as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

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THE OTTOMAN ETHOS

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The Ottoman Empire was tolerant of all races, colors, and creeds, historians tell us. What they fail to mention is that the Empire was tolerant only of subservient second-class citizens who allowed their daughters to be concubines in harems and their sons to convert to Islam and to die fighting in its imperialist wars. Whenever an ethnic group objected, it was marked for slaughter. Leave it to academics to pervert the meaning of words in the name of objective scholarship.

*

The very same readers who accuse me of negative criticism call my mother a whore, in the name of patriotism, of course. Others take pleasure in calling me a fool, thus implying they are wise. But who has ever heard of a wise man wasting his time reading a fool? And what could be more perverse than to blur the line between wise and smart-ass, and between smart-ass and ass?

*

God is merciful. God is compassionate. He allows even bloodsuckers and hoodlums to be fruitful, to multiply and sometimes even to prosper.

#

[ara baliozian]

#

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

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GOOD AND EVIL

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Ever since the tsunami disaster our local paper has been publishing commentaries by pastors and pundits about God's responsibility in the matter. Every one of these gentlemen comes up with an answer blissfully unaware of the fact that since time immemorial man has pondered this problem without solving it. Instead of accepting the fact that God is beyond human understanding, these self-appointed charlatans come up with answers like the following: "If God would have miraculously prevented the recent tsunami, we would not have to work at developing a tsunami warning system."

Such a pity that the victims were in no position to face their deaths without the consolation of this thought. And why is it that the scientific or, rather, the political failure of some (since the technology for such a warning system already exists) should be the capital offense of others?

*

CLOSER TO HOME

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To those who demand instant solutions to all our problems, may I remind them that there are two kinds of problems: those created by reasonable men may be solved by reason. The others may take longer…

*

Let me put it differently: There are two kinds of contradiction or anti-thesis: the Hegelian and the Armenian. The Hegelian leads to a synthesis; the Armenian to a dead end.

*

ALSO WORTH REMEMBERING

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Problems created by intolerance can be solved only by tolerance. Problems created by lack of solidarity can be solved only by solidarity. And problems created by charlatans can be solved only by honest men.

*

Solving problems is easy. What's difficult is for our bosses, bishops and benefactors to admit they have been on the wrong path.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 06, 2005

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HEAVEN AND HELL

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To understand reality means to read the mind of God. But reality remains elusive, God incomprehensible, and the future beyond our powers of prediction.

*

If virtue is rewarded and evil punished, how to explain the fact that Stalin died in bed and Gandhi was assassinated?

*

Mullahs and televangelists tell us, reality or the world in which we live is transitory and ephemeral, and what matters is the reality that comes after we die. Theologians reject this as simplistic. Heaven and hell, they tell us, must be seen as states of mind that we experience here and now on planet earth. Writes Karl Barth, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century: “Resurrection means not the continuation of life but life’s completion. The Christian hope is the conquest of death, not flight into the Beyond.”

*

This raises another question: Did Stalin spend the last years of his life in his own private hell? Did Gandhi die blissfully in the certainty that he had done the right thing?

*

Eventually we must move into a metaphysical, unscientific, or purely imaginary realm that can be neither proved nor disproved, and that is the realm in which charlatans prosper.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 07, 2005

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IDEAS AND POWER

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Do people with power and money respect ideas and intellectuals? Only those that legitimize their power and prestige, that is to say, only propagandists and brown-nosers.

*

MILLIONAIRES AND POETS

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A benefactor is quoted as having said to one of our intellectuals: “I hire and fire people like you every day.” And to a poet: “Desert-dwelling Arabs may need poetry. We don’t!” I agree. We don’t need the kind of versifier who sings of nightingales serenading the moon. But what we need even less are millionaires parading as commissars of culture and setting literary policy.

*

BENEFACTORS AND INTELLECTUALS

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Once, when I wrote that millionaires are in the habit of supporting only mediocrities, never major writers, “Wrong!” I was told by an angry reader, who went on to explain that he knew for a fact that Shahan Shahnour had enjoyed the financial support of a benefactor. “True or false?” I asked a biographer of Shahnour, and was told: “I doubt if any one of our benefactors even knew who Shahnour was… On second thought,” he went on, “Shahnour did receive a monthly check from a benefactor but the amount was so insignificant that after a while he didn't bother cashing them."

*

TALAAT AND STALIN

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Did Talaat and Stalin respect ideas and feared intellectuals? I have every reason to suspect they didn’t even care to know the names of those they butchered.

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 08, 2005

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READERS

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Turks make fun of me and Armenians insult me.

I must be on the right path.

*

ON THE ORIGINS OF TRAGEDY

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Oedipus didn't know he was killing his father and marrying his mother. Ignorance born of arrogance may be said to be the source of all tragedy.

*

Where there is an oversized ego there will also be an undersized brain.

*

WARNING

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Nothing can be as dangerous as assessing oneself as smart, perhaps because such an assessment is invariably used as a license to behave like a certified moron.

*

ON OBJECTIVITY

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The only way to be objective is to discard all convictions with a single trace of wishful thinking in them.

*

CRITICS

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Since in almost everything I write I speak against intolerance and charlatanism, some of my critics accuse me of both transgressions hoping thus to persuade me to hate myself. This maneuver is so transparent that only a self-assessed smart-ass could employ it.

*

THE LEAN AND THE FAT

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The poor pray for their daily bread, but the rich know man does not live by bread alone.

*

ON GOD

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I understand those who speak in the name of God. I too speak in the name of God, with one difference. My God doesn't exist. He is more like a point of reference, an abstraction, a concept like zero and infinity. And since my God doesn't exist, He is honest enough to promise me nothing.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 09, 2005

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LITERATURE

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Literature as high-class entertainment? Nonsense.

Literature as biopsy. That’s more like it.

*

JOURNALISM

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In Armenian journalism we have no one remotely comparable to Ben Bagdikian, whose central concern as an investigative reporter has been to expose American incompetence and corruption. And what has been the central concern of our own pundits and journalists? To reform the rest of the world by exposing its shortcomings, blunders, and crimes. In other words, they have become past masters of the blame game. In their eyes, there is nothing wrong with our own leadership and our problems must be ascribed to outsiders. Which means, their main function is to enlighten and educate the world. If that’s not megalomania run amok, I should like to know what is.

*

THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE

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We emphasize the positive in order to cover up the negative. We brag about our adaptability and cover up our high assimilation rate. In the ghetto near Athens, where I grew up, we (the white trash) spoke Greek with an Armenian accent, but professional Armenians (lawyers, businessmen, doctors) who lived in classier suburbs, spoke Armenian with a Greek accent. It is an undeniable historic fact that the assimilation rate among able and successful Armenians has been much higher than among lower-class Armenians. From Byzantine emperors of Armenian descent to Loris-Melikov, Mikoyan, and Deukmejian, the standard of our leadership among odars has been incomparably higher than among us. It is no exaggeration to say that, when it comes to political leadership and elites in general, ours within our own communities fully qualifies as white trash.

*

INTELLECTUALS

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A final word on our intellectuals: I have every reason to suspect that a bishop today makes more money in a single year than all our intellectuals put together throughout their lives. There you have the reason why we have dozens of well-nourished bishops and not even a single lean intellectual. I have heard of many writers who were employed by bosses, bishops, and benefactors, but I have never heard of a single boss, bishop or benefactor working for an intellectual.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 10, 2005

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MURDER OR SUICIDE?

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In his book, COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED,” Jared Diamond echoes Toynbee when he maintains, “societies aren’t murdered, they commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death.” He could have added: “…and whenever someone comes along and describes what’s happening, they call him a pessimist, an alarmist, and their first instinct is to silence and ignore him.”

*

READERS

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Last week alone one reader identified me as a capitalist and another as a communist. Which may suggest that, what defines the meaning of a text is not what is stated there in black and white by the writer, but the phobias, complexes, blind spots, and limitations a reader project on what he reads.

*

REALITY AND THE MIND OF GOD

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The greatest thinkers in the world contradict one another not because some are right and others wrong but because reality is an equation with an infinite number of unknown quantities or irrational numbers, and to understand it amounts to reading the mind of god.

#

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

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RECAPITULATION / PART 2

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People are more or less the same everywhere. Left to their own devices they are more than willing to live in peace with one another, as they have been doing in the United States, Canada, and Australia. It is the men at the top who transform average, law-abiding citizens into killers in the name of a phony abstraction.

*

When it comes to criminal conduct, the French are fond of saying “Cherchez la femme.” But when it comes to mass hysteria, war and massacre, it is “Cherchez le leadership.” The people are guilty only in so far as they allow themselves to be brainwashed by a charlatan in whose eyes they are only a means to an end, the end being his power and prestige.

*

In ancient times emperors declared themselves to be gods. More recently, king and sultans ruled with the authority invested on them by Almighty God Himself. In our own days dictators ruled as if they were gods. This may suggest that leadership and megalomania might as well be twins. And if you think we are immune to this aberration, may I remind you that we too have been at the mercy of individuals who speak in the name of god, capital, or ideology.

*

“What we need is not criticism but solutions,” I am told again and again by dupes who think our writers have been no better than nightingales serenading the moon or daydreamers contemplating the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. And this misconception is widespread because our literature, as subsidized by our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, has been distorted, misrepresented, and perverted beyond recognition.

*

Anyone who has read our writers from Khorenatsi in the 5th century to our own days (Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian) knows that their central concern has been our problems and their solutions. My guess is, we have more solutions than problems, but these solutions have been buried and forgotten as effectively as our writers, most of whom were either butchered by our enemies or silenced by our own commissars of culture.

*

Censorship has been and continues to be a constant in our literature and press. We have an entire army of speechifiers and sermonizers who speak in the name of god, capital, and ideology, but we have no one who speaks in defense of human rights and free speech, because human rights and free speech are incompatible with authoritarian, that is to say, anti-democratic power structures.

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

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RANDOM THOUGHTS

ON NATIONALISM, RELIGION,

AND RELATED ATROCITIES

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"LET SUDAN KNOW THAT GENOCIDE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED," reads a headline in our paper today. This means that so far genocide has been tolerated; which also means that we live in a world where pickpockets are arrested but serial killers are allowed to roam free, to rape, plunder and slaughter with the blessings of church and state.

*

No one is in a better position to appreciate the value of moderation, tolerance and doubt than one who has suffered in the hands of a fanatic.

*

One way to explain an Armenian fanatic is to say that he is what he is because he has adopted the Turk as his role model.

*

An Armenian fanatic is like a sheep that has suddenly acquired the teeth and appetite of a wolf.

*

Why is it that I feel closer to humanity when I am alone?

*

At the beginning was the word. Which means, we become what we say.

*

Have you ever tried to shake hands with someone who is kicking your ass?

*

Every ideology has its commissars and every religion its inquisitors.

*

Nice guys can be nasty, but good men, never!

*

Our religion tells us to love our enemies, and our patriotism teaches us to hate the Turk. It follows; a patriotic Armenian cannot be a good Christian and vice versa.

*

The defeated Azeri is my brother, the victorious Turks is the enemy of mankind.

*

Plato: "Only the dead have seen an end to war."

*

St. Augustine: "Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself."

*

Pablo Casals: "Love of country is a wonderful thing, but why should love stop at the border?"

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 13, 2005

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I have said this before but it bears repeating if only to remind myself that, since beggars can’t be choosers, I cherish the very few readers that I have, including those who become unhinged when they read me. If I knew how to pray I would ask the Good Lord that some day in the near or distant future these readers will acquire that minimum degree of inner balance and common sense without which understanding oneself, let alone others, becomes an impossibly complex and an almost insurmountable challenge.

*

JEWISH SAYINGS

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“If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth.”

*

“You can’t fill a sack that’s full of holes.”

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“Don’t offer pearls to men who deal in onions.”

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“Once upon a time angels walked the earth; today, they are not found even in heaven.”

*

“Anger is a fool.”

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“Whoever is consumed by rage hears no thunder and sees no lightning.”

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“He who seeks the truth must listen to his opponent.”

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“A brother turned enemy is an enemy for life.”

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ON JEWS

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So much wisdom, and so much suffering in the hands of barbarians and fanatics!

*

ABOUT MYSELF

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I will never be a popular writer because I write about our present mores and morons to an audience that prefers recycled crapola.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 14, 2005

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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

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To insult someone anonymously is to add cowardice to bad manners.

*

If you are afraid of writers, don’t read; if you are afraid of losing an argument, don’t contradict.

*

The wife of a wealthy fool will be prettier than the wife of a poor philosopher.

*

Every dupe operates on the assumption that he cannot be duped.

*

Don’t assume, but if you must, assume against yourself – you will be on safer ground that way.

*

When it comes to the failings of other nations, we have 20/20 vision, but when it comes to our own, we are blind, deaf, and dumb.

*

When two fools agree, they think they have achieved wisdom.

*

If you criticize or insult someone without understanding or reading him, you expose your own shortcomings more than his.

*

Dialogue has very few friends but many enemies, among them: ignorance, prejudice, power, dogma, arrogance, ego, barbarism, and in general, anything that is connected with ideology and religion.

*

On the subject of horizons, dwarfs will never agree with giants.

*

All fools can plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance.

*

JEWISH WISDOM

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“When a crook kisses you, count your teeth.”

*

“A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing.”

*

“Some academics are no better than jackasses because all they carry is a lot of books.”

*

“A deaf man heard a mute tell him how a blind man saw a cripple run – on water.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 15, 2005

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LET US NOW PRAISE HONEST MEN

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Some day I will fall silent -- no doubt about that. But that should not be cause for celebration to anyone, because if what I have been saying contains even a single particle of truth, it will not be forgotten or ignored. In saying this, I don't think I am being sentimental about truth. I happen to know that there are a thousand lies for every truth and they too will be repeated and recycled to the end of time. Even so, truth will continue to be a source of dread to all tyrants and their henchmen, who operate on the assumption that if they silence or starve one, or even a thousand honest men, that will be the end of honesty.

*

Have I said this before? I may have. I don't remember. But if you do, allow me to thank you. All writers cherish faithful readers with good memories, because they are the ones who elevate the status of what they have written to "It is written."

*

ON GOD

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

To believe in God is the greatest of luxuries because it means to have at your disposal an inexhaustible source of forgiveness.

*

MORE JEWISH SAYINGS

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"Two dogs can kill a lion."

*

"Henchmen are worse than their masters."

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"When men quarrel, even God's anger does not frighten them."

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"Bad men do well in this world, saints in the next."

*

"The one-eyed need sleep, too."

*

"We anger God with our sins, and men with our virtues."

*

"Where love is, no room is too small."

*

"It is easier to know ten countries than one man."

*

"The heaviest weight in the world is an empty pocket."

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 16, 2005

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NOTES / COMMENTS

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If fools outnumber the wise, they will choose a fool as a leader.

*

Some of my critics pretend to know better, but instead of sharing their wisdom, they prefer to share their venom.

*

Because three readers disagreed with me, a fourth reader writes: “If one man calls you a fool, you may not have a problem. If two men call you a fool, you may have a problem. If three men call you a fool, you might as well resign yourself to the fact that you are a damn fool.”

*

Maybe so, but it is also written: “Not everyone who identifies himself as a man is one.”

*

It is also written: “You cannot contradict the braying of an ass. Neither can you contradict the braying of three, or, for that matter, four asses.”

*

Let it be said that, if this is not written, it shall be.

*

I knew we were in deep trouble on the day one of our elder statesmen wrote me a letter saying he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was spelling my name wrong.

*

“May you go to hell!” might as well be synonymous with “May you spend the rest of your life working for an Armenian.” I know what I am saying; I have been in both places.

*

A tolerant atheist is closer to god than an intolerant Christian.

*

I wish someone had warned me that in the first thousand days of every important undertaking, you will make a thousand mistakes; and the worst mistake you can make is to assume that in the second thousand years, you will make only 999 mistakes.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 17, 2005

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In the December 16, 2004 issue of LE POINT, a Paris-based French-language illustrated weekly, there are a number of articles, commentaries and a long interview about Turkey in which Armenians are inevitably mentioned and discussed.

*

“There is a Christian – a Bulgarian or an Armenian – in the family tree of every Turk [alive today],” states Levent Yilmaz, identified as a young Turkish intellectual.

*

To the question, “Why is it that there is a law that prohibits all mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916?” Yilmaz replies: “No, that is not true. The law does not mention this or any other event specifically. It speaks only of blasphemy against the integrity and unity of the Republic – a judge is free to interpret the law in many ways.”

*

To the question whether or not Turkey is in denial of the Armenian genocide, Yilmas is willing to admit that the Armenian genocide is the last great national taboo, and it must be openly discussed, which is being done by a number of Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Tayyip Erdogan. He goes on to say that Vahakn Dadrian’s book was published recently without cuts. The debate, he adds, is whether or not the word genocide, “which was coined in 1948 in reference to the Jewish genocide” can be applied to the Armenian experience.

*

In the concluding remarks of the editorial on page 3 by Claude Imbert, we read: “Turkey’s ambition is to be part of the West, but its interests lie in the East with the Turkish-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and by the Caspian Sea. Turkey also comes with a heavy freight of controversies (Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdistan)….”

*

A subtitle in an essay titled “Europe: The Battle of Turkey,” reads: “The Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Is It an Obstacle to

Its Membership?” It goes on to say that it will be a point of contention during the next ten years of negotiations.

*

Far from being “forgotten,” it looks like our genocide is very much alive and kicking.

*

Elsewhere, in the same issue, and on the occasion of the sale of one of his paintings at Christie’s in London, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) is identified as a Russian. It seems, an anonymous buyer paid 2.1 million euros for it – “a record so far for a 19th-century Russian painting.”

#

[Armen]

"Where love is, no room is too small."

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You should write more this kind of stuff. I also think that one can have sex nearly everywhere anytime if peope are realy attracted.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

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The internet is a useful medium in so far as it allows hoodlums and cowards to expose themselves.

*

There should be an unspoken law that says, if you are going to attack or insult someone on the internet, you should identify yourself, because to do so anonymously is a sure symptom of cowardice.

*

We are insensitive to human rights issues. We don’t even like to mention free speech. After all, who among us can plead not guilty to the charge of not having violated the free speech of a fellow Armenian by means of insults masquerading as criticism?

*

And since literature is inconceivable without free speech, it follows, we are all guilty of implementing a policy of systematic extermination of our intellectual class. But perhaps what I am talking about here is not free speech but civilized conduct.

*

When was the last time any one of our academics spoke up in defense of free speech? As for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (our axis of evil): what can I say about them that has not already been said by Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Massikian, and Zarian, among many others?

#

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

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When I first met an assimilated Armenian in Italy, I remember, he looked down at me as an odd curiosity, and I looked at him as a brazen renegade. I was wrong and he may have been right. Because, as a teenager, I might as well have been a walking encyclopedia of chauvinist clichés and a dupe who believed my elders knew better and they had done whatever was humanly possible to save and preserve the nation. I know better today.

*

In a commentary, I read the following: "The inhabitants in many of the hardest hit areas [by the tsunami] are amongst the poorest in the world. One reason they live in squalor is that the governments in their countries rule by force, keeping everything for the ruling class. Long before the tsunami hit, peasant populations had been excluded from aid programs intended to benefit them."

My first thought: our homeland too has been hit by an invisible and slow-motion tsunami of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence. We, in the Diaspora, may be better off financially, but are we really better of morally?

*

A headline in our paper reads: "Pope wants more dialogue between Jews and Catholics." I can't help wondering what were they doing during the last 2000 years? - except perhaps calling one another blasphemers. And what will they call one another after 2000 years of dialogue? Brothers? Maybe. But perhaps the real question should be: Will they ever stop thinking of one another as blasphemers? Can they, without sacrificing a central tenet of their faith?

#

[Nakharar]

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

[Armen]

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves. 

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This is folk wisdom. Because we are all critics. Anyone who writes something is a critic of some other thing. That means that all humans are eunuchs. At least this can't apply to women. No?

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 20, 2005

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LABELS

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

When I write about Armenians, I don’t think of them as Armenians but as human beings. The same applies to Turks. I am not implying Turks are not guilty of genocide. What I am saying is that many other nations, among them Greeks, Germans, Americans, and Russians, would have behaved the same way only because they too have been guilty in the past of many unspeakable crimes against humanity. And given the same conditions, and if the roles had been reversed, who is to say we wouldn’t have done to the Turks what they did to us?

*

Speaking of conditions: the Turks were confronting external enemies (Russians, Greeks, the Great Powers, including Australians) as well as internal insurgents (Greeks, Kurds, Armenians). Their very survival as a nation was at stake.

*

My question is, who is threatening our present leadership today? How to explain their mistreatment of their fellow Armenians -- a mistreatment that forces them to be homeless, to emigrate, or to engage in prostitution in order to survive? How to explain their total indifference for the future of the nation?

*

Indifference, it has been said, is worse than hatred, because in hatred we involved the other in our feelings; that is to say, we do not cease to think of him as a fellow human being. Whereas in indifference, we reduce him to an object whose extinction would not even register on our consciousness.

#

[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 21, 2005

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THE HUMAN CONDITION

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The world is a mess because leaders play chess with the masses who can play only checkers. As for reality: it plays a game whose rules are known only to god, and so far he has refused to share them with mortals.

*

Religious leaders contradict one another because they speak in the name of a being that they don’t understand.

*

The problem with liars is that they can’t believe in the existence of the truth.

*

As for history: if it’s not the propaganda of the victor, it’s the consolation of the loser.

*

Two of the greatest historians of the 20th century (Spengler and Toynbee) disagree with each other, and their fellow historians have dismissed both as charlatans.

*

Where fools are in charge, the wise are sure to be persecuted.

*

We are like the blind man advancing towards the precipice with the certainty that, since he cannot see it, it is not there.

*

It was Graham Greene, I think, who once said something to the effect that a writer is a capitalist among communists, and a communist among capitalists, because his main function is to challenge, disturb, and provoke.

*

Let us worship god, if we must, but let us not pretend to understand him.

*

It is written: “When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are conversing.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 22, 2005

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NATIONAL TABOOS

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In Turkey, it's the Armenian Genocide; among us, it's all mention of Turkish humanity. But if we refuse to think of Turks as human beings worthy of our understanding, we shall have to think of them as bloodthirsty savages worse than vermin - which is the mistake they made when they tried to exterminate us. Even assuming Turks are no better than Asiatic barbarians: it would be poor diplomacy to address them as such, if only because barbarians are not in the habit of compromising or making concession or engaging in dialogue.

*

THEM AND US

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

A headline in our paper this morning reads: "We're OK, It's Everyone Else Who Needs to Change." Perhaps the function of a writer is to point out the fact that this happens to be a universal illusion and none of us is in a position to plead immunity.

*

THE BRAIN AND THE GUT

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This much said, I am willing to concede that my thoughts run much faster than my gut feelings, and very probably I will continue to think of Turks as bloodthirsty savages and Asiatic barbarians until the day I die.

*

OUR AXIS OF EVIL

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Our bishops are accountable only to god; our benefactors are accountable only to capital; and our political bosses continue to think of themselves as the brains of the people, thus feeling no need to be accountable to the brainless. The massacre continues…

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 23, 2005

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FROM THE DIARY OF A FOOL

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Once upon a time I was a fool. Since I think I am no longer a fool, I must be a worse fool.

*

It is written: “At the beginning was the word.”

It is also written: “You cannot cook pilaf with words.”

*

Writing consists in fighting a forest fire on a windy day with only a thimbleful of water.

*

A successful politician must pretend at all times and everywhere to know better even after reality has proven his knowledge to be worse than ignorance.

*

Which is where God comes in. If you believe in God, you can always identify yourself as an instrument of His will. For faith has the magic power of allowing you to serve the devil with the certainty that God is your only master.

*

According to a Muslim pundit in our paper this morning, polygamy is better than divorce. This pundit should be punished by marrying a wife with more than one husband, be suspected of infidelity and stoned to death by a mob of angry women.

#

[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 24, 2005

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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

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We live in a world where fools are more assertive in sharing their ignorance than the wise in sharing their knowledge.

*

An inability to entertain new thoughts and an unwillingness to share power: the two factors that go into the making of a fascist personality.

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If Moses were to testify in a court of law today, his Decalogue would be inadmissible because based on hearsay.

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Trying to be popular: I can’t imagine anything more repellent.

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He who has not yet achieved mediocrity should not aim at excellence.

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Not to have rejected everything you were taught as a child means to continue to think not with your own but with someone else’s thoughts.

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Imagine two worms in the middle of nowhere killing each other to save the honor of a man they have not seen: religious wars.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Only after you agree to disagree you may engage in dialogue; and only after you engage in dialogue you may compromise and reach a consensus, which does not mean agreement but consent to work together. Why is it that after 2000 years of countless conflicts, internecine feuds, defeats, and disasters, we have not yet learned this fundamental principle and simple rule of civilized conduct?

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The irony here is that, the more patriotic the Armenian, the more intransigent and uncompromising (that is to say, Ottoman) his stance.

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I read the following headline in our paper this morning: “Activists Call Ban on Pit Bulls ‘Canine Genocide’.” And to think that Turks plead not guilty to the crime of genocide because we abuse the word.

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How to explain the fact that our literature so far has had no discernible effect on our political leadership? Is it because “To educate fools is folly?” If you have a better theory, please let me know.

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A pervert is also someone who perverts the meaning of what he reads.

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It’s easy to have all the answers if you have not yet begun asking the right questions.

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