as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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ASSERTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS

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Confronted with an assertion, I think of its contradiction and if I see any merit in it, I know the assertion to be full of holes. The roots of some of the most important ideas are not to be found in life or reality but in contradictions. Hating the enemy comes naturally to all of us, but only a revolutionary of genius could come up with the idea of loving the enemy. For centuries kings were thought to be representatives of god on earth, until someone had the brilliant idea that they may well be representatives of the devil, and as such they deserved to be “strangled with the guts of the last priest.” Closer to home, the loudmouth dupe who preaches Armenianism and practices Ottomanism.

*

I look forward to the day when the English language will acquire a new verb – “to iraq” (pronounced I rock), meaning to make a royal mess of things in the name of god, freedom, progress, justice, and everything else that is good in life. After Saddam sodomized Iraq, Bush iraqed it. But when it comes to iraqing things, no one can beat our “best and brightest.”

*

The first four words from god’s memoirs: “Big mistake – creating man.”

*

To those who brag about being fluent in more than one language, I say: “What’s the use of speaking seven or seventy-seven languages if you are going to make an ass of yourself in all of them?”

*

A nation needs heroes willing to die in its defense, yes, certainly! But what a nation needs even more are leaders who value peace over war, especially wars they cannot win.

#

[Takoush]

Monday, December 04, 2006

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ON PRIDE

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*

We were persecuted because we were defeated. We were defeated not because God made our enemies strong and us weak but because they were united and we were divided.

*

Ara:

 

Although I agree with the thruthfullness of this paragraph in its entirety.

 

 

“I am glad we never had an Ataturk,” I read elsewhere. As a matter of fact we had several potential Ataturks, among them General Antranik and Nejdeh, but we also had many more mini-sultans and crypto-commissars who excel in only one endeavor – obstructing the path of all those who attempt to achieve solidarity. This minor detail is not stressed in our textbooks because that would amount to admitting incompetence. I say these things not to gloat over our failures but to point out the simple fact that only after we admit failure we may aim at success. To be satisfied with our incompetence and failures also means to perpetuate them.

#

I am not in accord with you about Gen. Antranik and especially Karekin Nejdeh. Though Gen. Antranik made some mistakes on our fronts; but Karekin Nejdeh in my eyes is a hero.

 

After all, if anything, he's was the aftermath. Certainly NOT the presedence as the enormity and the crude inhumanity what the Ataturks did.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 07, 2006

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IN DENIAL

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Even when I behaved like an idiot I thought I was being smart, and I thought I was being smart because I was in denial. And I am in denial today at this very moment when I think my words may change someone’s mind.

*

To be in denial is an easy concept to understand but difficult to detect in oneself. Censorship is a symptom of denial that masquerades as dedication, respect, and love of truth. If you say 2 plus 2 makes 4, and I say it makes 22, you don’t feel threatened. You may even smile. That’s because when truth is on your side, you don’t feel threatened by lies. But if you believe in an ideology or religion and someone questions its validity, you are tempted to punch him in the nose because you are afraid to be exposed as a jackass who has been betting on the wrong horse.

*

Tribes, nations, empires, and civilizations can be in denial as surely as megalomaniacs (which means being in denial of one’s mediocrity). I have a Jewish friend who is as close to me as a brother that I never had. We have exchanged hundreds perhaps even thousands of letters and e-mails. But whenever I question the validity of Jews being God’s Chosen People he refuses to talk to me for months.

*

The USSR was harsh on its dissidents not because it valued truth over lies but because it saw truth as a threat. How could a few words by (in their official estimation) harmless eccentrics and misfits in need of psychiatric care shake the foundations of a mighty empire?

*

To believe in propaganda amounts to saying all propagandists are liars except ours, who are men of honor and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, or anywhere else for that matter.

*

The aim of propaganda is to legitimize, promote, and reinforce a state of denial, but since everyone, except perhaps a handful of individuals who have mastered the demanding art of thinking for themselves, subscribes to a propaganda line, being in denial is considered a perfectly normal and healthy condition.

*

Under normal conditions murder is a capital offense, but in time of war soldiers are brainwashed by propagandists to believe that 2 plus 2 makes 22 and if anyone dares to disagree, he will be accused of treason, which happens to be a capital offense too. There you have it, another case of Catch-22.

*

I think it was Aldous Huxley who once observed that our planet is the insane asylum of the galaxy. If you reject or question the truth in this observation, it may be because you happen to be in denial.

#

[ara baliozian]

Ara:

 

Although I agree with the thruthfullness of this paragraph in its entirety.

I am not in accord with you about Gen. Antranik and especially Karekin Nejdeh. Though Gen. Antranik made some mistakes on our fronts; but Karekin Nejdeh in my eyes is a hero.

 

After all, if anything, he's was the aftermath. Certainly NOT the presedence as the enormity and the crude inhumanity what the Ataturks did.

 

Takouhi:

Nejdeh was a powerful intellect as well as a military leader of genius but he was also a product of his time and environment and as such he was a racist; he went further and elevated race to the status of religion. / ara

[ara baliozian]

Friday, December 08, 2006

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

ON BELIEF SYSTEMS AND

RELATED ATROCITIES

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

It is an undeniable fact that some of our most cherished ideas about God and Country, or religion and patriotism, were instilled in us at a time when we had not yet mastered the demanding art of thinking for ourselves, and as such they should be rejected as “prejudicial” and “hearsay” because not to do so would mean allowing geography to determine our belief system. It is another undeniable fact that geography or mountains, valleys, and flatlands do not and cannot think. It follows; to allow an unthinking factor to define our thinking is not just wrong but absurd. And yet, this is what the overwhelming majority of mankind does. Result, intolerance, conflicts, wars, massacres, and atrocities with no end in sight; or, to put it more bluntly, lies in the name of truth, and the Kingdom of the Devil instead of the City of God.

*

Having seen this clearly, the eminent historian Arnold J. Toynbee concluded his monumental STUDY OF HISTORY with an appeal to mankind to reconcile all known religions into a single universal religion by granting equal status to all scriptures, prophets, and messianic figures. Needless to add, he was labeled a mystic, a prophet of mumbo jumbo, and a utopian daydreamer.

*

Was Toynbee a utopian mystic or a realist and pragmatist? He was, I believe, both. He was a realist in so far as he saw that what moves tribes, nations, empires, and civilizations is a belief system rather than self-interest, and as long as there are conflicting belief systems there cannot be lasting peace. He was a utopian mystic in so far as he thought man, as a reasonable being would be more than willing to give up his arrogant, not to say, groundless belief that he had a monopoly on truth for whose sake he would rather see the world go down in flames rather than to live in perpetual peace and prosperity.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 09, 2006

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HUBRIS AND NEMESIS

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Ignorance of the law, including the moral law, especially the moral law, is no excuse. If you commit a transgression you can’t plead not guilty by reason of ignorance or unawareness. When the Greeks were defeated, humiliated, and enslaved by such “barbarians” as Macedonians, Romans, and Turks, it may not have occurred to them that their hubris in assuming to be the most civilized nation on earth may have provoked the retaliation of Nemesis. Have these catastrophes of millennial duration taught the Greeks a lesson? I don’t think so. Even in their present bastardized condition, they think, as the offspring of the greatest people on earth, they have every right to brag about their many contributions to world civilization.

To justify their hubris of considering themselves the Chosen, some learned Jews explain that they don’t mean it as an enviable privilege but, on the contrary, as a heavy burden and a thankless responsibility. But I agree with Toynbee: no matter how you slice it, baloney is baloney. Greeks, Jews, Brits, Nazis, Armenians: they are chosen by no one but themselves and no amount of sophistry can cover up or justify their arrogance. Which is why I shiver with disgust when I hear an Armenian bragging about how smart we are, how many languages we speak, how successful we have been in surviving where many others perished, first nation this, and first nation that. Why would anyone brag about being slaughtered by “bloodthirsty savages”? And smart in what? Selling Oriental rugs? It seems our need to brag is such that when we run out of positives, we brag about negatives.

How smart are we when we say the best and only way to solve our many problems is to sit on our collective ass for two or three generations until our problems solve themselves. Human problems do not solve themselves. It takes hard work and sometimes even blood, sweat, and tears. An average idiot with the minimum of political awareness knows this. But leave it to smart Armenians to pretend ignorance and unawareness.

#

[Takoush]

Saturday, December 09, 2006

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

HUBRIS AND NEMESIS

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

Ignorance of the law, including the moral law, especially the moral law, is no excuse. If you commit a transgression you can’t plead not guilty by reason of ignorance or unawareness. When the Greeks were defeated, humiliated, and enslaved by such “barbarians” as Macedonians, Romans, and Turks, it may not have occurred to them that their hubris in assuming to be the most civilized nation on earth may have provoked the retaliation of Nemesis. Have these catastrophes of millennial duration taught the Greeks a lesson? I don’t think so. Even in their present bastardized condition, they think, as the offspring of the greatest people on earth, they have every right to brag about their many contributions to world civilization.

To justify their hubris of considering themselves the Chosen, some learned Jews explain that they don’t mean it as an enviable privilege but, on the contrary, as a heavy burden and a thankless responsibility. But I agree with Toynbee: no matter how you slice it, baloney is baloney. Greeks, Jews, Brits, Nazis, Armenians: they are chosen by no one but themselves and no amount of sophistry can cover up or justify their arrogance. Which is why I shiver with disgust when I hear an Armenian bragging about how smart we are, how many languages we speak, how successful we have been in surviving where many others perished, first nation this, and first nation that. Why would anyone brag about being slaughtered by “bloodthirsty savages”? And smart in what? Selling Oriental rugs? It seems our need to brag is such that when we run out of positives, we brag about negatives.

How smart are we when we say the best and only way to solve our many problems is to sit on our collective ass for two or three generations until our problems solve themselves. Human problems do not solve themselves. It takes hard work and sometimes even blood, sweat, and tears. An average idiot with the minimum of political awareness knows this. But leave it to smart Armenians to pretend ignorance and unawareness.

#

Ara:

 

Why can't we talk about us Armenians being intelligent people? From what I know within the Soviet Regime in the scientific arena though Armenians were little in quantity but as far as having the most scientists per capita, we came to be the first. Thus Armenians in the whole of soviet union were they not judged by their intelligence for having the most highly qualified scientists, more than the rest of the nations within the soviet regime, including Russia? Surely we are not being judged by Oriental rugs or making good dolmas in the world.

 

Though we are not a very united people or a nation, nor we support each other, that is and always has been our downfall alas. Nor have we done a good job advertising our nation nor our nationality traits; and I suppose in most respects it is because after we have been annihilated, our whole nation, that is the survivors first they went into a trauma, then of course they had to survive. It's not easy to advertise yourself when you don't even have a country and when your survivors are scattered all around the world. Now the Jews are much more than us in quantity, and they do support each other to fight and to become equipped against the whole world as we have seen it happen.

 

As a nation if we speak about our Genocidal acceptance and if we demand it; it is the least we can do for the memory of our deceased who perished all over the Armenian Highlands and the Arabian deserts without even a grave or without knowing why they died and for what reasons and who was behind all this. The poor souls died in total ignorance and in total oblivian. It isn't with bragging that we talk about it; but with great grief in our hearts and also a mere recognition for our saintly deceased that we mourn for would be in order./AT

Edited December 10, 2006 by Anahid Takouhi

[Takoush]

So basically we mustn't brag about our intelligence or anything else for that matter, is that it? And if we must work about our national pursuits or for our communities; then we have to look up to our leaders for that, isn't it so?

 

No matter how we slice it; today some high official government people in our Republic are stealing from the people and the rights of the people and they are not being punished and taken to the courts of justice. Around the globe unfortunately, we don't seem to have the leadership we used to have say 50 or 60 years ago. Those people have died and the good leadership that they gave us haven't been replaced. Not just Armenians; but people all over the world have deterioted.

 

So what are we going to say to our people; let's just die as a nation rather than to give them confidence of who we were, of who we are, and what it is expected of them to be or what to make of themselves?

 

Personally, I'd rather give my people confidence and have them step up to the plate, then to say that we are doomed and we are not that smart or that we are not worthy.

 

I'd much rather say to the individual you are good, you are smart and you are worthy, rather than to say to him that you are stupid, you are unworthy and you are not good.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 10, 2006

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DIAGNOSE AND ADIOS

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Confronted with an incurable disease, some doctors offer no hope or consolation to the patient. This MO by MDs is known as “Diagnose and adios.” As a veteran of many verbal confrontations, I have learned the hard way that it never pays to contradict an argumentative person whose central concern is to prove his brain, or some other organ more closely connected with his manhood, is bigger than yours. Nothing disarms such a person more than telling him he is right, especially when he is dead wrong. Tell him he is wrong and he will come up with more reasons why you are a damn fool. If Freud were alive today, my guess is, he would diagnose Bush’s intransigence as an extension of his defective manhood. As for Armenian intransigence, he would diagnose it as a trauma sustained during centuries of subjection to brutal foreign tyrants, after which he would say “Auf viedersehen.” I look forward to the day when I too will see the light and say adios to our dupes.

#

[ara baliozian]

So basically we mustn't brag about our intelligence or anything else for that matter, is that it? And if we must work about our national pursuits or for our communities; then we have to look up to our leaders for that, isn't it so?

 

No matter how we slice it; today some high official government people in our Republic are stealing from the people and the rights of the people and they are not being punished and taken to the courts of justice. Around the globe unfortunately, we don't seem to have the leadership we used to have say 50 or 60 years ago. Those people have died and the good leadership that they gave us haven't been replaced. Not just Armenians; but people all over the world have deterioted.

 

So what are we going to say to our people; let's just die as a nation rather than to give them confidence of who we were, of who we are, and what it is expected of them to be or what to make of themselves?

 

Personally, I'd rather give my people confidence and have them step up to the plate, then to say that we are doomed and we are not that smart or that we are not worthy.

 

I'd much rather say to the individual you are good, you are smart and you are worthy, rather than to say to him that you are stupid, you are unworthy and you are not good.

 

we are not few; our assimilation rate is high.

and i have always maintained that our ablest brains worked and served odar regimes.

as for the genocide: it is wrong to divorce it from the rest of our history.

history cannot be sliced like salami.

our problems began 1500 years ago --

our historians speak of corruption and division even in the 5th century AD.

as for our leaders of some decades ago:

if you talk to ramgavars leaders, they will tell you tashnak leaders were damn fools.

it is also worth mentioning that some of our ablest men in the ottoman empire worked for the empire. Zohrab even saved Talaat's life.

it was hot-headed, inexperienced, idealistic dupes and mostly young outsiders who harbored territorial and political ambitions that provoked the genocide. / ara

[Takoush]

we are not few; our assimilation rate is high.

and i have always maintained that our ablest brains worked and served odar regimes.

as for the genocide: it is wrong to divorce it from the rest of our history.

history cannot be sliced like salami.

our problems began 1500 years ago --

our historians speak of corruption and division even in the 5th century AD.

as for our leaders of some decades ago:

if you talk to ramgavars leaders, they will tell you tashnak leaders were damn fools.

it is also worth mentioning that some of our ablest men in the ottoman empire worked for the empire. Zohrab even saved Talaat's life.

it was hot-headed, inexperienced, idealistic dupes and mostly young outsiders who harbored territorial and political ambitions that provoked the genocide. / ara

Ara first off I want to congratulate you on your Birthday and I wish you a very long and a happy life. Certainly many happy returns.

 

Now coming back on our discussion, you say our assimilation rate is high. It probably is; however we are today like the Jewish people unfortunately scattered around all over the world thanks to the Turks and their Genocidal deeds. Our today's Armenia is very small and again thanks to the Turks and their blocading Armenia now since its inception after the communism regime, we have been in a poorer circumstances than otherwise we would have been.

 

Despite all the above facts, there are much more fortunate countries, such as Greece, the middle east and the Asians or other Europeans that still do come to the Americas and they also assimilate like ourselves or even more. Practically the whole world is assimilating now and they happen to be in a much more fortunate situations than us.

 

Yes you are right about not slicing our history as a salami; but lets just think a little bit here. Despite the fact that true enough our country have been divided in corruption and divisions between our princes and disregarding our kings; and for fact that's why Ottomans came and ruled our country, I am with you here; but after we were under their rule and their country, what humanly right did they have to annihilate their their citizens (the Armenians) in the name of religion or even envy and jealousy. A whole nation? How can anyone give them the right to do such horrible acts and let them get away with it. Just because our anscestors acted in a corrupted manner, envied and didn't cooperate to obey supreme rules and thus they let the enemy win them over through the centuries, sorry but the Turks' Genocidal acts doesn't justify them to do what they did and get away with it nor because as you put it (some young dupes) I know they were of Tashnagtsagan belief, fought on the mountains against the persecution, the heavy taxation and the turks' bashebozuk acts and regimes. The Tashnak young Fedayis were trying to help and save the people. The people, rather the citizens of turkey (the Armenians) were being constantly raped, killed, harrassed and persecuted and heavily taxed. What to do? What to do? What to do? I dont' blame Tashnagtsoutyoun and I don't blame thos young Fedayis. Not only I don't blame them; but if I lived in those times I would surely be one of them. As I'd rather die in honor than be raped, persecuted, taken advantage of and take a lot of bullshit from a warped and bloodsucking government; such is the case with Turkey and their turkish generals and warped and lying governments.

 

Yes, Zohrab was a genius, he gave his good consents for the welfare of the turkish govenrment, he further saved Talaat's life, and look what the bloody turks did to him. They have killed him and his whole nation in murderous cold blood. But I know this for sure: before he died, he told his killer to be that his spirit will come and haunt him forever. And guess what, he did deliver it justly and his killer finally not being able to bear it; killed himself.

[Anonymouse]

Friday, July 07, 2006

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If national consciousness or solidarity is what makes a nation, all so-called ideological divisions serve only to legitimize tribalism and to implement the divide-and-rule tactics of the enemy. It follows, the ultimate aim of all our tribal leaders and enemies is one and the same: the destruction of the nation, or genocide by other means.

 

This assumes that humans possess absolute free will. It's similar to the open borders crowd who argue that there should be no borders or boundaries. If we had complete free will, we would will ourselves out of any ideological system and eliminate borders. But since we do not have complete free will, it cannot. As much as we have free will, we are limited because we are also animals. We are social beings that group ourselves into families, tribes, and nations, like animals form packs. To deny this is to deny you are human. Man creates de facto segregation merely by being a man.

Edited December 11, 2006 by Anonymouse

[Anonymouse]

Friday, December 08, 2006

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

ON BELIEF SYSTEMS AND

RELATED ATROCITIES

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

It is an undeniable fact that some of our most cherished ideas about God and Country, or religion and patriotism, were instilled in us at a time when we had not yet mastered the demanding art of thinking for ourselves, and as such they should be rejected as “prejudicial” and “hearsay” because not to do so would mean allowing geography to determine our belief system. It is another undeniable fact that geography or mountains, valleys, and flatlands do not and cannot think. It follows; to allow an unthinking factor to define our thinking is not just wrong but absurd. And yet, this is what the overwhelming majority of mankind does. Result, intolerance, conflicts, wars, massacres, and atrocities with no end in sight; or, to put it more bluntly, lies in the name of truth, and the Kingdom of the Devil instead of the City of God.

 

And yet, all history is about survival and the will to power. Those who don't get with the program and suffer from slave morality and do not have the instinct and life force to propogate and spread their seed die out. All people have emotional and psychological attachments to lands, mountains, valleys and flatlands. To deny that, again, would deny part of being human. You assume that simply by dissociating ourselves that it simply solves the problem.

 

Having seen this clearly, the eminent historian Arnold J. Toynbee concluded his monumental STUDY OF HISTORY with an appeal to mankind to reconcile all known religions into a single universal religion by granting equal status to all scriptures, prophets, and messianic figures. Needless to add, he was labeled a mystic, a prophet of mumbo jumbo, and a utopian daydreamer.

*

Was Toynbee a utopian mystic or a realist and pragmatist? He was, I believe, both. He was a realist in so far as he saw that what moves tribes, nations, empires, and civilizations is a belief system rather than self-interest, and as long as there are conflicting belief systems there cannot be lasting peace. He was a utopian mystic in so far as he thought man, as a reasonable being would be more than willing to give up his arrogant, not to say, groundless belief that he had a monopoly on truth for whose sake he would rather see the world go down in flames rather than to live in perpetual peace and prosperity.

 

And this is where both you and Toynbee are wrong. As much as I love Toynbee for the greatness of his work, both you and him have a faulty assumption, whether about nations and races, or religion in this case. Toynbee talked about molding all religions into one and granting "equal status" to all scriptures, prophets, etc. The sheer absurdity of the egalitarian doctrine that never dies down from the mouth of mystics (yes, mystics and prophets of mumbo jumbo) is amazing. First, what, if anything, about humans is equal? Second, is there anything humans could quantify and perceive "equally"? Third, do we not have subjective experiences of life? Fourth, do we not assign different values and judgments to different things and ideas? Fifth, do we not all possess differences in minds, characters and capacities? Egalitarianism is a hollow and decadent ideology that, like the democracy you so cherish and argue for, marks the decadent or aging periods of civilizations. Vibrant and virile civilizations that still possess culture creating power and growth do not display a love or affinity for egalitarianism and democracy. They are what Nietzsche would refer to as Apollonian forces.

 

And as evidence of the decaying and atrophying nature of democracy and egalitarianism all one has to do is look to "the West", for only the West is obsessed with this nonsense of democracy and egalitarianism and wants to spread their weakness upon others. Yet, as it stands today, it is only the West, Europeans and America, who stand to lose their civilizations through low births, massive immigrations and intermixing and Armenians who are caught in the winds of these civilizations also stand to lose. Woe is us.

[Takoush]

To add to these statements and thoughts I'd like to bring in here the thought mechanism of Karekin Nejteh when he said that being a cosmopolitan does not serve to any entity of state or a group of people. Rather it is doomed for the social structures of mankind and of the human beings. As the individual will eventually become completely self absorbed, self centered and basically will not be any use to society; but for his sellfish individualism.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 11, 2006

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CANNIBALS AND CHRISTIANS

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To say that I attack or criticize Armenia and Armenians in my writings is a gross distortion of what I have been doing. I write in defense of all victims, underdogs, and men of goodwill (regardless of nationality). To write in defense of victims also means to expose their victimizers, and I don’t mean past victimizers (as our Turcocentric self-appointed pundits do), but present ones. We cannot change the past, but we may have a better chance to change the future. If I write more on wicked men and less on good ones, it’s because they (the wicked) have taken over our leadership. My writings are an expression of concern rather than hostility. To criticize is to expose contradictions. A critic is someone who tells you if you want to travel south, you should not board a northbound train because then you may end up in Alaska where you may freeze your butt. If you want to live to be a hundred, you should not mix yourself a cocktail of arsenic and rat poison. If you want to impress others with your high IQ, you may have a better chance of doing so if you keep your trap shut, because if you open it, you may run the risk of exposing yourself as an idiot. If you are in a hole, you should stop digging. If you worry about Armenians being few, you should not support or defend leaders who have no interest in checking the exodus from the Homeland and the assimilation rate in the Diaspora. On the contrary, you should do whatever you can to expose their corruption, incompetence, lies, and wickedness; and if you cannot do that, you should not obstruct the path of those who are trying. This much said, let me conclude by saying that none of us can claim to be beyond criticism, because being human also means being a bundle of contradictions. And speaking of contradictions let me confess one of my own many contradictions: If I want to lecture on the advantages of a vegetarian diet, why do I choose doing so to an audience of cannibals?

#

[ara baliozian]

Ara first off I want to congratulate you on your Birthday and I wish you a very long and a happy life. Certainly many happy returns.

 

Now coming back on our discussion, you say our assimilation rate is high. It probably is; however we are today like the Jewish people unfortunately scattered around all over the world thanks to the Turks and their Genocidal deeds. Our today's Armenia is very small and again thanks to the Turks and their blocading Armenia now since its inception after the communism regime, we have been in a poorer circumstances than otherwise we would have been.

 

Despite all the above facts, there are much more fortunate countries, such as Greece, the middle east and the Asians or other Europeans that still do come to the Americas and they also assimilate like ourselves or even more. Practically the whole world is assimilating now and they happen to be in a much more fortunate situations than us.

 

Yes you are right about not slicing our history as a salami; but lets just think a little bit here. Despite the fact that true enough our country have been divided in corruption and divisions between our princes and disregarding our kings; and for fact that's why Ottomans came and ruled our country, I am with you here; but after we were under their rule and their country, what humanly right did they have to annihilate their their citizens (the Armenians) in the name of religion or even envy and jealousy. A whole nation? How can anyone give them the right to do such horrible acts and let them get away with it. Just because our anscestors acted in a corrupted manner, envied and didn't cooperate to obey supreme rules and thus they let the enemy win them over through the centuries, sorry but the Turks' Genocidal acts doesn't justify them to do what they did and get away with it nor because as you put it (some young dupes) I know they were of Tashnagtsagan belief, fought on the mountains against the persecution, the heavy taxation and the turks' bashebozuk acts and regimes. The Tashnak young Fedayis were trying to help and save the people. The people, rather the citizens of turkey (the Armenians) were being constantly raped, killed, harrassed and persecuted and heavily taxed. What to do? What to do? What to do? I dont' blame Tashnagtsoutyoun and I don't blame thos young Fedayis. Not only I don't blame them; but if I lived in those times I would surely be one of them. As I'd rather die in honor than be raped, persecuted, taken advantage of and take a lot of bullshit from a warped and bloodsucking government; such is the case with Turkey and their turkish generals and warped and lying governments.

 

Yes, Zohrab was a genius, he gave his good consents for the welfare of the turkish govenrment, he further saved Talaat's life, and look what the bloody turks did to him. They have killed him and his whole nation in murderous cold blood. But I know this for sure: before he died, he told his killer to be that his spirit will come and haunt him forever. And guess what, he did deliver it justly and his killer finally not being able to bear it; killed himself.

 

many thanks for your good wishes on my birthday.

about our tashnak heroes and turks:

you say they had no choice but to rise against a brutal enemy.

i am all for revolutions. but any historian will tell you that a revolution without popular support has no chance to succeed. our heroes were outsiders. armenians within the empire were not as worse off as the blacks and the indians in america, the untouchables in India, the jews and the peasants in russia.... and it seems it makes little sense to replace the occasion rape with genocide...our revolutionaries failed because they were the dupes of the West. they do not deserve our admiration if only because most of them survived....

[ara baliozian]

And yet, all history is about survival and the will to power. Those who don't get with the program and suffer from slave morality and do not have the instinct and life force to propogate and spread their seed die out. All people have emotional and psychological attachments to lands, mountains, valleys and flatlands. To deny that, again, would deny part of being human. You assume that simply by dissociating ourselves that it simply solves the problem.

And this is where both you and Toynbee are wrong. As much as I love Toynbee for the greatness of his work, both you and him have a faulty assumption, whether about nations and races, or religion in this case. Toynbee talked about molding all religions into one and granting "equal status" to all scriptures, prophets, etc. The sheer absurdity of the egalitarian doctrine that never dies down from the mouth of mystics (yes, mystics and prophets of mumbo jumbo) is amazing. First, what, if anything, about humans is equal? Second, is there anything humans could quantify and perceive "equally"? Third, do we not have subjective experiences of life? Fourth, do we not assign different values and judgments to different things and ideas? Fifth, do we not all possess differences in minds, characters and capacities? Egalitarianism is a hollow and decadent ideology that, like the democracy you so cherish and argue for, marks the decadent or aging periods of civilizations. Vibrant and virile civilizations that still possess culture creating power and growth do not display a love or affinity for egalitarianism and democracy. They are what Nietzsche would refer to as Apollonian forces.

 

And as evidence of the decaying and atrophying nature of democracy and egalitarianism all one has to do is look to "the West", for only the West is obsessed with this nonsense of democracy and egalitarianism and wants to spread their weakness upon others. Yet, as it stands today, it is only the West, Europeans and America, who stand to lose their civilizations through low births, massive immigrations and intermixing and Armenians who are caught in the winds of these civilizations also stand to lose. Woe is us.

 

if the opposite of egalitarianism is inequality in human rights, then we end up legalizing and justifying slavery and many other forms of abuses practiced in totalitarian regimes.

 

when it comes to philosophers and historians of Toynbee's caliber, you will be better off if you make an effort to understand them. you may contradict me all you want -- no harm done. but if you contradict Toynbee, you run the risk of making yourself ridiculous.

[Anonymouse]

if the opposite of egalitarianism is inequality in human rights, then we end up legalizing and justifying slavery and many other forms of abuses practiced in totalitarian regimes.

 

That is a non-sequitur. How does an admission of inherent inequalities in nature, which by the way is the rule, justify or legalize slavery? Maybe in the warped imaginations of crackpot mystics and prophets of mumbo jumbo after an immense manipulation of logic. The initial is an admission precisely against totalitarianism, for it has been nothing more than a cause embraced by totalitarian regimes from Hitler to Stalin to Mao who, in the name of some idealistic goal of sameness have obliterated life and caused slavery. All these regimes were premised on some need of establishing conformity and uniformity between their subjects and in the process millions upon millions lost their lives. It is this hollow chimera of egalitarianism that has made the most vocal masses who cry for it and yet that equality cannot be enforced without the iron hand of the State to discipline and punish its populations to keep them in line. From Christianity to Marxism it has been the same regurgitated hogwash.

 

when it comes to philosophers and historians of Toynbee's caliber, you will be better off if you make an effort to understand them. you may contradict me all you want -- no harm done. but if you contradict Toynbee, you run the risk of making yourself ridiculous.

 

How convenient this is! You just had your birthday (Happy Birthday and congratulations I'll give you that) are 70 years old and preach about tolerance yet here you are being a typical intellectual about people who disagree with you. So when I disagree with something Toynbee has stated, it's my death sentence! For how dare I or anyone else disagree with Toynbee! Can you imagine that? This coming from Mr. Ara Baliozian who always chides Armenians for being unthinking animals who always parrot the supposed party line of our 'leaders' and dupes, yet here he chides someone for thinking for himself and freely disagreeing with a minor point from one of the world's most eminent historians. What a world in which the victors and those who know the truth can do no wrong!

Edited December 11, 2006 by Anonymouse

[zurderer]

it was hot-headed, inexperienced, idealistic dupes and mostly young outsiders who harbored territorial and political ambitions that provoked the genocide. / ara

 

I should add, young turks were also hot-headed, inexperienced and idealistic bastards who harbored territorial and political ambitions that destroyed empire too.

[Takoush]

about our tashnak heroes and turks:

you say they had no choice but to rise against a brutal enemy.

i am all for revolutions. but any historian will tell you that a revolution without popular support has no chance to succeed. our heroes were outsiders. armenians within the empire were not as worse off as the blacks and the indians in america, the untouchables in India, the jews and the peasants in russia.... and it seems it makes little sense to replace the occasion rape with genocide...our revolutionaries failed because they were the dupes of the West. they do not deserve our admiration if only because most of them survived....

Though yes we were living as citizens within the empire, but I hardly think that it was just an occasional rape. It was bits and pieces of massacres, slaughter, raping and kidnapping women and men, cutting testicles of little boys, stealing and heavily taxing the people. You call that little? It is hardly little for me.

 

You say a lot of them survived; but those brave men (Fedayis) used to stay up on the mountains guarding our towns and our people and when in need bravely fighting for months end with little food and or sleep. A great deal lost their lives. They put their life on the front, I can't think of any one more deserving my respect and admiration.

 

If the attaturks did what they did, I don't think because of our Fedayis; but they were going to do the Genocide regardless. This I believe in; as the Bulgarians got their freedom and we would've been next, so they did the Genocide to put the final key on the coffin of the Armenians.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

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

IF THE BLIND…

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

When it comes to what to write and how to write it, I find my guidelines not in the speeches and sermons of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted flunkies and hirelings, who will say and do anything for an empty title or a regular salary, but in our literature. Not everyone who speaks in the name of God acts with His wisdom; and some of the most dangerous fanatics in history have exceled in the art of speechifying in the name of patriotism.

*

I remember during the Soviet era whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime, I would receive nasty and abusive phone calls and letters by our chic Bolsheviks who would remind me that we owe our present prosperity and existence to our big brothers to the North, and if they ever withdrew their support, the Turks would have us for breakfast. Whenever I cited violations of human rights, I would be informed that such violations exist everywhere, including Canada and the United States. They would explain and justify every Soviet crime against humanity the way denialist Turks explain the Genocide by saying even the most so-called civilized nations on earth have been guilty of similar crimes, and like rape and murder, genocide is an integral part of the human condition. It follows no one can afford to adopt a morally superior stance. Ramgavar editors would go further and accuse me of disseminating Tashnak propaganda. That’s the problem with liars and propagandists: they think everyone is either a liar or a propagandist.

*

Let’s not have any illusions about our “betters” who are better only at creating problems rather than solving them. If you have not understood that much about our history and present situation, it may be because you are a product of an educational system whose aim is not to raise consciousness but to lower it by making you say “Yes sir!” when common sense and decency tells you to bellow “A plague on both your houses!” And if you were to ask why I blame Soviet purges and Ottoman massacres on our own leaders, I would reply by saying, for the same reason that sectarian violence in Iraq today is blamed on Bush. Political leadership is a demanding discipline; mediocrity and politics don’t mix; mediocrity in times of crisis may even spell disaster for the nation. Leadership is much more than popularity, charisma, and patriotic speeches. Leadership means the ability to see what’s on the other side of the hill. Our leaders have been better at speechifying than seeing the other side of the hill. The source of all our misfortunes is to be found in their blindness…and “if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

#

[ara baliozian]

I should add, young turks were also hot-headed, inexperienced and idealistic bastards who harbored territorial and political ambitions that destroyed empire too.

 

the difference between turks and armenians is that they won and we lost.

[ara baliozian]

Though yes we were living as citizens within the empire, but I hardly think that it was just an occasional rape. It was bits and pieces of massacres, slaughter, raping and kidnapping women and men, cutting testicles of little boys, stealing and heavily taxing the people. You call that little? It is hardly little for me.

 

You say a lot of them survived; but those brave men (Fedayis) used to stay up on the mountains guarding our towns and our people and when in need bravely fighting for months end with little food and or sleep. A great deal lost their lives. They put their life on the front, I can't think of any one more deserving my respect and admiration.

 

If the attaturks did what they did, I don't think because of our Fedayis; but they were going to do the Genocide regardless. This I believe in; as the Bulgarians got their freedom and we would've been next, so they did the Genocide to put the final key on the coffin of the Armenians.

 

as far as i remember most of the tashnak leaders survived and wrote multi-volume memoirs of their heroic deeds, but also as far as i remember, they did not save a single life during the genocide.

[ara baliozian]

That is a non-sequitur. How does an admission of inherent inequalities in nature, which by the way is the rule, justify or legalize slavery? Maybe in the warped imaginations of crackpot mystics and prophets of mumbo jumbo after an immense manipulation of logic. The initial is an admission precisely against totalitarianism, for it has been nothing more than a cause embraced by totalitarian regimes from Hitler to Stalin to Mao who, in the name of some idealistic goal of sameness have obliterated life and caused slavery. All these regimes were premised on some need of establishing conformity and uniformity between their subjects and in the process millions upon millions lost their lives. It is this hollow chimera of egalitarianism that has made the most vocal masses who cry for it and yet that equality cannot be enforced without the iron hand of the State to discipline and punish its populations to keep them in line. From Christianity to Marxism it has been the same regurgitated hogwash.

How convenient this is! You just had your birthday (Happy Birthday and congratulations I'll give you that) are 70 years old and preach about tolerance yet here you are being a typical intellectual about people who disagree with you. So when I disagree with something Toynbee has stated, it's my death sentence! For how dare I or anyone else disagree with Toynbee! Can you imagine that? This coming from Mr. Ara Baliozian who always chides Armenians for being unthinking animals who always parrot the supposed party line of our 'leaders' and dupes, yet here he chides someone for thinking for himself and freely disagreeing with a minor point from one of the world's most eminent historians. What a world in which the victors and those who know the truth can do no wrong!

 

before you disagree with Toynbee, i think perhaps you should make an honest effort to disagree with our leadership. when was the last time you did that? as a midget, before you tackle a giant, you should pick someone your own size. i call that common sense, not a "death sentence." / ara

[Anonymouse]

before you disagree with Toynbee, i think perhaps you should make an honest effort to disagree with our leadership. when was the last time you did that? as a midget, before you tackle a giant, you should pick someone your own size. i call that common sense, not a "death sentence." / ara

 

What evidence have you found that I agree with "our leadership"? Is there anything that has led you to suggest that I do not disagree with "our leadership"? So when you cannot attack the message you attack the messenger? Do I not faintly remember one of your rants being exactly about that? Yet here you are defying your own wisdom?

 

First, there is a difference between disagreeing, whether with leadership or anyone else, and constructively criticizing something and being nothing more than a orifice for communicating nothing but negativity and self-hatred and nihilism. You are the latter.