as i see it - Pt. IV

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 16, 2011

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

FASCIST PHOBIAS

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

Genocide: they relished the action

but are afraid of the word.

*

If you think we are different, think again.

We trusted Talaat, Stalin, and Hitler

but we silence anyone

who dares to question our judgment.

*

My most faithful readers are readers

who find me unreasonable, unbearable, and unreadable.

*

We are all entitled to make two big mistakes,

the first of which is being born.

#

Friday, June 17, 2011

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

ON FAITH

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

A Turkish Kemalist writer

has published a book of nearly 900 pages

(copiousy footnoted and annotated)

in which he proves to his satisfaction

that the Armenian Genocide is a pack of lies,

it never happened.

Which at least proves one thing:

one can prove anything

by quoting passages from carefully selected sources.

*

There are lines in the Bible

that justify war, massacre, and genocide.

Eery jihadist and terrorist is convinced

God to be on his side.

Any Catholic theologian could easily produce

a tome of a thousand pages proving

all other religions to be heresies

and inventions of the Devil.

*

This may suggest that faith

is the most dangerous obstacle

to reason, common sense and decency,

and to subscribe to a belief system,

any belief system,

is the first step to becoming a dupe,

and worse, to applying for membership

in a criminal gang.

*

To trust the judgment of another –

as Germans did under Hitler,

as Russians did under Stalin,

and as Turks did under Kemal --

is to abdicate one’s humanity.

#

Saturday, June 18, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Truth is a lie you believe in.

*

This morning on the radio

I heard a politician use the word “dichotomy”

and I remembered Mark Twain’s definition

of cauliflower:

“A cabbage with a college education.”

*

We mourn our victims

and we brag about our survival:

am I the only one who see a contradiction here?

*

The disrepute of our political parties is such

that smart partisans pretend to be non-partisan –

like wolves in sheep’s clothing.

*

Never say I have a dream

when what you have is a nightmare in the making.

*

We use our brain to demolish our adversaries

and our gut to justify ourselves.

*

Why is it that dogs that kill

are invariably described by their owners as "friendly,"

and serial killers are described

as "nice" by their neighbors?

*

Being an Armenian writer

amounts to being a shoemaker in a country

where everyone prefers to go barefoot.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 19, 2011

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

THEM AND US (II)

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

We are brought up to believe

we are better than Turks,

in the same way that Turks are brought up

to believe they are better than Armenians.

In our treatment of intellectuals, however,

we might as well be identical twins.

They massacred our intellectuals

in time of war; and in our Soviet phase,

we massacred intellectuals in time of peace.

*

Why target intellectuals?

Because the only way to deceive and mislead the people

is by silencing intellectuals

who collectively suffer from a neurotic compulsion

to speak the truth even if doing so

may spell their total ruin and destruction.

*

Another thing we have learned from Turks

is to blame others for all our problems

even if in the process we may run the risk

of abdicating our humanity.

I therefore feel justified in maintaining that

deep down somewhere we (Armenians and Turks) are one and the same –

a fact that may become a certainty

when our respective DNAs are compared.

*

We either come to terms with this reality

or we continue to project that which is evil in us

on the other thus implying

one should not mess around with perfection –

an implication that has the double demerit

of being both absurd and ridiculous.

#

Monday, June 20, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

A reasonable Armenian is as rare

as a Turk who has not beem brainwashed.

*

Tolerance: the ability to see some truth even in lies.

*

Anyone with the brain of an ape

and the tongue of a parrot

can recycle propaganda.

*

I don’t believe everything I write

but I wish I did.

*

I wear the insults of anonymous cowards like a badge.

*

There are no happy endings in life.

For everyone who preaches love

there are ten who preach hatred

and a hundred who practice it.

*

Noobar Janoian: “The opposite of fear is love.”

*

Italian saying: "Fratelli, flagelli."

(Free translation: "The wrath of brothers,

the wrath of whips.")

*

Flaubert: "Stupidity is something immovable,

you can’t try to attack it without being broken by it."

#

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When they say it was Armenians who massacred Turks,

what they really mean is that

a single Turk killed by Armenians

matters much more to them

than a thousand Armenians slaughtered by Turks.

That’s because they view the slaughter of infidels

not as a crime against humanity

but as a patriotic as well as a religious duty.

*

When I was a child in Greece we used to say,

“Do you take me for an American?” – meaning,

“Do you take me for an idiot?”

It was only on the day they elected Nixon as president

that I realized there was more to Yanks

than Yankee-Doodle-Dandy.

Likewise, it was on the day they awarded

the Nobel Prize to Pamuk that I realized

there was more to Turks than massacres.

*

I have said “Yes, sir!”

and I have said “No, sir!”

and No, sir! is more fun.

There may be no money in it, granted,

but I’d rather be dirt poor and free

than a slave, a dupe, and a brown-noser

with a regular income.

#

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The phoniest line in the world:

“Your call is important to us.”

*

The ugliest words in the English language:

“Press one…press two…press three…press four…”

at which point I hang up.

*

To cover up his true status

“Homo ignoramus” classifies himself

as “Homo sapiens.”

*

If some people have no interest in knowing themselves

it may be because they already know enough to know

that they are not worth knowing.

*

Why is it that some very smart and learned Armenians

confuse anti-charlatanism with anti-Armenianism?

Why is it that some very cunning Armenians

in their defense of their own selfish, narrow interests

will voice reasons worthy of an inbred moron?

*

A problem is like an illness.

The first step is to diagnose it correctly.

But if you choose to ignore it,

you may promote it from a minor nuisance

to a terminal affliction.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, June 26, 2011

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

TWO OBSERVATIONS

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

The most convincing evidence of their guilt

is the fact that they have developed a propaganda machinery,

an educational system,

and a legal apparatus denying the charge of genocide.

Who believes them?

Not even Turks, except the brainwashed, of course,

who will believe anything if only because

they have no choice in the matter.

*

If Hitler had won World War II

there would now be an entire generation of Germans

committed to the belief that

he was a great statesman,

a progressive and civilizing force,

a man of vision,

and a warrior equal in stature

to Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon.

In short, he would be to Germans

what Kemal is to the Turks today.

#

Monday, June 27, 2011

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

WAS KEMAL A DENIALIST?

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

Not only was he not a denialist,

he also had some of the perpetrators

arrested, tried, and executed.

*

For more on this subject,

see THE COURT MARTIAL PROCEEDINGS

OF THE MILITARY TRIBUNAL 1919-1922,

compiled by Vahakn Dadrian and Taner Akcam

(Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 733 pages, 2010).

*

This much said let me add that

Kemal’s motives may not have been

love of justice or sympathy for the victims.

It is reasonable to assume that

like all men of power

his main concern was to keep and increase his power

and the only way he could do that

was by eliminating his Ittihadist competition.

#

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

Never say “I was deceived.”

Say instead “I allowed myself to be deceived.”

*

To need something badly

is to make oneself vulnerable to deception.

*

Nations make mistakes as surely as individuals

if only because they are ruled by individuals.

*

What matters is not how big your mistakes are

but what you do with them.

*

To behave like bloodthirsty barbarians

and to pretend to be civilized

is to compound the felony.

*

The shortest distance between ignorance and wisdom

is a painful blunder.

#

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

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

DR NOOBAR JANOIAN SPEAKS

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

In his TRAVELS IN TIME AND SPACE

Dr Janoian speaks of a conversation he once had

with a Vietnamese patient.

When asked what was it exactly

that made North Vietnam resist

and ultimately defeat a military colossus

like the United States,

his patient explains that Vietnam

has always resisted and defeated all occupiers,

among them the Chinese, the Japanese, and the French.

The difference between the South and the North,

he goes on to explain, is that

the leaders of the North were

men of principle and ideals,

unlike their counterparts in the South,

who were no better than thieves and bandits.

An honest and dedicated leadership

inspires solidarity and self-sacrifice in the people, he adds,

and a corrupt leadership promotes

divisions, disloyalty, opportunism, and treason.

*

We may now have a free and independent homeland,

the good doctor reflects in the final paragraph of the story,

but our leaders are less like the leaders of North Vietnam

and more like the leaders of South Vietnam –

no better than thieves and bandits.

#

[Louise Kiffer]

I am not sure if we (Armenians of Armenia) had a very good leader, that the people will follow his way. Because they have been corrupted by 70 years of communism, where they

learnt to steal et cheat. May be in the following generations...if they receive a good education.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, June 30, 2011

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

TWO OBSERVATIONS

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

ON LIMITATIONS

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

We all go through a period in our lives

when the sky is the limit.

But sooner or later

the painful realization sinks in:

we can’t even reach the ceiling

of our solitary confinement.

*

CRITICS

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

It makes no difference whether you are

a failure or a success,

the number of critics will remain constant.

What may change is their caliber.

As a failure you will be trashed by trash.

As a success you will be trashed

by a better class of trash.

#

Friday, July 01, 2011

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

FREEDOM

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

According to Kant,

freedom “enlarges the usefulness of other faculties.”

It follows, where there is no freedom of speech,

powers of perception and understanding of reality

are damaged.

*

To classify ourselves as civilized,

we compare ourselves to barbarians.

The question is:

has a barbarian ever classified him as a barbarian?

*

The Turks now have a dissenting school of thought.

Where is ours?

What happens on the day barbarians overtake us?

*

A hundred years ago

we were faced with extinction

not because we rebelled against tyranny

but because for 600 years we were subservient to scum.

*

As for our so-called heroic revolutionaries:

their remedy was worse than the disease.

Beheading is not a cure for a headache.

*

For 600 years we were at the mercy

of bloodthirsty barbarians.

We are now afraid of scarecrows.

*

Our reality is a nightmare

from which we refuse to wake up.

#

Saturday, July 02, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

In Turks I see all our failings magnified.

*

To the average dupe,

silencing intellectuals is a concept of such irrelevance

that it doesn’t even register on his consciousness.

*

I am fully aware of the fact that by writing about idiots

I endow them with a dignity they don’t deserve.

*

The unspoken slogan of all fascists and criminals in general:

“If you can get away with it, do it.”

*

“Treason and betrayal are in our blood,” said Raffi.

So is fascism.

*

According to an international watchdog group,

political parties and the media

are two of the most corrupt institutions in the world.

To put it more bluntly:

our "betters" are the worst scum on earth

and anyone who defends them

is either a brown-nosing dupe

or a brainwashed pervert.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 03, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

ON PATRIOTISM

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

Love of homeland should never be confused

with loyalty to a regime,

or its propaganda, that is to say, lies.

*

ON WORDS

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

As a medium of communication,

the spoken or written word is better equipped

to expose lies than to assert truths.

*

ON BS

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

It is only very recently that a friend pointed out to me

that both belief system and bull sh*t have identical initials.

*

ON CONTROVERSIES

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

In all controversies there is a natural tendency

to go to extremes with the inevitable result that

moderation and objectivity are seen as treason.

*

ON METAPHYSICS

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

To exist and to imagine non-existence

is as difficult as to non-exist and to imagine existence.

*

ON WOMEN

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

Women have played a very important role in my life.

The reason I don’t write about them is that

the wounds are too deep.

*

ON DEATH

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

Death is a privilege reserved only for the dying;

all others are condemned to live.

*

ON PHILOSOPHY

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

Everyone has a philosophy (in American parlance)

only when the line that separates philosophy (love of wisdom)

from philomoronism is either blurred or deleted.

*

MORE ON WOMEN

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

Freud said he had no answer to the question:

"What do women want?”

Shaw said women want the same things as men.

Neither Freud nor Shaw, or for that matter,

neither men nor women know what they really want

and what to do with it when they get it.

#

Monday, July 04, 2011

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

ON JUSTICE

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

A headline in today’s paper reads:

“Turkey officially recognizes Libyan rebels.”

A hundred years ago they massacred their own.

They now recognize and support someone else’s.

*

Has anybody ever said,

“I plead guilty to the charge of genocide?”

Talaat was assassinated.

Stalin died in bed.

Hitler committed suicide.

Genghis Khan openly declared:

“My great pleasure is killing my enemies

and raping their women.”

Had they been arrested and tried,

would they have admitted violating anyone’s human rights?

In their own eyes they were statesmen of vision

who deserved universal respect and admiration.

*

If you have the power to rewrite history,

you also have the power to find the guilty innocent

and the innocent guilty.

Why should we be surprised if

after a century of trying

we have not yet seen a single red cent

or a single square inch of soil in reparations?

#

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

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

THAT WHICH WE SHARE

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

To begin with, we share 600 years of coexistence.

*

They silence their dissenters.

So do we.

*

They confuse patriotism or love of homeland

with loyalty to a regime or ideology,

that is to say, a propaganda line

adopted by wheeler-dealers whose central concern

is neither consensus nor the welfare of the people

but their own powers and privileges.

Can we really say we are different?

*

They deal with controversial issues

by adopting a dogmatic stance.

So do we.

*

They are tribal.

So are we.

Don’t take my word for it.

Listen to Nikol Aghbalian (1873-1947),

an eminent statesman, literary scholar, and educator:

“We Armenians are products of the tribal mentality of Turks

and Kurds and this tribal mentality remains stubbornly rooted

even in our leaders and elites.”

*

We accuse them of crimes against humanity.

So do they.

*

On a personal level:

the insults leveled at me by both Armenians and Turks

have been so similar that they might as well have emanated

from the same source.

*

They rewrite history.

So do we.

If you have any lingering doubts on the subject,

have a casual conversation with a Catholic, Protestant,

Anteliassagan, Etchmiadznagan, and an atheist.

*

They brainwash their children.

So do we.

*

They cover up their crimes.

We cover up our blunders.

*

If the Ottoman Empire had been an Armenian Empire

and the Turks within it one of the minorities,

I have every reason to suspect

we would have done to them what they did to us.

#

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

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

OBSERVATIONS

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

Our greatest problem:

our refusal to forget what we have learned

from our former masters and role models.

Collective amnesia or Alzheimer’s may well be

our only salvation.

*

We were sheep;

they were wolves;

and we didn’t see it coming?

Figure that one out, if you can.

*

Were we blind?

Can we really say

our sight has been restored?

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, July 07, 2011

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

OBSERVATIONS

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

Sometimes understanding consists

in the sudden realization that

those you trust and respect most

are the least worthy of your trust and respect.

*

More often than not the least trustworthy people

are those whose honesty you are not even allowed to question.

It is not that they are as bad as you

as that they are infinitely different and worse.

*

An exposed lie reorganizes the world.

*

I respect both Marx and Freud

as pioneers in their respective fields of inquiry,

but consider their differences:

Marx would have accused Freud

of using a pseudo-science of his own fabrication

to adjust the individual to an unjust,

dehumanized and essentially evil social order.

In his turn, Freud would have accused Marx

of Jewish messianism and a total inability to predict

the consequences of his own theories

which were fated to be far more dangerous,

lethal, and evil than all the abuses of capitalism.

And the irony is that both would be right.

#

Friday, July 08, 2011

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

DANCING WITH THE DEVIL

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

There are dead-end situations in life

that one ignores at one’s own peril.

Two cases in point:

our position in the Ottoman Empire,

and our present malaise

(divisions, alienation, intolerance of free speech…

among other aberrations).

It is a cowardly illusion to think that

if a dead end situation is ignored,

it will go away.

*

I can recognize a dead end situation when I see one

because I have been in one for a good number years –

since 1975 to be exact, that’s when my firs book,

titled THE ARMENIANS, appeared.

My only consolation is that so far

my failure has harmed no one but myself.

*

How to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Some say it was the Polish Pope.

Others name Reagan.

My own preferred candidate is Gorbachev and his glasnost.

One reason I prefer Gorbachev is that

I believe empires and power structures in general

are not killed, they commit suicide.

Which is what we have been doing –

death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts.

#

Saturday, July 09, 2011

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

OBSERVATIONS

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

You want to know what Turks are really like?

Be an Armenian.

You want to know what Armenians are really like?

Be a writer.

*

Divisions?

There are divisions everywhere;

also sermonizers preaching “All men are brothers.”

*

We shout our certainties in public

but we whisper our doubts

in the solitary confinement of our souls

even when there is more truth in them.

*

Memo to a reader:

Either read me with an open mind

or don't read me at all.

And remember, the first victim of a closed mind is yourself.

*

If wrong, I can always rely on my readers to correct me.

I can even rely on them to correct me when I am right –

especially when I am right.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 10, 2011

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

POLITICS

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

You tell them what they want to hear

and when things don’t work out as planned,

you blame it on the opposition

or factors beyond your control.

If you promise them heaven

and you deliver hell,

you can always blame it on God – if, that is,

you run out of unpredictable hostile factors;

or, in the words of Louis XIV:

“Has God forgotten what I have done for Him?”

*

Everyone has his way of judging people and nations.

I judge them by the manner in which they treat writers.

History provides us with many precedents,

the most recent being Talaat’s Turkey

Stalin’s Soviet Union,

and our own faceless flunkies

who operate anonymously

from behind closed doors.

*

Being an Armenian writer

amounts to being a shoemaker in a country

where everyone prefers to go barefoot.

#

Monday, July 11, 2011

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

DESPAIR

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

Edmund Burk:

“Do not despair,

but if you do,

work on in despair.”

*

Separating a nation from its myths and propaganda

is harder than separating Siamese twin –

an operation that requires a team of expert surgeons.

I can’t even stand the sight of blood on TV.

I apologize whenever I step on an ant.

*

If I cannot convince Armenians to do

what’s in their own best interest,

how can I, or anyone else for that matter,

convince Turks to do what’s against their own interest?

*

To Turks we are no better than “Indians.”

To our own leadership, we might as well be “white niggers.”

*

They control the media, the educational system,

the church, and the community centers.

What do I have in my favor?

Only a touch of common sense – the least common

of all faculties, it has been said,

and so it appears to be.

*

Our tribal chiefs agree only on one thing:

to silence dissent.

*

A hundred years ago we were slaves.

We are now slaves of former slaves.

#

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

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

PATTERN

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

When Hitler lost the war,

and shortly before he committed suicide,

he blamed it on his people,

the very same people he had brainwashed to believe

they were la crème de la crème.

*

Like most Armenian children

who had an Armenian education

I too was brought up to believe

we were just about the smartest people on earth.

I know now that the very same people

who brainwashed us to believe that

have been and continue to be

the instruments of our destruction.

This to me is now as clear as daylight

and as inevitable as night follows day.

#

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

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

WHY I LOVE

BERTRAND RUSSELL

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

ON ENVY

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

“Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has,

[the envious person] derives pain from what others have.”

*

ON MARRIAGE

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

“Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution,

except being harder to escape from.”

*

ON SERMONIZERS

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

“The human race has not hitherto discovered

any method of eradicating moral defects;

preaching and exhortation only add hypocrisy

to the previous list of vices.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, July 14, 2011

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

ON KEMAL (III)

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

In asserting the reality of the Armenian genocide

I am not relying on Armenian historians and

eyewitness accounts by foreign diplomats and observers,

but Kemal’s own treatment of the perpetrators.

So that when brainwashed Turks call Armenians liars,

they unknowingly also apply the same label on Kemal,

who may indeed have been one

but not in his treatment of the Ittihadist criminals.

The only other alternative is accusing Kemal

of gross incompetence, not to say criminal conduct,

in his persecution, prosecution, and execution

of high-ranking military and political leaders

whose actions were based on the firm belief that

they were following orders and acting

in the best interest of the nation.

Because if these gentlemen were innocent,

as Turkish denialists maintain,

then it goes without saying that

Kemal got away with murder.

#

Friday, July 15, 2011

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

NOTES / COMMENTS

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

Every day something happens to remind me

that I am not the center of the universe

and every day I choose to ignore the evidence.

*

You may have noticed that

people are more willing to help you

if in the process they can also help themselves.

*

Originality: to be unpredictable and inevitable at the same time.

*

Everybody wants to be rich and famous.

I have come to terms with my own obscurity and poverty

because I see no merit in being like everyone else.

*

The ambition of all authority figures is

to appear infallible in the same way that

the ambition of every scarecrow is to terrorize.

*

Freud's grand-daughter is reported to have said:

"The 20th Century produced two major charlatans:

Hitler and Freud."

My first thought:

Her legal claim on the Freud estate

and a fraction of his royalties must have been rejected

by a court of law.

(In this connection see also Aram Saroyan's memoir

of his father, LAST RITES).

#

Saturday, July 16, 2011

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

RE-READING TOYNBEE

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

ON OUR FAVORITE SPORT:

THE BLAME-GAME

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

“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.”

*

ON UNDERSTANDING

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

“Comprehension sometimes consists in just a correct understanding of questions that are unanswerable.”

*

CONNECTIONS

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

“Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that ever lived.”

*

“In this sense human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality.”

*

ON WAR

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

“It is part of the nature of war, once started, to get out of hand; and many belligerents who have made war ‘justly’ at the start have drifted into commission of injustice before the end of the story.”

*

ON REFORM

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

“I do not know of any human society in which drastic social reform has not been overdue at every stage of its history.”

*

ON IRREVERANCE

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

“I am convinced that irreverence, where irreverence is due, is one of the cardinal virtues.”

*

ON DEATH

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

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

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, July 21, 2011

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

TWO QUESTIONS,

ONE ANSWER

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

Can you name a country

whose most profitable export has been war?

*

Can you name a country

whose greatest source of wealth has been

the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed civilians?

*

The trouble with brainwashing people is that

you may be successful only with your own.

*

One reason Kemal has acquired heroic stature in Turkey

is that his predecessors were infinitely worse.

*

Wilkie Collins: “Nothing in this world is hidden forever.”

*

Sooner or later all Big Lies are exposed.

*

There are no hiding places from the truth.

#

Friday, July 22, 2011

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

RIFF-RAFF

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

In my youth I was so abysmally naïve

that I believed I could count

on the support, friendship, and understanding

of the very same individuals

who were in the business of oppressing the people.

But then, in what way was I different from Zohrab,

one of the smartest Armenians that ever lived,

who thought he could count on Talaat’s friendship?

*

Man will always invent an ideology or belief system

that will justify criminal conduct.

Which amounts to saying,

he will find a way to speak in the name of god

and do the devil’s work.

#

Saturday, July 23, 2011

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

RIFF-RAFF / II

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

A headline in my morning paper reads:

“James Murdoch on hot seat.”

And why?

Because he may have lied

when he testified before a parliamentary committee.

So what else is new?

Everybody lies – from muggers to presidents.

If everybody lies, it follows,

nobody sees anything wrong in lying to liars.

That’s why Turks have been lying for a hundred years

and they will continue to lie to the end of time.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 24, 2011

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

ON POWER

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

Power means first and foremost

the power to justify that which cannot be justified –

from dividing the community

to committing genocide.

*

Power allows the insane to accuse the sane of insanity.

*

My answer to those who question my habit

of posting critical comments on open forums:

If I am wrong, they can correct me.

If they are wrong, they should correct themselves.

*

Power means to view disagreement as a capital offense.

*

The first and most important measure

of all powerful men

is to convince their adversaries that

the best defense is subservience.

But I believe Dostoevsky when he said

even the weakest man

has unimaginable reserves of power within him.

*

There are no new ideas.

All we can do is to mention the forgotten,

to emphasize the marginalized,

and to expose the absurd.

#

Monday, July 25, 2011

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

THE LESSONS OF OSLO

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

Life is unpredictable and trying to predict it

is a waste of time.

*

Never underestimate the barbarism of the civilized.

*

Sometimes our worst enemy is one of us.

*

There is a Turk in all of us –

and Norwegians are no exception.

#

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

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

COMMENTS

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

How to win an argument Turkish style:

Make yourself so absurd and repellent that

your adversary will give up in disgust.

*

I look forward to the day

when I will be objective enough to view Armenia

as a foreign country and my fellow Armenians

not as my brothers but as foreigners.

*

“He doesn’t believe what he says”

is better than “he believes what he says.”

I’d much rather deal with a liar

than with someone willing to kill and die

in the name of a belief system –

that is to say, a Big Lie.

#

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

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

THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE

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

When asked why he hates Germans,

a Jew is reported to have replied:

“I have seven million reasons.”

We may not have as many reasons,

but we have another: we are called liars

because we dare to speak the truth.

*

Talaat appears to be the role model of all war criminals.

First they run away to a foreign country

(as I write there are thirty of them in Canada alone)

and when they are identified, arrested, and brought to justice,

they plead not guilty.

They see themselves as patriots, not killers.

Like wolves, they view the slaughter of sheep

as an inevitable result of evolution.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, July 28, 2011

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

TURKS, KEMALISM,

& DEMOCRACY

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

Unlike fascists in Italy who believed

“Mussolini ha sempre ragione,”

Turks don’t say “Kemal is always right!”

but they think and live as if he were.

He isn’t! -- if only because Kemalism and democracy

are mutually exclusive concepts.

*

Turks: who are they?

The unvarnished and de-Kemalized answer is:

a bunch of thoroughly mongrelized Mongols

who have been brainwashed to classify themselves as Turks,

in the same way that Armenians and Kurds within Turkey

are classified as “Christian Turks”

and “Mountain Turks” respectively.

I have met many Armenians from Turkey

but none of them has ever identified himself as a Christian Turk;

and I suspect the only time a Kurd identifies himself

as a “Mountain Turk” is when he applies for a job

in the civil service.

*

I live in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen

but whenever I am asked to identify my nationality,

I say “Armenian” and no one sees anything remotely disloyal

or questionable in that.

*

When Armenians build a community center in Canada,

they call it an Armenian Community Center.

What do Armenians and Kurds call

their community centers in Turkey?

But perhaps the right question is:

Are they allowed to build such centers?

*

It seems to me, Kemalist democracy

is more akin to fascism.

#

Friday, July 29, 2011

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

SOLUTIONS

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

Here are three of them in the form of commandments:

Thou shalt not divide and rule.

Thou shalt not silence dissent.

Thou shalt not speechify and sermonize with a forked tongue.

*

Silencing dissent is a fascist tactic.

Dividing the community is enemy action.

Only deceivers speak with a forked tongue.

*

To my critics I ask:

Which part of what I have been saying

you don’t understand – or rather,

you pretend not to understand?

*

Recent developments in the Middle East suggest

the days of all undemocratic regimes are numbered.

*

That which is whispered today by a single dissident

shall be shouted by a chorus of enraged millions tomorrow.

*

Because we don’t know our history,

we don’t know when we repeat it.

#

Saturday, July 30, 2011

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

SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION

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

Nationalist historians, religious leaders, and

a politically controlled educational system conspire

to create not human beings

with the ability to think for themselves,

but dupes who parrot lies

and are willing to kill and die

in the name of God and Country.

And when someone comes along

and exposes this simple fact,

he is labeled an enemy of the people

who fully deserves to be insulted, exiled,

jailed, silenced, or starved.

*

Some of my critics are convinced that

I am a pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian pornographer.

All because I deal with facts as opposed to fiction,

and I speak of reality

as opposed to recycling propaganda.

*

Among fanatics moderation is a risky business,

and among crooks honesty is a capital offense.

*

Sooner or later all belief systems and ideologies

are corrupted by ruthless and power-hungry mediocrities

who tell the people what they want to hear

and do what they want to do

even when what they tell the people is a lie

and even when what they want to do is criminal.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, July 31, 2011

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

ON INFALLIBILITY

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

As the number of blunders goes up,

so do assertions of infallibility.

*

The greatest mistake is to think we are right

and those who disagree with us wrong.

*

Prove an infallible man wrong

and make an enemy for life.

*

Infallible men don’t learn

because they are in the business of teaching.

*

On the Genocide issue

Americans see Turks as reflections of themselves

and Armenians as white niggers.

*

Our political and religious leaders

praise solidarity with words

and bury it with actions.

*

Nothing can be transparently more dishonest

than to expose the crimes of our enemies

and to cover up our own blunders.

*

One of the most important functions

of all educational systems is to identify the enemy.

*

What holds a nation together

is the threatening presence of the enemy.

*

If the enemy dies,

so does the glue that holds the nation together.

*

The unspoken aim of all organized religions and ideologies

is to legitimize double-talk:

to say one thing and do the opposite.

*

I don’t write for the enjoyment of the reader.

Neither do I write to flatter.

I write to point out the fact that

no one is infallible,

we all make mistakes,

and the beginning of all wisdom is acknowledging them.

#

Monday, August 01, 2011

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

ON COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

& FALLACIES

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

Readers who know nothing about me

assume just because I criticize Turks

I must be pro-Armenian; or, again,

just because I criticize Armenians

I must be pro-Turkish.

These readers appear to live

in a one-dimensional either/or universe

in which the dominant colors are black and white.

It never even occurs to them that

criticism may be motivated

more by an objective assessment of facts

and less by means of nationalist bias.

*

If you tell me you know and understand

all you need to know and understand,

you give me no choice but to conclude that

your needs must be extremely narrow.

If you tell me reality is an open book to you,

you will corner me into saying

that may be because you read nothing but comic books.

There are more shadows than light in life,

and more shades of gray than black and white.

*

Whenever a historian asserts

he has figured out the past and how it works,

he is immediately attacked by other historians

as well as philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists,

and theologians who inform him in no uncertain terms

that his facts are all wrong,

his assumptions unjustified,

and his conclusions misguided.

*

For more on this subject, see Arnold J. Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS,

volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY.

See also the critical fire aimed at Oswald Spengler

by, among others, Toynbee himself in the opus cited above.

*

To my uninformed readers, may I add that

Spengler and Toynbee are two of the greatest historians

of the past century.

May I also add that public opinion is shaped

less by great historians and more

by politicians, propagandists, and ghazetajis

who operate on the assumption that

a nation’s own version of its past is the only true one.

#

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

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

A TURKISH FRIEND

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

Some Turks appear to be obsessed

with what they did to Armenians during World War I

as surely as some Armenians are.

They are Armenocentric to the same degree

that some Armenians are Turcocentric.

*

I have a Turkish friend

(he may no longer consider me a friend, but I do)

who has written a big book –

the biggest I know on the subject – in which

he attempts to prove that Armenians have

not only invented a genocide and

believed in it for almost a century

but they have also somehow succeeded in convincing

an important fraction of the civilized world,

including one of the greatest historians of all time

and several Nobel-Prize winners

(among them a Turkish one).

*

This friend of mine believes Talaat

was the best friend Armenians had;

and Kemal was a great statesman

who was never wrong (in his own words:

“he was right 99% of the time”).

*

By contrast, I was brought up to believe

Talaat was to Armenians what Hitler was to Jews.

All wrong! my Turkish friend is eager to inform me.

The only reason Talaat did what he did

is that Armenians returned his friendship

by trying to assassinate him.

But since (I assume) he could not arrest the perpetrators,

he took it out on defenseless civilians.

If attempted assassination were sufficient ground for genocide,

we would have genocides as frequently as soups du jour.

*

As for Kemal being a universally admired statesman

about whom even western historians have written

voluminous biographies:

my good friend may not be aware of the fact that

western historians have also written voluminous biographies

of Hitler and Stalin.

*

To my Turkish friends I say,

if I continue to call you a friend it’s because

(one) I don’t consider disagreement sufficient ground for divorce;

(two) I believe with Gandhi that no man is beyond redemption; and

(three) convictions, even belief systems,

are subject to error and change.

So that I for one will not be surprised in the least

if we become friends once more.

#

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Them and us is a misleading classification

because there is a great deal of us in them

and vice versa.

*

To say that a question is unanswerable

is also an answer.

*

To convert to a religion or ideology

is to legitimize one’s status as a dupe.

*

The rich defend their privileges

with the same intensity as the starving search for food.

*

The difference between being infallible and 99% right

is about the same as the difference

between charity and a loan for 99 years.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 04, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The Chinese said to their poor, “Get rich,”

and they got rich.

The Americans said to their rich, “Get richer,”

and they bankrupted the global economy.

*

You cannot travel on the wrong path

and hope to reach your destination.

*

I know my critics are wrong

when they say what I used to think thirty years ago.

As for critics who speak in the name of God and Country,

they are never right – or they are wrong 99% of the time.

*

Some of the most dangerous criminals

in the history of mankind were political leaders

who were thought of as infallible – or 99% right.

*

Bishops, imams, rabbis:

witch doctors with a college education.

#

Friday, August 05, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Both Turks and Armenians share in common

an aversion to reality.

Turks believe all talk of genocide is fiction.

When repeatedly warned of the coming catastrophe,

Armenians reacted with disbelief.

“Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,”

was a typical reaction.

Even after the cold-blooded murder

of our ablest men in Soviet Armenia,

our “chic Bolsheviks” in the Diaspora

went on repeating the slogan

“Russians are our big brothers.”

Closer to home,

when I speak of our reality objectively today,

I am told to “Shut the f*** up!”

#

Saturday, August 06, 2011

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

CRITICS

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

My critics are my best source of inspiration.

They are my bread and butter.

*

Once upon a time we were a progressive nation.

But we lost that under the Sultans and the Soviets.

*

To say all problems can be solved except ours

might as well be a suicide note.

*

Charlatans will prosper as long as there are dupes;

and honest men will be persecuted

as long as there are charlatans.

*

To be smart and to be a dupe

are mutually exclusive concept.

*

To divide and rule has been the foreign policy

of all imperial powers.

As long as we remain divided

we implement the foreign policy of our enemies.

*

Our dividers are as unaware of their genocidal intent

as Turkish denialists.

*

When I was young I sought the approval of my superiors

until I realized they were the scum of the earth.

*

I cannot change the past;

neither can I resurrect the dead.

No one can.

*

To expose present blunders

is to prevent future catastrophes.

That’s why I prefer to write about our reality today

as opposed to past deeds that cannot be undone.

*

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 07, 2011

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

CRITICS (II)

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

On the day brainwashed dupes begin to agree with me

I will have no choice but to consider a career move

by applying for a job in the sanitation department

-- which may not be much of a move

consisting as it does in collecting trash

as opposed to exposing it.

*

The right word at the right time and place

can make a difference.

I have no doubt about that.

If so far I have made no difference

it may be because I have not yet found the right word;

or, if I have found it,

I have not delivered it at the right time and place.

This is why I intend to keep buggering on

until I hit paydirt.

In the meantime I console myself by saying

if what I say annoys the hell out of some readers,

I must be doing something right.

*

“What Africa needs,” I read today in a commentary,

“is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties

to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”

Which simply means, we have no reason to believe

we are ahead of Somalis, Ugandans, and Zulus?

*

The Tea Party in America reminds me of our partisans

willing to drive the nation to bankruptcy

rather than to compromise for the sake of consensus.

*

Compromise and consensus have become dirty words with us

because God and all those who speak in His name

have no use for compromise.

Our partisans confuse ideology with theology…

“and because it was a religious war,

there were no survivors.”

#

Monday, August 08, 2011

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

ON BELIEF SYSTEMS

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

When it comes to politics and history,

the average man

(this is especially true of Armenians and Turks)

tends to adopt a dogmatic stance.

His views become an integral part of a belief system

and as everyone knows,

the problem with belief systems

and those who hold them is that

they are never wrong –

very much like the Pope of Rome

(in the eyes of Catholics),

Kemal (in the eyes of Kemalists),

Hitler (in the eyes of Nazis),

Stalin (in the eyes of Stalinists),

Mussolini (in the eyes of Italian fascists),

Mao (in the eyes of Maoists),

and last but not least,

Marx (in the eyes of Marxists –

though Marx himself is quoted as having said,

“I am not a Marxist”).

*

I was brought up as a Catholic,

and as a Catholic it never even occurred to me

to question the Pope’s infallibility.

But I changed my mind

the moment I began thinking for myself --

as opposed to saying “Yes, sir!”

to whatever I was told

by my superiors, whom I now consider

the scum of the earth).

*

The problem with believers is that

they suffer from one of the most dangerous

psychological aberrations known to man,

namely, infantilism.

They hate to grow up.

They hate anyone who dares to contradict them.

Above all they hate to think for themselves,

which means, they hate to use that which happens to be

their most valuable possession: their brain.

*

Believing in gods

(there have been ten thousand of them, we are told)

is bad enough.

Believing in men is infinitely worse.

#

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

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

WHAT A MAN BELIEVES

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

What a man believes is his own business.

It becomes our business

only when his belief system

promotes intolerance,

legitimizes prejudice,

and issues licenses to kill.

*

A belief system that relies on charlatans to exploit dupes

might as well be a criminal conspiracy.

I am not spinning theories and scenarios

based on abstractions.

I am talking about facts and historical reality –

what happened to our parents in the Ottoman Empire,

to our brothers in the Soviet Union;

and what’s happening today

in the Middle East and Africa.

*

“Yes, sir!” may be said to be

the two most dangerous words known to man.

If it weren’t for these two monosyllables,

we would have no organized religions and armies,

that is to say, wars and massacres.

#

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

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

WHAT'S TO BE UNDONE

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

We like to believe we are eminently adaptable survivors.

There is some truth in that but also a contradiction.

We are so adaptable in fact that in France

we could easily pass for Frenchmen,

in Russia for Russians,

in Greece for Greeks,

in Italy for Italians,

in Israel for Jews, and so on…and

I have even met Armenians

who could easily identify themselves as Mongols in Mongolia

and get away with it.

As for being survivors:

let us not forget that a great many of us,

especially the best and the brightest,

did not survive – compliments of Talaat, Stalin,

and our Levantine philistines in the Diaspora.

*

And speaking of Levantines:

one of the worst things that happened to us

in the New World is allowing Levantines

to be in charge of our institutions

on the grounds that they are more authentic

and less assimilated Armenians than the average native.

These gentlemen (if you will forgive the overstatement)

have done more harm to the integrity of our communities

than all “social, political, and economic factors

beyond our control” combined.

*

We like to believe we are smart.

Yes, some of us may well be smart,

but only in the marketplace.

Our political I.Q. or the way we conduct our affairs

might as well be negative.

We are as tribal as the most backward

African dysfunctional nation.

Put two Armenians on a desert island

and they will build three churches – the third

being the one they don’t go to.

*

What will save us?

What can save us?

As for as I can see, only prayer –

and I speak as an atheist.

“Our Father who art in Heaven…”

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 18, 2011

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

ONEUPMANSHIP

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

Only Armenian writers writing in Armenian

are eager to inform me that I don’t qualify

as an Armenian writer because I write in English,

as if being an Armenian writer

were an honor and a privilege

as opposed to being a curse and sometimes even

a death sentence.

*

About the Genocide and its Recognition:

either Turks are mean as well as obstinate (probably both)

or we are incompetent and stupid (ditto).

*

And speaking of Genocide Recognition:

where would this issue – so dear to all our hearts – be

without the contribution of Armenian writers

writing in odar languages?

*

Our patriotism teaches us to love our homeland

and to hate our fellow men – including Armenians.

As for criticizing Armenians in open forums

accessible to our enemies:

even when completely blind,

our enemies acquire 20/20 vision

when it comes to identifying our weaknesses and failings.

That’s the way of the world and the jungle.

I have every reason to believe

Turks know more about us

than we know ourselves.

I doubt if I have ever said anything

they didn’t already know.

#

Friday, August 19, 2011

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

WHAT I KNOW

ABOUT OUR BRAINWASHED DUPES

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

They believe to have the rare gift

of judging someone they don’t know

and criticizing a text they haven’t read.

*

Not only do they believe God to be an Armenian,

they also believe His patience is without end.

*

They have a tendency to believe the absurd

and to reject the evidence of their own eyes.

*

They may not be happier than us

But for some incomprehensible reason

they appear to be on better terms with themselves.

#

Saturday, August 20, 2011

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

ON KEMAL (V)

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

Finally an objective assessment of Kemal

by a Turkish biographer.

After discussing the fallacies Kemal espoused

(scientism, materialism, nationalism, among others),

we are told, he may have been the right man

at the right time and place

but he was not a great man.

“The key to Ataturk’s success lay not

in the originality of his ideas

but in the singularity of the opportunity he seized.”

See M. Sukru Hanioglu, ATATURK (Princeton, $27.95).

*

The trouble with most academics is that

they fall hopelessly in love with their thesis.

*

The most dangerous dupe is the propagandist

who believes in his own propaganda.

*

A brainwashed Turk and a brainwashed Armenian

might as well be twins.

They belong to no known nation

except the nation of the brainwashed.

They are the cattle of mankind.

*

We judge people not by how good they are

but how much they love or flatter us.

To the rest we are indifferent.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 21, 2011

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

ON IGNORANCE…

AMONG OTHER THINGS

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

More often than not

ignorance is not a result of not knowing

but of not wanting to know.

*

To be a dupe means to place

patriotism and propaganda

above honesty and objectivity.

*

My Armenian and Turkish critics

sound remarkably alike – no doubt

as a result of 600 years of cohabitation

compounded by fear of reality.

*

Dupes come in bunches.

Where there is one there will be another.

They need each other’s warmth

like swine in a cold barn.

#

Monday, August 22, 2011

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

UNANSWERED QUERSTIONS

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

Because I support the idea

of a united and strong Armenia,

I engage in treason?

And because my critics are for

a divided, weak, demoralized Armenia,

they are patriots?

But the question, the real question,

which nobody cares to ask is:

We survived the Turk,

will we survive our patriots?

*

What if, when it comes to extermination,

our leaders are better at it than

the Sultan, Talaat, and Stalin combined?

What if there is more truth in what we hate

than in what we pretend to love?

What if we serve the Devil

even when we speak and act in the name of God?

*

Because I write in open forums

where even Turks can read me,

my readers take notice of what I say.

Otherwise they would have ignored me.

They would have pretended I don’t exist.

They would have saved their spittle

for their real enemies – the opposition.

*

For more on this subject, see

A FIRST-RATE MADNESS:

UNCOVERING THE LINKS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MENTAL ILLNESS.

By Nassir Ghaemi. 340 pages. The Penguin Press. $27.95.

#

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

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

THEN AND NOW

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

A hundred years ago

Armenians had to be forcibly driven out from Turkey;

they are now exiting from Armenia on their own.

*

I should like to see a comparative study

of Armenian assimilation rates

in the Ottoman Empire and the United States of America.

*

How many Armenian-Americans can read and write

in Armenian today?

After two or at most three generations in America

assimilation sets in.

But even after six hundred years

in the Ottoman Empire – that is roughly

twenty-four generations – we had a vibrant Armenian literature

in Istanbul.

Name a single Armenian-American writer today if you can.

*

We like to blame Talaat and Stalin

for the slaughter of two generations of our major writers,

but we forget that these writers

were betrayed by Armenians.

*

The only authentic Armenians today

are the skeletons of our 5th-century ancestors

and even the best of them

were odars with mixed blood.

*

Our nationalists may portray themselves as superpatriots

but their true intent is extermination – if, that is,

we judge them by their actions

rather than by their verbally stated intentions.

*

When words and actions don’t match

you may safely discard words as lies – unless of course

you happen to be a certified dupe.

#

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

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

ON LEADERS (II)

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

In theory, patriotism, even nationalism,

stands for freedom from imperial oppression,

beginning with free speech.

In practice, try to disagree with one of our superpatriots

and see what happens.

There is a hangman in all our nationalists.

*

Only readers who cling to their Ottomanism and Sovietism

confuse my anti-Ottomanism and anti-Sovietism

with anti-Armenianism.

*

The God of the Old Testament

is a jungle chieftain who thinks men

are such ignorant savages that

they have to be told murder is a no-no.

*

The secret ambition of all leaders

is to be almighty and infallible, like God.

This is as true of the Pope as it is of Stalin.

*

Who are our leaders?

In the Diaspora they are faceless Levantine wheeler-dealers

at the mercy of social, political, cultural, and economic forces

beyond their control – in short:

they are in over their heads.

In the Homeland they are dehumanized bureaucrats

accountable only to the Kremlin.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, August 25, 2011

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

SUMMING UP

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

The ideal dupe is he

who doesn’t believe he is one.

*

The true believer is he

who believes anyone who doesn’t share his belief system

is the dupe of a heresy.

*

Mankind is divided between deceivers and their dupes.

As for the silent majority:

they might as well be an absent factor.

*

If we judge an idea by its history,

we shall have no choice but to assert

belief systems are the source of all evil.

*

“Since it was a religious war,

there were no survivors.”

*

If you think religious wars

are a thing of the past, think again.

*

Think again!

A useless, not to say, an absurd suggestion

to a believer who by believing

he declares his inability to think for himself

and must therefore rely on someone else’s thinking – no,

not thinking but believing,

which can also be defined as “not thinking.”

*

And if you believe the age of prophets,

like the age of religious wars

belongs to the irrevocable past,

I for one will not be surprised to learn that

in the eyes of some historians

the 20th century is already known

as the century of false prophets –

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Kemal….

#

“Believe those who are seeking the truth.

Doubt those who find it.”

Even better:

Believe only those who are engaged in rejecting lies.

#

Friday, August 26, 2011

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

WORDS

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

We are told

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

We are told

to judge a tree by its fruit,

a man by his actions,

and an idea by its history.

What about religion?

If religion is such a good thing

why has it killed and continues to kill so many people?

Who will believe you if you say

“my religion is the only true one;

all others are heresies?

Not even your co-religionists.

Consider the case of Catholics and Protestants,

Shias and Sunnis, and generally speaking,

all orthodoxies and heresies.

But contradictions don’t end there.

In the Old Testament we are told

“Thou shalt not kill.”

But elsewhere God commands His Chosen People

to slaughter not only their enemies

but also their cattle.

Are we to believe even God contradicts Himself?

Or is it only when He uses words?

#

Saturday, August 27, 2011

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

MEMO TO MY TURKISH READERS

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

Do you really think

you can run away from justice, like Talaat?

Surely you can’t expect us to believe

that your sources are more authentic

than Pamuk’s, Akcam’s, and countless other

western historians among them Turcophiles like

Arnold J. Toynbee and Bernard Lewis.

Last but not least,

you can’t be serious when you dare to suggest

you know better than Kemal

who at no time denied the reality of large-scale atrocities

and the only reason he didn’t use the word “genocide”

is that it had not yet been coined.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, August 28, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

We all try to do the best for ourselves

and more often than not

our best turns out to have been our worst.

*

To brag is wrong except when a nation does it –

and they do it all the time.

*

We don’t think unless we are cornered into thinking.

What we do instead is grab the most convenient

or flattering explanation

and hang on to it to the bitter end.

*

The disappointments of success

are as deep as the disappointments of failure.

*

The very same individuals who are against free speech

control our educational system, and with it,

our perception of reality.

*

In politics if you win you brag,

if you lose you lie.

*

To combat the dread of death

we pretend to live.

*

It is in the blood (or collective unconscious) of the strong

to divide and rule the weak,

and it is in the blood of the weak to be divided.

*

To say free speech is our “greatest enemy” (Zarian)

is to imply we are our own greatest threat

to our security and development as a nation.

In that sense, the enemy is indeed us.

*

Plutarch: “But when the body called the Five Thousand –

which in fact were only Four Hundred…”

#

Monday, August 29, 2011

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

OBSERVATIONS

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

There is a type of Latin-American writer,

I read today, who is convinced

“literature can fend off injustice and ugliness

and redeem the world.”

Once upon a time we too had such writers.

But do we have them today?

If you know of one, can you name him or her?

*

I am constantly urged not to speak about Armenians

as I do on open forums, in the same way that

Turkish writers are urged, nay threatened,

not to speak of Turkish crimes against humanity.

Propagandists on both sides are not interested in facts,

only in figments of their own imagination.

*

How easily are love and lust confused? --

also arrogance and self-esteem.

Search for the worst in the best

and don’t be surprised if you find it.

*

Man is prone to superstition

because he cannot answer the most important questions

and his need for answers exceeds

his love of truth or his understanding of reality.

*

We all love to be loved and hate to consider the possibility

that we may not deserve it.

#

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

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

HYPNOSIS

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

Knut Hamsun on Hitler’s Germany:

“It’s mass-hypnosis that does it…

Mass hypnosis is an awful thing,

just look at theaters and circuses.”

*

They are hypnotized into thinking

Turks are too civilized to have committed atrocities

and we are hypnotized into thinking

all Turks are bloodthirsty barbarians.

One could say that the aim of all propaganda

is mass hypnosis.

Or, after the subject has been hypnotized,

you can convince him of anything.

*

To the Turks, Kemal is a messianic figure

who raised the nation from the rotten corpse of the Empire.

If only we too had a Kemal of our own.

On second thought, we may be better off without one.

*

One way to explain an alienated Armenian is to say that

he is an Armenian who refuses to be hypnotized.

#

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

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

AS I SEE IT

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

The older I grow,

the heavier the burden of memories.

Which is why I don’t consider Alzheimer’s

an undesirable condition.

*

Perseverance is a good thing

but not when it comes to digging your own grave.

*

I don’t write to save the nation.

I can’t even save myself from boredom.

*

I drink to drown the Turk in me,

but the bugger is a swimmer with Olympic ambitions.

*

Political leaders of the West were almost unanimous

in their desire to befriend Gadhafi.

Which may suggest the world is ruled by men

whose IQ is lower than that of a backward African mob.

*

The Buddha is right: no one can save another – especially one

who has made up his mind to go to hell.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 08, 2011

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

ON LOVE

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

In a scientific text I read the following:

“The original purpose of the sense of hearing

was to enable an organism to hear the love song of a wooer.”

Further down:

“The higher forms of life,

and possibly the lower ones as well,

would have become extinct a long time ago

if it were not for the pleasures of love –

which are thus more important

than anything that reason is able to produce.”

*

I think therefore I am?

Hell no!

I love therefore I survive.

*

Let’s reason together?

Wrong!

Let’s make love.

*

Why do you think the memoirs of a bordello madam

will sell many more copies

than a treatise on reason by an eminent philosopher?

*

We are a dysfunctional nation

because we preach love of country

and practice hatred of fellow countrymen.

*

To our leaders the Homeland is a symbol

with which they identify – and when they speak of love

in a patriotic context, it is they who want to be loved

because they know they are unworthy of anyone’s love.

Bugger the old farts!

#

Friday, September 09, 2011

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

ON LOVE (II)

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

Only an Armenian who has not “known” a Turkish woman

or an Armenian woman who has not know a Turkish man

(in the literal as well as Biblical sense of the word)

is capable of harboring anti-Turkish sentiments.

I will go further and say that

there is no such thing as a Turk

or, for that matter, an Armenian.

National identity is an artificially created label

based on propaganda rather than any other factor.

*

Take a child, any child,

place him in an environment whose educational system

is controlled by individuals who identify themselves as Turks

(or any other nationality you care to mention)

and forever after that child will identify himself as a Turk.

*

It is a statistically and historically established fact

that when they first set foot on Armenian soil,

Turks (or rather, those who identified themselves as such)

were a minority.

It follows, after 600 years of co-existence and concubinage,

they are now very probably more Armenian than Turkish.

*

Wars and massacres are declared and committed

not by nations but by politicians and their brainwashed dupes.

All nations have such criminal gangs

and it would be the height of absurdity to assert

Armenians are an exception.

*

I am not denying the fact that

“Turks” massacred “Armenians.”

What I am saying is that criminals (and their victims)

will use any excuse to justify their actions

and prejudices respectively;

and to ascribe the crimes of a few

on the majority might as well be

a working definition of racism.

*

After writing these lines

I read the following by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“For what man who is master of himself

does not laugh at a king?”

Likewise, for what man who can think for himself

does not laugh at the likes of Kemal

in whose system of thought

Kurds are Mountain Turks and Armenians Christian Turks,

instead of human beings who happen to be living

in a territory called Turkey today

but was known by another label yesterday

and will be known by still another tomorrow?

#

Saturday, September 10, 2011

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

NOTES / COMMENTS

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

Between power and wisdom,

who will choose wisdom?

*

Birth is not a beginning

and death is not an end.

We think of them as such

because our perception of reality is limited.

In cosmic time, a lifetime is shorter

than a fraction of a second.

*

From the TALMUD:

“Who is rich?”

“He that rejoices in his portion.”

“Who is a hero?”

“He who conquers his urge.”

*

I like all sentences that begin with the words,

“It has been said.”

*

Lord Byron on Italy:

“They make love a good deal here,

and assassinate a little.”

*

On women:

“My wife is perfection itself – the best creature breathing.

But mind what I say – don’t marry.”

*

Camus on love:

“Loving a human being amounts to killing all others.”

*

“Les seuls paradis sont ceux qu’on a perdus.”

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 11, 2011

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

AS I SEE IT

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

All children believe in what adults tell them

especially in matters dealing with God and Country.

The world conspires to make us dupes;

and by the time we realize what happened

we have either killed or died as soldiers, terrorists,

and believers in false gods and big lies.

*

We are not smart – we never were

in things that really matter.

For 600 years we dropped our pants and exposed ourselves

to the Turks.

Tell me, my friend,

how smart is that?

*

The more we try to control events,

the deeper the realization of our powerlessness.

*

The source of all wisdom is within your subconscious,

very much like the Kingdom of God.

*

Strinberg: “Ever since childhood,

I have looked for God and found the Devil.”

Perhaps because they are one and the same.

Either that or our perception of reality is so defective

that we confuse one with the other.

*

The astonishing ease with which blessings become curses.

#

Monday, September 12, 2011

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

ON FREEDOM

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

Imperial powers prefer to deal with corrupt regimes

because the corrupt are more easily manipulated.

This is as true of America as it is of Russia.

Remember that next time you speak of our big brothers.

*

Freedom in a democratic context

means much more than free elections.

It means freedom from want,

freedom of expression,

freedom of assembly, movement, and faith.

Have we ever been free?

Do we know what freedom is?

Freedom to grow a fat belly – is that

the beginning and end of all freedom for us?

*

During the day they speechify

on freedom and patriotism,

on God and Country,

but at night they engage in wheeling-and-dealing.

Hence their favorite slogan, “Do as I say…”

#

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

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

CORRECT ME

IF I AM WRONG

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

On man’s inhumanity to man:

If you have ever asked yourself,

How can one human being do such a thing

to another human being?

My tentative answer is:

Some human beings cease to be human

when they join a party or group

that subscribes to a belief system.

*

They oppressed us with fire and sword.

We oppress ourselves with ignorance and intolerance.

The result is the same.

The massacre continues.

*

Even people who act in the name of the Devil say

“God is with us.”

*

To fanatics moderation is treason.

So is reason to the unthinking.

*

Freedom of speech allows the fanatic

to expose himself as a fool.

*

We should have a commandment

or a constitutional amendment to protect free speech

instead of a tacit consensus to violate it.

*

Memo to my anonymous critics:

Democracy and intolerance of dissent

are mutually exclusive concepts.

If I am wrong I can be corrected.

But if those in power are wrong

the damage can be as incalculable as another genocide.

#

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

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

CORRECT ME

IF I AM WRONG (II)

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

In theory we are all against the massacre

of unarmed and innocent civilians,

but give us a chance and we will gladly even the score

and call it justice.

This is only a guess, of course,

based on how mean we can be in disagreement.

*

To how many of my critics I could say:

“Don’t stop, please! Keep writing.

You are a living proof of everything

I have been saying about Armenians –

narrow-minded, rude, intolerant, ignorant, dogmatic,

self-satisfied, loud-mouth…”

*

God is not in the business of explaining the incomprehensible.

We must either find a meaning in our genocide

or dismiss it as incomprehensible.

By making of it a collective obsession

we accomplish nothing but reinforce our image

as perennial victims and losers.

As for justice: let’s leave that to belly-slitting lawyers –

we can afford them.

*

It was only after observing the ease with which

we are Americanized that I was able to identify

our Ottomanized and Sovietized brothers.

*

A peculiarity of dupes is that

they tend to take themselves and their views very seriously.

*

Let’s make one thing clear once and for all.

They did not divide and rule us.

We divided ourselves.

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 15, 2011

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

NARCISSISM

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

It is narcissism and nothing else

that allows a political leader to think

he is the best thing that happened to his nation…

until he is driven to exile,

or arrested, condemned to death, or assassinated.

There is probably more narcissism in politics

than in any other line of work.

*

It is narcissism and nothing else

that allows Turks to believe

our genocide is a fiction of our imagination.

Likewise it is narcissism of the most primitive kind

that allows us to think

we are smart and progressive

when the historic evidence proves otherwise.

*

It is narcissism and nothing else

that allows the very rich to behave like swine

and to believe they are la crème de la crème.

*

The astonishing ease with which both men and women

confuse an ephemeral infatuation with eternal love.

*

The rule is and must be

anything that flatters are vanity

should be dismissed as a lie.

#

Friday, September 16, 2011

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

THREE HEADLINES

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

The headline of a commentary in my morning paper reads:

“Canada’s self-image needs a reality check.”

There follows a list of misconceptions and fallacies

that have become common currency in Canada,

a country with a long democratic tradition and a free press.

You may now imagine the number of our own misconceptions

that have been consistently covered up

by our controlled press and authoritarians power structures.

*

The headline of another commentary on the same page reads:

“Is it time to rethink think tanks?”

Can we do that?

Do we have them?

There are 4500 active think tanks in the world,

we are informed here.

My question is:

Is any one of them Armenian?

*

In the section dealing with local news,

another headline reads:

“Region’s suicide rate still high.”

Do you know – does anyone know -- our own suicide rate?

Does anyone care to know?

#

Saturday, September 17, 2011

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

GANDHI

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

Gandhi was a double dissident –

critical of British colonialism

as well as many facets of Indian life.

In a new biography we are told:

“This made him a rather more balanced nationalist

than the many who remarked on the victimhood of their race

or argued for the superiority of their own culture.”

See Jad Adams, GANDHI:

THE TRUE MAN BEHIND MODERN INDIA

(New York, Pegasus, 2011, page 56).

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 18, 2011

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

THE GOOD BOOK

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

My ideas are subversive and dangerous?

What about the ideas in the Bible?

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“Without vision the people perish.”

“Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

“Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

The trouble with our censorship is that

its ultimate aim is to violate

not only my human right

but also God’s divine right of free speech.

#

Monday, September 19, 2011

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

AS I SEE IT

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

Divisions don’t bother me as much as

the lies that are spoken in their defense.

*

Liars don’t bother me as much as

their efforts to make you believe that

they believe in their own lies

and they expect you to do likewise.

*

I may consider making an effort to agree

with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors

on the day they make an effort

to agree with one another.

*

My answer to those who tell me

if I do this that and the other

I may be more popular:

My obscurity is too well established

to be vulnerable to any kind of

promotional or advertising campaign.

*

I have committed so many blunders

that I don’t deserve to live.

The only thing that keeps me going

is the fact that almost everyone I know

has committed worse blunders

yet nothing could be further from their thoughts

than suicide.

*

Instead of voicing your suspicions

redouble your vigilance.

#

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

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

OBSERVATIONS

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

He who violates my human right of free speech

is in no position to determine his degree of guilt or innocence.

If it were up to fascists to judge themselves,

they would be unanimous in pronouncing their victims guilty.

*

The sons and daughters of well-known Armenian writers

that I have met or heard from

prefer solitude to the proximity of their fellow Armenians.

That may be because they know something

most Armenians don’t -- namely: to survive

in our environment one must either lie

or be penalized for his honesty.

*

I repeat myself?

That may be because I am a bad writer

and you are a worse reader

for reading a writer who is not worth reading.

*

All problems and solutions begin and end

in the convolutions of our breains – which of course

does not apply to the brainless.

*

Love is the mightiest creative force of all

because it sees somebody in nobody

and meaning in the meanigless.

#

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

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

READING

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

Gerald Durrell’s memoir MY FAMILY

AND OTHER ANIMALS (1956) contains

a hilarious portrait of Gostan Zarian.

Gerald Durrell: not to be confused

with his better-known brother Lawrence

(THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET)

who also wrote extensively on Zarian.

*

A headline reads:

“Syria blames terrorists for country’s violence.”

The trick here is and it has always been,

to portray yourself as a victim even as you victimize.

*

In detective stories I am more interested in the dialogue

than the plot.

*

If only there were writers

who specialized in rewriting difficult texts –

Hegel rewritten by Chekhov.

*

Dupes hate critics.

They view criticism as enemy action.

*

Poetry, it has been said,

is when two words meet for the first time – as in

“fearful symmetry” (Blake) and “beeloud glade” (Yeats).

*

His handwriting is so bad that

his “morale” looks like “merde.”

*

I am a failure because my readers know better.

If only I could choose a different audience…

#

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, September 22, 2011

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

AS I SEE IT

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

It never ceases to amaze me

the greed with which we cling to the illusion

of our own importance no matter how often

we are exposed as irrelevant.

*

Our genocide?

The West wouldn’t allow it.

The recognition of our genocide?

If we write enough books,

produce enough eyewitness accounts,

and organize enough demonstrations,

the West may finally see the light.

*

Historic lands?

All of America is someone else’s historic land,

so what?

*

Perhaps truth or reality itself is a territory

beyond our comprehension,

and God Himself is the negation of the “I”

and everything connected with it.

*

If Calderon is right and “life is a dream,”

it may not even be our dream but someone else’s.

*

In my younger days our elder statesmen

would seek me out and give me advice – all of it useless.

*

History may become more comprehensible

if you think of serial killers as failed political leaders.

*

What if I am wrong?

I will be dead wrong on the day I assert infallibility.

#

Friday, September 23, 2011

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you search long enough for something

you are sure to find a substitute.

*

The more I deal with Turks

the more I like my fellow Armenians;

and the more I deal with Armenians

the better I understand Turks.

*

A writer is someone who has developed the art of speaking

even when he has nothing to say.

*

My mother believed what she read in the papers

except what I wrote.

*

Spengler: “The less one needs others,

the more powerful one is.”

*

My ambition in life when young:

To come to terms with death.

My ambition now:

to die in order to have the final answer

which may or may not exist.

*

There are no questions and answers in reality –

both begin and end in the convolutions of our brains.

*

We are told space must have an end.

We are also told space is being created

with the speed of light.

It follows, no matter how fast we travel

we will never see what’s on the other side of space.

*

Love means being always on the verge of tears.

Love feels as though your insides

were being surgically removed

without anaesthesia.

If you have not experienced love,

you don’t know bliss.

#

Saturday, September 24, 2011

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

SHRINKS

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

Almost everyone I have been reading about recently

has been analyzed. I have never been near an analyst

and I doubt very much if I ever will find myself

in the same room with one.

What could he tell me that I don’t already know?

And what could I tell him?

Where would I begin?

I am misunderstood and spat upon by hoodlums?

Who hasn’t been?

Homer, it is said, was kicked out of seven villages,

all of which, after he died, claimed to be his birthplace.

To this day no one knows where he was born or,

for that matter, buried.

#

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, September 25, 2011

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

CONTRADICTIONS

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

They fascinate me and I see them everywhere.

AVANIM (Stones) an Israeli film

whose unstated but clearly implied moral is:

Rabbis may be as much of a threat to the survival of Israel

as Palestinians.

*

Search for the enemy within and you will find him.

*

They may talk of God

but the means they employ belong to the Devil.

This is as true of rabbis as it is of imams and popes.

*

They may praise rebirth and resurrection

but what they promote is death of the spirit.

*

DECEPTION

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

What could be easier than deceiving children?

And are not adults children is disguise?

Do we ever give up – are we capable of giving up --

childhood illusions?

Are we not our own most gullible dupes?

*

A GOOD ANSWER

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

When asked if Cary Grant was homosexual or bisexual,

one of his wives (he had five of them) is reported to have replied:

“I was too busy f***ing him to ask.”

There should be a Nobel Prize for the best remark of the year.

#

Monday, September 26, 2011

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

REFLECTIONS

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

Most of my life I kept my thoughts to myself

out of fear of offending men in positions of power.

I was a coward but refused to admit it.

I behaved like a fool and thought I was wise.

Nothing comes more easily than to preach heroism

and to promote cowardice

in the name of tradition, law and order,

respect for authority, and countless other

fictional considerations.

*

If you are a fool

do not attempt to share your wisdom

with better men than yourself.

*

Are you wise or brave enough to admit

you are a fool?

*

To the rich, money is the quintessence of all wisdom.

*

Between the virtues of the rich

and the vices of the poor,

which would you choose?

*

The criticism of idiots

is more of a testimonial than an indictment.

*

More important than education itself is

who does the educating.

#

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

To know perfection

we must first experience the degradation

of life on earth.

Heaven will not be heaven for me

if I can’t play the Beethoven Sonatas like Schnabel

and Bach like Glen Gould.

*

Anonymity will make a hero out of a zero.

*

Promises are one thing, delivery another.

The two might as well be strangers to one another.

*

Whenever I see an odar

joining one of our discussion forums on the internet

I would like to post the following message:

"Welcome to this forum, dear friend.

Please remember to ignore the hooligans among us.

They represent no one but themselves."

*

It must be obvious by now that

one doesn’t have to be a Turk in order to behave like one.

Nothing comes easier to an Ottomanized Armenian

than to behave like a Turk with the certainty that

he is discharging his duty as a patriotic Armenian.

The same applies to Sovietized Armenians.

#

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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

TWO PHILOSOPHERS

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

Once, when after a loud argument,

Socrates’ wife poured a pail of dirty water on his head,

he said: “It generally rains after thunder.”

More recently, while massaging his wife’s neck,

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) strangled her,

he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

Women disappoint men

because they find men disappointing.

*

The difference between dialogue and Armenian arguments is that

the aim of the first is synthesis or consensus,

the aim of the second is verbal assassination.

*

Gide: “Le plus grand bonheur, après que d’aimer,

c’est de confesser son amour.”

*

Valery: “Combien de gens meurent dans les accidents,

pour ne pas lacher leur parapluis!”

#