as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

July 25, 2010

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RANDOM THOUGHTS

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An Armenian will disagree with you even when he agrees. His aim is not dialogue but monologue; not being smart but to appear to be smarter than you; not consensus but oneupmanship.

*

It is not that the world is moving at a faster rate than we are, the situation is much worse. We are moving backwards. Compare the first half of the last century with the present. In the first half we had Oshagan, Zarian, General Antranik, Karekin Nejdeh, Roupen Der Minassian, Nikol Aghbalian, and many others. Today we have nothing but Turcocentric ghazetajis and brainless, faceless empty suit.

*

To those who say our problems are the world's problems, I say: Name a single nation that has been at the mercy of brutal foreign oppressors for as long as we have been.

*

If at times I am merciless in my criticism, it’s because life has been even more merciless to us collectively. Compared to how tough life has been, I don’t even qualify as a marshmallow.

#

July 26, 2010

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MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

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They recycle propaganda and call it free speech.

*

No dupe can ever be free.

*

The greatest enemy of liars is not the truth but reality.

*

Instead of speaking about Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, and Turks, we should teach ourselves to speak of human beings. That way we may learn to emphasize that which we share.

*

Shakespeare (THE WINTER’S TALE): “I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty; for there is nothing the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting, drinking.”

*

On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for “I have been verbally abused”) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.

*

Giambattista Vico:

“Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”

*

If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.

*

An Armenian who is about to lose an argument turns into a Turk.

#

July 27, 2010

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IT TAKES ALL KINDS

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In his youth Koestler was taken in by Soviet propaganda and became a member of the Communist Party. But after Stalin's show trials and purges of the 1930s he published DARKNESS AT NOON, one of the most anti-Soviet books in world literature.

Stalin's countless crimes have had no effect on our chic Bolsheviks however. To them Stalin is no more than McCarthy's counterpart.

*

Nabokov, the offspring of multimillionaire Russian aristocrats, hated the Communists to such a degree that he even supported the war in Vietnam.

*

As a petit-bourgeois, Sartre hated the French bourgeoisie, including De Gaulle, so much that he sided with Stalin, Mao, and Castro.

*

Thomas Mann wanted to save Germany from the Nazis but he succeeded only in making enemies of his fellow Germans who looked up to Hitler for guidance and accused him (Mann) of treason.

*

Hitler and Mussolini counted among their early admirers many great men in politics and literature, among them Shaw, Churchill, Knut Hamsun, and Heidegger.

*

Even men with 20/20 vision have their blind spots; and sometimes to know more is to understand less.

*

In an environment where Abovian was driven to suicide and Zarian was silenced,

what chance does a minor scribbler have?

Why do I go on?

Call it art for art's sake,

A waste of time.

#

July 28, 2010

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THE SOUIND AND THE FURY

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Instead of writing MADAME BOVARY

he should have written MONSIEUR FLAUBERT.

The result would have been

a much more authentic and believable work.

He knew everything there is to know about Flaubert,

little or nothing about the Bovarys

and what he knew about them

was based on hearsay, projection, research, and imagination

and as such, inadmissible evidence.

This is a mistake we all make:

we prefer to speak about things

we know little or nothing about,

and more often than we rely on hearsay.

Consider ideologies, religions, gods, and prophets.

What are holy scriptures if not hearsay?

What is the infallibility of prophets, popes, imams, and rabbis

if not pure fiction and collective illusion?

What are wars and massacres

if not hysterical or psychotic outbursts?

Leave it to historians to see meaning in them,

with the result that one man's meaning or truth

is another's nonsense and lie,

not to say the seed of another war and massacre,

followed by more sound and fury signifying nothing.

#

[ara baliozian]

Dear Ara,

 

My name is Vahan. I found out that you translated Zabel Yessayan's works. I want to purchase all the originals in Armenian but I can't find anywhere online. Can you recommend a site to buy it from? Or maybe you can recommend a store in North America which would sell her novels.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Vahan

 

dear Vahan:

your best bet is to get a copy free of charge through interlibrary loan.

the book has been out of print for a number of years now. / ara

[ara baliozian]

July 29, 2010

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MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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You say it was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.

How so, if

(one) we were tiny islands in a vast Turkish sea;

(two) we were not allowed to bear arms; and

(three) we now live on foreign soil and you live in your homeland which was ours long before it was yours.

*

Armenians are guilty of slaughtering Turks?

There are literally thousands of articles published in the international press that speak of Armenian massacres and deportations in Turkey during World War I some of which have been compiled and published as books. Now then, show me a single article published outside Turkey in which it is stated that it was Armenians who massacred and deported Turks.

*

I understand and even sympathize with your loyalty to your tribe, but I suggest a man is judged more by his loyalty to principles of justice and fair play and less by his loyalty to a regime.

*

Speaking of man and criteria of judgment, I am reminded of the old Turkish saying: “Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”

And speaking of loyalty: I would add that loyalty to a regime is at the root of all fascism.

*

And now let us consider the following scenario: A united Armenia (miracles happen) declares war against a divided, weakened, and demoralized Turkey (after all, even mighty empires fall and vanish from the annals of history) and commits crimes against humanity by slaughtering and deporting innocent Turkish civilians. I assure you there will be honest Armenians (and I like to believe I would be among them) who will denounce the perpetrators in the same way that there are today many honest Turks who have raised their voices against Turkish denialists: you see, we are more alike than you think, with one difference: there are many more of you, which also means more criminals, more fanatics, more liars, and more dupes of propaganda.

*

On a number of occasions I have been asked by Turkish friends: “If we tried to exterminate Armenians, how come there are so many of you around the world?”

To which I can only say: millions of Jews are alive today all over the world as well as in Israel. Does that mean the Holocaust is a lie?

*

Another question: Suppose the Ottoman Empire were an Armenian Empire and suppose Turks were a minority in it. And suppose after six long centuries of Armenian oppression some Turks decided to rise against their oppressors: Would you call them freedom fighters, heroic revolutionaries, or terrorists?

You say the Ottoman Empire did not oppress its minorities. Then explain why even the Turks rose against the Sultan? And if you say Talaat was not a fascist guilty of genocide, then explain why he ran away to Berlin?

*

A final note on truth and propaganda:

Where there are conflicting interests, truth may be difficult to establish, unlike propaganda which is easily identified and defined because it supports one set of interests against another – in addition to flattering the collective ego.

Who needs flattery?

My answer: Maybe the “nine women” mentioned in the Turkish saying quoted above, but surely not the “tenth man.”

#

July 30, 2010

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#2 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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You say, “For 600 years Armenians and Turks lived in peace. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, and a time when Turkey was fighting for its own very survival, you decided to side with our enemies and engaged in acts of terrorism within Turkey, thus giving Turks no choice but to take decisive action against you, which is what any state would have done.”

*

What you say contains a number of misconceptions, distortions, and fallacies.

Our revolutionaries were a handful of young idealists.

They did not represent the people.

None of them was democratically elected.

The deportations and atrocities undertaken by the Turkish state

did not target them but innocent law-abiding civilians.

As for Armenian soldiers who fought with the Russians:

again, they did so with no support whatever

from the Armenian people within Turkey.

Besides, no one is accusing the Turks

of killing Armenian soldiers on the battlefield.

*

Now, about the myth (a euphemism for the Big Lie)

of Armeno-Turkish coexistence:

throughout history all oppressors invariably adopt

a paternalist stance towards the oppressed.

They see themselves not as oppressors or masters

but as benefactors and protectors of their subjects;

and they are outraged at any show of discontent or dissent

which they view as ingratitude.

They are convinced the order established by them

has been ordained by the Almighty

and anyone who refuses to accept that self-evident truth

deserves to die.

To tyrants, exploiters, and imperialists,

all revolt is incomprehensible and unjustified.

*

However, the real issue here is not the psychology of oppressors

but why did the Turks target defenseless and law-abiding Armenians?

The obvious answer is,

they adopted a racist stance towards them.

When the American ambassador pointed out to Talaat

that he was targeting friendly Armenians,

Talaat said: “After what we have done to them,

all Armenians will be our enemies.”

Talaat understood and admitted

what you refuse to understand and admit,

perhaps because you continue to think and feel as oppressors.

You think the order established by your military victory

should be seen as a final verdict without appeal

because ordained by Allah.

You are completely blind to the fact that

your military victory was also a moral catastrophe.

*

And if you say, atrocities and deportations

are inevitable consequences of war,

yes, I agree. No one denies that either.

If Armenians see you as Asiatic barbarians

it is less for what you have done to them

and more for denying its reality.

#

July 31, 2010

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#3 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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You say,

“In our place you would have done the same thing.”

To which I can only say, and in our place

you would be reacting the same way.

Which means, we may be members of different tribes

but the same race – namely, the human race.

It also means we share more things in common

than we like to think. And yet,

we pretend otherwise

and we expect others to believe us

perhaps because we don't have as high an opinion of them

as we have of ourselves.

This pretense is baseless

because we might as well be transparent.

We both have a highly developed critical sense

when we deal with others, especially those we label as enemies,

and lack objectivity when it comes to ourselves.

You think the world needs you

more than it needs us, and we think

in the long run justice and truth are bound to prevail.

You cannot fool all the people all the time.

We both believe God or truth to be on our side,

thus reducing the mystery of existence to a game.

But life is not a game.

Not only today's victor may be tomorrow's loser

but also because victory on one level

may be defeat on another.

A criminal who believes he is innocent

because he is a law-abiding citizen

will commit the same crime again and again

until he is caught, arrested, tried, and found guilty.

*

A state that thinks only in terms of power and influence over others

is a dehumanized state. That is to say,

a state that has committed moral suicide.

Such a state doesn't have to be killed in order to die

because it is already dead.

I say this with grief in my heart

because it applies to the rest of the world as well,

including ourselves.

#

[ara baliozian]

August 1, 2010

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#4 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS:

ON NATIONALISM

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What nationalism does is to create an a priori positive image of one's nation (“my country, right or wrong”) and to automatically reject anything that may be remotely negative.

Nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology – a pathology if only in the sense that it divides mankind into us and them, Abels and Cains, friends and enemies -- the kind of enemies that, if you don't kill them first, they will kill you. As a result, murder one is classified as self-defense or at worst justified manslaughter.

*

My nationalist Turkish friends expect me to believe their version of the past as gospel truth and to reject the version of my own nationalist brothers as a pack of distortions and lies. And because I have been critical of our nationalists too, they think I am on their side and I qualify as an honorary Turk.

I am told some of them even quote me in their writings, websites, and speeches to buttress their denialist position. Which may suggest that they are so hungry for evidence that they are even willing to fabricate it.

*

What they miss is that my anti-nationalism targets not just Armenian nationalists but all nationalists, including theirs.

Their bias is such that it makes them blind to the reality of their position.

In their view it was not Turks but Armenians who committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The bones in the desert are not Armenian but Turkish bones. Talaat is not a criminal but a statesman of vision who did not deserve to be gunned down like a dog in the street by a deranged Armenian assassin.

*

A final comment on the myth of Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire.

Gandhi once called the British Empire “satanic.” As far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever described the Ottoman Empire as more civilized and humane than the British Empire. And if some day an ultra-nationalist Turkish historian somewhere calls the regime of the sultans “angelic,” that should be seen as irrefutable evidence of the fact that nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology, and as such in need of medical treatment rather than philosophical refutation.

#

August 2, 2010

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GROUPS

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“On your own you can do nothing. You must join a group,” I am told again and again.

Join a group? How can I if my aim in life is to expose the moral bankruptcy of all groups?

*

What Shaw said of professions (that they are “conspiracies against the laity”) applies to groups regardless of credo, ideology, or political orientation.

*

Speaking of Zarian, a Tashnak editor once wrote to a fellow Tashnak:

“If we publish him he may come to our side.

When he didn't, not only was he silenced but also rumored to be unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and mad.

Later when the Soviets promised to publish him, he believed them and by the time he realized he had been taken in, it was too late. He spent his final years as an outcast in his own homeland and died with the conviction that he had been killed.

*

In their efforts to assert their own intellectual superiority and moral integrity, our mediocrities now spread the rumor that Zarian was an agent of both the CIA and the KGB.

I too have been accused to being an agent of, among others, the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. To which I can only repeat the words of Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”

*

Sooner or later all groups become criminal conspiracies.

*

The longevity of a group or belief system guarantees nothing. Astrology has been with us longer than any organized religion.

*

Where there is a belief system that asserts monopoly on truth, there will also be deceivers and dupes.

*

Where faith enters, lies and prejudices are sure to follow.

*

What needs to be glorified is not faith but doubt.

*

The destiny of blind men is to be at the mercy of other blind men who will invariably lead them into the ditch.

*

A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master.

#

 

August 3, 2010

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#5 MEMO

TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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You dare to speak of six centuries of peaceful Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire. You forget that during this so-called brotherly co-existence you raped our daughters and forced them into concubinage; and you abducted our sons and forced them to kill and die in your imperialist wars of conquest. You did these things legally of course because your legal system was rotten.

*

Times change and laws change but you continue to think with the old Ottomanized brain, hence the absurd notion that, like the Sultan before them, both Talaat and Kemal represented the Almighty on earth and as such they could do no wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of treason and deserves to die.

*

A man can get used to anything. You got used to your own vileness and we got used to our own cowardly subservience. In that sense, the Ottoman Empire was not the blessing you like to believe it was, but a curse to both of us.

And if we massacred you whenever we had the upper hand it may be because as your subjects, we adopted and put into practice the values and methods of our masters. Before you blame us, blame yourself.

*

In one of his Anatolian travelogues Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and the future author of a mammoth biography of Kemal, quotes an old Turkish peasant as having said: “We taught the Armenians a lesson the will never forget.” This illiterate peasant understood what educated, modernized, denialist scholars pretend not to understand today, namely that, what you did to us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven or, for that matter, covered up.

#

 

August 4, 2010

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DIARY

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Reading the TALMUD. Some good lines in it. “Love work, hate lordship, and seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”

*

A hundred years ago our writers knew how to deal with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. We appear to have lost the art and with it our cojones. The offspring of our revolutionaries now refer to one another as “boys” and to our benefactors as “baron.” The only lesson they appear to have learned from their experience in the Ottoman Empire is respect for authority and everyone in its neighborhood even if they are no better than yes-men, brown-nosers, and the scum of the earth. Hence the saying, “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” And this in the land of the brave and the free.

*

Because I am critical of Armenians, my Turkish friends think I must be blind to their shortcomings. I will not apologize for disappointing them.

*

Yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.

*

If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.

*

In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: “Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”

There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.

*

In a dictionary, I read the following definition:

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

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 5, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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One reason I am overly critical of Armenians is that I see too many of my own failings in them.

*

It is not that like all nations or human institutions tribal people are sometimes wrong; rather, they can do nothing right. Everything they do contributes to their disintegration.

*

A pundit is useless to an audience of superpundits.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money is less lethal than greed for power.

*

More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.

*

Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”

*

Thomas Hardy: “More life may tickle out of men through fear than through a gaping wound.”

*

Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”

*

Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”

#

Friday, August 6, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The difference between verbiage and garbage is that garbage may be recycled and verbiage cannot because it may contain dangerous contaminants.

*

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923): “Non-rational beliefs are more important in spurring men to action than logical demonstration.”

It is also true that non-rational beliefs generate masters of persuasion who speak in the name of reason and common sense. Aquinas learned more from Aristotle and less from the prophets.

*

According to Pavese, who killed himself because an American starlet did not return his love: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”

*

Pascal: “The 'I' is hateful.”

Fichte: “For he who still has a self – in him assuredly there is nothing good.”

It follows, if the “I” or the “self” or the individual is nothing, the state must be everything. Hence the universal appeal of patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and ultimately war and massacre.

I am reminded of Erdogan's dictum: “Muslims don't commit genocide.”

That's because Muslims act in the name of an all “merciful” and “compassionate” Allah. Or rather, their actions are not theirs but Allah's. Now then, go ahead, accuse the Almighty of criminal conduct.

*

It is the questions that cannot be answered that are asked again and again. And it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable that generates the greatest number of explanations.

*

Where there is censorship, seek to be among the silenced.

*

Andre Agassi in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink.”

If life does that to his kind, imagine if you can what it does to the rest of us.

#

Saturday, August 7, 2010

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A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

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

Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire had little knowledge of the Great Powers, little knowledge of the Ottoman temperament, little knowledge of the consequences of their actions, little knowledge of politics, history, and diplomacy, and no knowledge at all of the proposition that a leader is first and foremost a servant of the people and a revolution without popular support is doomed to fail. And they appear to have learned not little but nothing.

*

The Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian today is as merciless as his prototypes. With one difference: he doesn't have a license to kill. But in every other respect he might as well be an agent of the Sultan or the Kremlin.

*

When a man selects his evidence, seek for the truth in the unselected fraction.

*

The true intention of Turkish denialists is not to convince the jury but to instill the shadow of a doubt in a single juror, because that's all they need for a mistrial.

*

More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda less than nothing.

*

Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks. Imagine an honest Armenian.

*

Rosa Luxemburg: “Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.”

*

Amu Djoleto (African poet):

“What you expect me to sing, I will not,

What you do not expect me to croak, I will.”

#

[Armat]

Thursday, August 5, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

One reason I am overly critical of Armenians is that I see too many of my own failings in them.

*

It is not that like all nations or human institutions tribal people are sometimes wrong; rather, they can do nothing right. Everything they do contributes to their disintegration.

*

A pundit is useless to an audience of superpundits.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money is less lethal than greed for power.

*

More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.

*

Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”

*

Thomas Hardy: “More life may tickle out of men through fear than through a gaping wound.”

*

Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”

*

Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”

#

Friday, August 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The difference between verbiage and garbage is that garbage may be recycled and verbiage cannot because it may contain dangerous contaminants.

*

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923): “Non-rational beliefs are more important in spurring men to action than logical demonstration.”

It is also true that non-rational beliefs generate masters of persuasion who speak in the name of reason and common sense. Aquinas learned more from Aristotle and less from the prophets.

*

According to Pavese, who killed himself because an American starlet did not return his love: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”

*

Pascal: “The 'I' is hateful.”

Fichte: “For he who still has a self – in him assuredly there is nothing good.”

It follows, if the “I” or the “self” or the individual is nothing, the state must be everything. Hence the universal appeal of patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and ultimately war and massacre.

I am reminded of Erdogan's dictum: “Muslims don't commit genocide.”

That's because Muslims act in the name of an all “merciful” and “compassionate” Allah. Or rather, their actions are not theirs but Allah's. Now then, go ahead, accuse the Almighty of criminal conduct.

*

It is the questions that cannot be answered that are asked again and again. And it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable that generates the greatest number of explanations.

*

Where there is censorship, seek to be among the silenced.

*

Andre Agassi in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink.”

If life does that to his kind, imagine if you can what it does to the rest of us.

#

Saturday, August 7, 2010

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

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

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

Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire had little knowledge of the Great Powers, little knowledge of the Ottoman temperament, little knowledge of the consequences of their actions, little knowledge of politics, history, and diplomacy, and no knowledge at all of the proposition that a leader is first and foremost a servant of the people and a revolution without popular support is doomed to fail. And they appear to have learned not little but nothing.

*

The Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian today is as merciless as his prototypes. With one difference: he doesn't have a license to kill. But in every other respect he might as well be an agent of the Sultan or the Kremlin.

*

When a man selects his evidence, seek for the truth in the unselected fraction.

*

The true intention of Turkish denialists is not to convince the jury but to instill the shadow of a doubt in a single juror, because that's all they need for a mistrial.

*

More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda less than nothing.

*

Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks. Imagine an honest Armenian.

*

Rosa Luxemburg: “Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.”

*

Amu Djoleto (African poet):

“What you expect me to sing, I will not,

What you do not expect me to croak, I will.”

#

Thanks for the "TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS" articles.I enjoyed reading them.Some Turks started to re-post your articles critical of Armenians against Armenians from purely racist bent and failed to see one can love the same people one is critical about.I guess for lot of Turks criticism is still perceived as "traitors etc Pamuk and the likes"

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 8, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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The thought that writing for Armenians is a waste of time never leaves me.

*

I am all for tolerance, but I am myself tolerant only when drunk. Koestler may be right. What the world needs is a tolerance pill, if only to numb the crocodilian brain in us.

*

If in the next life (assuming there is one) the riddle of life and death is solved, will we say, “But of course, I should have guessed!” or will we say, “I should never have guessed this!”

*

When after World War II the victorious Allies decided to reduce Germany to a shadow of itself, they divided it into two. We don't need anyone to divide us into two; we can divide ourselves into twenty-two on our own.

*

When asked why he had hardly moved from his house for twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz is quoted as having said: “You don't like my house?” And when asked why he plays Clementi Sonatas, he replies: “You don't like Clementi?”

The other day a reader wanted to know if I was priest. I should have pulled a Horowitz on him and said, “You don't like priests?”

*

And speaking of rabbis, in the TALMUD I read: “He that does not increase shall cease, he that does not learn deserves to die, and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.”

Tough buggers, those old rabbis.

*

Anonymous: “The drowning man has no fear of rain.”

*

Avedik Issahakian: “The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn.”

#

Monday, August 9, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Everyone in Washington is on the take.

So what else is new?

The American Congress is the best Congress money can buy.

Why don't you tell me something I don't know?

What about us? Do you think we are morally superior? What about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? Are they all gentlemen?

What kind of people assert moral superiority?

Only the scum of the earth.

*

When we brag about survival, let us not forget that treason and betrayal also qualify as survival tactics.

*

What if life after death is as different as being is from nothingness?

*

Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies; that’s because for every bitter truth there are a thousand sweet lies and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.

*

Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus. Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs. The gut, yes. The brain, no!

*

The secret ambition of every windbag is to be a fire-breathing dragon.

*

Propaganda is a tree that needs the manure of rhetoric. Truth can stand on its own even in the middle of a desert.

#

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

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GOOD MEN

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

After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends accuses me of anti-Turkish bias. I try to explain to him that my “bias” is not against people in general regardless of race, color, and creed, but against regimes, and more specifically, against individuals who formulate criminal policies and their underlings who implement them because not implementing them would mean loss of power, prestige, title, and income.

*

There are good men everywhere, granted. But good men cease to be good when they become dupes of leaders who abuse their power.

*

Speaking of good men: I owe my very existence to a kind Turkish cop who warned my father's family of the coming catastrophe, even when this warning, if exposed, would have cost him his job or even his life.

#

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

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

READING

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

What makes Andre Agassi's AUTOBIOGRAPHY compulsively readable is its colloquial style and searing honesty. At one point he identifies his father as an Armenian from Iran who curses in Assyrian (probably because Assyrian sounds more menacing). Speaking of an opponent he writes: “His serve is uncannily accurate. If he misses, it's only by a bee's dick.”

Agassi writes like someone who has been in hell and back. The moral of his story seems to me, never do what someone else wants you to do even if by following his instructions may take you to the top of the world and into the bed of the likes of Brooke Shields and Barbra Streisand (which at the time was rumored to be less a May-December than an AD and BC affair).

*

Some of my readers inform me that I am a pessimist, probably because I have a grim view of our present reality. Others tell me I am an optimist, probably because they think I write hoping I can make a difference or change things. These contradictory reactions confirm my own view of myself as someone who thinks as a pessimist but works as an optimist. As for changing things: to entertain such an illusion would be less optimism and more megalomania bordering on insanity. The only thing I want to accomplish is to give insomnia to our charlatans and bloodsuckers, and I shall consider my mission accomplished even if the insomnia lasts no more than a fraction of a second.

*

Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago (give and take a decade or two) there lived a Roman emperor by the name of Vespasian (no, he was not of Armenian descent). He was a good emperor -- much better than average, according to most historians. But since the Senators didn’t like some of his policies, they demoted him to Supervisor of Public Urinals. Vespasian was not in any way offended or discouraged. He said to his staff, “I intend to discharge my duties as Supervisor of Public Urinals as competently and diligently as I discharged my duties as emperor.”

To this day Italians use his name instead of giovanni (john). To say “I am going to pay a visit to Vespasian,” means I am going to the john.

I think of Vespasian often perhaps because what keeps me going is the thought that, if my detractors are right and I am in fact nothing but an extremely minor scribbler, I will at least be an honest one.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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

REBUTTAL

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

After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends, himself the author of a fat denialist tome, has written a detailed rebuttal which I stop reading when I run into the kind of fallacy that is bound to undermine the validity of everything that follows in addition to demolishing his much vaunted objectivity.

*

My good friend seems to be saying that truth is on the side of big battalions. If revolutionaries win, he explains, they are heroes. But if they lose, they are criminals guilty of a capital offense and as such they deserve to die, and not just they but also their women, children, parents, and everyone else that shares their ethnic origin. That's because in time of war it is not always easy to separate the sheep from the goats even when the sheep may outnumber the goats.

*

Another implication that comes across loud and clear is that, if the overwhelming majority of Western historians assert the reality of the Genocide, it may be because (one) they, unlike my good friend, haven't done their homework, and (two) like most of their Armenian counterparts, they have an anti-Turkish bias. It follows, only historians who deny the reality of the Genocide are true historians. The rest are dupes of Armenian propaganda.

*

Another curious point that I noted about my good friend is that he doesn't like proverbial sayings and he dismisses their wisdom as old wives' tales. I disagree. I love words of wisdom, especially when they challenge my fundamental assumptions and expose my prejudices and bias. I believe a single proverb is worth more than a thousand documents whose relevance and authenticity may well be bogus. Which is why I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from the TALMUD that I read early this morning:

“Let the honor of thy fellow be as dear to thee as thine own. Be not easily angered. Repent one day before thy death. And keep warm at the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coal lest thou be scorched: for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss the hiss of a serpent – moreover all their words are like coals of fire.”

#

Friday, August 13, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Let's get one thing straight: I am not anti-social. Rather, it is society that is anti-individual. And if I am not active in the community it may be because the community has no use for the likes of me and it prefers to deal, support, and compensate bearded hoodlums armed to the teeth with guitars and braying like jackasses, or idiots who hit a ball with a stick. I don't see why I should moronize myself to please my moronized fellow men.

*

Throughout history man has hated in the name of love, committed injustice in the name of justice, and professed dedication to truth in the name of a Big Lie. Which is why after centuries and millennia Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, supporters and opponents of capital punishment, abortion, and war, have failed to resolve their differences.

*

An Armenian has two sets of enemies, Turks and Armenians, and of the two, he hates Armenians more.

*

Eventually all thinking Armenians will have to ask themselves the question: What if it is not God at whose right hand we sit but the Devil?

*

I am willing to concede that all my observations on Armenians are also confessions.

*

“Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”

Likewise, where there is a benefactor, there will be brown-nosers.

And where there is propaganda, there will bedupes and one or more dissidents.

*

No matter how good the theory, there will be another that will contradict it.

*

The American illusion: “We may not be very smart but with the dollar we can hire the best brains.”

*

What if in the next life – if there is one -- the final questions will remain unanswered?

#

Saturday, August 14, 2010

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

TH RELIGION OF DENIAL

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

Assertions are not made in a vacuum but within a context of unspoken assumptions whose absurdity may be hidden to insiders but as clearly visible to outsiders as a city set on a hill. In what follows I will list a handful of these assumptions made by our denialist friends.

*

Our books are based on authentic evidence. By contrast, books of the opposition are based on hearsay, old wives' tales, and forgeries.

*

Some of our key documents are of Armenian origin, and when an Armenian is on our side, he is an honest man; but when he is against us, he is a charlatan, a crook, and a liar whose testimony should be dismissed as inadmissible.

*

The authority of the state is sacrosanct. To challenge it is to incur its wrath.

*

If the authority of the state is sacrosanct, its assertions cannot be questioned. If the present regime says there was no genocide, there was no genocide. End of story.

*

When Talaat and Co. challenged the divine authority of the Sultan, they were right to do so. When Kemal did the same to Talaat and Co., he too was right. But when Armenians did the same, they were guilty of a capital offense and what followed was justified retaliation with some inevitable peripheral casualties.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 15, 2010

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

EXPLAINING AND UNDERSTANDING

THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

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

We all swim in the same soup.

There is a Cain in all of us, including Abel.

Am I saying anything you don't already know?

*

Armenians and Turks will begin to understand one another only when they say, “In their place, we would have done the same thing.”

*

Armenians have no choice but to accept their degrading history of subservience to the same degree that Turks have no choice but to accept their role as oppressors; and of the two I find it difficult to decide which is more morally reprehensible.

*

Do you really want to know what I think of imperialism? True, I don't have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be the subject of an empire; but I have dealt with Ottomanized and Stalinized Armenians, and the best thing I can say about them is that, if they class themselves up two or three notches, they may qualify as the scum of the earth. That's the best thing I can say about oppression and subservience.

Let others believe the Ottoman Empire was a progressive and civilizing force. As they say, there is no accounting for tastes, it takes all kinds, and against stupidity even the Gods compete in vain.

*

What could be more preposterous than to suggest all the nations that rose against the regime of the sultans (and I am not excluding Turks themselves) during the last decades of the Empire's existence were wrong and the Sultan right?

*

Under pressure or when provoked, all people, even the most civilized, are capable of committing crimes against humanity. Now then, go ahead and say six hundred years of oppression does not qualify as provocation.

#

Monday, August 16, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Historian Nial Ferguson to the question, “Are we all doomed?”

“Definitely. The question is, will it be a bus this afternoon, or will I wheeze my last in some old folks' home, aged 90?” (London: NEW STATESMAN. July 26, 2010.)

*

Jean Rostand: “The world belongs to the superior second-raters.” And “Let a dictator perform an act of good sense, and people immediately hail him as a genius.”

Now you know all you need to know about Kemal's popularity. I speak as a “Christian Turk,” and I suspect the only people who will agree with me are “Mountain Turks.”

*

Turks are brought up to believe they are brave warriors – warriors who are now afraid of words – and the words that scares them the most are “Armenians” and “Kurds.” Compliments of Kemal.

*

La Rochefoucauld: “A man is never more easily deceived than when he believes he is deceiving others.”

*

Some day someone may write a history of Ottoman philosophy, but until then I will continue to think of Ottomanism and philosophy as mutually exclusive concepts.

*

La Rochefoucauld again: “It is only those who are despicable who fear being despised.”

*

The victor and the vanquished, the capitalist and the worker, the master and the slave, the boss and the hireling, the rich and the poor: relax the rule of law and they will tear one another to shreds.

*

If there are alienated Armenians today it's because they have had it up to here with Armenian nonsense. You may now guess why the best brains that Turkey has produced in recent times live in exile.

#

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

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

FROM EMPIRE TO NATION

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

Because I am critical of my fellow Armenians, I am thought of as pro-Turkish by readers to whom labels are more important than human beings. Hence the fallacy: You are either with us or against us, and if you are against us the hangman's noose is too good for you.

*

The Ottoman Empire of the sultans was an octopus.

Kemal's Turkey is a monopus – all trunk, no limbs, forever at the mercy of tides. Rejected by Israel, it embraces Iran. It moves backwards thinking it has taken a step in the right direction.

*

The central and unspoken tenet of Kemalism is the refusal to come to terms with the fact that the nation was born from the rotten corpse of the Empire. It is a zombie not a phoenix. On the map, it looks like a castrated member – a dick whose cojones have been surgically removed. A sorryyyyy induced erection that does not flag, neither can it connect, let alone penetrate, the object of its perennial desire – the West.

*

To be at the mercy of imperialists: what could be worse? -- except perhaps to be at the mercy of nationalists.

#

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

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

TURKS (II)

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

The laws of the land are designed to legitimize the power structure and to support the ruling class even when the rulers happen to be cold-blooded sadistic serial killers.

*

The slave is brought up to feel guilty even when innocent. It's the other way with the master – his conscience has been atrophied, his sense of justice perverted; so much so that he can slay the innocent with the conviction that he is discharging his duty in the eyes of the Lord. There you have it: the roots of denialism.

*

I believe Turks when they plead not guilty to the charge of genocide. I also believe these Turks think and feel with the old Ottomanized brain. Deep in their hearts (if you will forgive the overstatement) they have the unshakable conviction that the sultans were always right (remember the Italian slogan, “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right) and their(sultans') function in life was to carry out the will of the Almighty. The difference between the East and the West is that Mussolini was shot and hanged on a public square.

*

To speak of genocide in an Ottomanized context amounts to accusing the Lord of murder – an unthinkable blasphemy that in another time and place would have been seen as a capital offense. If the sultans came back to life today, they would issue a fatwa against all Armenians who utter the word genocide.

Let us therefore count our blessings!

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 19, 2010

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

KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES

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

The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.

Imagine the following scenario if you can:

A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”

*

The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.

The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.

*

Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.

Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!

But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?

*

Genocide? What genocide?

It was a military victory.

Deportations and atrocities?

Collateral damage. All wars have them.

*

Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.

Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.

Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.

But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.

No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.

None of them rewrote history.

None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.

None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.

None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”

None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.

#

Friday, August 20, 2010

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

ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA

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

Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.

*

The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.

In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.

The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.

*

Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.

Prejudices are all guts and no brain.

*

Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.

*

If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.

*

Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.

#

Saturday, August 21, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When I was young I thought I had all the answers.

I know now that I don't even have the questions.

*

Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger

than understand the message.

*

To divide is bad enough,

but to divide in the name of a religion

that asserts “all men are brothers”

is the height of perversion.

*

It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,

I question the sanity of those who do.

*

Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while

that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.

*

To speak the truth means to contradict

one Big Lie,

a hundred small lies,

and a thousand liars.

*

What is censorship

if not fear of being exposed

as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 22, 2010

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

ILLUSIONS

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

We all have illusions.

Mine is the belief that man is open to reason.

*

God did not create belief systems, men of vision did.

Men of vision see things that the rest of us cannot see.

They also hear words that the rest of us cannot hear.

It follows, when we speak of belief systems,

whatever we say will be based on hearsay,

and therefore inadmissible evidence.

*

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” we are told.

But where visions clash, the result will be the same.

Remember Voltaire's dictum:

“Since it was a religious war,

there were no survivors.”

*

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

*

Two recent books published in England:

50 PEOPLE WHO BUGGERED UP BRITAIN, and

THE DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL BULLSHIT.

When, O when will our writers write less about massacres

and more about the b.s. of our buggers?

#

Monday, August 23, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

How much of what you think is based on hearsay?

Next question: Can you tell the difference between the inadmissible and the unreasonable?

*

When hungry you don't think of the contents of a sausage.

Keep that in mind next time you fall in love.

*

Men fall in love with their convictions as surely as with a pair of shapely legs in nylons.

*

He who lies to himself cannot speak the truth to others.

*

To express their contempt for English cuisine, the French like to say that Joan of Arc “is the only thing the English have ever cooked properly.”

*

George Orwell (1903-1950), British author: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

*

We are all assassins in the sense that if we are not legally guilty of murder, we are morally guilty of wishing someone dead.

*

Some of the most dangerous lies come to us as religious dogmas and ideological truths, sometimes even as undeniable facts.

*

All speechifiers and sermonizers speak with a forked tongue.

*

A writer cannot make readers think, he can only hope to underline their secret thoughts, thus letting them know there are others who think as they do.

*

If we had the power, would our enemies escape total extinction?

#

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

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

A READER WRITES

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

Some of my most ferocious critics are individuals who have not yet mastered the art of reading and understanding simple sentences in the English language. But I shouldn't complain. I also have readers who are not just with me but ahead of me. A case in point follows.

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

When I first stumbled on your 'reflections',

'notebooks' and 'diaries', I just couldn't help

wondering -- why is this fella trying, with such an

admirable persistence, to do what is so strongly

discouraged in Matthew 7:6 ?

[something to do with pearls and swine, i suspect].

What's the good of

devoting one's precious kilobytes to fighting the

revered ancient wisdom, just to get another

confirmation that the stuff between an Armenian's

squarehead's ears is immune to the 'virus' of the voice of

reason, and his hostility more toxic than the

most deadly roach poison advertised on TV ?

On second thought, however, I realized that was

indeed arrogant and unfair of me to think that

way, for which I apologize. In fact I've been

intending to email you with a little word of

encouragement for a while now, but, firstly, I wasn't sure

you really needed one, or expected any feedback.

In fact, what you say has never sounded to me "so

eccentric and odd that you might as well be an

enemy of the people". Rather, most of the points

you make would seem rather natural if prejudice and

irrationality were put aside, traditional

'taboos' broken, and viewing the situation from an

unbiased perspective, legitimized. But after you

wrote that you felt like a Muslim among Christians,

and like a giaour among jihadists, I

figured a little note that there is someone there

feeling the same way won't do you much harm, after all.

Secondly -- and that was the main reason for not

writing before -- I realized I hardly belonged to

your target audience, as I wasn't among those you

seemed to be trying to reach: reading your posts,

I just felt that agreeable and somewhat

mischievous pleasure of seeing the tenets of my heresy

professed by someone better suited for the

'mission'. It's not that I considered it as a real

heresy; but the truth is, and you know that better than

anyone, that the traditional thinking is so

deeply ingrained in Armenian communities that it is like

a computer virus: reality becomes twisted and

distorted in a way that reason and common sense are

seen as a heresy while religious obscurantism and

genocide fetishism are regarded as the norm. Only

running an antivirus program won't do in this

case: the only way of eradicating it is teaching

people to think for themselves, rather than just

blindly follow what has been drilled into them by the

propaganda, and that's exactly what you've been

trying to do.

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins once wrote that

"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet

somebody who claims not to believe in evolution,

that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or

wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Later he

added that there is perhaps a fifth category,

which may belong under "insane" but which can be more

sympathetically characterized by a word like

tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people

who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked

can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the

massive evidence of science on the one hand, and

their understanding of what their holy book tells

them on the other. It seems that this, mutatis

mutandis, obtains in Armenians: a great many people

who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked

may not dare think for themselves under the

suffocating peer pressure from those who actually are

ignorant, stupid, and, more often than not,

wicked. Like those people who don't believe in

evolution because nobody has ever told them what

evolution is, many sincere an Armenian might not realize

that what they believe in is a prejudice and a

fallacy because no one dared to expose it as a

prejudice and a fallacy.

So it is indeed comforting that some have the

courage of challenging the traditional view.

However, it seems strange that most of your readers won't

engage in any meaningful discussion on this

subject. So keep on

posting your 'reflections', no matter what the

reaction of 'the ignorant, the stupid, and the

wicked' -- that's the only way of engaging a sheep's

brain into the long process of transformation into

that of a human being.

#

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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

CRACKPOTS

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

The function of politicians is to convince the people that they are the most qualified members of the community to count chickens before they are hatched, even when – especially when – they are the least qualified. Recent history, including our own, provides many examples of this abortive claim.

*

Politicians can't learn because their central concern is asserting if not infallibility than the kind of superior wisdom that authorizes them to speak in terms of certainties. But the only thing that is certain in them is their lust for power.

*

When power enters the equation, catastrophe is sure to follow. That's because power acts on the brain like an intoxicant. Power is the opium of politicians.

*

A headline in this morning's Op-Ed page reads: “American leaders often make important decisions based on conjecture, questionable advice and blind faith.”

If this is true of democratically elected leaders, it must be doubly true of our own.

A typical passage of this commentary reads:

“How could such a careful and seasoned statesman [Eisenhower] have concocted such a crackpot scheme [the Bay of Pigs fiasco]?

*

World history, including our own, may be said to be a long catalog of crackpot schemes concocted by screwballs parading as our “betters.”

*

The universe was created not by a tender-loving God but a very tough hombre who can watch crackpots concocting catastrophes without lifting a finger.

#

[ara baliozian]

FOR a free copy of ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION

 

go to Google.com,

 

type ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION by Ara Baliozian,

 

and click on "digitized copy"

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 26, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Our body language is a medium that is more accessible to others than to ourselves.

*

Bolivar: “We have seen the light and it is not our desire to be thrust back into darkness.”

That's what I think when I think of my homeland. And my guess is there are millions out there who think and feel as I do.

*

Brazilian saying: “We progress at night when the politicians sleep.”

Judging by the amount of progress we have made, our politicians MUST suffer from chronic insomnia.

*

It took me a long time to realize that the -ian ending was not a guarantee of nobility.

*

Perhaps what I am trying to say is that it is possible to think about Turks without turning into one.

*

Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), American politician: "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

*

The truth is, no one likes to be told he is morally inferior to anyone; and to brag about moral superiority is the surest way of provoking universal contempt, and what's even worse, of forfeiting all credibility.

*

Some readers approach my writings as lovingly as a starving cannibal marinating a fat missionary.

*

Our knowledge is limited and our ignorance infinite. Only fools and fanatics forget this.

#

Friday, August 27, 2010

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

ISLAMOPHOBIA?

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

Irrational fear of Islam?

A complex? A prejudice?

Both?

Not so fast, my Muslim friends.

It seems to me Muslims have as many reasons to fear Islam

as the rest of us in the West.

*

Embedded gangs of terrorists among us plotting to destroy and kill indiscriminately.

Sharia law and its treatment of women.

Endless fratricidal Sunni-Shiah confrontations.

Deranged imams issuing fatwas and declaring jihads.

Bloodsucking multi-billionaire desert kings.

Sex-starved suicidal fanatics.

The destruction of ancient religious monuments.

Fascist regimes.

Contempt for democracy and fundamental human rights.

Honor killings.

*

Accusing the West of Islamophobia makes as much sense as accusing a sardine swimming in a pool of sharks of sharkophobia.

#

Saturday, August 28, 2010

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

DECLINE AND FALL

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

Men of vision show the way,

their followers make signs that say “Dead End.”

*

Jesus and Marx were dissenters.

Their followers see no contradiction in being yes-men.

*

An organization can never live up to the original aim of its founder.

From Marx to Stalin, from Jesus to televangelists and child molesters:

all great movements begin as visions and end as bureaucracies,

and bureaucracies are mechanisms

that promote yes-men and unprincipled mediocrities.

*

The history of all movements

is one of gradual decline and disintegration.

*

In all organizations conformism is in, dissent out.

Where there is no dialogue there can be no progress.

*

All men of power pretend to be better than they are,

and eventually the worst end up parading as the best.

*

Bureaucrats are like dogs who know their master

but not their master's master.

*

Who governs Armenia today?

Clearly not the government.

Armenia's capital is not Yerevan but Moscow.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 29, 2010

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

AM I RIGHT OR WRONG?

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

That's up to the reader to decide.

I am not in the business of proving myself right

and my adversaries wrong.

All I am interested in doing is sharing my understanding.

If I were interested in proving myself right

I would write a thesis with footnotes and a bibliography.

But I leave that to academics

who tend to choose a subject and stick to it

to the end of their career.

No one in his right mind

would call writing for Armenians a career

or even a job. If I were to place it somewhere

it would have to be between a hobby

and a complete waste of time.

As a victim, what motivates me is less love of victims

and more hatred of victimizers,

especially the kind that begin by deceiving children

and end by sodomizing them – sometimes literally.

And if you think Armenians are morally superior

to Catholic priests, ask yourself:

Who drilled that nonsense into your head?

What motivates you to believe him, beside wishful thinking?

If some readers disagree with me,

it may be because so far they have failed

to deprogram themselves, which means

they continue to believe everything that happened to us

was someone else's fault

and our sole contribution to history

has been providing victims to alien tyrants.

#

Monday, August 30, 2010

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

ONE OR TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF

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

I have a phobia of boring the reader.

My secret ambition:

to write three-line essays as in a haiku.

*

The best Armenian joke I know:

bosses, bishops, benefactors.

*

Books I consider necessities, everything else a luxury.

Books I get free of charge from the public library;

luxuries from the dollar store.

*

Something to brag about:

I have never delivered a speech in my life;

and I have never heard a speech that didn't bore me.

*

I am beginning to think of death as liberation.

Writing for Armenians may have something to do with this.

*

The first time I met an honest Armenian,

I thought he was crazy.

*

Who will disagree with me if I say

to have an Armenian friend is to harbor a potential enemy?

*

I neither preach nor teach. I share.

There is an element of coercion in both preaching and teaching.

A preacher relies on a captive audience,

and a teacher on his own authority.

Sharing is between equals; it does not exploit or violate anyone's freedom.

*

Because Negro spirituals touch my soul

as deeply as our sharagans, my patriotism may well be suspect.

*

To be misunderstood is almost to suffer an injustice.

#

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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

GREED

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

“We defeated fascism and communism,” American like to brag.

Maybe. But it is equally true that both fascism and communism helped them by committing suicide.

And Americans may be next.

*

According to a British pundit, “The banks lost money but the bankers made a fortune and now live in big mansions.”

But according to an American observer: “The salaries and bonuses of chief executive officers are less than 1% of the total."

Whom to believe?

Statistics can lie, of course. The average citizen can't afford to make his own statistics and must therefore rely on statisticians. What matters here – what needs to be carefully and objectively analyzed – is the mindset of the men at the top who focus on their welfare so much that every other consideration is ignored.

So what if millions lose their jobs?

So what if some losers commit suicide?

So what if it's bad public relations?

Bankers pay millions to their PR men: let them earn their keep and bury the problem in statistics, sophistries, and legalities.

*

If Obama loses it will be because he helped top dogs and ignored the plight of underdogs – the very same mindset that toppled fascism and communism.

Even assuming Obama is doing what must be done: his failure consists in his inability to convince the people; and when a politician failes in that department, nothing and no one can save him.

*

A headline in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper today reads: “Billionaires bankrolling U.S. Conservative movement.”

They are saved with taxpayers' money and they demand tax cuts for themselves.

They make so much money that they don't know what to do with it, and they want more! -- more for themselves and less for everyone else.

And they call Obama a communist and a fascist.

Toynbee is right: “Empires and nations are not killed: they commit suicide.”

#

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

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

REPUTATION AND SELF-ESTEEM

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

Whenever I exercise my critical faculties and my fundamental human right of free speech, I am told I besmirch our reputation in the eyes of the world.

Allow me to quote two eminent witness on the subject of reputation:

Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”

Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”

*

It was during the Watergate hearings that I discovered the greatness of democracy.

*

We have swallowed the poison of murderous alien tyrants for such a long time that we confuse their absence with freedom, and our rotten paternalism as a mandate from heaven.

*

Who benefits when we cover up our contradictions? Surely not the people.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 2, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

They say “God is great!” and they imply “He is on our side.”

To believe the unbelievable is the source of all fanaticism.

*

The dinosaurs are the Titanics of evolution.

*

Sympathy is seldom extended to those who demand it.

*

Don't write what you think but what you really think,

especially if it is the opposite of what you think.

*

On the day my critics begin to agree with me,

I will start wondering if I have succumbed to senility.

*

Have I said this before? No matter.

If something is worth saying, it is worth repeating.

*

Whenever an adult delivers a cliché, I am tempted to ask:

How old were you when you first heard that line, five or seven?

*

Vanity, it has been said, has a voracious appetite,

which is why I dismiss as a lie any statement that flatters our collective ego.

*

A nationalist historian who believes in his own version of history

has a dupe for a reader.

*

"Makers of idols don't believe in them," says an old Chinese proverb,

and if Italians are to be believed, "Even the Pope doubts his faith

seven times every day."

#

Friday, September 3, 2010

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

SPECULATIONS

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

The number of atoms in the universe is constant.

Birth and death neither add nor subtract from the total.

In birth atoms are assembled and in death they are disassembled.

This cycle is repeated endlessly.

Life moves not from being to nothingness and vice versa

but from organization to disintegration and back to organization again.

*

The dead enter a timeless realm

in which a fraction of a second is as long as a million years.

The time before we were born or even before the universe existed

(or what cosmologists call the Big Bang)

is the realm of timelessness.

*

God exists not in the cosmos that is accessible to telescopes and microscopes

but in a different realm and dimension.

Examples of different dimensions are

the realms of such abstractions as numbers, dreams, or music.

*

In dreams being and nothingness are no longer contradictions

but parallel realms in which the dead live.

An infinite number of organisms also means

an infinite number of realms some of which may become accessible to us

only after we die.

#

Saturday, September 4, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you do the right thing they will laugh at you and say, “That fool doesn't know what's good for himself.”

*

The worst pretend to be better because that's the only way they know how to live with themselves.

*

If you don't know what I mean when I speak of “Ottomanized Armenians,” I suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

*

For the man who is tormented by painful memories, Alzheimer's must be bliss.

*

We are never told everything. We always get a carefully edited version of events, sentiments, ideas, and speculations.

*

To how many of my critics I could say, “I have at no time claimed to be a genius like you.”

*

Among the many signs held by opponents of the construction of a mosque near ground zero in New York City, I notice one that says “BOYCOTT TURKISH GOODS & PRODUCE.” (TIME, August 16, 2010, page 17.)

*

There is a tendency in all bullies and victimizers to choose the defenseless as their targets because it is less labor intensive.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 5, 2010

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

POWER

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

The need to believe is universal.

So is the need to manufacture evidence

in order to stress the truth of a specific belief system

that is in competition with many others.

To put it bluntly:

all religions and ideologies lie.

Likewise, all children are taught

to expose the lies of alien belief systems

and to cover up their own.

The first reaction of an organized society

to all alien or new belief systems is to reject them

not because they are lies

but because they threaten the legitimacy

of the status quo.

Regardless of what they profess to believe in,

all men of power are committed to only one thing, their power.

Even a belief system whose central tenet is love

will practice hatred in defense of the status quo.

To say that power corrupts

is to place the cart before the horse,

the effect before the cause,

the headline before the crime,

and not just “b” before “a”

but omega before alpha.

Power is cancer – make it,

terminal cancer of the soul.

#

Monday, September 6, 2010

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

MORE SPECULATIONS...

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

They believe God will provide them with seventy-three virgins.

They say “God is great!” and they mean “God is a pimp.”

When I think of all the things that are said and done in His name,

I have no choice but to conclude

He must be just about the most abused Being in the universe

and the crucifixion is not an isolated incident

but an ongoing process with no end in sight.

Is God a masochist?

Judging by the suffering that is inflicted on the innocent,

one could also conclude that He is sadist.

Do you really want to know what I really think?

I think as long as we are human beings,

even if endowed with the best human brain,

we will never know,

we will never understand,

and it is a waste of time to speculate.

#

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

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

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

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

If I ever meet Atom Egoyan I will ask him so far how many Armenians have submitted screenplays to him. I remember to have read somewhere that Mamoulian went out of his way to avoid helping Armenians. And I once met an Armenian conductor who swore to me he would never again invite an Armenian soloist to play with his orchestra.

*

When dealing with Armenians, it helps to have one eye shut -- both would be preferable of course.

*

I write not to change things but to understand them. Call me an addict of explanations. The harder the nut to crack the sweeter the kernel. To ignore our problems would be like pretending the elephant in the room is a French poodle.

*

May I suggest dividing the nation is not the only way to solve our problems.

*

Compulsive liars are believed only by perennial dupes and retards.

Armenians are smart?

Don't make me laugh!

*

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, massacres, incurable diseases, floods, serial killers and a thousand other misfortunes are God's way of saying “I refuse to get involved!”

#

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

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

GOD AND SATAN

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

One man's God is another's Satan.

*

The God of an American fundamentalist is as alien to me as a Muslim's Allah. Both share more features with Nazis and Bolsheviks than with decent human beings. There are moderate Muslims but they are not the ones who are making history today. They might as well be absentee landlords.

*

The aim of stoning a woman convicted of adultery is less to punish the guilty and more to terrorize the innocent. And they terrorize the innocent because they are themselves terrorized by the prospect of infidelity.

*

Muslims hate one another more than they hate the West. This has been said before and it bears repeating. Muslims have victimized more Muslims in wars, civil wars, and act of terrorism than the West.

*

Not all propagandists speak with a forked tongue. Some believe in their own lies. They are like murderers who not only plead insanity but are in fact insane.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 9, 2010

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

THEM AND US

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

“Plan to burn Qur'an is offensive,” reads the headline of a commentary in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper.

Maybe so, but what about another headline that says, “They [Muslims] burn the Qur'an every day with their actions.”

And sure enough, in the fourth paragraph of this commentary, our pundit writes: “There are Muslims who pervert their religion, literally called the path of peace, into a call to armed suppression of women and acts of terrorism.”

*

God may be great indeed, but He seems powerless against those who terrorize and kill in His name.

Are Christians better than Muslims?

No comment!

*

Toynbee: “It is always easier, both intellectually and morally, to debit one's ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”

In other words, to play the blame-game and to paint ourselves all white and the opposition all black.

*

I thought I knew better when I knew nothing.

It takes knowledge and understanding to see the depths of evil that resides in our hearts. This may explain the popularity of ignorance.

#

Friday, September 10, 2010

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

CONSOLATION

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

Toynbee: “Death limits life's liabilities. This boon that death confers is supremely valuable, and ought to be immensely consoling.”

*

There is no evidence to suggest that life will make sense after death. If to die means to enter the realm of nothingness, then nothingness is the only perfection we will ever know.

*

A little learning is the source of all prejudice, conspiracy theories, and xenophobia.

Here is Toynbee's masterful explanation of this phenomenon:

“The danger lay in the opening which a rudimentary universal education gave for propaganda, and in the skill and unscrupousness with which this opportunity had been seized by salesmen for advertising their wares and by news agencies, pressure groups, political parties, and the public relations departments of firms and governments for selling their policies.”

*

The importance of education is constantly stressed to unsuspecting children. What is ignored is the fact that no matter how many degrees you acquire, the chances are you will end up working for an assh*le.”

#

Saturday, September 11, 2010

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

BOOKS

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

There are two kinds of writers: those whose ideas shape the future (not always for the better), and those whose ideas are buried and forgotten with them. To the first category belong Rousseau, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Marx; to the second category, our writers.

*

There are no new ideas. Everything we say has been said before. When told the Bible was written by the Holy Spirit, Shaw replied: “All books are written by the Holy Spirit.”

*

I for one don't believe in the holiness of holy books -- regardless of denomination – when I think of all the wars and massacres perpetrated in their name, not to mention the intolerance, the persecution of heretics, and the countless abuses... More often than not, it seems to me, a holy book is used as a license to kill.

*

Holy books might as well be synonymous with holy wars.

*

Sometimes serial killers plead not guilty by reason of insanity – they say it was God or Satan who ordered them to do what they did. Now then, if you count the victims of serial killers and the victims of religious leaders, you may conclude that the latter are far more dangerous.

*

To those who say we no longer live in the Middle Ages, I ask: Who ordered 9/11? Where does an imam get his authority?

*

I see a direct link between the overpopulation, poverty, and drug wars in Mexico and the Pope's dogmatic interdiction of birth control devices.

*

All religions have dogmas, and all dogmas legitimize intolerance, and ultimately the murder of innocent victims.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 12, 2010

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

SCORPIONS

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

Whenever I hear an Armenian bragging about survival, I consider it my duty to remind him that scorpions and spiders have survived too, you don't hear them bragging about it.

Our brainwashed phony patriots consider me unpatriotic because I dare to point out failings visible to everyone but themselves.

I don't like braggarts. No one does! And yet, we are taught to brag.

*

To be a slave of former slaves means to be paralyzed with fear not only of the master's shadow (who may well be dead and buried to begin with) but also of any idea that may be remotely connected with reality.

*

For almost a century now we have been clamoring for justice, and what have we accomplished?

We pretend to be for dialogue but only from a fixed position, which is an oxymoronic position visible to all except morons.

*

One of my gentle readers once described me as a “self-appointed critic,” as if critics qualify as such only when appointed by God or a representative of His on earth, say, like the Pope, the Sultan, or some other source of authority.

Because I dare to speak for no one but myself, they think I can safely be dismissed as an undesirable and unqualified interloper whose testimony should be ignored.

*

The problem with braggarts is that they are too satisfied with their own lies to be useful to anyone but themselves. Their unspoken motto seems to be, “Don't fix that which ain't broken,” or “One should not mess with perfection.”

*

Once, when I was accused of comparing Armenians to scorpions, I said I had no desire to insult scorpions who can always plead not guilty by reason of the fact that evolution had failed to endow them with a brain -- a plea which is not available to us.

#

Monday, September 13, 2010

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

DOGMAS

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

Taliban slogan: “Throw reason to the dogs.”

*

Taliban come in all sizes and shapes and there is a Taliban in all of us.

*

The higher you climb on the tree of knowledge,

the greater the area if ignorance that comes into view.

*

When they run out of arguments, they insult you. In a different time and place they would have you arrested on charges of treason. Let us therefore count our blessings.

*

Speaking as a layman, I find some scientific theories as incomprehensible as religious dogmas. The Big Bang is to me as unbelievable as the pandemonium and paraphernalia of fornicating Greek gods in whose name Socrates was arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed.

*

The Koran-burning controversy and the protests in Muslim countries have proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: the true aim of Islamists everywhere is to intimidate and control the West the way they intimidate and control their women. And since in order to survive their women adopt a passive stance, they expect the West to do likewise. And they are outraged to the point of hysteria when it doesn't.

*

As for moderate Muslims: consider the case of the imam in New York who keeps saying, if he is not allowed to build a mosque near Ground Zero, Americans will make themselves vulnerable to a billion Muslims around the world bent on revenge.

#

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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

IS GOD AN ARMENIAN?

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

They adopted the role of masters, which they assumed to be their manifest destiny, to the same degree that we adopted the role of slaves (and more recently, that of slaves of former slaves).

*

In reference to the Watergate scandals, Nixon once stated: “When the President does it, it's not illegal.”

The Turks now expect us to believe we are in no position to question or doubt the legality of their actions performed at a time when they were masters and we their slaves.

*

Some people are so addicted to brag that they will brag even about the fact that they massacred innocent and unarmed civilians (“We taught the Armenians a lesson they will never forget!”) and we brag about the fact that we are the first nation in the 20th century to be targeted for extermination.

*

The final act of this tragedy of illusions and lies has not yet played itself out. We are now told by our leaders they will see to it that justice is done, notwithstanding the fact that so far, and after a hundred years of trying, we have not seen a single red cent in reparations, or a single square inch of soil annexed, or a single victim resurrected.

*

Instead of doing what must be done or what is within their power to do (such as enhancing our solidarity, shedding their tribalism, or respecting our human rights) they promise to do what only God Almighty can do but so far has consistently refused to do.

*

Does God recognize the Genocide?

I for one cannot claim to read His mind.

I can only say that He allowed it to happen and it was done in His name.

*

To those who say I repeat myself, I say, I see nothing wrong in repeating my truths as often as they repeat their lies.

#

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

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

FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE

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

Religions are popular not because they are true

but because they make sense

the way Leonardo's Mona Lisa makes sense to lovers of art,

Beethoven's 6th Symphony makes sense to lovers of music,

and algebra and trigonometry make sense to mathematicians.

The Greek myths made sense to the Greeks

to the same degree that Islam makes sense to Muslims,

Christianity to Christians, and atheism to atheists –

with one difference:

whereas there is only one trigonometry,

there are many religions that contradict one another.

*

It's astonishing how little men know

about the world around them and themselves.

A man's area of ignorance is infinitely greater

than his area of knowledge.

Men like Beethoven and Einstein may have know

everything there is to know about music and physics respectively

but little or nothing about many other subjects,

including, say, Armenian history and culture.

Even though I have myself written several books on the subject,

my own knowledge of our history and culture

may be said to be less than 0.01% of the total.

Which may explain why dupes outnumber the wise,

and even the wise are no better dupes.

Hence the number of great 20th-century

philosophers, writers, and Nobel-Prize winners

who were Catholics, atheists, Stalinists,

and members of the Nazi Party.

#

 

 

 

__._,_.___

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 16, 2010

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

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

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

When a religion, or any movement for that matter, acquires a leader, it becomes authoritarian, which means, the authority of the leader becomes an issue of paramount importance, and those who dare to challenge it face death – either spiritual (by excommunication or expulsion) or literal (by fatwa).

*

One of the curses of authoritarian belief systems is their ruthless exploitation of fear. A God of love, compassion, and mercy does not rule by intimidation and blackmail. This may suggest that organized religions are inventions not of God but of the Devil.

*

When imams and popes preach love, they speak with a forked tongue. That's why only the naïve and the ignorant take them seriously. As in all organizations whose central concern is power, only unprincipled mediocrities, and ultimately bloodsuckers, killers, and child molesters are promoted.

*

We need rules and we need enforcers of rules, true, but history tells us some of the worst offenders and abusers of law and order have been the police.

*

Those who speak of another world are charlatans because we know nothing about it and what we pretend to know is nothing but a figment of our imagination.

As for the world in which we live: we know very little about it, and the only thing we know with some degree of certainty is that it is occupied by “weeds, rubble and vermin” (Nietzsche).

*

If a member of a party or organization were to tell me 1+1=2, I would immediately reach for my calculator to make sure I was not being bamboozled, hoodwinked, and flimflammed.

*

Herbert Butterfield: “The blindest of all the blind are those who are unable to examine their own presuppositions, and blithely imagine therefore that they do not posses them.”

#

Friday, September 17, 2010

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

SUCCESS

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

At the age of thirty-one he was charged with sedition, arrested, tried, found guilty, condemned to death, and executed.

Was he a success or a failure?

More recently, as a teenager he joined a quartet of singers who composed their own songs, eventually achieved fame and fortune, and became, in his own words, “more popular that Jesus Christ.”

Was he a success or a failure?

*

To define success as achieving fame and fortune is the surest recipe for promoting failures. If failures outnumber successes a thousand to one today it's because children are brainwashed to believe their options are limited, and their options are defined by the inflexible laws of demand and supply. As a result, a less than mediocre lawyer, accountant, or dentist is equipped to make more money (the surest index of success, we are told) than say, a prophet who may alter our perception of reality for centuries to come.

*

Gulbenkian probably spent more money in a single day than J.S. Bach made throughout his life. If asked whether he would like to be Gulbenkian or Bach, my guess is, the average American (who may pronounce Bach Batch) will choose to be Gulbenkian.

*

Ask a mother, any mother, whether she would like to see her only son crucified at the age of thirty-one, my guess is, she will say she would much rather see him live to a ripe old age as a mediocre carpenter.

*

Early this morning, in Nabokov's INVITATION TO A BEHEADING, I read the following passage in which an executioner delivers the following line to a condemned man: “...you must not be childish. The public, and all of us, as representatives of the public, are interested only in your welfare – that must be obvious by now.”

It's always the same story: the very same people who urge you to follow a path that is not your own, pretend to have your best interest at heart.

*

To those who say not everybody can be a genius, allow me to recount the following anecdote. About fifty years ago, a little girl by the name of Minou Drouet published a book of poems that was immediately hailed as the work of a prodigy. Jean Cocteau's comment on this prodigy: “Every child is a genius except Minou Drouet.”

*

Every child is a genius because the Kingdom of God is within us.

#

Saturday, September 18, 2010

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

TWO ENEMIES

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

To trust someone means to make yourself vulnerable to betrayal.

*

I have had some sinister experiences in the hands of authority figures who pretended to know better.

I have earned the right to trust no one.

*

If I am proud of anything it's the fact that what I write has no cash value – or so I am told by individuals who deal in cash.

*

Dealing with people who deal in cash:

I can't imagine anything more carcinogenic.

*

My guess is, in the next world – if there is one – money will be abolished. Which means the annual income of a prince and a pauper, or a benefactor and a poet will be the same.

*

I have written two kinds of books: propaganda and anti-propaganda, and of the two, the propaganda books have sold many more copies.

*

I did not set out to write propaganda books. I wrote such books at a time when I was led to believe it was my duty to lie in the name of patriotism; and when I lied I did not think of it as lying but as speaking a self-evident truth.

*

We are told, in science to be right means to be slightly wrong, because in science, as in many other disciplines, there are no final answers, and if there are, they are known only to God who so far has consistently refused to share them with us.

According to Karl Popper, scientific as well as political solutions “can never be more than provisional and are always open to improvement.”

There is no such thing as history, only historic interpretation.

And according to Sartre, “history must be constantly rewritten.”

*

What does it mean to be an Armenian?

First and foremost it means demanding justice for past injustices.

Let's demand justice by all means, but in the process let us not commit a greater injustice.

There is more to life than past crimes against humanity.

Let us not allow our obsession with Turks to turn us into pillars of salt.

We have enemies, no doubt about that. But we also have an enemy within, and of the two, the second can inflict more damage.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 19, 2010

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

JUDGE AND JURY

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

Don't believe anything I say until and unless you see it with your own eyes and experience it on your own skin.

*

It seems what I say matters only to those of my readers who disagree with me and would like to see me silenced. To the rest, I repeat that which is obvious.

*

No one in the history of mankind has ever been all things to all men. Naregatsi had his critics, Gandhi his assassin, and Christ his Judas.

*

I hold a mirror up to them and when they don't like what they see, they blame it on me instead of themselves.

*

Our religion teaches us to love our enemies, including fellow Armenians who may not agree with us. I wonder if any one of our speechifiers and sermonizers has ever expanded on this theme.

*

One of my gentle readers accused me the other day of trying to advance a “personal agenda.” I suggest speaking in defense of free speech is not a personal but a human agenda. But I don't expect my dehumanized readers to see this.

*

Why is it that a dehumanized Armenian allows the Turk within to assume the role of both judge and jury?

*

Remember, even what you think is not what you really think but only the echo of a shadow. A thousand invisible forces stand between you and reality which is as elusive as an incomprehensible metaphysical abstraction.

*

Because we don't know everything, we operate on partial evidence. Only fascists silence dissenting voices to cover up that part of the evidence that is against them. As a result their verdict is bound to be overturned by a higher court.

#

Monday, September 20, 2010

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

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

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

Because a few non-representative Armenians challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century, countless Armenians were slaughtered, starved, and deported.

If I have a problem, you have a problem.

None of us is an island.

No one can say “Your problem is not my problem. Go and peddle your wares elsewhere.”

*

It has been said of China that it is a country of “a million truths.”

It could be said of us that we are a people of a thousand and one half-truths, and sometimes a half-truth can be as dangerous as a big lie.

*

It is a mistake to ascribe the slaughter of two generations of our ablest writers to Turks and Russians because on both occasions Armenian traitors played a key role. Raffi is right: in all our defeats and catastrophes search for the Armenian traitor. The only thing that has remained constant in our culture is our propensity for treason.

Because I say this, am I a hostile witness whose testimony should be dismissed because it is based on inadmissible evidence?

We can learn from history only if we know it.

*

The chances are those who pretend to know better know nothing because they allow their little knowledge to blind them; and when the blind lead the blind...

*

Toynbee on Russians:

“As heir of an Orthodox Christian cultural heritage, they could not find the practice of totalitarianism either unfamiliar or shocking.”

I see parallels where others pretend to see nothing.

When the blind...

*

Armenian fascism is the elephant in the room.

#

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

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

HOW DO I KNOW I AM RIGHT?

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

I don't!

Mine is not an open and shut case.

My evidence is circumstantial and based on hearsay.

What I know with some degree of certainty is that

(one) where there is a power structure,

there will be propaganda,

and where there is propaganda,

there will be dupes;

(two) where there is an authority figure

there will be subservient subjects

who cannot think for themselves ;

(three) between dupes and dissidents

I will always be on the side of dissidents;

(four) where there are victims and victimizers,

I will refuse to join the ranks of the victimizers.

*

And now from the general to the specific:

when it comes to our political bosses

I choose to be on the side of Hagop Baronian

(in whose eyes they are no better than

loud-mouth irresponsible charlatans);

Yervant Odian (who portrayed them

as sh*t-disturbers forever in need of financial support);

and Gostan Zarian (who described them

as useless mediocrities whose greatest enemy is free speech).

*

When it comes to our historians,

I agree with Naregatsi who consistently and stubbornly refused

to play the blame-game and focused instead

on his own failings and shortcomings.

When it comes to nationalism

I am on the side of many 20th-century eminent thinkers,

among them Arnold Toynbee and Roland Barthes

(who described it as one of the three pillars of fascism

(the other two being anti-intellectualism and anti-semitism).

*

Judges pronounce a man guilty

based on the evidence. And yet, again and again

innocent men have been found guilty and condemned to death.

This is especially true in case of political prisoners

under totalitarian regimes.

*

I have read books written by Turkish scholars

that assert Armenians are liars, traitors, and terrorists

who killed many innocent civilians,

and more recently, equally innocent diplomats

who were not even born before World War I

and cannot thus be held responsible

of any crimes against humanity.

I have also read books by Armenian scholars

who portray Turks as bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians

guilty of countless atrocities

against unarmed and innocent women and children.

*

What is an outsider to think?

My guess is, he will trust neither side and

he will dismiss both Turks and Armenians

biased and unreliable witnesses.

After which he will conclude

he has better things to do than waste his time

getting involved in a controversy

that has lasted almost a century

with no prospect of consensus in sight.

His final verdict may well be

“A plague on both your houses!”

and once more the Turks will win.

#

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The best way not to solve a problem is to say more research is needed.

*

To be part of a power structure means to be prepared to do anything to advance your position in it, knowing that if you don't do it someone else will.

*

What is the significance of the cosmos with its countless stars, planets and vast distances if not to remind us of our insignificance?

*

We like to say power corrupts. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that only the corrupt seek it.

*

Whenever during a walk I see an ant on the sidewalk, I am careful not to step on it. But sometimes I get tired of being careful. In the eyes of the powerful we are no better than ants. And in the eyeds of God...

*

Only propaganda has all the answers.

*

A cheerful thought: Any day now, and in cosmic time, in less than a fraction of a second, we will all be dead and all our problems will be buried with us.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 23, 2010

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

ON CHARITY

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

Had I been a contemporary of Baronian and Odian, I wouldn't have written a single line. Either that or I would have written love stories. Which is what I did at first. For nearly a decade I wrote nothing but love stories.

*

When I think of my past blunders I feel like digging a hole and burying myself in it.

I am always a little surprised when I see an adult laughing.

I suspect Alzheimer's can't be all bad.

*

I write as I do because no one dares to say what must be said.

Those who say we need solutions imply that when it comes to our problems our writers have been of no use. Zarian is right: they say that to cover up their own uselessness and fear of free speech.

Not only do they say we need solutions, they also teach children to view critics as unpatriotic witnesses.

When they don't like what you say -- because what you say may threaten to expose their own uselessness – they say: “We don't need critics. We need solutions.” That's their way of saying “Shut up!”

*

This morning on the radio: “How can you tell if, instead of supporting charities, your charity money supports fund-raisers?”

Canadians dare to ask such questions because they believe in free speech. Once upon a time we did too.

A hundred years ago Odian made savage fun of our fund-raisers.

Who dares to question the ethics of our charitable organizations today?

Next time you make a contribution to a charity, don't be afraid to ask questions. Remember, it is your right to know. Asking questions may well be the most important contribution you can make.

*

Ask questions but don't believe everything you are told.

Honesty has never been a priority in our culture.

What culture?

If you want culture, get a tub of yogurt. You will find more culture there than in all our cultural foundations combined.

#

Friday, September 24, 2010

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

DEAD END

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

Because I was critical of Armenians, I acquired several Turkish friends.

And because I became critical of Turks, I lost them.

Easy come, easy go.

*

That's another thing Armenians share with Turks: intolerance of criticism.

As long as they remain intolerant, reason will find no opening in their negotiations, and without reason there can be no dialogue, no compromise, and no consensus.

*

After saying they are for democracy and human rights, both Turks and Armenians suppress dissent.

Both delude themselves when they assert moral superiority.

Who believes them?

Only themselves.

*

Asserting the reality of the Genocide and denying it has become an industry among them. Both sides refuse to see the obvious, namely that, they were so blinded by hatred of the other that they slaughtered indiscriminately whenever they had the upper hand. But because Turks were a majority, Armenian victims outnumbered Turkish victims.

*

How to live in peace with their history?

They can't.

Hence their tendency to rewrite it.

*

Free speech is a meaningless commodity to those who don't know what freedom is and whose conception of speech consists in saying “Yes, sir!”

*

Armenians and Turks may reach a consensus only on the day they see reflection of themselves in the other. Until then their history will stand still.

*

For an Armenian, the idea that he may be as bad as a Turk is so repellent that it might as well be treason and blasphemy.

The same applies to Turks.

You may now draw your own conclusions.

#

Saturday, September 25, 2010

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

QUOTATIONS

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

Fidel Castro: “Obama is not Nixon who was a cynic. Neither is he Reagan who was an imbecile.”

*

A Vatican insider: “Half of the Vatican is homosexual. So is the Pope, I think.”

*

Ingrid Betancourt: “There are things you do because you have to. You don't always calculate the consequences. And sometimes you do very stupid things because of that.”

*

John Adams: “Neither philosophy, nor religion, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor interest will ever govern nations or parties against their vanity, their pride, their resentment or revenge, or their avarice or ambition.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 26, 2010

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

CONFESSION

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

We don't always say what we think, seldom what we really think, and never what we suspect to be the truth.

As a boy, I remember, what fascinated me about Dostoevsky was the daring of his characters to go to the limit, to hold nothing back, to say what they think.

*

The Pope never says he doubts his faith “seven time every day,” as the popular Italian saying has it; and Mother Teresa confessed her loss of faith only to her confessor and no one else.

Some readers resent me for saying what everyone almost knows and understand but is reluctant to say it because it may not be socially acceptable or patriotic.

*

Larry Terzian (God bless his soul) who edited several of my books once said to me: “You have written enough about Armenians. Now write about something else.”

I write about Armenians not as an Armenian but as a human being, and I write to expose that which is universal in them.

*

My Armenian readers hate me when I write about Turks not as Turks but as human beings. A smart Armenian knows instinctively that honesty and truth are not appreciated by the average Armenian reader. He also knows that objectivity has no cash value. He treats Armenians as angels and Turks as devils. He may know better but he also knows there are limits to what a man in his position can say publicly.

*

Saroyan's image was that of a good fellow who loved everyone, especially Armenians. Privately however he hated even his own children, who may or may not have been lovable. But then who is? A good friend of his, who has published a book about him, once said to me: “Saroyan cared only for Saroyan.” Later when I got to know this man, he turned out to be no better.

What about me?

The only positive thing I can say about myself is that I am not an insider or an organization man. I think of nationalism and patriotism not as assets but as liabitilies. And I don't feel the need to conform and to say only that which is generally held to be true or popular.

Can I prove that?

I am not sure. My only evidence is the Socratic dictum, “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”

#

Monday, September 27, 2010

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

IN PRAISE OF DOUBT

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

Sometimes between the obvious and the false, it is the obvious that will be misunderstood and rejected. That's because we all operate under the influence of an ideology or religion whose aim is to obstruct and distort our perception of reality.

*

We are brought up to believe the end is a new beginning because the alternative – that is to say, the obvious – is unbearable.

*

Faith is hope and hope is good provided it is not motivated by wishful thinking and divorced from common sense and logic.

Faith is a mighty force; it is also the most frequently abused.

Science cannot explain the visible, but faith claims to have explained the invisible.

*

Faith is wrong when it convinces us we can know and understand that which we have no way of knowing and understanding.

Faith is dangerous when it creates a bureaucracy with its own laws and dogmas.

Faith becomes a scandal when it falls under the control of popes, imams, televangelists, and witch doctors who make a comfortable living by legitimizing superstition, prejudice, and intolerance.

Faith is criminal when it uses education as an instrument of intimidation, oppression, exploitations, persecution, and violence.

*

Faith tries to convince us that the invisible and incomprehensible power that created the cosmos owes us not only a life but also a better one.

And if the majority of mankind has adopted a belief system it may be because in a crowded room it is not the most reasonable that is heard but the loudest.

#

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

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

A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE

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

Both Turks and Armenians share one thing in common: both see themselves as victims -- Turks as victims of the Great Powers, Russia, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians within Turkey itself; and Armenians see themselves as victims of Turks.

In Turkish eyes what happened to the Armenians was not a crime against humanity but a desperate self-defensive move against a mosaic of enemies bent on the total ruin and destruction of their Empire. They did what any David would have done when confronting Goliath; and because they couldn't cut off Goliath's head or, for that matter, his right arm, they cut off his nose.

In any case that's their story or, in modern parlance, their narrative, and they are sticking to it.

Their perspective is global, ours is tribal. Hence the semantic vacillations of the United States.

And speaking of Yanks: How do you think they will react on the day the Islamic world, with the tacit support of former enemies and present rivals, Russia and China, rises against them and threatens to wipe America off the map? Do you think they will send a diplomatic delegation to negotiate peace terms with them? Hell no! They will do what they did to the Japs at the end of World War II.

They will “teach them (Jihadists) a lesson they will never forget!”

They will do so even if it means killing innocent civilians by the million; even if it means to be accused forever after of unspeakable crimes against humanity.

#

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

They want me silenced because I threaten to demolish their comfortable view of reality by exposing their status as dupes.

*

Whether I go on writing or fall silent makes no difference in the long run because everything I say has either been said before by better men than myself or it will be said in the future by someone with a minimum of common sense.

*

Sometimes people pretend not to know to catch you in the act of exploiting their ignorance.

*

The secret ambition of all liberators is to be oppressors.

*

After every line I write, I ask myself: Am I boring the reader? Am I fooling myself into thinking I am saying something he doesn't already know?

*

A tolerant religion? A contradiction in terms. Consider the fate of Untouchables under Hinduism (identified as the most tolerant religion). There are Untouchables in all organized religions.

*

Where there are dogmas there will be heretics.

*

It is easier to identify ourselves as victims than as victimizers. We experience our pain, we can only imagine someone else's.

*

Armenians cannot engage in dialogue with Turks because Armenians cannot engage in dialogue with fellow Armenians. The same applies to Turks. Consider the way they treat their dissidents.

*

Whenever I try to reason with a partisan I end up being insulted. In an intolerant environment reason is treated like a hostile witness.

*

Those who think truth or God is on their side can do no wrong for the same reason that in matters of faith the Pope is infallible.

*

Religions have their saints and ideologies their heroes. Also their heretics and traitors. In the eyes of brainwashed dupes, dissidents are either heretics or traitors.

*

A good Armenian is taught to believe his most important duty as an Armenian is to learn saying “Yes sir!” in the same way that once upon a time all Germans were taught to say “Heil Hitler!” and all Italians were taught to say “Mussolini ha sempre ragione!” (Mussolini is always right).

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 30, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Social aberrations like racism, fascism, and more recently, political correctness, are as a rule so gradual that the average dupe and conformist (but I repeat myself) submits to them the way he submits to winter cold and summer heat.

*

Why is it that religions are against conflict between classes and for warfare between states?

*

Whenever they tell you “We had no choice,” they lie. Subservient subjects may not have a choice but decision-makers do.

*

There is a core of truth in all religions, but instead of emphasizing the core, religious leaders emphasize such aberrations as intimidation, mumbo jumbo, and the collection plate. In Brecht's words: “Grub first, then ethics.”

*

Where truths are covered up, lies rush in; and where lies become the common currency, wars and massacres are sure to follow.

*

Sooner or later all our organizations turn into fund-raising agencies.

*

If both sides are to blame, why feel the need to support one side against the other? If in judgment impartiality matters, why assume the role of a pro-bono lawyer?

*

God and the Devil are man-made classifications. So are heaven hell. As they say of hallucinations: “It's all in your head.”

*

There are people out there whose sole aim in life is to exploit, deceive, and mislead their fellow men, and most of them are not crooks but pillars of society.

*

Nationalism is good in so far as it stands in opposition to the many abuses of imperialism. Nationalism is bad in so far as it legitimizes fascism, whose abuses and crimes outnumber those of imperial powers. Compare the Hamidian massacres (committed in the name of Ottoman imperialism) with the Genocide (whose perpetrators where Turkish nationalists).

*

Don't be taken in by our own nationalists. If they appear harmless today it's because they are without power.

#

Friday, October 1, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Toynbee's definition of God: “Absolute Reality approached anthropomorphically.”

My translation: The Unknowable and Inomprhensible as a bearded grandfatherly type.

*

As a boy I could not imagine anyone taking a dislike at me. As an old man I live in solitude because I have no desire to foist my unclean presence on others.

*

Violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, oppression, and lies are universal aberrations and none of us can plead not guilty – none except brainwashed nationalists who have 20/20 vision when they judge others and are blind when they assess themselves.

*

He who worships his ego can worship nothing else.

*

One reason Marie Antoinette was beheaded is that she thought bread could be easily replaced with brioche. A similar fate awaits those who think propaganda can replace free speech.

*

You want to do the right thing? Follow the example of Socrates and Jesus as opposed to that of their executioners.

*

In CASSELL'S FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES (London, 2000) I read the following: “Cantaloupe: a small, round, ribbed musk melon, from Cantaluppi, a papal estate near Rome, where it was first introduced from Armenia.”

#

Saturday, October 2, 2010

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

STICKS AND STONES

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

“What have you got against the Armenian people?”

“Wrong question. Ask instead what have the Armenian people got against writers?”

“The Armenian people worship their writers. If you go to Armenia, you will see monuments, museums, and libraries dedicated to them.”

“That's only after they were dead and buried.”

*

Yesterday on the radio when asked “How would you like to be remembered after you die?” David Suzuki replied: “I don't give a sh*t what they say about me after I am dead and buried.”

*

“What you write annoys the hell out of me.”

“Use your delete button. To be read by the likes of you is as pleasant an experience as falling in the crapper.”

*

Nobody is ever duped for his own good.

*

Where there is power there will also be mumbo jumbo.

*

If you want to have an idea of infinity, think of human ignorance.

*

If my critics were pennies, I would be a wealthy man.

*

A definition of government: “A disease masquerading as its own cure.”

*

“Be more constructive!”

“You want constructive? What you need is standup comedians.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 3, 2010

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

ON DISSENT

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

One reason why dissident Armenians are thought to be a tiny and non-representative minority is that they are not organized and they don't have a propaganda machinery with which to broadcast their opposition. Every alienated and assimilated Armenian is a dissident. It is the partisans and superpatriots that are a minority, and it is their intolerance that is at the root of dissent, alienation, and asssimilation (or “sbidak chart” = white massacre).

*

It is an illusion and a dangerous one to think that we know all we need to know to do what must be done and we have no use for dialogue with those who disagree with us. I would go as far as saying that we owe the Genocide to this kind of arrogant mindset.

*

You can silence dissent but you can't bury the truth. Not even a tyrant with the power of a thousand Stalins can do that.

*

Popularity, fame and fortune are false gods that you worship at your own peril.

*

Being cannot imagine nothingness and vice versa: nothingness (or death) cannot imagine being (or life after death).

*

In his REBEL LAND: UNRAVELING THE RIDDLE OF HISTORY (London, 2010), Christopher de Bellaigue (an English writer and a former Turcophile and Kemalist who has spent a number of years in Istanbul but who has finally seen the light) writes: “To the west, on the other side of the Turkish border, there rises the glowing, incandescent, inaccessible past: Mount Ararat, Armenia's eternal symbol, in enemy's hands.”

Only a born-again human being could produce such a sentence.

#

Monday, October 4, 2010

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

ON THE UNIVERSAL NEED TO BELIEVE

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

Some people believe in politicians because some people will believe anything.

And some people will believe anything because there is a dupe in all of us.

Consider the number of gods mankind has invented and believed.

Did our Savior really save us?

Before you answer that question, think of the countless innocent victims of wars and massacres.

About the Fall of Man:

What kind of loving God would penalize not only the perpetrator but also all his children, grandchildren, and descendants “from here to eternity”?

And what was the perp's crime, may I ask?

Tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (as opposed to sticking to what? -- trees of ignorance?)

Mankind fell because of that victimless crime?

What could be more cruel and unusual punishment?

Why couldn't He see that planting that damn tree in the middle of the Garden was a blunder on His part?

Why couldn't He see that placing a serpent in the Garden was entrapment?

No wonder the majority of mankind are infidels.

What am I driving at?

Only this: Once you establish yourself as an authority figure, you can get away with all kinds of nonsense because you can always rely on the fact that most people are dupes, or in American parlance, there is a sucker born every minute.

One reason why political and religious leaders see eye to eye is that they are both in the same line of business, namely, that of swindling, bamboozling, flimflamming, and hoodwinking the ignorant masses who will believe anything!

#

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

In Ovid's METAMORPHOSES (AD 8) we read:

“...creatures whose nature is wild and fierce, Armenian tigers and raging lions, bears and wolves delight in butchered food.”

*

All men are brothers – except my critics.

My critics are more than my brothers.

They are what I was.

There is no falsehood that I have not subscribed to or even recycled as an adult.

*

If at times I am merciless it’s because life has been even more merciless to us collectively. Compared to how tough life can be, I don’t even qualify as a marshmallow.

*

Perhaps we are too obsessed with the past to focus on our present problems.

In some perverse way the Turks continue to be in charge of our destiny.

We have not yet emancipated from our Ottoman phase.

*

An Armenian hates Turk because they massacred his ancestors. An Armenian will also hate his fellow Armenians because they are not as wise or as infallible as he is. And because I write as I do I have been told on several occasions that I hate not only my fellow Armenians but also myself.

*

At one time or another we have all practiced false modesty; also false vulnerability – pretending to be outraged or offended when in fact we didn't give a damn one way or another.

*

The wrong answer will be readily accepted if it flatters one's ego.

*

Samuel Butler (NOTEBOOKS): “What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be: ‘I bet my Redeemer liveth.’”

#

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you want something very badly you will be disappointed regardless of the outcome.

*

More about the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge: Who among us has not been tempted to disobey an order, especially one that doesn't make any sense? And please don't tell me the Good Lord who knows everything didn't know this.

*

The superpatriot who will do anything for his country except give up his little luxuries in the Diaspora; and the superpatriot who will gladly live in the Homeland provided he can afford a villa in the countryside and a condo in Yerevan.

*

To all those who at one time or another have attacked or insulted me, I say:

“Thank you for being a source of inspiration to me. Next time you see a reference to your person in one of my comments, please rest assured that you are not an incipient paranoiac.”

*

An Armenian fool will never agree with his Turkish counterpart. On the day fools cease to represent us, we may have a better chance to come to terms with one another.

#

Thursday, October 7, 2010

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

A REMARKABLE FILM

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

Las night I watched Robert Guediguian's JOURNEY TO ARMENIA, a film that raises some important questions -- among them:

Why is it that the best features of the Soviet system have been abolished and the worst have been retained?

Why is it that Stalin (and his mustache) continue to be the role model of men whose job it is to enforce the law (in a lawless land)?

Why is it that these outrages become apparent only to outsiders but are accepted as inevitable facts of life to the natives?

Why is it that most Diasporan Armenians instinctively conspire with the regime to cover up that which should be exposed?

*

My tentative answer to that last question is:

That's what they have been brainwashed to do by their bosses, bishops, and benefactors.

We deserve better.

The poor and the powerless in the Homeland deserve better.

I say to all Armenians who speak or write about the Homeland:

Please, let's cut out the buffoonery.

Let's behave like responsible citizens.

Honesty and objectivity are not unpatriotic.

On the contrary!

Very much on the contrary.

*

This is a remarkable film achieved by disarmingly unremarkable means. While watching it I was reminded of an observation made by an English traveller at the turn of the last century: “What magnificent landscape, what miserable people!” -- or words to that effect.

#

Friday, October 8, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When you read the Greeks you realize they have settled most arguments, and yet people go on arguing.

*

Eminent thinkers and great statesmen have called the United States “a mistake,” and England “a nation of shopkeepers.” I have every reason to suspect these gentlemen would have serious problems trying to accept our own assessment of ourselves as first nation this and first nation that.

*

My Credo would begin with the words: “I believe in the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible, the source of all good and evil. I believe nothing that popes, imams, rabbis, and the mobs that follow them, say. I would believe them only if they were to admit openly that what they say they believe is motivated less by love of truth and more by wishful thinking.”

*

Toynbee on patience: “A capacity to suffer fools gladly and to do this with gusto, not as a martyrdom, but as a fine art which the practitioner can practice with zest.”

*

More about popes, imams, and rabbis: I agree with all of them when they say the others are charlatans. With one difference: I wouldn't call them infidel dogs or heretics in league with the Devil. I would, however, call them dupes.

#

Saturday, October 9, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

God must love moral morons – He has made so many of them.

*

There is a tendency in all of us to say yes to the status quo even when its architects and supporters are cretins.

*

Education, ideas, culture, environment, climate, cuisine, friends and many other factors combine to shape our character and worldview – also and especially the amount of sh*t we were exposed to in our formative years.

*

The rich like to believe their wealth is a blessing from the Good Lord. The poor know they are bloodsucking crooks who overprice their product and underpay their workers.

*

When a chauvinist who recycles crap says: “Criticism must be constructive!” what he really means is: “If recycling crap is good enough for me, how dare you think otherwise?”

*

I don’t read to have my ego massaged or prejudices reinforced, but for the exactly opposite reason.

*

Dostoevsky began his literary career as a liberal and became a conservative. By contrast, Thomas Mann began as a conservative right-wing nationalist and ended as a left-wing liberal. I enjoy reading both. I enjoy them even when they express views with which I am in complete disagreement.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, October 10, 2010

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

PROPAGANDA & DISSENT

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

For eight years I worked in an insurance company that employed thousands.

What did they produce?

Nothing. Only paperwork.

What did they sell?

The certainty that if you die tomorrow or next year, your family will be awarded a goodly sum – depending on the amount of insurance you bought and provided you paid your monthly, quarterly, or annual premiums.

There is money in certainty no matter how unfounded and false.

There is none in doubt no matter how justified.

*

People hate uncertainty perhaps because there is so much of it in life.

They need to be told there is life after death -- even eternal bliss provided you do what you are told.

Propaganda (be it religious or political) pays because it deals in certainties and it is constructive in so far as it speaks of dreams -- even as it delivers nightmares. Propaganda promises the millennium -- that is, peace and prosperity for a thousand years, even as it delivers war, the concentration camp, and the Gulag.

By contrast, all dissent can do is expose lies.

What could be more negative and destructive?

*

The best dissent can do is question and doubt, thus replacing optimism and hope with pessimism, despair, and anxiety.

Once in a while I get letters asking me, sometimes even begging me, to be more positive and constructive – never more objective and truthful.

I regret to say I am in no position to promise eternal bliss or, for that matter, seventy-three virgins. And yet, that's what the average dupe wants me to do – to deliver empty promises, illusions, and lies.

That may explain why propagandists are amply compensated with power and money and dissenters are ostracized, persecuted, silenced, sometimes even tortured, starved, and killed.

#

Monday, October 11, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Nowadays almost everyone has either written a book or is busy writing one. When asked to identify my racket, I say I am a retired church organist. A writer has as much prestige today as a mental masturbator.

*

You can behead kings and assassinate heads of state but there isn't much you can do to a faceless and anonymous bureaucrat who may exercise more power on you than any king of head of state.

*

The greatest blunder committed by Turks at the turn of the last century was to think that a tiny and non-representative group of misguided young fools with their heads in the clouds could be a threat to the survival of the Empire.

*

The problem with speechifiers and sermonizes is that they don't even recycle their own crap. What they do is recycle someone else's who did the same. What they say has therefore as much value as the evidence of a comatose parrot.

*

You cannot change that which you hate: that may explain my failure. Perhaps what we need is not critics but messiahs. Anyone interested in being crucified?

*

A partisan thinks it is his patriotic duty to defend everything his party does and to agree with everything the boss says. But I happen to be of the opinion that the Pope is not infallible, Mussolini was not always right, and Suleiman the Magnificent was not magnificent. I further believe the Good Lord has given us a brain with which to think and judge for ourselves, and there is nothing praiseworthy in subservience even when it is promoted in the name of discipline, loyalty, patriotism, and truth.

#

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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

NARRATIVES

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

For every narrative there is a counter-narrative.

*

Our perception of reality is limited.

The human eye, like the eye of a camera, can take in countless details, but the human mind can select and focus only on a limited number of them.

In the Soviet era, for example, the Kremlin provided its own narrative and dissidents like Solzhenitsyn provided a counter-narrative. And for a good number of years, or until Khrushchev's withering speech against the cult of personality, the dissidents' counter-narrative was dismissed by most Sovietologists as reactionary propaganda subsidized and disseminated by the capitalist West.

*

Another case of narrative and counter-narrative is the Turkish version of the Genocide. According to the Turkish official narrative, our genocide is fiction. But according to such dissidents as Pamuk and Akcam, the official narrative is state propaganda.

*

The central concern of our official narrative today is the Genocide. If we had a counter-narrative, its central concern would be democracy and human rights.

We may not have a counter-narrative today, but we had one at the turn of the last century and two of its most important exponents were Baronian and Odian, both of whom are now identified as humorists. Their main concern, however, was neither to entertain nor to amuse their readers, but to expose our moral bankruptcy.

*

Why is it that we had a counter-narrative in the Ottoman Empire but not today in the land of the brave and the free?

The answer is: Under the Sultan, our bosses, bishops, and benefactors did not have the power to control the press.

*

Moral I:

Where there is only one narrative, it can be asserted with some degree of certainty that the counter-narrative has been suppressed.

*

Moral II:

Where crooks and liars are in charge, the press will be controlled; and where the press is controlled, the fundamental human right of free speech will be violated.

#

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

There are those who say if you believe in a Big Lie, that lie ceases to be a lie. I am not one of them. I don't believe in faith as magic because i don't believe in magic.

*

What happened to us was not inevitable. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar who is too arrogant to admit that like the rest of mankind he too is prone to error.

*

I may sound like an angry young man but I am in fact a serene old man who has come to terms with his own limitations.

Everything I say contains a silent mea culpa.

I don't accuse, I confess.

And by confessing I hope to achieve a higher degree of serenity.

Consider that a symptom of my Catholic upbringing.

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There are many little truths in all organized ideologies and religions, but their core is a Big Lie.

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Truth has never been a central concern of organizations.

Power, yes.

Truth, never!

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Truth is a metaphysical abstraction with no counterpart in reality. And of reality we are equipped to perceive only tiny fractions. Which is why no two men will ever agree on everything.

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I don't write to be popular.

I believe there is more merit in unpopularity than in fame and fortune.

And I rate indifference to fame above fame.

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Did you know that Mongolia's population is 2.7 million? – which means there are many more mongoloids than Mongols – meant to say, many more Armenians.

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