as i see it - Pt. IV

[DominO123]

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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I really like this one. Great Ara.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

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NOTES / COMMENTS

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There are those who think being a good Armenian consists in exposing Turkish crimes and covering up our own blunders. But to refuse to acknowledge any degree of responsibility in our destiny as a nation is to imply we are no better than herbivores seeking justice in a jungle ruled by carnivores - a dead end situation, if there ever was one.

*

My twin ambitions as an Armenian writer: to avoid starvation in life and hell in death. As for Siberian exile: compared to where I live, Siberia would probably be an improvement.

*

Because I write what I think, I am insulted by readers who think (if you will forgive the overstatement) recycling chauvinist crapola qualifies as thinking.

*

Words are cheap, I am reminded once in a while, and that if I want to be of any use to anyone I should go to Armenia and fight for the underdog. But I have every reason to suspect if I ever go to Armenia, all I will accomplish is add another underdog to the already existing number of underdogs there.

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[ara baliozian]

Thursday, January 27, 2005

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The aim of politics is power, not truth. Where there are political parties there will be propaganda. And where there is propaganda, education will be subservient to it. Which means, between the whole truth and a fraction of it (which is how propaganda is defined: a fraction of the truth), propaganda will be given priority. It is this and nothing else that allows the armies of two nations to go to war and kill with the conviction that they are performing their sacred patriotic duty and they deserve universal admiration for their sacrifice.

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Wars are not encounters between a truth and a lie, but between two lies.

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Some day if mankind enters a Golden Age of Universal Enlightenment, there will be only one history text book taught in the schools of all nations and tribes. That’s because the past of mankind is one and the moment you start slicing it, it ceases being history and it becomes propaganda, that is to say, baloney. It follows, so-called nationalist historians are not historians but baloney artists.

*

Today, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our local paper has published a series of illustrated articles, commentaries and reminiscences by survivors. In none of them is the Armenian genocide mentioned, though several other more recent genocides are. Ours, I suppose, might as well be ancient history.

*

Our genocide may be “ancient history,” but World War I is not. In Canada, where I live, World War I is remembered every year on November 11 – veterans march, bands play, speeches are delivered, government employees are given the day off, and at 11:00 AM a moment of silence is observed.

*

What about us? How many of us have been taught to remember the anniversary of any other genocide? I have even met Armenians who deny the reality of the Holocaust. After all is said and done, who among us is in a position to plead not guilty to the charge of having been at one time or another the dupe of a baloney artist?

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[ara baliozian]

Friday, January 28, 2005

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IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM

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If you are for honesty, the dishonest will gang up against you, but they will never say, “We are against honesty because we have been dishonest all our lives and we have no intention of changing.” What they will do instead is invent other reasons, and needless to add, these reasons will be dishonest ones.

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The greatest temptation is not sex but wishful thinking, and wishful thinking has a way of insinuating itself in our most cherished convictions.

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Once, after verbally abusing me almost daily for a number of years, one of my gentle readers telephoned to apologize, and he apologized so profusely that I believed him. Shortly thereafter he went back to abusing me again, all in the name of patriotism, of course.

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It is written: “If you hear a mountain moved, believe it. But if you hear a man has changed, believe it not.”

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One could also say that 600 years of Ottoman oppression on their part, and Ottoman brown-nosing on ours, cannot be obliterated from our collective subconscious by an act of will.

*

During the Soviet era, whenever I published a critical commentary about the regime, I would get abusive calls and letters from our fellow travellers. Nothing evil ever dies. Some of my readers today engage in verbal hooliganism in defense of patriotism, and it doesn’t even occur to them that massacres too have been committed and covered up in the name of patriotism.

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Some of our phony superpatriots operate on the assumption that patriotism and civilized conduct are mutually exclusive concepts.

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It is written: “Patriotism is a very convenient refuge of rascals, ruffians, and riffraff.” And so it is.

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[ara baliozian]

Saturday, January 29, 2005

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The function of an Armenian writer today is similar to that of a composer of music for the movies - to provide background noise, and at best, to emphasize the action on the screen: in our case, the clichés of our speechifiers and sermonizers.

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They warned me about the starving part, but nobody ever said, "You will be writing for an audience with a marked preference for recycled chauvinist crapola."

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If a writer does not go beyond the known and the familiar, he might as well go into the recycling business too.

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The more ignorant the man, the more satisfied with his ignorance.

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Shame on female interrogators at the Guantanamo Detention Center who used sex and such shocking devices as menstrual blood (red ink, actually) to break down the resistance of Muslim prisoners. It would have been much more humane and compatible with their religious beliefs and practices if the poor bastards had been beheaded. Beheaded, they would now be in paradise making whoopee in their private harem of 73 virgins.

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[ara baliozian]

Sunday, January 30, 2005

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History treats nations the way they treat their superior intellects. Consider what happened to the Athenian Empire after they condemned Socrates to death, to the Russians and their Empire after they exiled Dostoevsky and excommunicated Tolstoy, to the Soviets and their Empire after what they did to Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Finally, consider what happened to us after we betrayed Baronian to the Turkish authorities.

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Man cannot understand god if only because man cannot understand man, including himself.

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Between wealth (without wisdom) and wisdom (without wealth) who will choose wisdom?

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Our writers have been critical of our people and the people have retaliated by ignoring, silencing, starving and silencing them. Who has won, except perhaps our enemies? Try to put a positive spin on that, if you can.

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It was Orwell, I think, who made the observation that all memoirs misrepresent reality because 70% of life consists of humiliations, and no one likes to speak about them. Nations are very much like individuals, who even when haunted by blunders, defeats, and humiliations, prefer to speak of their moral superiority.

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, January 31, 2005

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DEMOCRACY

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On the radio this morning, an Iraqi man: “Our history goes back 7000 years, but this is the first time the people have been given a chance to vote in a free and democratic election.”

The older the culture, the more fascist its political profile.

*

What about us? How democratic is our system? – provided we define democracy not simply as free elections but as the three freedoms: freedom of thought, freedom of movement, and freedom from want. In the Diaspora, we have freedom from want and freedom of movement, but freedom of thought? In the Homeland, we may have freedom of movement and thought, but not freedom from want.

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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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Louis de Bernieres’s last novel is titled BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS and it tells the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. A Turkish character in it, named Iskander, muses: “Life was merrier when the Christians were still among us, not least because almost every one of their days was the feast of some saint.”

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Further down: “Since they took their icon of Mary Mother of Jesus with them, there are some who think that we have had less good luck than we did before.”

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The same character, after a short reference to the “times of whirlwind,” observes: “The world has learned over and over again that the wounds of the ancestors make the children bleed. I do not know if anyone will ever be forgiven, or if the harm that was done will ever be undone.” Which may suggest that all nations speak with a forked tongue and more often than not, what the people think and feel may be in direct contradiction with what the politicians say.

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To a question about the end of the world, Nasreddin Hodja is said to have replied: “The world will end twice: once when my wife dies, and once when I die myself.” Again, I am quoting from BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS. More quotations will follow. So far I have read only the first 57 of its 908 pages.

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[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

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MY AMBITION IN LIFE

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To reason with my fellow Armenians, which may suggest that I am neither Don Quixote nor Sancho Panza; neither am I Rossinante; but I may perhaps qualify as Panza’s jackass.

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REFLECTIONS

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It is impossible to convince someone who thinks he is very smart that he may in fact be a damned fool; or even if he is smart in one field, he may well be a certified moron in many others.

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One of the inflexible rules of life: If you refuse to learn the easy way, you shall have to learn the hard way.

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BLEEDING HEARTS AND PANSIES

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When, in 1971, the Muslims of West Pakistan were slaughtering the Hindus of East Pakistan by the million, the American ambassador in Dhaka sent an urgent message to Washington that said in part: “We are mute witnesses to a reign of terror…We should be expressing our shock…”

After calling him a “bleeding-heart liberal” and a “pansy,” both Nixon and Kissinger (himself a survivor of the Holocaust) agreed that the ambassador should be removed and given a transfer to some other country. “Kick him the hell out of there!” Nixon is quoted as having said, to which Kissinger expresses total agreement.

Moral: People, including survivors, may care about their own genocide but they couldn’t care less about anyone else’s.

Are we different? I wonder…

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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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A Turkish boy says to his Greek friend: “You Christians are always richer than us, and my father says it’s all because of reading and writing and adding up and taking away, and that’s why you’re so good at deceiving us, and he says that we Muslims only learn what we need to get us into paradise, which is all that matters in the end, but you Christians get all the advantages on earth because you learn about all the other things as well.”

This may suggest that Turks saw us in the same light that our anti-Semites see Jews.

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Speaking of deception, elsewhere in the novel, we read about a Turkish rogue by the name of Selim who sells his own bottled urine as “Selim’s elixir…compounded by the renowned apothecary, Gevork the Armenian of Ararat.”

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[Arvestaked]

Moral: People, including survivors, may care about their own genocide but they couldn’t care less about anyone else’s.

Are we different? I wonder…

 

No other group of people has had the luxury of exercising compassionate behavior in the general sense and no other group of people has proven themselves to be so deficient in that compassion.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

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A POINT OF ETIQUETTE

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Disagreement expressed in a civilized manner can be much more effective than disagreement expressed by means of verbal abuse. Try to explain this to our skinheads.

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ON DOGS

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It is written: "If you help a dog, he will express his gratitude by biting your fingers."

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ON THE ADANA MASSACRES

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Here is a version of the 1909 Adana massacres in BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres that's news to me and very probably to most of my readers: "In Adana, the hot-headed and nominally Christian Archbishop Moushegh encourages his fellow Armenians to acquire arms and kill Muslims, causing a backlash that leads to the burning of the town and the massacre of 20,000 Armenians and 2000 Muslims. Jemal ***** arrives and quells the disturbances, executing 47 guilty Muslims and one Armenian."

This passage occurs in a chapter subtitled "Mustafa Kemal, His Own Policeman." In the acknowledgments we are informed that the "Mustafa Kemal" sections are based on the biographies of Ataturk by Lord Kinross and Andrew Mango. It is to be noted that both Kinross and Mango are notorious Turcophiles.

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[Armen]

Disagreement expressed in a civilized manner can be much more effective than disagreement expressed by means of verbal abuse. Try to explain this to our skinheads.

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Someone reading this will think that there exist Armenian skinheads in nature. Have you heard of Armenian "skinheads" killing or abusing someone (especially someone of other race) lately? You're starting to demonise us in order to prove a point.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, February 03, 2005

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ACCORDING TO STONE

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In a recent issue of the SPECTATOR (London, December 2004) Norman Stone has published an essay on Turkey where the following passage occurs: “The Armenian diaspora can be especially tiresome, trying to make us believe that they had their own Holocaust. In 1914 their leader, Boghos Noubar Pash, was offered a place in the Turkish cabinet. Can you imagine Hitler making Chaim Weizmann the same offer?”

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Obviously, Norman Stone is totally unaware of the fact that Krikor Zohrab, who was as important a personage in Turkey as Boghos Noubar ***** was in Egypt, in addition to being a close friend and associate of Talaat, was brutally assassinated by orders of Talaat in 1915, simply because he had dared to question the legitimacy of the Genocide.

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Also to be noted: at a time when Talaat was a wanted man by the Sultan, it was Zohrab who risked his own life by hiding him in his own residence.

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History is made by hoodlums and written by dupes perhaps because being subservient to authority and being deceived (or consenting to recycle propaganda) comes naturally to most men.

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[ara baliozian]

Someone reading this will think that there exist Armenian skinheads in nature. Have you heard of Armenian "skinheads" killing or abusing someone (especially someone of other race) lately? You're starting to demonise us in order to prove a point.

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in that case i am the skinhead!

satisfied?

[DominO123]

Ara, I have by accident found a forum where you exchange with denialists, I was really surprised to see you debate and trying to counter their theses. Good job, if they exagerate, just PM me, I will be glad to kick some butts.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, February 04, 2005

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DUPES

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If a Turk were to say, only Turkish historians are honest and all others are liars, he would enjoy some degree of affection and support in Turkish circles but anywhere else he would be dismissed as a dupe of nationalist propaganda. Something very similar could be said of all nations and tribes. I wish I were in a position to say Armenians are an exception to this rule.

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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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In a chapter subtitled “The Removal,” meaning the deportation of Armenians from Anatolia, Louis de Bernieres writes: “It is not possible to calculate how many Armenians died on the forced marches. In 1915 the number was thought to be 300,000, a figure which has been progressively increased ever since, thanks to the efforts of angry propagandists. To argue about whether it was 300,000 or 2,000,000 is in a sense irrelevant and distasteful, however, since both numbers are great enough to be equally distressing, and the suffering of individual victims in their trajectory towards death is in both cases immeasurable.”

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

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To assume you know everything you need to know means to cling to the old brain and reject everything that does not fit in it. To assume the opposite, means to be more open to new perceptions and ideas. To put it more bluntly: arrogance is punished with ignorance, which is said to be the source of all evil, and humility is rewarded with wisdom.

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SKINHEADS

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At one time or another I have been accused of every aberration known to men and some known only to my critics. As recently as yesterday a reader accused of “demonizing” the nation by suggesting that there are Armenian skinheads. If this reader is not careful, he may provoke me into asserting that not only we have our share of skinheads but that we, the entire nation, happens to be at their mercy. Why else would Raffi say, “Treason and betrayal are in our blood,” and Zarian would reflect in his posthumously published diary, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another”? Unless of course they were themselves skinheads out to demonize the nation.

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THEN AND NOW

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Once upon a time it was my ambition to be all things to all men. I have since gradually lowered my sights. My efforts are now concentrating on avoiding being nothing to nobody.

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[Armen]

SKINHEADS

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At one time or another I have been accused of every aberration known to men and some known only to my critics. As recently as yesterday a reader accused of “demonizing” the nation by suggesting that there are Armenian skinheads. If this reader is not careful, he may provoke me into asserting that not only we have our share of skinheads but that we, the entire nation, happens to be at their mercy. Why else would Raffi say, “Treason and betrayal are in our blood,” and Zarian would reflect in his posthumously published diary, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another”? Unless of course they were themselves skinheads out to demonize the nation.

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Ara, "skinhead" is a very well know term and it represents a clear social group with clear outlook and known ideology (that is Fascizm). When you say "our skinheads" you put a stamp and lable on something that is not there in Armenia reality. Or at lease NOT in that scope and capacity. You should have used another term to describe that ... whatever you wanted to describe.

[Nakharar]

Skinhead = thug

 

It's only another synonym. One doesn't have to have a different ideology to be classified as such. It's just a mode of behavior or to put it correctly lack of behavior.

[Armen]

Skinhead = thug

 

It's only another synonym. One doesn't have to have a different ideology to be classified as such. It's just a mode of behavior or to put it correctly lack of behavior.

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Wrong...

 

skin·head

 

1. A person with a shaven head.

2. A member of any of various groups of people, especially young people, who shave their heads and sometimes participate in white-supremacist and anti-immigrant activities.

 

n : a young person who belongs to a British or American group that shave their heads and gather at rock concerts or engage in white supremacist demonstrations

 

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If Ara was refering to Armenians who just shave their head I have no problem. Also, he could have well used the word thug.

[DominO123]

Armen, please let artists use the words they want in their creation, let them use the paint they want, the style they want, etc.

 

And above all, stop behaving like an autistic.

Edited February 4, 2005 by QueBeceR

[ara baliozian]

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Saturday, February 05, 2005

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LESSONS I WAS NEVER TAUGHT

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Why is it that the most important lessons in life are not taught in schools? I was taught algebra, which has been of no use to me, but nobody ever told me that most of life consists of blunders and humiliations because we assume our privileges to be permanent conditions.

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Only after achieving indifference to the opinion of others we may aim at excellence. Until then our efforts are focused on conforming to the demands of others, which we can do only at the expense of our authentic self.

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By blaming others for all our misfortunes, we reinforce our profile as passive victims; but by accepting some degree of responsibility we may acquire the freedom to forge our destiny.

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Readers whose initial reaction is violent disagreement: they are my main targets. As for readers who agree with me: what can I say to them that they don't already know?

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[ara baliozian]

Wrong...

 

skin·head 

 

  1. A person with a shaven head.

  2. A member of any of various groups of people, especially young people, who shave their heads and sometimes participate in white-supremacist and anti-immigrant activities.

 

n : a young person who belongs to a British or American group that shave their heads and gather at rock concerts or engage in white supremacist demonstrations

 

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If Ara was refering to Armenians who just shave their head I have no problem. Also, he could have well used the word thug.

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Armen:

it is obvious to me that you are not familiar with the use of words as metaphors.

It was Roupen Zartarian, i think, who said "You must have a sultan in your heart," or words to that effect.

That's what i mean by metaphor.

and when zarian spoke of armenian cannibals, he did not mean it literally either....

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, February 06, 2005

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If you are an honest man, you will make many enemies but very few friends.

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My patriotism is as necessary to me as air and water. My enemy’s patriotism might as well be carbon monoxide and arsenic.

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In my salad days I wrote a number of dishonest books. When I wrote them I did not think of myself as being dishonest but as being patriotic. And I was outraged when a Canadian critic accused me of racism for my uncompromising pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish stance. It took me twenty years to realize that he was right and I was wrong. It may take me another twenty years to realize that when I write an honest line today I should not expect to have the agreement and support of our chauvinist charlatans.

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Patriotism we are taught to believe is a far more important attribute than honesty. Unfortunately for us and for mankind in general, our enemies are similarly brainwashed. Result? Millions of innocent victims. It may take not twenty but two thousand more years for humanity to realize the obvious fact that patriotism is not a virtue but an integral part of our killer instinct.

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History is clear on this point: territoriality and terrorism might as well be synonymous.

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Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And that it has no name.”

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[ara baliozian]

Monday, February 07, 2005

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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY

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I was brought up to believe in the moral superiority of Armenians. Since then I have been disappointed so many times that I no longer believe in the moral superiority of any race, nation or tribe; neither do I believe in their moral inferiority. We all swim in the same soup. Germans as well as Russians, Americans as well as Africans – they have all produced their share of swine, and Armenians as well as Turks are no exception to this rule.

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It is not the best among us who assert moral superiority, but the worst. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a good look at himself in the mirror and question his readiness to accept racist propaganda as the final arbiter of morality.

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[phantom22]

Mr. Baliozian,

 

Is it illusion, delusion or mass psychosis that elicits a response from the collective Armenian psyche to feel that we are a "race" separate from the rest of humanity?

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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In the second half of this wonderful historical novel by Louis de Bernieres, we read the following:

“The Armenians and the Kurds have loathed each other for centuries, and, owing to the fact that there are many Armenian units and commanders in the Russian army, the same banal atrocities have been committed against the Kurds that the latter have always enjoyed committing against Armenians.”

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Further down there is a similar passage dealing with Adana.

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May I confess that I read similar passages in foreign books with a sense of relief and malicious pleasure. I for one am tired of seeing Armenians portrayed as perennial victims of bloodthirsty savages.

*

Perhaps we owe our survival not to our religious faith or superior intelligence or degree of civilization (probably all myths created by our propagandists), but to the fact that, in human affairs, past conduct is not always an infallible index of future conduct and appearances can be misleading. So much so that, only the naïve and the ignorant are perplexed when sheep behave like wolves.

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