless her grave, the Armenian priest refused.

“It's against our rules,” he explained. “We don't believe in cremation.”

My guess is, his refusal had another reason.

He knew as an Armenian writer I work for nothing and I would probably pay him less than minimum wage. I suspect that because immediately after he added, “I cannot do it unless I ask permission from the bishop,” thus implying exceptions are made, especially if the ashes belong to an Oriental carpet dealer – there are several of them in the neighborhood.

It would have taken him less than a minute to call the bishop, but I guess neither Mother nor my sister (both, unlike me, devout church-goers) deserved the courtesy of a phone call.

#

Saturday, November 27, 2010

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

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

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

Privately they brag: “We taught Armenians a lesson they will never forget.”

Publicly they assert: “It was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.”

You want to unmask compulsive liars?

Nothing easier.

Think the opposite of what they say.

*

When we speak, we confess.

With every word we utter we say “Guilty as charged, your Honor.”

*

“Among ten men nine are sure to be women,” Turks confess.

Hence the slaughter of unarmed women and children.

*

What matters is not that I have only two readers three of whom would like to see me silenced.

What matters, what really matters, is that I am no longer dependent on benefactors (“the charity of swine”) and editors, about whom one could say: “Among ten Armenian editors, nine are sure to have been Ottomanized or Sovietized.”

*

What really matters is that even if I have only one reader today and if – repeat if! -- what I say is worth reading, I may have two tomorrow; and if I have two, I may have more-- if not the day after than next month or year. Not because time is on my side, but because time is on no one's side.

*

I don't paint a pretty picture, granted.

If pretty is what you want listen to our speechifiers and read our Turcocentric ghazetajis, all of whom make a comfortable living – thank you very much – by dishing out what you want to hear and read.

*

What matters is not that I don't have a high opinion of these gentlemen.

What really matters is that neither do they. Hence their subservience and cowardice.

Hence their habit of saying one thing publicly and the exact opposite privately.

#

ara baliozian · December 1, 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

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

DIARY

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

Antonia Fraser in her Pinter diary: “I need a $60,000 loan."

Even the wealthy have financial problems.

Ask a chief executive officer on Wall Street why the fat bonuses and he will probably make a list of all those things he can't afford.

*

To tell right from wrong is easy. What's hard is why under certain conditions right becomes wrong and vice versa.

*

On my way to the library yesterday, a black fellow walking in the same direction but on the opposite sidewalk wanted to know if had “any food.” “Sorry,” I said, “just books.”

*

Very early this morning (5:07 to be exact) a Buddhist monk on the radio: “Salvation means avoiding the hell that we have made for ourselves.”

Makes perfect sense.

Hell is not an alien place. Hell is within us. Hell is a house that we have built for ourselves. We are its architect, contractor, digger of its foundations, bricklayer, painter, carpenter, plumber, electrician, carpet-layer, and decorator.

*

If for an Armenian, hell is another Armenian, it may be because some Armenians, like some Turks, have made it a lifetime project never to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror.

Where does Ottomanism end and Armenianism begin? When it comes to them and us, I have more questions than answers.

*

Be kind to your enemies, they will hate even more.

#

Monday, November 29, 2010

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

DIARY

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

According to an article in our paper on the Hitchens/Blair televised debate, Christopher (GOD IS NOT GREAT) Hitchens believes organized religions have been a force for evil; and Tony Blair (a recent convert to Catholicism) believes atheists like Hitler and Stalin have done more harm than the Papacy, and that faith can be a force for good if it emphasizes not dogma but tolerance and understanding – thus implying so far it has failed to do so. Blair's view on faith reminds me of Dr. Johnson's remark on second marriages: “The triumph of hope over experience.”

*

Have you heard this one? An Irish Catholic priest asks a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A prostitute,” she replies.

“Say that again?”

“A prostitute.”

“Thank God, I thought you said a Protestant.”

*

My question to popes, imams, and rabbis: “Why is it that you can convince millions but not one another? If you cannot reach a consensus, you are as bad as Armenians. With one difference: Armenians harm only themselves. You harm all of mankind when you legitimize intolerance, wars, and massacres.”

*

If not tomorrow or in ten years, and if not ten years, than a hundred years from now, a suicidal fanatic will detonate a nuclear device in a major city in the West. I say this to suggest that if World War III starts, it will be in the name of God.

*

And speaking of Armenians: I wonder if they are mentioned in the recent batch of documents released by WikiLeaks. It would be interesting to know what politicians think of us when they don't need our votes.

*

Turkish proverb as quoted by Hitchens in his memoirs: “When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said: 'At least the handle is one of us.'”

If this is an apology for treason, it must be a translation from the Armenian.

*

I write as I do because I have read Zarian's posthumously published diaries, notebooks, and correspondence and I am not afraid to say publicly things that he dared to say only privately because he had a family to support.

#

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

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

DIARY

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

The occupation by Israel of Arab lands has become an endless source of controversy in the international media and on discussion forums on the Internet, including our own. By contrast, only Armenians speak of the occupation of Armenian lands by Romans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Russians, among others. Why this imbalance in media attention? My only explanation: Hatred of Jews runs deeper than affection for Armenians.

*

Affection for Armenians? Why should the world have more of something which Armenians themselves have so very little of it?

Hatred of Jews? Bad choice of words. The politically “correct” word is anti-Zionism.

*

Everything that is evil in us I ascribe to Turks. It's only fair. We were their scapegoats a hundred years ago. They will be ours now for a thousand years.

*

How many absurd dogmas – like say, Papal infallibility – survive for the sake of consistency (which has been described as “the hobgoblin of small minds).

*

Speaking of hobgoblins: Are there any references to condoms in the Scriptures? Once upon a time Christians challenged the Might of the Roman Empire. They are now gibbering about condoms.

*

When the phone rings these days it's more likely to be a telemarketer. Gone are the good old days when senile vodanavorjis wanted me to translate their verse, or chic Bolsheviks tried to convince me that Russians were our big brothers.

#

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

In capitalist countries there are many government programs, organizations, and groups who look after the hungry, the homeless, and the unemployed. Lenin was against all of them because he explained charity does nothing but postpone the revolution.

One can say so much in a single line!

*

Our propaganda tells us we are better than Turks. But I am of the opinion that we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including Turks.

To those who say we can't be as bad as them because we have at no time committed the unspeakable crime of genocide, I say: “Let us not confuse military inferiority with moral superiority.”

*

God is our Father, we are His children, and all men are brothers. Unlike French grammarians, when God makes a rule, He makes them without exceptions.

All men are brothers is a knife that cuts both ways.

To my Turkish brothers who assert the Genocide is a big lie, I say our function is not to recycle state propaganda but to expose the lies of politicians, and to say or suggest that all politicians lie except Turkish politicians is to expose oneself as a dupe whose thinking has not yet emerged from its infantile stage. I am familiar with the type because the world is full of them and because I too believed everything I was told as a child.

#

ara baliozian · December 4, 2010

Thursday, December 2, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Nationalists are not born but made. Same with fanatics. And what makes them is education -- a euphemism for systematic brainwashing that starts at a very early age.

*

There is a natural tendency in all of us to “stick to our own kind.” There is an equally strong tendency to be intrigued (and attracted) by the strange, the alien, the unknown, and the “other.”

*

If Wittgenstein is right – and I have every reason to think he is – we may have answers to many questions but not to the most important ones. It follows, anyone who claims to have them is either a liar or a dupe who simply repeats what a liar told him.

For more on this subject, see LOGICOMIX: AN EPIC SEARCH FOR TRUTH by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (New York, 2009) which is less about Wittgenstein and more about Bertrand Russell, who was Wittgenstein's teacher.

LOGICOMIX has been described by critics as “breathtaking,” “a titanic artistic achievement,” “extraordinary,” “daring,” “engaging,” and most important of all, “accessible.”

*

In Antonia Fraser's diary, we read: “In the spring of 1985 Harold Pinter visited Turkey with Arthur Miller on behalf of PEN International, to protest against the imprisonment and torture of intellectuals. Their guide incidentally was a young writer called Orhan Pamuk.”

We further read here that Pinter's play “Mountain Language” was written after “he learnt that the Kurdish language was forbidden, even among Kurds themselves.”

To my Turkish friends who have written a thousand lines to prove that the Armenian genocide is a fiction of our imagination, I ask: “Have you ever written a single line against torture?”

#

Friday, December 3, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Heine: “Whenever books are burnt, men, also in the end are burned!”

And whenever writers are silenced, tongues are also cut out.

The question we should ask is not “Where does Ottomanism end and Armenianism begin,” but “When will Ottomanism end?”

*

The ideal candidate for membership in an Armenian political party is a dupe who has not yet acquired the ability to think for himself.

*

Is the silent majority with me or against me? Neither. You don't have to be a Russell or Wittgenstein to see that you cannot be for or against someone whose existence you don't acknowledge. And when I say “me” I don't mean myself but our dissidents from Khorenatsi to Massikian whose ideas I recycle.

*

A man is shaped by his mistakes. Those who assert infallibility are monsters.

*

I hate to work for money. Hence the choice of my present job. Please note that I say job and not career.

*

While I lived in Athens and Venice it never occurred to me to say I was walking where Socrates and Plato, and Vivaldi, Thomas Mann, and Stravinsky had walked.

*

The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.

*

In a dictionary, I read the following definition:

“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party, as against people’s interests generally.”

#

Friday, December 3, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Power means first and foremost the power to brainwash.

*

Once upon a time we were brainwashed to believe

what the Pope is to Catholics,

the Sultan and Stalin were to the subjects of their respective empires

and anyone who dared to say otherwise

was declared guilty of a capital offense.

If I have been and continue to be subjected

to verbal abuse by readers

it's not because they disagree with me

but because I disagree with those

who brainwashed them.

Which means, we are the slaves of former slaves

who have brainwashed themselves to believe they are free.

*

Sometimes reality can be

more fantastic than science fiction.

#

ara baliozian · December 8, 2010

Sunday, December 4, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Bob Woodward in a recent interview: “I get up in the morning with the question: what are the bastards hiding?”

*

When I run out of things to say, I repeat myself, but not as often as our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and Turcocentric ghazetajis -- especially Turcocentric ghazetajis who, like me, have no choice but to speak about repellent things: Turks, in their cases; our leadership in mine.

*

It is a writer's duty to make sense. Unlike speechifiers, sermonizers, and propagandists, he is not allowed to be irrational.

*

An old Armenian composer once said to me: “I am grateful to all Armenians who refrained from obstructing my path.”

*

To say that I am an unpopular writer is to distort reality. The truth is, in the eyes of those who decide who is and is not popular, I don't even qualify as a writer -- a nuisance and a sh*t-disturber, maybe, but a writer, no!

*

Are we survivors as our propagandists like to tell us? The answer is, only in so far as the brain-dead and the comatose may be said to be alive.

#

Monday, December 5, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

With Russian military support, Iranian friendship, and American dollars, we are now masters of our own house. We never had it so good. So what if our best and brightest emigrate? So what if we don't have popular support? What matters is that we are no longer “tshvar, ander” but “azad, angakh!”

*

Once upon a time Turks were subjects of the Sultan. They are now children of Atatürk. They didn't lose an empire, they gained a papa.

*

The only thing our benefactors know about literature is that all writers are beggars.

*

When it comes to writers, what our leadership wants is not their ideas but their cojones surgically removed and presented to them on a platter; and the astonishing part is that most writers don't mind singing soprano.

*

Some of my Turkish friends think because I am critical of Armenians I must be anti-Armenian and pro-Turkish. It doesn't even occur to them to think that I may be against lies, intolerance, and corruption regardless of nationality.

#

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Think of ideas – all ideas – as experiments,

because if you don't,

you may end up as a Catholic, a Bolshevik,

or even a suicidal Muslim terrorist.

That's what happens to people

who take what they think or believe seriously

with no margin of error, no humor, no doubt,

no objectivity...and no sense.

Claude Levi-Strauss may well be closer to the truth

when he says, there is no difference

between a primitive jungle tribe

that trusts its witch doctor

and a so-called 21st-century industrialized, civilized,

and progressive society

that takes its popes, imams, and rabbis seriously.

What matters about a man

is not what he thinks or believes

but what he questions and doubts –

beginning with his own religion.

Not “I think therefore I am,”

but “I doubt therefore I am a human being.”

#

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Where there is freedom of speech there will also be freedom to recycle lies and propaganda – in other words, fascism without fascists.

*

As power increases the number of brain cells decreases: there is an algebraic equation to prove this fact but those in power have been against its publication – for obvious reasons.

*

For everyone who knows what he is talking about there are at least ten (some say ten thousand) who don't.

*

I know what I write makes a deep impression when old friends become new enemies.

*

Harold Pinter: “Life is beautiful but the world is Hell.”

*

Rumor has it that writers, and artists in general, are unreliable and solitary eccentrics, unlike political and military leaders who oppress, exploit, deceive, lie, declare wars and commit massacres. In an abnormal world the normal is seen as an aberration.

#

ara baliozian · December 11, 2010

Thursday, December 9, 2010

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

SELF-RELIANCE

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

In our environment money is used to stifle dissent and to subsidize propaganda. Truth is out.

Lies are in.

Flattery, yes.

Objective assessment, no!

Even worse: money is used to divide the intellectual class.

Brown-nosers are in.

Critics, let them eat cak (sic)!

We now have a generation of opportunistic careerists and cowards who calculate every word they speak. Will a wrong word or a misplaced comma offend anyone who may be in a position to advance my career?

In the words of an academic: “My family comes first.”

*

In this morning's paper I read: “A clown, a priest, an academic, and a convicted pedophile were among 25 Canadians arrested...”

My first thought: they arrest theirs, we promote ours.

Hence my loathing of bene***tors.

*

Remember: the men at the top don't always know better.

Respecting your elders does not mean ignoring the dictates of your own brain and its ability to tell right from wrong.

*

Do we have a word for self-reliance?

I am not sure. If we do, we seldom or never use it.

*

I agree with the wise man who said that we should treat our enemies as if they were destined to be future friends.

The reason I ignore this piece of excellence advice is that

I have acquired too many enemies and I don't have much of a future left.

#

Friday, December 10, 2010

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

QUESTIONS I HAVE BEEN ASKED

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

Why do you write?

I write because that's my way of thanking all those writers I have read, enjoyed, and learned from.

Why do you write more about Armenian blunders and less about Turkish criminal conduct?

I write less about Turks because I don't want to muscle in the territory of our Turcocentric ghazetajis who make a comfortable living by writing about nothing else.

Are you anti-Armenian?

I am against idiots who pretend to be smart regardless of nationality.

Are you pro-Turkish?

I prefer an honest Turk to a dishonest Armenian. If that makes me pro-Turkish I am more than willing to plead guilty as charged.

You write about our divisions as if that were a capital offense. But isn't it true that there are divisions everywhere, including America?

America is a big country with many small divisions. We are a small country with many big divisions all of which have an incomprehensible origin buried in the distant past.

Are you an atheist?

On that subject I have more questions than answers. Does that make me an atheist?

You are more critical of Armenians than Turks. Why?

Turks have critics of their own, including one who is a Nobel Prize winner.

You have said you have more enemies than friends. Does that bother you?

Of course it does. But I have come to terms with that reality and with the fact that when I die the celebrants will outnumber the mourners.

You have said on more than one occasion that we are not smart. Do you really mean that?

What I have said is that we have many smart Oriental carpet dealers but idiots for leaders.

Don't we have a rich culture?

What we have is a culture of intolerance. We have consistently rejected our ablest intellects. We have created an environment in which creativity and originality cannot survive let alone develop.

Don't you ever get tired of writing as you do?

I get more tired of listening to lies.

#

Saturday, December 11, 2010

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

FILTH

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

On the subject of our commissars, I once had the following exchange with one of our vodanavorjis:

“What makes you think he is a man we can trust?” I wanted to know.

“I once heard him say that poets are engineers of the soul,” she replied.

“He didn't say that.”

“He said it to me.”

“I meant, Stalin said that. Our commissar was quoting him.”

And I remembered the following lines from Zarian's TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD:

“They are spitting on Raffi. They are spitting on Aharonian. They are spitting on Derian. And that with the borrowed spittle of Muscovite masters. Even their filth is second hand. Even their trash has not been picked up from our own streets. Danger, danger, danger!”

#

ara baliozian · December 15, 2010

Sunday, December 12, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When Socrates was mentioned in a discussion, a Soviet agent is reported to have said: “I regret to say, I am not acquainted with the gentleman.”

*

Brainwash a decent man to believe that the fellow on the other side of an imaginary line, who may well be as decent as he, is a mortal enemy, and he will turn into a killer. Unlike Dr. Jekyll, you don't have to drink a potion to turn into Mr. Hyde. All you have to do is expose yourself to state propaganda.

*

Some day, when mankind is civilized, there will be a law that says, brainwashing children (sometimes also identified as education) is a crime against humanity.

*

To confuse ideology with theology: that’s another function of brainwashing. Theology legitimizes and promotes intolerance and hatred in the name of God or Truth. Odium theologicum is a well-known Latin expression that means: “The bitter hatred of rival theologians. There are no wars so sanguinary as holy wars, no persecution so relentless as religious persecution, no hatred so bitter as theological hatred.” (BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE & FABLE, 16th edition, revised by Adrian Room, London: Cassell, 1999, page 841.)

*

Perhaps I should warn my readers that I don't write as a writer, or as an Armenian, or for that matter, as that most contemptible of all beings: an Armenian writer.

Once upon a time I did write as an Armenian writer -- a nightmarish experience I wouldn't wish on a Turk. I write instead as a human being who happens to be an Armenian – an identity imposed on me by circumstances beyond my control.

#

Monday, December 13, 2010

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

WORDS

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

In his CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Dostoevsky quotes a long letter – a polite and courteous letter – and tears it to shreds by exposing the venom that is hidden between the lines.

Reading between the lines is an art.

Diplomacy sometimes consists in saying the opposite of what one means or thinks.

*

A study of TV commercials has found that 95% of them are either false or misleading.

*

The Chinese don't have a word for “no” -- “perhaps” is as far as they will go – neither do they have a word for “husband.” When a Chinese woman wants to say “my husband,” she says “my good for nothing.”

True or false?

I don't know. I am only paraphrasing what I remember to have read somewhere.

*

Writes Saroyan's wife in her memoirs: “When I say la, you must understand lalabloo.”

*

One reason I am thought of as anti-Armenian or even pro-Turkish is that when I say chick I don't mean chickpeas.

I mean what I say because I speak only for myself.

I represent no one and I work for no one.

I can't be fired or demoted.

And I can afford a paycut in my salary because I work for nothing.

#

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you have the power and the money,

you can go on with the deception indefinitely.

That's the only way to explain the continued existence

of rabbis, imams, and popes.

*

Faith can remove only those mountains

that were raised by our own fears, ignorance, and prejudices.

*

Identity is revealed not only in what we say,

but also in what we choose not to say.

To the discerning ear

silence can speak louder than a thousand speeches

delivered by a thousand stentorian speechifiers.

*

The ambition of every Armenian dunghill is to be Mt. Ararat.

*

The torch of truth burns many asses.

*

From nature’s point of view,

chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion

than all the others put together.

#

Wednesday, December15, 2010

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

WHAT I BELIEVE

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

The aim of civilization is to civilize,

and the aim of religion is to make you a better person.

That's the positive view of reality.

To have a more balanced view however,

it is necessary to see the negative in the positive,

and vice versa.

Or to separate propaganda from fact.

*

Civilization is a jungle and religion has ruined many lives,

and i don't mean just the lives of heretics, infidels, and victims of religious wars (one of which lasted a hundred years), I mean...: see below.

*

If you are weak or defenseless,

you will be victimized by the strong (our history in a nutshell).

If you are young, you will be brainwashed by the old.

If you are innocent and inexperienced, you will be duped by the cunning.

If you are poor, you will be exploited by the rich.

And there will always be a rabbi, bishop, or imam

who will legitimize these aberrations in the name of the Almighty.

*

Benefactors and I share one important thing in common: generosity.

They are generous with money,

I am generous with unsolicited advice –

a kibitzer who doesn't know when to shut up.

*

“A man with an idea is my enemy,” said Napoleon.

A man with a thousand ideas must be a nightmare

to anyone with a Napoleonic complex.

*

I repeat myself because my aim is less to explain and educate

and more to deprogram the brainwashed.

*

A decent man will never murder another decent man.

But brainwash him to believe the other is his mortal enemy

and you will have a cold-blooded killer in your hands.

That's politics for you.

*

In our environment, selfless intellectual labor is so unpopular

that it might as well be some kind of self-inflicted insanity.

That may explain why I am a majority of one.

#

ara baliozian · December 18, 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

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

PHILOSOPHY

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

Our problem is not that we don't have the right answers,

but that, according Martin Heidegger, we don't even have the right questions.

What about Greek philosophy beginning with Socrates?

According to Plato, Socrates was better at asking questions

than at answering them;

and the most important questions he asked

remain unanswered to this day.

*

The real scandal is not that we don't yet have the right questions

but that so far we (including Heidegger himself who was a Nazi)

have been dependent on the answers of idiots.

*

Some of the best brains of the 20th century --

among them Russell, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein --

attempted to establish the rules of logic

but they failed to reach a consensus.

Assuming they will reach a consensus in fifty or a hundred years:

what are the chances that the world will abide by them?

*

If there can be one god,

why not a thousand gods? --

unless of course god is a fascist

whose most important number is One?

*

A fascist god is the only logical explanation

as to why so far mankind has been ruled

by so many bloodthirsty tyrants.

*

If god is a fascist, an atheist may be said to be

a member of the democratic opposition.

*

Nothing can be as dangerous as sanity in an insane world,

or honesty in a world run by swine.

#

Friday, December 17, 2010

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

TRANSLATION

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

THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY FROM THE KING

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

BY AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN

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

Once upon a time

A mighty king

Decided to see his realm

To visit and inspect

Every town and village.

Orders then he issued

And with him arose

A retinue of servants,

Soldiers, carriages, and horses.

*

Days later

As the crowds roared

And as His Royal Majesty

Made a triumphal entry

Through the gate

Of a distant town

A humble townsman

Made a sudden exit

From another gate

And he ran and he ran

Like a hunted beast he ran

Through forests and valleys

Through dark and uncharted regions.

*

“Hold it right there!”

Cried out a stranger

Standing in his path.

“What's the rush, tell me.

Is it the law you are trying to evade?

Are you a bandit perchance

Or maybe a cold-blooded killer?"

“I am innocent, I swear,”

Said the townsman,

“What bread I have eaten

I have earned with my own sweat.

I beg you, let me explain

Why I am running so.

His Majesty the King, you see,

Is visiting my town.

Now then, please understand,

What I am about to say.

His Royal Highness,

As everyone knows,

Is a man of great might

But his brains, alas

Is that of a child.

I have heard it said

That the further away

From such a king you are

The better off you are.”

*

After hearing this

The stranger let him pass.

And the townsman

Took to his heels once more

And he ran and he ran

Like a hunted beast he ran

Through forests and valleys

Through dark and uncharted regions.

(1935)

#

Friday, December 17, 2010

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

SCENARIO

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

Before we were born, we were only inanimate scattered atoms. After we die, we will revert to our previous state, before we are born again and so on until the solar system burns itself out, the cosmos collapses, and is followed by another Big Bang.

*

In an infinite number of cycles there is always a remote possibility that there will be another Socrates, another Napoleon, another American Revolution, and another you. To ask whether this is good or bad is like asking is reality good or bad?

*

Life is a process in which the living organism sheds atoms with every breath it takes. So that the cycle or process I described above, also sometimes referred to as reincarnation, happens even when we are alive. The atoms we shed do not vanish but are constantly reassembled into other living organisms. The world as we know it is itself a living organism that constantly dies and is resurrected. The atoms we have shed are already in the living creatures around us, including the birds that migrate to distant continents. Parts of you now live in a South-American rain forest, an African jungle, and a Siberian river or lake.

*

What is the role of God in all his?

So far I have been dealing with scientifically verifiable facts. All questions dealing with God must be referred to metaphysicians or theologians which is a discipline I am not qualified to speak about, except to say that when two theologians disagree or contradict one another – and they almost always do – it is safer to dismiss both as charlatans.

#

ara baliozian · December 22, 2010

Sunday, December 19, 2010

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

DEGENERATION

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

Science tells us “most evolutionary change has been degenerative” (J.B.S. Haldane), and “natural selection does not guarantee progress” (Julian Huxley).

It follows, survival in itself is meaningless and may even be a liability and a visible as well as unmistakable symptom of moral degeneration.

*

Armenian psychology has evolved not in freedom but in subservience, which means, more cunning and less intelligence, more greed for material possessions and less interest in spiritual attainments. Hence our contempt for selfless intellectual labor, which is shared even by our intellectual class -- that is, our academics.

*

The hungry man thinks of food, the sexually starved man of women, the poor of luxuries, and the slave of freedom -- but only after he has satisfied his primary needs, that is, food and sex, by which time he may have acquired the burden of providing for a family and keeping up with the Joneses.

*

Like most oppressed people, the Armenian tends to see freedom as the freedom to oppress. Which is why Stalin was a more ruthless tyrant than Ivan the Terrible; the French Revolutionaries were more bloodthirsty than kings, and American capitalists chose to see no contradiction between the assertion “All men are created equal,” and slavery.

*

A fund-raiser's assessment of reality: if it can raise funds, it's good; if it can't, it's bad. You may have noticed that fund-raisers are neither vegetarian nor lean, but carnivorous fat slobs. Lean fund-raisers are only the front men. It never pays to underestimate the cunning of degenerates.

#

Monday, December 20, 2010

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

DEGENERATION (II)

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

When things get from bad to worse and from worse to unbearable, you stay away from them. This is seen as a positive development by those in charge of things on the grounds that one less malcontent means one less potential trouble-maker.

*

Alienate, silence, and eliminate all potential trouble-makers and you end up with a bunch of dupes who will believe anyone who speaks in the name of God or with the blessing of someone who speaks in the name of God.

*

When two men speak in the name of God and they contradict each other, it's not because one of them is right and the other wrong but because both are about to do the Devil's work.

*

Remember, some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind (among them our own genocide) were committed in the name of God.

*

Belief systems are a dime a dozen and dupes are without number.

*

Dupes are not born but made and what makes them is a compulsory educational system.

*

Being a dupe is an addiction acquired at a very early age and as such difficult to kick.

*

In a world where everyone is brought up to believe his is the only true God, either there are no false Gods or there are no Gods.

*

Belief systems exist because there are deceivers and there are dupes. Now then, go ahead and say, my belief system is better than yours because my God is the only true God, my religious leaders are not deceivers, and I am not a dupe.

#

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

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

CHOPPED LIVER

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

Throughout our long history we have fought and died by the thousand and by the million in the armies of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and more recently of the Soviet Union.

During World War II Armenians fought and died on both sides of the conflict.

In the 20th century alone Armenians have fought and died in Spain, France, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (with both the Soviets and the Yanks).

But when during World War I we were being massacred by the thousand and the million, no one lifted a finger to help us; and to this day some of the very same people in whose service we fought and died are unwilling to use the G word because it would be against the interests of Turks who are allies – unlike us, whose status apparently does not even rise above that of chopped liver.

That, my friends, is what it means to be weak.

And as if our weakness weren't enough of a burden and a curse, our leaders in their wisdom continue to divide us even as they speechify and sermonize on self-sacrifice, patriotism and solidarity.

How to explain these inconsistencies, paradoxes, contradictions, and oxymorons?

Many years ago, in the ghetto, I had a friend who used to brag about the fact that his father knew more Turkish swearwords than anyone else. When really angry, my friend said, his father would go on cursing forever and it was like music to the ears (my friend took violin lessons).

In one of his Prefaces G.B. Shaw speaks of a similar virtuoso, who it seems, one day lost everything he owned in an accident, and all he could say was: “I cannot do justice to this situation.”

Neither can I.

#

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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

CHOPPED LIVER (II)

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

It is a fruitless undertaking and a complete waste of time to argue with someone who has programmed himself to disagree with you.

A man who has brainwashed himself cannot be deprogrammed.

*

Religion has been a source of comfort and joy to many?

Yes, of course – but not to the countless victims, including those who were massacred in the name of Allah.

*

I am sure Germans felt more than just comfortable in the belief that they belonged to a superior race. In the same way that Jews, Christians, and Muslims feel comfortable in the knowledge that theirs is the only True God and anyone who says otherwise is an infidel.

*

A belief system in itself and in isolation is harmless, of course. It becomes an instrument of the Devil only when it is organized and its leadership falls into the hands of arrogant, ambitious, and intolerant leaders.

*

Readers who are not satisfied with my arguments, urge me to reply to specific questions and to expand on others.

But everything I write is either a reply or an elaboration of a previous point.

As for answering all questions:

I cannot do that.

I don't have all the answers.

No one does – no one that is, except imams, popes, and rabbis, and if you believe them, you will believe anything, including the Big Lie that you know better on the grounds that your imam, bishop, or rabbi said so.

#

ara baliozian · December 24, 2010

Thursday, December 23, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Yanks speak of the American Dream.

We don't speak of the Armenian Dream

because we don't have one.

What we have in great abundance instead is nightmares.

*

Acknowledging blunders makes one humble, cautious, and wise.

Refusing to acknowledge them makes one arrogant, self-righteous, and stupid.

*

Whenever I see an anonymous insult

in a discussion forum on the Internet

I think he must be a bishop or the son of a bi-

shop.

*

The greatest misfortune that can befall a writer

is being born an Armenian.

The only benefit: no matter how many lies you expose,

you will never run out of them.

*

Emigration, alienation, assimilation, assassination:

they too are expressions of dissent.

*

Puzant Granian: “We have many national benefactors

but not a single national writer.”

*

Anonymous: “In his own home a mouse is a lion.”

*

Anonymous: “Patience is a tough tree that bears sweet fruit.”

*

Vahram Papazian: “The greater your worth

the greater the pleasure of the worthless to tear you down.”

#

Friday, December 24, 2010

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

HUMBUG

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

The closer to the truth I get,

the more enemies I make.

*

For most of my life I thought my function as a writer was to inspire pride in my readers – even as I was degraded, insulted, lied to, and forced to flatter the colossal egos of megalomaniacal nonentities.

But then I saw the light and was born again as a human being,

after which things got from bad to worse.

There are no happy endings in Armenian literature.

If it's not TB, it's Turks;

if it's not Turks, it's commissars;

and if its not commissars

it's our own Ottomanized and Sovietized partisans and panchoonies.

*

I don't write to be controversial.

I write as a human being for readers who have shed their status as dehumanized dupes.

*

Here on earth money may perform miracles,

but in hell it can't even buy an ice cube.

*

Is there life after death?

The answer to that question is so valuable that its price is death.

#

ara baliozian · December 29, 2010

Friday, December 25, 2010

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

HUMBUG (II)

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

One of the professed aims of all believers is to make the world a better place, but they succeed only in butchering one another. You may have an explanation for this, but I don't.

*

May I state here and now and once and for all that I too am a believer, and I believe in the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible, and categorically reject anyone and everyone who says he speaks in the name of a comprehensible and knowable God.

*

We are told to judge a tree by its fruit. If we judge the Book by the number of innocent men and women it has victimized, we shall have to conclude that it is a tree not of knowledge and understanding but of prejudice, ignorance, intolerance, cruelty, exploitation, deception, and crimes against humanity.

*

And now from the sublime to the ridiculous: in all my life as a working stiff I have received four paychecks that have bounced and all four were from Armenian editors and publishers – that is to say, by the very same individuals who shape perceptions of reality.

This is either a meaningless coincidence or one pregnant with meaning. If the second, we have two choices: to cover up or to deny the reality of this meaning or to confront it.

I am all for confronting it.

*

Denialism is an aberration that consists in rejecting the reality of verifiable facts in the name of patriotism. It follows, both Armenian and Turkish denialism spring from the same source: namely, Ottomanism. Or as Nixon once put it: “When the President does it, it's not illegal.”

*

Once upon a time there was a mighty Persian king who hated the Greeks so much that he ordered one of his servants to say “Remember the Greeks” with every meal he served.

I see myself as that servant who with everything he writes he says, “Remember our crooks.”

*

I have seen the light and it is pitch-black darkness.

*

Roald Dahl's famous last words, “Ow, F*ck!”

#

Sunday, December 26, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you want to understand your fellow men,

their belief systems or religions is as good a starting point as any.

To begin with, there are “the people of the Book”

(meaning the Old Testament)

who identify themselves (in chronological order)

as Jews, Christians, and Muslims,

and who say they believe in the same God

but call one another infidels and heretics.

And then there are Buddhists who consider

all talk of God, messiahs, and prophets as so much stuff and nonsense.

If you can reconcile these inconsistencies and contradictions

you may – repeat, may – begin to understand your fellow men;

or more reasonably, to conclude that

trying to understand them is a waste of time.

#

Monday, December 27, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

We speak and behave as if we had nothing to do with our misfortunes, whereas I think we had everything to do with them.

*

When theory meets reality, one of them is bound to lose, and it's never reality.

*

When I committed my greatest blunders, it didn't even occur to me to think that I may be doing the wrong thing.

*

We are not what we pretend to be; we may even be the exact opposite.

*

The negative should be covered up? That would be like treating a disease by ignoring its symptoms.

*

Just because our chains are invisible it doesn't mean they don't exist.

*

To be an Armenian means to be the citizen of an alien empire. Fifteen centuries ago we could speak of Armenian identity and culture. Today we can only speak of a culture that has been thoroughly bastardized by alien influences – among them Ottoman, Soviet, and American.

*

There is more merit in being a humble human being than a proud Armenian. He who speaks of pride deals in lies.

*

An Armenian is more interested in settling scores than in discussing issues.

*

We pretend to understand others better than we understand ourselves.

#

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

No one is immune to deception.

If smart men with the best education money can buy

and at the top of their game can be taken in

by the likes of Wall Street CEOs and Madoff,

who dares to assert immunity?

*

Trust a man if you must

but only if he speaks against his own interests and is dirt poor.

*

Philosophy after Plato,

music after Bach,

art after Leonardo:

what I see is not progress but degeneration.

Contemporary art is to me as phony as Madoff.

*

Turks are convinced they have been

misunderstood, misrepresented and maligned by the infidel West.

The Armenian genocide explains nothing because

to begin with it never happened.

What really happened was that

troublemakers within the Empire

(among them Armenians) started it

by assassinating Turks

and raping and massacring innocent Turkish civilians.

Everything that followed is now shrouded in the fog of war.

All talk of genocide is therefore politically motivated,

and politics is a filthy business

with one notable exception: Kemal.

*

To the overwhelming majority of well-educated and smart Turks,

Kemal is a combination of Washington, Lincoln, and Mahatma Gandhi.

#

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

What keeps me going is propaganda.

I am like the plumber whose business card said:

“Your sh*t is my bread and butter.”

*

There are so many contradictory belief systems

that the first line of every credo should read:

“I believe in lies.”

*

My definition of lie:

“Any verbal expression that legitimizes intolerance

and ultimately war and massacre.”

*

No one has ever heard of a society

that has survived and prospered

because its leadership silenced dissenting voices.

*

Me a pessimist? No way!

It takes a large amount of foolish optimism

and colossal arrogance to aim at success

when far better men than myself have failed.

*

My greatest achievement so far:

I have survived fifty Canadian winters.

#

ara baliozian · December 31, 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

What have we learned from our Soviet experience and the Genocide?

As far as I can see, nothing.

When it comes to free speech, our revolutionaries in the Diaspora are as intolerant as our commissars in the Homeland.

In their eyes silencing dissent is not a crime, dissent is.

They'd rather be wrong their way than right in someone else's.

All they care about is maintaining and whenever possible increasing their power even if it means hoodwinking, bamboozling, flimflamming, and brainwashing innocent civilians and their defenseless children.

In their thinking (or unthinking) when truth (that is, their ideology) speaks, lies should be silenced, in the same way that when the wise (that is, the boss) speaks, fools should hold their tongue.

*

“From the crucifixion of Christ to the excommunication of Spinoza: what have you learned from history?” I once asked my old friend, the rabbi.

His reply:

“Who are you to tell us how to deal with our criminals?”

Spoken like a true commissar and a revolutionary.

#

Friday, December 31, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

To those who hunger for solutions to our problems,

may I remind them that

great reformers like Jesus, Mohammad, and Marx,

who provided solutions to mankind's problems

and changed the world,

did not always change it for the better.

*

If the Kingdom of God is within us,

so are the solutions to all our problems.

*

The blame-game is not a solution,

neither is lamentation –

and that's what Turcocentrism is --

endless and fruitless talk of Turks and massacres.

*

Turcocentrism is the absence of all ideas

and the denial of all solutions.

In that sense it is more pathology than ideology –

a pathology that says we are beyond criticism

and free speech is our only enemy

(which happens to be the official Turkish line too).

*

I suggest we don't need reformers.

What we really need is a good look at ourselves in the mirror.

*

It takes great courage to see ourselves as we are.

*

Speaking of solutions:

Talaat and Atatürk, and before them Sultan Abdulhamid II,

had one for the Turks.

So did Hitler for the Germans.

#

ara baliozian · January 5, 2011

Saturday, January 1, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

We search for meaning in a meaningless world

and when we can't find it, we invent it

driven by the same urge that a drowning man

is said to cling to a serpent.

*

Life is made unbearable by ignoramuses

who make a comfortable living

by pretending to know better.

*

For every economist who says one thing

there will be another who says the exact opposite.

*

Mankind has always been at the mercy of a majority of dupes

and a minority of flim-flam artists

whose number one concern is number one.

*

No one has ever seen the mind of God

or the soul of man but theologians and psychologists

pretend to understand and explain both.

*

Socrates and Jesus did not write a single line

but ten thousand books have been written about them.

*

Logicians don't agree on the rules of logic

and philosophers can't explain why things exist.

*

Dupes of the world unite,

the light you pretend to have seen

is only the mirage of a black hat in a dark room.

#

Sunday, January 2, 2011

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

MEMOS TO OUR WRITERS

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

MEMO I:

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

If you are paid by the line,

resist the temptation of being long-winded.

*

MEMO II:

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

If you deal in propaganda,

be honest enough not to pretend to believe everything you say.

*

MEMO III:

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

If you are a Turcocentric ghazetaji

or a member of the Genocide mafia

(i.e. academics whose field is massacres)

it would enhance your credibility if once or twice a year

you were to admit that not all Turks are bloodthirsty savages

and not all Armenians are civilized.

*

MEMO IV:

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

If you are a brown-noser

have the decency not to say it smells like roses.

#

Monday, January 3, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

ON REWRITING HISTORY

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

We rewrite history for a number of reasosns, among them:

to cover up blunders;

to misrepresent military defeats as moral victories;

to prepare the nation for another war;

to play the favorite sport of nationalist historians

and their dupes – namely, the blame-game.

To project a better image of ourselves,

and since none of us is perfect,

we can all use some cosmetic surgery.

*

JUDGING MEN

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

If we judge men not by their words but by their actions,

how do we judge men like, say, our activists,

who do nothing but speechify and raise funds?

*

SCAPEGOATS

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

Turks believe Kurds to be disguised Armenians

in the same way that Egyptians today

believe recent shark attack in the Red Sea

are the actions of Mossad agents

disguised as man-eating sharks.

Even as we say and repeat all men are brothers,

we fabricate ten thousand lies, fallacies, and misconceptions

to prove that most men are our enemies,

including our own brothers.

*

UNSPOKEN AMBITION

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

The secret ambition of all rulers

is to have subjects who are such simpletons that

they will believe everything they are told.

To our bosses, bishops, and benefactors,

a thinking Armenian might as well be as dangerous

as a bloodthirsty Turk with a yataghan

let loose in a crowd of unarmed giaours.

*

THE CONSTITUTION

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

In America even criminals use the Constitution to their advantage.

Is that option available to the innocent in Armenia?

Sign In

as i see it - Pt. IV

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