as i see it - Pt. IV

ara baliozian · December 15, 2012

Thursday, December 13, 2012**************************************** IF…************* Some of the greatest Irish writers, among them Oscar Wilde, G.B. Shaw, and James Joyce, wrote not in Gaelic but in English. What would have happened if Armenian writers in the Ottoman Empire had written in Turkish? My guess is (one) they would now have many more readers; (two) at least one of them would be a Nobel Prize winner; (three) they would have been translated into many languages; (four) their life and work would have been the subject of numerous biographies and monographs in several languages; and last but not least (5) since half of Turkey is very probably half-Armenian, millions of Armenians would now be identified not as Christian Turks but as Muslim Armenians. *Treason, you say? Listen to James Joyce: “Ireland is the old sow [pig] that eats her farrow [babies].” And if you say Armenians are more civilized than that, I say: Compared to Irish literature, Armenian literature is a nightmare of neglect, degradation, betrayal, exile, and murder.#Friday, December 14, 2012************************************* SLOGANS******************** After the collapse of the USSR, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians were ruthless in their treatment of their Russian citizens. Chechens and Georgians went further and declared war on Russia.We did nothing of the kind on the grounds that we need them more than they need us.*If true it is also true that what we don’t need is their kind of oligarchy, plutocracy, larceny, corruption, and contempt for democracy and human rights, which may be at the root of our exodus or “white massacre.” If you can’t see this clearly it may be because you are capable in thinking only in terms of cheap slogans and recycled enemy propaganda. *Once upon a time we had chic Bolsheviks in America who parroted the Kremlin line “The Russians are our Big Brothers.” The USSR has collapsed, our chic Bolsheviks have been silenced, but Stalin lives. *To the simple-minded who can think only in terms of slogans, how about this one?“Russia, yes. Russian shit, no!”*Have you noticed that the dumbest Armenians are Armenians who have assessed themselves as smart?#Saturday, December 15, 2012*************************************** DIARY**************** In the latest edition of BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS I find half a page dedicated to Raymond Chandler. Now that’s what I call progress. On the negative side, there are several pages of T.S. Eliot quotations most of which are neither familiar nor accessible to a layman like me. Armenians are mention only once in a single line – Hitler’s.*On our tombstone I suggest the following inscription: “They tried everything but solidarity.” Or “They refused to learn from their mistakes which they were careful never to acknowledge.”*We have played minor supporting roles on the stage of world history and we have invariably supported our butchers and executioners. *All the political policies we have adopted and implemented have been driven by death wish. What was done to us is only half the story.*Jose Ortega y Gasset must have had us in mind when he said: “A society without an aristocracy, without an elite, is not a society.”*We live in a world where genocide is easier to cover up than murder.#

ara baliozian · December 19, 2012

Sunday, December 16, 2012************************************* ANTI-PROPAGANDA******************************** Kafka in his DIARY: “What have I in common with Jews?” If you have ever asked the same question in reference to your fellow countrymen, welcome to the club. *Biologically speaking, we are as much Christian Turks as they are Muslim Armenians. *An Armenian who says he loves his fellow Armenians is either a liar or William Saroyan. *Michael (GREEN HAT) Arlen put it best when he said to his son Michael (PASSAGE TO ARARAT) Arlen: “Armenians are lovely people but stay away from them.” *An Armenian who hates his fellow Armenians can’t be all bad. *An Armenian doesn’t want to know. He wants to know better for purely one-upmanship reasons. *If ever I go back to writing fiction I will remember to use the line: “I am proud to my Armenian ancestry, said Kurdoglnanian.” *Propaganda moronizes even the smartest. Hence the phenomenon of a smart Armenianwho voices views and opinions worthy of a retard. *In both the Ottoman Empire and the USSR we were brainwashed to believe we lived in the best of all possible worlds. Are things much different in America today? *History does not repeat itself. It stays the same. *My ambition: to say what everybody knows but doesn’t want to admit it.*Beware of good Armenians. Some of my worst enemies are Armenians who think they are better Armenians.#Monday, December 17, 2012*************************************** AS I SEE IT*********************** The homeless, the hungry, the unemployed: let others look after them. We prefer bloodsuckers, thieves, deceivers, and fugitives from justice. *To meet an Armenian is to meet a foreigner. *Kachaturian in music, Zarian in literature. If the first is better known it’s because he wrote dances and lullabies. *If the Turk that resides within us and the Turk who lives in Turkey were to meet, they wouldn’t recognize each other. *No Armenian can be as ignorant as the Armenian who pretends to know all there is to know about Armenians. *We have probably invented and spoken more lies about ourselves than all other nations combined. *Power corrupts. So does weakness. We are a proof of that. *A reader writes: “You don’t know what you are saying. I visited Armenia recently and everybody I met was nice.” Behold the birth of an expert!*Sooner or later all closed systems of thought are perverted. If they preach love, they practice hatred. If they preach peace, they go on the warpath. If they preach love of country,they practice hatred of fellow countrymen.#Tuesday, December 18, 2012************************************ MEMO TO A WRITER****************************** You want to play it safe? Easy! Write about nightingales serenading the moon and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. Consider all other subjects as no-man’s land that you enter at your own risk.*For most of my life I could not tell the difference between subservience and respect for authority. I recycled chauvinist crap with a clear conscience. I thought of myself as a future role model and not as a brown-noser and a coward. I trusted my elders. I surrendered my mind and soul to them the way my predecessors trusted theirs to the Sultan and Stalin.*A line worth remembering: “In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.”*In both capitalism and communism the only thing you really own is your death.#Wednesday, December 19, 2012******************************************** TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY************************************** What I have been trying to explain, without much success it seems, is that unlike tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes our misfortunes were not one-sided affairs. It wasn’t all the Sultan’s or Stalin’s fault. We had something to do with them if only because we didn’t see them coming; or rather, we didn’t want to see them, and “to the blind everything is sudden.” *Until we realize and admit the extent of our contribution to our misfortunes, defeats, and catastrophes we condemn ourselves to understand nothing about the world in which we live, our enemies, and ultimately ourselves. *Is there anything we could have done to prevent any one of our tragedies? Strike that question. Let us ask instead, is there anything we can do today to minimize the damage perpetrated by the “white massacre” (namely, exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)? Because if there is and so far we have done nothing, it follows we are at the mercy of men who are not just incompetent and corrupt but also our worst enemies. *Speaking of earthquakes: I remember an American pundit saying “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do;” and a Soviet bureaucrat from Moscow (with an Armenian surname) on TV explaining the Earthquake in Armenia with the words: “We don’t control building codes in the republics.” They control every single line published in newspapers and periodicals but not building codes that may kill thousands.#

ara baliozian · December 22, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

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

ON SUBSERVIENCE…

AMONG OTHER THINGS.

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

Subservience is subservience no matter how you slice it.

It makes no difference whether you are subservient

to a Turk, Russian, or any one

of our bosses, bishops, or benefactors.

The free Armenian who is neither alienated nor assimilated

is an absurdity, he doesn’t exist,

he is a fiction of someone fertile imagination.

An Armenian needs his subservience

the way others need their freedom.

*

To be a good Armenian means

to recycle the propaganda line

of a dogmatic ideology, orthodoxy or mafia

even when the propaganda line happens to be

no better than verbal vomit.

*

“This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,”

translated into Armenian reads:

“This is the beginning of a lifelong feud.”

*

To be a Turk to Turks:

that’s the secret ambition of Armenians

who are proud to identify themselves as patriotic Armenians.

*

As far as I know no Armenian poet has ever written a poem

titled “To my sweet fellow Armenians.”

#

Friday, December 21, 2012

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

THE UGLY ARMENIAN

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

If you are an Armenian from the Middle East

don’t read what follows.

It may not be flattering to your colossal ego.

*

An Armenian from the Middle East

knows all there is to know about

Armenians, Turks, Jews, Arabs, and Americans.

What he doesn’t know can’t be worth knowing.

He is born to explain, not to understand.

As a result, on the day he dies

he will be as ignorant as on the day he was born.

*

I have no doubt whatever in my mind

there are Armenians from the Middle East

who know their limitations

but I have yet to meet one.

*

One difference between Armenians and Americans is that

Americans have published a best-selling book

titled THE UGLY AMERICAN.

*

Between a general who is caught in adultery

and another who burns down and levels

towns and villages in distant places,

I am all for dedicating a monument in a city park

to the fornicator.

*

Say yes or no but always leave some room

for the unknown and the unknowable

because that’s God’s dwelling place.

*

Propaganda flatters, therefore it is wrong.

As yanks are fond of saying after delivering a cliché,

“That’s my philosophy.”

*

Dogmatic assertions can’t be right

because they demand not only agreement

but also subservience.

*

At the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire

we were paranoids in reverse – we saw friends everywhere

but didn’t see the mortal enemy next door.

#

Saturday, December 22, 2012

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

WHY I AM AGAINST PATRIOTISM

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

First and foremost because

some of the worst crimes against humanity

were committed in the name of patriotism.

*

Patriotism means to place more value

on a fraction of mankind than on mankind as a whole.

*

To be a patriot means to trust the judgment and integrity

of politicians, that is to say, individuals

that history has exposed again and against

as habitual and compulsive liars.

*

To trust habitual and compulsive liars means

to abdicate not only one’s responsibility

but also logic, common sense and decency.

That is to say, to be not human but subhuman –

a dupe, a vessel of lies and prejudices whose aim is

not to enhance life but death.

*

To be a patriot means to admit

our understanding of reality is so limited and defective

that we need others to tell us what to think and understand

even when these others are corrupt and incompetent,

that is to say, no better than the rest of us.

*

Patriotism can’t be right if only because

everybody says my patriotism is better than yours

and no one has ever said my patriotism is second class

but yours is first class.

*

Speaking as an Armenian I could go on and say

I have 1,500,000 more reasons but I doubt very much

if that will convince any one of our patriots

to give up his patriotism.

It may even have the opposite effect.

#

ara baliozian · December 27, 2012

Sunday, December 23, 2012

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

HISTORY

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

What do we really know about our past

and more particularly about the 600 years

in the Ottoman Empire

that preceded the Genocide?

We know that we coexisted with the Turks

very much like our concubines in their harems,

our janissaries in their armies

and our ablest men in their bureaucracy.

Our patriarch in Istanbul was the Sultan’s tax collector.

We know that some Armenians prospered

and others led a subhuman existence

very much like the Untouchables in India,

the Blacks in America,

the serfs in Russia,

and the very poor in England

(as anyone who has read Dickens knows).

What changed was the fact that

the children of prosperous Armenians

were sent to Europe to complete their education

and discovered a new life there.

They wanted more freedom and power

and were encouraged in their ambition by the West.

Our teenagers confused Europe’s verbal support

with military intervention and that was a fatal error

for which the people paid dearly.

Our revolutionaries were our “best and brightest”

very much like “the best and brightest” who justified

the American involvement in Vietnam.

With one important difference.

Whereas the Yanks are smart enough and secure enough

to admit their blunders (see McNamara’s memoirs on the subject)

we are too self-righteous, stubborn, and dogmatic to do so.

As a result the offspring of our revolutionaries

(or should I say blunderers) continue to portray themselves

as dedicated patriots who can do no wrong –

very much like their counterparts,

the Kemalists, in Turkey.

#

Monday, December 24, 2012

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

REALITY

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

Reality is too big and complex a concept

to be grasped by a single mind, or, for that matter,

a single school of thought, ideology, religion,

political party or propaganda line.

*

After thousands of years of philosophical speculation

and scientific research we can’t even answer

the simplest of all questions – such as,

why things exist.

*

When one or both sides assert Truth or God

is on their side, paralysis is sure to follow.

The problem with Armenians and Turks is that

both their educational systems are politically controlled;

and when dupes meet

they can only parrot a propaganda line,

and two divergent propaganda lines can never meet.

#

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

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

HUMBUG

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

He who says we need solutions to our problems

is a humbugger engaged in humbuggery.

You want solutions?

Read our writers beginning with Khorenatsi’s LAMENTATION.

You want the kind of leader who will guide us

out of the mess we are in?

Read philosophers from Plato to Sartre.

Even better, read the Scriptures

where you may even find a self-portrait.

*

“Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

*

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit

is a fool that repeats his folly.”

*

“Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?

There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

*

“He who despises the word will die.”

*

“A poor man is better than a liar.”

*

“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity

than a man who is perverse in speech and is a fool.”

*

“A fool’s mouth is his ruin,

and his lips are a snare to himself.”

*

“He who states his case first seems right,

until the other comes and [cross-] examines him.”

*

“No respect is shown to the elders.

Woe to us, for we have sinned!

For this our heart has become sick,

and our eyes have grown dim.”

*

Dim?

Make it blind.

And when the blind lead the blind…”

So much for our bosses, bishops, benefactors

and their dupes

who believe we are in the best of hands.

#

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

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

ON REVOLUTION

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

The French Revolution succeeded

because it was an essentially French affair –

French citizens against a French king.

The Russian Revolution succeeded for similar reasons.

The American Revolution succeeded

because it was a WASP uprising

against a distant WASP monarch.

Our revolution failed because we made demands

on an alien despot who was the political

as well as religious head of a disintergating empire.

*

To use the words of one of elder statesmen,

we weren’t just “a frog trying to rape an elephant,”

we were “infidel dogs” trying to f*ck “a wounded tiger.”

To paraphrase Voltaire,

and because it was a religious

as well as apolitical confrontation,

there were very few survivors.

*

This was clearly seen by foreign observers, diplomats,

and missionaries as well as our own bureaucrats

within the Ottoman administration,

but our revolutionaries chose to ignore their warnings.

*

But perhaps the most important difference

between our revolution and the others mentioned above

is the fact that ours was not a popular uprising;

but the uprising of a non-representative minority

within an ethnic minority --

in view of the fact that most Armenians within the Empire

were illiterate and lacked political awareness.

*

For more on this subject see

Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY

IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993),

and my DEFINITIONS: A CRITICAL COMPANION

TO ARMENIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE (Kitchener, 1998).

#

Thursday, December 27, 2012

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

YESTERDAY & TODAY

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

In America, yesterday’s hippies have become

today’s bankers and CEOs.

Something similar has happened to our revolutionaries:

yesterday’s idealists have become today’s businessmen.

*

“America’s business is business,”

a famous American once said.

More recently an even more famous American

(President John F. Kennedy) called businessmen sons of bitches.

The full quotation reads:

“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches

but I never believed it till now.”

(See BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS, 2012 edition, page 786.)

*

One of our elder statesmen from the Middle East once told me:

Whenever the old revolutionaries met

with their younger counterparts,

they (the old) were treated liked losers and figures of fun.

*

Until our music and architecture acquire

the purity and universality of their medieval ancestors,

I will continue to think of Armenians

as Levantinized and Sovietized mongrels

or “Oreo” Armenians – that is,

Armenians on the outside,

Arabs, Turks, Russians, and Yanks on the inside.

*

Don’t think of honesty as a finished product

but as a work in progress – as a goal towards which

we either advance or retreat.

And so far I see nothing but retreat.

#

ara baliozian · December 29, 2012

Friday, December 28, 2012

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

TO MY SWEET FELLOW ARMENIANS

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

To how many of my fellow countrymen I could say:

“You are Armenian.

I am Armenian.

Therefore we have nothing in common.”

*

After Obama won the election

a young woman in the South was so angry that

when she found out her husband had not voted,

she ran him over with her SUV.”

My first thought on reading this story in my morning paper:

“She must have had some Armenian blood in her veins.”

Or, as Turgenev (who despised Dostoevky) would say,

“Straight out of Dostoevsky.”

*

Another story told by a Canadian-Armenian woman:

“I once met two elegantly dressed ladies in a supermarket

speaking Armenian. I approached them and said in Armenian:

‘You are Armenian?’ They immediately took a step backward

as if I were suffering from a contagious disease.”

And I remember to have thought:

They must have been from the Middle East,

who knew instinctively there is no such thing

as a friendly Armenian without ulterior motives.

*

Sometimes I am told I am consistently negative

about my fellow Armenians.

Others tell me I should write more like Saroyan

who despised his wife (whom he married twice)

and both his children.

#

Saturday, December 29, 2012

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

TWO GENOCIDES

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

There are two genocides in our past

and the first one lasted 600 years

during which they re-created us in their own image.

I repeat, there are two genocides –

the remembered one and the unremembered or ignored one.

The documented and exposed one,

and the covered up and forgotten.

*

There is an entire library of material on the second genocide;

not even a whisper on the first.

No one can be as blind as the man who refuses to see.

Our blindness is a self-induced condition.

It is a blindness planned, organized, and implemented

by the pornography of our own phony patriotism and propaganda.

*

If we refuse to see the obvious

it’s because we are as guilty as the perpetrators.

We did not shape our history.

History shaped us.

And what shaped us more than any event or factor

is 600 years of subservience.

*

Nothing degrades and corrupts a man more

than subservience to a morally corrupt power.

Such subservience is worse than suicide.

In suicide only the body is killed.

In subservience, the spirit.

*

In the second genocide only our bodies were slaughtered.

In the first, our spirit.

Turks re-created us in their own image as surely

as God is said to have created us in His.

*

The 11th Commandment should read:

“Thou shalt not be subservient to any man.”

The Turks have programmed us to hate our fellow Armenians.

The massacre continues.

#

ara baliozian · January 2, 2013

Sunday, December 30, 2012

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

IN BRIEF

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

A party of truth cannot survive

Without a big lie.

*

If you can’t throw the bums out

you can change nothing.

*

If the Pope is a crook

can his bishops be honest men?

*

As long as we remain divided

the Sultan continues to rule.

*

We agree only on one thing,

to remain divided.

*

Turks conquered Armenia

not after winning a war

but after we lost many small battles.

*

A member of a party is like a dog

who knows his master

but not his master’s master.

*

A religious leader

is a religious leader

regardless of belief system.

A politician is a politician

regardless of nationality.

Believe nothing they say.

#

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

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

AS I SEE IT

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

Never underestimate the cunning of your adversary

especially if you have been moronized into thinking

you are smart.

*

I rate understanding above hating the enemy.

I believe the more we understand

the closer we get to God,

including the God who stood by and did nothing

to stop the massacre of the innocent.

*

We have been shaped by our mountains and valleys,

and where there are no mountains we raise them;

and where there are no valleys, we dig them.

*

Let Americans speak of the American dream;

we can only speak of the nightmares we must avoid.

*

Teach yourself to say and repeat:

God did not make me a dupe;

I chose to be one.

*

In politics a whore has a better chance to succeed than a virgin.

A bordello madam would make an ideal candidate.

#

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

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

BON APPETIT

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

Let the world celebrate the New Year;

I have more important fish to fry –

and today I propose to fry our revolutionaries.

*

When revolutionaries become politicians

they turn into cannibals.

This is what happened in France;

this is what happened in Russia;

and this is what’s happening with us.

Hence Zarian’s dictum:

“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.

*

Among Armenians it is impossible to be

a member of a political party

without being a moronized fanatic.

There are so many lies to swallow

and so many blunders to cover up!

*

Consider the Ottoman Bank caper as a case in point.

As a child I was brainwashed to believe

it was a major coup even though our “heroes” survived

and the people paid a heavy price –

as many as 4000 innocent civilians (some say 6000)

were brutally massacred in retaliation.

*

I was led to believe it was a major success

because the whole world learned about our plight.

In other words, it was a success as a publicity stunt.

We raised the consciousness of the world.

And what did the world do

in the catastrophe that followed?

Nothing!

What is the world doing today a hundred years later?

Even President Obama is afraid to use the “G” word.

Some success!

Some publicity stunt!

#

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

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

“AGHBER”

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

“You are a disgrace to the nation.”

“Was your grandmother a Turkish whore?”

“Why are you single? Are you a homosexual?”

“How much are they paying you to write as you do?”

“You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!”

“You are a tavajan.”

“Nobody reads you any more. So why don’t you shut up?”

“Nobody gives a damn what you think.”

“You call yourself an Armenian?”

*

No! As a matter of fact I don’t.

I do my utmost to avoid labels.

First and foremost I identify myself

as a human being,

and I consider all other identifications

accidents of history.

Let others use them like flags

with which to cover their nakedness.

#

ara baliozian · January 5, 2013

Thursday, January 03, 2013

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

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

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

Turks read and quote me?

Let them!

I refuse to join a conspiracy of silence

by writing about “nightingales serenading

the moon and the stars” (Leo).

*

If we are the mercy of “Turks who speak Armenian fluently,”

(according to one of our elder statesmen)

who will benefit by my silence?

If we are experiencing another genocide (“sbidak chart”) –

that is to say, exodus from the Homeland

and assimilation in the Diaspora –

will my silence slow down or accelerate the process?

If in the eyes of our “betters”

we are no better than garbage (“aghber”) and “shits,”

I see nothing questionable in pointing out the fact that,

very much like the rest of us,

they could be wrong.

*

If the Turks know us better than we know ourselves –

after all, it was they who initiated and implemented

a policy of “divide and rule” --

what’s new in what I have been saying?

*

I don’t adjust what I think and write

to please this or that imaginary audience.

I deal with facts.

I deal with reality.

I don’t control reality.

I try to understand it.

*

When told to give them hell,

Truman is quoted as having said:

“I don’t do that. I speak the truth

and they think they are in hell.”

If that’s good enough for an American presidential candidate,

it ought to be good enough for a minor Armenian scribbler.

*

Covering up the blunders of our political and religious leaders

has nothing to do with patriotism

and everything to do with subservience and cowardice.

#

Friday, January 04, 2013

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

THROW THE BUMS OUT

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

People don’t divide themselves; leaders do –

political leaders in cahoots with religious leaders;

bosses and bishops.

and what motivates them is not love of God or Truth

but lust for power.

*

They say they divide us in the name of dogmas

that are far more important

than the survival of the nation

and the welfare of the people.

If you believe that

you will believe anything.

*

All politicians are compulsive and habitual liars

who promise heaven and deliver hell.

Only the brainwashed take them seriously

and a brainwashed Armenian is a moronized dupe

who believes he cannot be fooled

because he is smart.

Smart when it comes to selling Oriental rugs, maybe;

but a damn fool when it comes to politics, certainly!

*

To divide and undermine the integrity of the nation

is enemy action, therefore treason.

*

The ideal dupe is a child that cannot yet think for himself.

Hence schools run by political parties

on the theory that once brainwashed always a dupe.

There it is, an outline of our central problem.

The solution is obvious

and if you can’t see it it’s because you have been “educated”

to be blind. And when “the blind lead the blind

both shall fall into the ditch.”

#

Saturday, January 05, 2013

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

ON PROPAGANDA

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

Propaganda dehumanizes as well as

moronizes its dupes.

*

The difference between someone

who thinks for himself

and another who recycles propaganda is that

the first is a human being, therefore fallible,

and the second is a parrot

who has no conception of right and wrong

and is therefore infallible.

I speak from experience.

I was brought up as a parrot

and remained one for most of my life.

*

One way to tell the difference

between a parrot and a human being

is by their vocabulary.

Parrots read from the same script,

deliver the same line,

and use similar phrases, expressions and verbal formulas,

one of them being:

“We owe our continued existence

to our heroic freedom fighters;

if it weren’t for them

there would be no Armenia today.”

*

Our Stalinists could say the same thing

with one significant difference.

Whereas we know 350,000 Armenian boys died

during World War II fighting the Germans,

we have no idea how many freedom fighters died

in World War I.

If that is a state secret

there must be a good reason for it.

What is the reason?

I ask because I don’t know.

As always I have more questions than answers.

*

Why is it that we know the number of innocent civilians

that were slaughtered in 1915

but we don’t know the number of our heroes that fell?

*

In the Ottoman Bank caper

about a dozen heroes took part

and about four perished;

we also know that about 4000 (some say 6000)

innocent civilians were slaughtered in retaliation.

The ratio here is 1000 civilians to one freedom fighter.

Next question: does this ratio hold true

for the next chapter of our history?

Again I have more questions than answers

and as always I look forward to being enlightened.

#

ara baliozian · January 9, 2013

Sunday, January 06, 2013

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

WORK WITH ME

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

“What motivates you to write as you do

is self-hatred.”

There is some truth in that;

but hatred only of my former self

when I was a dupe and believed everything I was told

by my elders.

*

“How dare you blame the victims?”

I blame them only in so far as they allow themselves

to be victimized all over again by charlatans

who speak in the name of God and Country

but whose first and most important priority

is their own powers and privileges.

*

“You are an enemy of the nation.”

An enemy yes, but only of perennial losers

who speak with a forked tongue

and have consistently refused to learn from their blunders.

An enemy to them certainly,

but the best of friend to the ignorant,

the oppressed, the dupe,

and the slave who have been subservient

to brutal tyrants for so many centuries

that they can’t imagine

what it means to be free.

*

“I believe nothing you say!”

That’s because very much like me

you were “educated” to place your trust

on our dividers, that is to say gravediggers

who pretend to be unaware of the fact that

by dividing the community and the nation

they carry on a policy initiated and implemented

by sultans and commissars.

*

“Sometimes I have no idea what you blabber about endlessly.”

I can give you arguments,

cite historic precedents,

quote an international array of pundits, intellectuals, philosophers,

and even our own writers on our character as a people…

I can do all that and more

but what I cannot do is

give you understanding.

#

Monday, January 07, 2013

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

REFLECTIONS

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

If I were to use a less rude and crude style of writing

when dealing with our foibles and failures

would I have a better chance of convincing some of my readers

that they are brainwashed dupes?

Maybe. I am not sure.

But I am sure of one thing.

It would be unspeakable arrogance on my part

to think I can say something that hasn’t been said before

by far better men than myself.

*

If I write the way I write it may be because

deep inside somewhere I have given up.

If 1500 years of literature failed to change a single iota

in our collective existence what chance do I have?

Think of what I write as another lamentation –

the lamentation of an unbeliever or an atheist

who believes in god but a god

who is unknowable and incomprehensible

and wants to stay that way.

*

I believe the best argument against the existence of god

is organized religions.

I know now that even if I were to speak

with the tongue of angels and prophets

I would make no difference because an Armenian

is first and foremost an impenetrable wall.

#

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

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

ARMENIANS AND JEWS

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

No one is beyond salvation.

But my guess is

if 1500 years of literature failed to save us,

only a messiah may have a better chance.

*

I once heard an Armenian lady say:

“I don’t care what everyone says.

Jesus was not a Jew but an Armenian.

They crucified him;

we were the first to accept him.”

*

A Jewish friend once said to me:

“You are lucky. Only Turks are after your ass.

The whole world is after ours.”

*

As a young man Zarian had messianic ambitions.

But in America they spread the rumor

that he was a madman.

In Armenia they silenced him.

We did not crucify him.

We buried him alive.

*

I once heard an Armenian Negro –

that’s right: a black Armenian from Africa

who spoke Armenian fluently say:

“Jews have a superior mutual support system.”

That’s common knowledge of course.

It is also common knowledge that

we speak about it all the time,

but nobody does a damn thing.

Talk is cheap.

Actions may boomerang.

*

Suppose a bishop were to sermonize on unity,

a member of the congregation would be justified in asking:

“Would you consider resigning your position

for the sake of unity?”

*

Some Armenians –

especially Armenians from the Middle East –

see Jews everywhere.

By contrast I see Armenians everywhere.

Officially there are no more than

a dozen Armenian families where I live

(population 500,000).

But whenever I open the telephone book

I see an Armenian on every page.

*

Our chief of police is an Armenian.

For many years our orchestral conductor

was also an Armenian.

I once wrote him a letter asking

if he would be willing to be interviewed –

that’s when I contributed regularly to several weeklies.

There was no reply.

#

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

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

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW

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

All dupes identify themselves as patriots

and all idiots like to be called smart.

And that’s exactly what propaganda does:

it flatters as it moronizes.

*

I am not smart.

I just deviated from the conventional and narrow path

by a fraction of an inch and saw a different horizon.

*

An Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk.

If all Turks were to disappear tomorrow,

nothing would change.

*

If there are no atheists in foxholes it’s because

in foxholes one becomes a target of the unpredictable,

that is to say the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable,

which is as good a definition of God as any.

*

If “taxation without representation is tyranny,”

fund-raising without accounting is larceny.

*

The ambition of every sardine is to be a shark.

*

On the day I realized I could say what I think

(as opposed to parroting a propaganda line)

I felt as though I had discovered a new continent.

*

The only thing our political leaders have learned from history

is how to create a new generation of dupes and idiots.

#

ara baliozian · January 12, 2013

Thursday, January 10, 2013

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

SURVIVORS

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

To understand history

you must first understand the history of historians

and their criteria for selecting facts.

*

The Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse:

a regime of degenerate sultans,

ruthless bloodthirsty buggers

clinging to power by massacring innocent civilians

by the thousand.

Can you imagine anything more repulsive? –

except perhaps a regime of former KGB agents.

*

It is to be noted that sultans were both

political as well as religious leaders --

the equivalent of emperors and popes.

My question is:

why would a religious leader need a harem

of a thousand concubines most of them,

like himself, the offspring of “infidel dogs"?

*

The hardest thing in the world:

to be an Armenian without making enemies.

The easiest: to make enemies –

enemies who have no interest in understanding

what you are saying and why you are saying it.

What they hate more than anything else, it seems,

is your right to say what you think.

*

We fool ourselves when we say we are survivors.

The real survivors are the Sultan and Stalin.

#

Friday, January 11, 2013

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

NATIONAL HONOR

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

When was the last time any one of our former KGB agents in the Homeland

and merchants in the Diaspora dared to utter the words “national honor”?

*

Thomas Jefferson: “Merchants have no country.

The mere spot they stand on

does not constitute so strong an attachment

as that from which they draw their gains.”

*

Now listen to our Raffi

saying the same thing with fewer words:

“Merchants are men without a country.

Profit is their only homeland.”

*

Instead of Goya Aivazovsky;

and instead of Shostakovich, Khachatourian.

*

Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible

than ignorance in action.”

*

If I am a second-rater it may be because

our first-raters have been systematically silenced

by KGB agents and merchants.

Armenian literature has been an endless war on two friends.

*

They don’t like what I say

because I don’t write what they think.

They think?

Strike that.

Make it, “they think they think.”

*

They resent me because I refuse to behave

like their unpaid secretary

taking down their unspoken words.

*

An American on America,

a Russian on Russia,

a German on Germany:

Don’t expect to hear the truth unless of course

they are dissidents:

Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Mann.

#

Saturday, January 12, 2013

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

FASCISTS

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

When Hitler lost World War II

he blamed it on the German people.

That’s the way it is with all fascists –

they never make mistakes.

*

When Romney lost the election

he at no time blamed it on his ineptitude

and verbal blunders.

*

To this day our own revolutionaries expect us to believe

their operation was a success even if the patient died.

*

Turks worship Kemal and they have every right to:

after degenerate sultans any half-assed boozer and fornicator

would be seen as a great statesman worthy of universal adulation.

*

The common language of all political leaders is the same –

propaganda, based on the assumption that

the masses are so dumb that they will believe

anything they are told.

*

To this day Jews believe they are the Chosen;

Brits believe they were born to civilize the rest of the world;

and Armenians believe they are smart.

*

Speaking for myself:

I believe only idiots fall for a propaganda line

that flatters their vanity.

On the day this is understood,

mankind will be born again.

#

ara baliozian · January 16, 2013

Sunday, January 13, 2013

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

ACTION

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

We didn’t have to rise against the Sultan

to topple him: the Young Turks were going to do that for us.

As for the Young Turks:

Kemal was going to deal with them

in his own time.

And Kemal had his own nemesis and killer: booze.

*

We were wrong again when more recently

we adopted Palestinians as our role models

and engaged in random acts of assassination.

*

When I say “we” I don’t mean the majority of the people

who after long centuries of subservience under brutal tyrants

learned to wait, but a non-representative group

of self-appointed “freedom fighters”

(in their own version of the story)

and terrorists (as others, not all of them odar, saw them).

*

For once history was on our side

but we were too blind to see it;

and “when the blind lead the blind…”

*

Moral: Sometimes inaction is the best action.

*

Moral II: “Nothing can be as terrible

as ignorance in action.”

#

Monday, January 14, 2013

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

RECAPITULATING

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

In politics and diplomacy

objective judgment is better than emotional involvement.

The Brits are right: there are no friends and enemies in politics;

only interests.

*

Anger is a short madness.

So is hatred and in general all emotions

that cloud and distort one’s judgment.

*

There are two kinds of leaders:

the competent and the incompetent.

Avedik Issahakian is right:

we have been cursed with earthquakes,

a bad neighborhood, and fools as leaders.

*

The astonishing ease with which a fool

will convince himself or

allow himself to be brainwashed to believe

he is smart.

*

Memo to our leaders:

Unless you study history and learn from your blunders,

you will be a curse not a blessing to you nation.

*

Our enemies, our real enemies are

neither Turks nor Russians

but Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians.

*

Q: The brainwashed: are they men or apes?

A: Apes who speak like parrots.

*

In an article dealing with the leadership

of native Indians in Canada I read the following words

in this morning’s paper:

“mismanagement, misappropriation, incompetence

and poor accountability.”

Poor Indians.

Poor Armenians.

#

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

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

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

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

All power structures engage in propaganda,

including the Catholic Church.

As a child I once met Cardinal Aghajanian

who handled Vatican’s propaganda department–

identified as “propagation of the faith.”

He was a sweet old man,

all smiles and small talk.

*

The aim of propaganda is to legitimize

political gangsterism

by moronizing the masses.

Like all Armenians I have been exposed

to my share of speechifiers

who engaged in partisan propaganda.

It didn’t even occur to me to question their integrity.

*

Propaganda and commercial advertising

might as well be twins.

The aim of advertising is to sell more products

by emphasizing the positive

and covering up the negative, like cancer in tobacco.

*

The hidden aim of political propaganda

is to raise another generation of killers.

*

Dupes of propaganda come in all sizes and shapes,

including highly intelligent men with impeccable credentials.

Two cases from the Vietnam era that come readily to mind:

George Romney (a governor as well as a presidential candidate,

very much like his son Mitt)

and Robert McNamara,

one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.”

Romney admitted publicly to have been “brainwashed” (his word)

and McNamara acknowledged his blunder in his war memoirs.

*

Remember, no one can claim a monopoly on truth.

If you want to be born again as a human being

as opposed to a moronized dupe,

reassess periodically your fundamental assumptions

and the dogmas of your belief system.

#

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

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

STATUS QUO

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

Three generations of our ablest men

have lived and died trying to solve our problems.

Result? We now have a generation of dupes

who believe we never had it so good

because we are in the best of hands

and that our greatest problem

is a handful of malcontents

whose sole aim in life is to promote gloom and doom,

pessimism, negativism, and defeatism.

*

And then there are the brainless who think

(if you will forgive the overstatement)

just because they have a computer

they are also entitled to have an opinion.

Or, in the words of an eminent Canadian poet

(may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul)

“just because they have an asshole,

they must also have an opinion.”

*

To say we are free to subscribe to a belief system

of our own choice even when it is a false one

is like saying we are free to choose slavery.

Or again, if I believe my lie to be the truth,

no one is in a position to tell me otherwise

because I know what’s best for myself.

*

When this kind of mentality because the dominant mindset,

genocide becomes not a possibility but a certainty.

*

When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned

“This time they will slaughter us indiscriminately,”

they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,”

thus implying they knew better.

What has changed?

#

ara baliozian · January 19, 2013

Thursday, January 17, 2013

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

PHOBIA

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

Because I am against divisions and dividers

on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”

I am identified by some readers as an enemy

motivated by “self-hatred.”

The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose

contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say

but to discharge verbal manure –

in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:

“You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!”

*

The fact is, our dividers divide us

not because they think divisions are good for us

or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas

but because that’s how they make a living.

Divisions are their bread and butter

in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.

To attack their source of income

or to expose them as charlatans,

as they see me doing

is almost to condemn them to starvation.

*

If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,

fear of starvation must be a phobia

shared by all dividers who must know

they can’t fool all the people all the time

and anyone who can think for himself

will sooner or later identify them

not as the saviors of the nation

but as its gravediggers.

#

Friday, January 18, 2013

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

EXTRAPOLATING

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

Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.

It’s much worse!

If for a hundred years after our genocide

we have failed to develop a consensus,

can we even dare to hope that some day

jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?

*

We live in a world where everyone thinks

everyone else has been brainwashed

and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.

In such an environment World War III,

that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.

This is now as clear to me as daylight.

What is the solution?

There is none!

*

When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed

there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.

And when Armenian meets Armenian –

you may now draw your own conclusions.

The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind

and by the time our superpatriots realize

we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text

it will is too late.

*

In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world

has already committed murder and suicide

in the name of a dehumanized god

that rules over a dehumanized mankind.

*

There is a 1952 French film titled

NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).

If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution

on one level and World War II on another.

I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.

#

Thursday, January 17, 2013

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

PHOBIA

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

Because I am against divisions and dividers

on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”

I am identified by some readers as an enemy

motivated by “self-hatred.”

The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose

contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say

but to discharge verbal manure –

in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:

“You are full of shit, Baliozoglu!”

*

The fact is, our dividers divide us

not because they think divisions are good for us

or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas

but because that’s how they make a living.

Divisions are their bread and butter

in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.

To attack their source of income

or to expose them as charlatans,

as they see me doing

is almost to condemn them to starvation.

*

If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,

fear of starvation must be a phobia

shared by all dividers who must know

they can’t fool all the people all the time

and anyone who can think for himself

will sooner or later identify them

not as the saviors of the nation

but as its gravediggers.

#

Friday, January 18, 2013

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

EXTRAPOLATING

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

Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.

It’s much worse!

If for a hundred years after our genocide

we have failed to develop a consensus,

can we even dare to hope that some day

jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?

*

We live in a world where everyone thinks

everyone else has been brainwashed

and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.

In such an environment World War III,

that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.

This is now as clear to me as daylight.

What is the solution?

There is none!

*

When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed

there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.

And when Armenian meets Armenian –

you may now draw your own conclusions.

The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind

and by the time our superpatriots realize

we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text

it will is too late.

*

In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world

has already committed murder and suicide

in the name of a dehumanized god

that rules over a dehumanized mankind.

*

There is a 1952 French film titled

NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).

If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution

on one level and World War II on another.

I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.

#

Saturday, January 19, 2013

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

The shortest list in the world,

that of Armenian statesmen.

*

The least quoted document in the world:

the Armenian Constitution.

Speaking for myself,

I don’t even know if it has a single Amendment.

*

How many Armenians?

Hard to say.

What if most Armenians are ashamed

to identify themselves as Armenian?

*

More often than not Armenian readers disagree

less with my ideas and more with my right to think.

*

Where there is too much propaganda

there will be too little free speech.

*

Silence reason and usher in insanity.

Silence dissent and tyranny is sure to follow.

*

An Armenian is a white Negro to another Armenian.

*

Some of my readers want me to write

about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat

and nightingales serenading the moon

so that they can safely ignore me.

*

Two recent books of great photographs:

KARSH: BEYOND THE CAMERA,

Selected with an Introduction and Commentary

by David Trevis,

and

KALOUST: RETROSPECTIVE (Toronto Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society).

#

ara baliozian · January 23, 2013

Sunday, January 20, 2013

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

LIFE AND LITERATURE

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

Sartre is right.

Literature saves no one.

As a boy I entertained messianic ambitions.

I know now that I cannot even make

a discernible contribution to its salvation.

*

All I have been doing so far is

drop a tiny pebble – or is it a feather – in the ocean

of our millennial literature.

*

Compared to the sum total of my predecessors –

from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi and from Abovian to Zarian –

I am nothing.

If they made no difference,

can I ever hope to do any better?

*

Why do I go on writing?

The only answer I can come up with is,

to kill time and in the process

to make a handful of friends

who see things as I do.

*

The human body consists of billions of tiny particles

working in harmony.

There is life after death provided

we don’t identify life as consciousness.

*

How much of “me” is in the cosmos?

Or rather, how much of the cosmos is within me?

Everything except my consciousness.

If asleep I keep only a fraction of my subconscious

(namely, the part that dreams)

dead I keep nothing

or the same degree of awareness before I was born.

*

Eternity exists but not as “I”

but as something entirely different.

How different?

We will have the answer to that question

only after we die.

#

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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

PARANOIA

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

For repeating what far better men than myself have said

in their effort to solve our problems

I am described as a pro-Turkish enemy.

*

They say nations have the leadership they deserve.

No one deserves our leaders except perhaps Turks.

*

Propaganda is the opium of the people.

*

Where the dominant mindset is shaped by propaganda,

there can be no progress, only gradual decline.

*

What a book one could write titled:

ARMENIANS: SLAVES, VICTIMS, DUPES.

*

To be infatuated with one’s own prejudices

is like compounding a felony.

*

The history of our literature is clear on this point:

We don’t hate those who deceive us,

only those who try to enlighten us.

#

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

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

REFLECTIONS

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

There is nothing wrong in saying you were wrong.

It means you are willing to move in the right direction.

*

An unspoken Armenian motto:

“If you cannot reason, make a noise.”

*

A verbal avalanche is not always a valid counter-argument.

*

Depth and a facility with words

are mutually exclusive concepts.

*

In our environment the more arguments you win

the more enemies you make – enemies who will call you

pro-Turkish because they cannot think of a worst insult.

*

We owe all wars and massacres

to the propaganda of the 1%.

#

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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

AS I SEE IT

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

If I believe in the absence of God

I must also believe in His presence elsewhere.

*

In an environment where belief in propaganda is the norm,

criticism of propaganda will be seen as a capital offense.

*

When I said I had been a dupe most of my life,

a reader demanded: “How do you know you are not one today?”

I don’t, and the moment you help me unmask my deceiver

I may have a better chance to see the light.

*

The true atheist is not he who denies His existence

but he who speaks in His name.

*

Dupes come in all sizes and shapes.

In the latest issue of PARIS-MATCH I read the following headline:

“Even Steve Jobs, creator of Apple, was victimized by a medical charlatan.”

*

You can recognize a charlatan by the fact that

he proceeds from a position of infallibility.

#

ara baliozian · January 26, 2013

Thursday, January 24, 2013

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

WHY DO I GO ON WRITING?

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

That’s a question I ask myself again and again

and I always come up with an answer

that may make sense to me

but no one else.

*

I write to settle a score, beginning with myself.

I feel partly responsible for our leadership.

I supported it for a number of years.

I kissed its ass when I should have kicked it.

*

Our divisions go so far back in history

that they have become invulnerable to dissent and criticism.

It is also true that if a system is rotten

it will fall if not tomorrow than the day after.

Isn’t that what happened to monarchy, fascism, and Stalinism?

*

The reason our divisions have survived is that

we have lived on the margins of history;

and they have not so much survived as they have become,

in Toynbee’s classification, fossilized.

They are dead men walking.

Case in point: by failing to unite the Armenian vote in America,

our leadership has condemned itself to be a silent scream.

No American presidential candidate will ever take us seriously

so long as we divide our vote evenly

between Republicans and Democrats.

*

As for our Turcocentric ghazetajis

who pretend to be defenders of the Cause:

so far all they have succeeded in doing

is drive the Cause to a dead end.

Their unspoken or real aim is not to get justice

but to cover up the incompetence

of the empty suits they work for.

*

A final note on Turks:

they are not all butchers and murderers;

they have their share of both as surely as

we have our share of traitors, collaborators,

and cover-up artists,

#

Friday, January 25, 2013

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

PARADOX

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

We think with someone else’s thoughts

and we believe by adopting someone else’s belief system.

When it comes to the two most important things in life –

thinking and believing,

or that which makes us human --

we are more like apes than men.

I think therefore I am not.

*

Our disagreements and conflicts are not ours

but someone else’s.

Neither are our wars.

Only our victims may be said to be ours.

*

Absurdity is not a philosophical abstraction;

it is embedded in our daily existence.

*

Question all certainties.

Reject all dogmatic assertions.

And never forget that what you borrow

is not yours.

#

Saturday, January 26, 2013

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

AS I SEE IT

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

Our most popular school of criticism

consists in slinging mud (such as pro-Turkish)

hoping some of it will stick.

*

Identifying blunders in others can be useful

only if it may help us identify our own.

*

Thirst for fame is the surest symptom of mediocrity.

*

Only pathological liars with political ambitions

rewrite history in order to project a positive image.

*

A book is called bad or dangerous if it proves

what you believe to be true is a lie.

#

ara baliozian · January 30, 2013

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

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

SMART ARMENIANS

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

A smart Armenian is first and foremost

a self-assessed Armenian and in all self-assessments

propaganda speaks louder than reality.

*

Whenever I speak of reality

I am accused of being pro-Turkish probably because

for 600 years our reality was not ours but theirs.

When it came to the most important decisions in life,

it was they who made them.

We had no choice but to say “Yes, sir!”

They dished it out and we took it.

And when our revolutionaries decided to change that,

we all know what happened next: reality turned against us.

*

How long before we create our own reality?

My only tentative answer: I may not live long enough to see it.

*

I have dealt with many self-assessed smart Armenians

and they were all idiots.

So was I for most of my life.

Everything I say about Armenians is based on self-analysis.

*

Gentle reader: If you think what I say does not apply to you

because you are different, I am more than willing to apologize.

Every rule has its exceptions.

I have even heard it said that it is exceptions

that certify the legitimacy of a rule.

My hope is that really smart Armenians

will decide to step forward and get involved

in our community affairs instead of conducting

an underground existence.

*

Did I say really smart Armenians?

Strike that. Make it honest Armenians.

Because it doesn’t take a high IQ to see that

we are on the wrong path and on our way to the devil.

*

A warning: If you are an honest Armenian

and decide to be pro-active, don’t be surprised

if accusations of pro-Turkish sympathies are hurled against you

by moronized self-assessed Armenians.

#

Monday, January 28, 2013

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Propaganda is as addictive as nicotine, alcohol, and opium.

*

The hidden message in all propaganda is,

what you think is right

and anyone who dares to disagree with you

is an enemy agent.

*

Now Barabbas was a publisher

and Cain a fascist.

*

Speechifiers and sermonizers end up believing

in their own speeches and sermons.

Arguing with them is like trying to enlighten a source of light.

*

There are times when I get so depressed

by my fellow countrymen that

the thought of death cheers me up.

*

Dissent means questioning the integrity of individuals

who believe in their own infallibility.

*

Propaganda sticks to children like crazy glue.

#

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

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

IRRELEVANCE

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

Even in a land of the brave and the free

there will be cowards and slaves;

and if not slaves to human masters

than slaves to ignorance, prejudice, and lies.

*

Our men at the top know that

the best way to avoid international scrutiny

is by achieving irrelevance,

and irrelevance is thrust on some

as greatness is thrust on others.

*

Who after all gives a damn about Armenia?

Not even Armenians.

Who gives a damn about our 1,500,000?

Not even Obama.

Who gives a damn about our ongoing “white genocide”

(exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora)?

Not even our superpatriots

who prefer to speechify about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.

*

God’s existence is as great a mystery to me

as the Devil’s?

#

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

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

JESUS, MARX, FREUD

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

All of Freud may be said to be an expansion

of the Biblical dictum:

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

Or, the resolution of all your inner conflicts and contradictions

are in your unconscious.

*

When Marx said “I am not a Marxist,”

he was in a way questioning the legitimacy of all ideologies

or closed systems of thought.

*

Einstein proved that all our fundamental assumptions

about time and space are wrong;

nothing is what it seems;

a great deal of reality may be comprehensible

but not everything.

There are things we may never understand and explain.

*

What has been the most important contribution

America has made to the world?

Double-talk.

To assert “All men are created equal,”

and with the full cooperation of the Church

to legitimize slavery.

*

What about Armenian contributions?

Inbred morons pretending to be smart.

*

If the Kingdom of God is within you,

so is the Empire of the Devil.

#

ara baliozian · February 2, 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

**********

…AND SO IT GOES

**********

The aim of politics is power.

The aim of literature is understanding reality.

When the two meet, literature loses.

And when literature loses,

murder, war, and massacre become inevitable.

*

Writers are dreamers?

Yes, but only in so far as they think

they can survive in a fascist environment.

*

The attitude of the average dupe towards literature?

“He is a writer? An Armenian writer?

He must be a daydreamer.

Let’s have some fun with him.”

*

Armenians are different from Turks?

In their treatment of dissent

they might as well be identical twins.

*

Dupes rate the lies of propaganda

above the truths of literature.

*

One reason why our dividers are more popular

than our dissidents is that

the IQ of the average Armenian is a negative digit;

which is why he is constantly reminded he is smart.

*

One of my most dedicated readers is a

Second-Amendment gun nut and racist

who thinks he fully qualifies as a commissar culture

and based on that assumption

he issues daily memoranda

reminding me that unless I follow instructions

I will never amount to anything.

*

When reason meets prejudice,

reason is bound to lose.

So what else is new?

Mart bidi ch’ellank.

#

Friday, February 01, 2013

**********

AS I SEE IT

**********

Some lies are so transparent that

they might as well be confessions.

*

There are no more deep truths,

only platitudes in fancy uniforms.

*

There are Armenians today who are pro-Assad.

I have met some of them myself.

What’s next?– being pro-Talaat?

*

To those who demand that I explain my explanations,

I say: I have already done so in the past

and I will again in the future.

*

Toynbee:“Comprehension sometimes consists

in just a correct understanding of questions

that are unanswerable."

#

Saturday, February 02, 2013

**********

ON OUR 1%

**********

Why did Raffi say “we are sheep without a shepherd”?

Why did Avedik Issahakian call our leaders “brainless”?

And why did Zarian call them “useless”?

Were all three wrong or dupes of enemy propaganda?

*

Baruir Massikian, a successful lawyer in Egypt

in addition to being a brilliant writer:

as he lay dying in hospital he was approached

by a delegation community leaders

who suggested he leave his considerable wealth

(he was a bachelor) to an Armenian educational foundation.

His reply:“I’d much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”

Was he anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish?– two charges

that are leveled against anyone

who dares to refuse being a dupe.

*

Why do our academics prefer to write

about the Middle Ages and the Genocide?

And why is it that whenever someone tries to expose

the corruption and incompetence of our 1%

he is insulted by our superpatriots

and experts on any given subject?

*

Please note that I am only asking questions.

I am not making dogmatic assertions whose sole intent is

to divide the community into members of the club

and alienated degenerates.

*

I repeat myself and the 1% does not?

*

In the opinion page of my local morning paper

a pundit begins his commentary with the following words:

“We live, breathe and exist in an age of apocalyptic uncertainty.”

If you were to ask one of our pro-establishment propagandists,

my guess is he would say:

“We never had it so good

because we are in the best of hands.”

#

ara baliozian · February 6, 2013

Sunday, February 03, 2013

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

DEAD END

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

If I criticize the 1%

it’s because I am on the side of the 99%.

If I don’t enjoy the support of the 99%

it may be because the secret ambition of most of them

is to join the 1%.

*

Freedom of religion also means

the freedom to brainwash children.

If we don’t see the harm in that

it’s because we live in a world

in which subservience is valued more than freedom,

intolerance more than tolerance,

revenge more than justice,

and ultimately war and massacre

more than peace and coexistence.

*

On the day we learn to think for ourselves

we may have a better chance to achieve solidarity

not only with our brothers

but also with our enemies.

*

Always treat today’s enemy

as if he were tomorrow’s friend.

*

If I am different it’s only because I rely

more on my own thinking than on the thinking of

empty suits and bearded charlatans

who make a comfortable living by deceiving

the defenceless and the ignorant.

#

Monday, February 04, 2013

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

SOUND BITES

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

If Christianity has legitimized

intolerance, persecution, torture, war and massacre,

can we really say “There are good religions?”

*

I don’t believe in optimism.

Hell, I don’t even believe in pessimism.

In pessimism we construct a narrative that makes sense.

But evil is incomprehensible.

So is reality. That’s why every historian

creates his own version of the past.

*

Does it make sense to say what’s theirs is bad

and what’s ours is good

when that’s exactly what they say too?

*

If you make a list of writers who preferred exile

to life in their own homeland,

you may end up with a who’s who is contemporary literature.

*

Our reality is so unbearable that my objectivity

is sometimes confused with self-hatred.

*

“When we kill them it’s good;

when they kills us it’s bad.”

What’s the difference between this mindset

and the one expressed by an African tribal chieftain

quoted by C.G. Jung in his memoirs:

“When my enemy steals my wives, it’s bad;

when I steal his it’s good.”

*

To those who say “I don’t agree with you.

Human beings are better than that; so is life.”

All I can say is: “Enjoy your innocence (or is it ignorance?)

while you can. It won’t last.”

*

How often do I find myself saying:

“I would have agreed with you thirty years ago.”

#

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

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

COMMISSARS OF CULTURE

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

Q: Who are they? Could we have a definition?

A: They are Armenians who know what must be said and done

but who want someone else to do it for them.

Q: Why?

A: The obvious answer is, they don’t know.

They only pretend to know. They are bluffing.

Just like their role models in the USSR who trusted Stalin

more than Solzhenitsyn. Our commissars today trust more

our bosses, bishops, and benefactors than our writers.

Q: Why do they?

A: My guess is they believe literature to be a dead end.

No money in it. No power. No future.

Our history is clear on this point:

To write for Armenians is a waste of time.

Q: Knowing this you go on writing, why?

A: A good question, but I have a better one for you:

Why do Armenians who are brought up to believe

they are smart, progressive and civilized

choose to behave like inbred morons

when it comes to politics and collective action?

More precisely, why do they support our dividers

and grave-diggers?

Q: You must have an answer to that question.

A: I don’t! Unless of course we say they behave like morons

because they are in fact morons.

Q: I wouldn’t describe that as a diplomatic explanation.

A: Literature is not diplomacy. Neither is it a profitable enterprise

unless of course you decide to write

about the Middle Ages and the massacres.

But that’s a subject for another conversation.

#

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

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

ON BEING AN ARMENIAN WRITER

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

Q: What are some of the positives and negatives

in being an Armenian writer?

A: Positives? None! Negatives? To begin with

you work for nothing;

you are treated like an unemployed and unemployable misfit,

a mental masturbator;

morons take it upon themselves to tell you

what to write and how to write it;

and worst of all, you are dependent on the charity of swine.

A: Aren’t you afraid that by using angry words

you may run the risk of undermining your own objectivity?

A: I am more than willing to take that chance.

Those who are against me will be against me

even if I were to speak like an angel.

And I have every reason to suspect

if so far Armenian writers have been ignored

it’s because they were afraid to go down into the gutter

where our self-appointed “betters” and their dupes live.

Some day if these gentlemen are unmasked,

they will be exposed as bottom-of-the-barrel

egomaniacal sociopaths and bullies

who operate on the assumption that

they know better and our only option is to say “Yes sir!”

Q: "The Sultan is dead, long live the Sultan?"

A: That’s true for Ottomanized Armenians.

For Sovietized Armenians it’s “Stalin is dead,

long live our commissars!”

Q: Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel?

A: For me, no! For those who may follow me, maybe.

You never know…anything is possible.

And they say I am a pessimist.

What the hell do they know?

#

ara baliozian · February 9, 2013

Thursday, February 07, 2013

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

NAMING NAMES

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

Q: You never name names. Why?

A: In our environment naming names doesn’t work.

Q: What do you mean it doesn’t work?

A: Last time someone named names he was taken to court,

his sources evaporated, he was found guilty, he suffered a stroke,

and shortly thereafter he died.

Q: His sources evaporated, how?

A: They refused to testify in court.

Q: Why?

A: Obviously they didn’t want to lose their only source

of financial support.

Q: I see.

A: That’s the way it has always been in our environment:

those in power and the establishment in general

have been invulnerable. This was true

even in the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union.

Even on the eve of the Genocide there were

Armenians – and I don’t mean dupes --

who worked for the Ottoman and Soviet administrations,

which means they supported the Sultan and the Young Turks.

Krikor Zohrab, an eminent lawyer, diplomat,

and intellectual leader was one of them –

he was a close friend and supporter of Talaat

who had him murdered in cold blood.

I am myself personally acquainted with writers

who make a comfortable living as secretaries of bishops.

Do you think they will even consider testifying

against their only source of income

and start looking for another job?

Who would hire them?

Armenian writers are not exactly in great demand

in today’s marketplace. But all that is theory.

In reality it has never happened.

We don’t have a system or cultural environment

that supports individuals who place truth or principle

above self-interest. And we have always had

ruthless manipulators willing to take advantage of this situation.

#

Friday, February 08, 2013

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

ON READING

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

Q: What are some of the books you have reread more than twice?

A: Lesley Blanch’s SABRES OF PARADISE,

Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS (volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY),

and Sartre’s WORDS.

Q: A strange trio.

A: I forgot Nabokov’s LOLITA, and of course Zarian

whom I have translated into English,

and to translate a book is equivalent to rereading

it ten times if not more. There may be others

but these are the ones that come readily to mind at the moment.

Q: What is it about Zarian that fascinates you?

A: His daring and uncanny ability to say

what you almost think…and his unique grasp of reality.

Q: What about books that have changed your worldview?

A: Dostoevsky’s IDIOT, Turgenev’s FATHERS AND SONS,

and Suzuki’s INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM,

all of which I read as a teenager --

and Plato’s DIALOGUES. Also Shaw’s plays,

or rather their prefaces which are longer than the plays themselves.

And Thomas Mann’s MAGIC MOUNTAIN.

Q: Do you have a favorite genre?

A: All of them – fiction, essays, biographies, memoirs, diaries,

conversations, crime novels, encyclopedias…

everything but poetry. I don’t remember to have ever read

a collection of verse from beginning to end.

Isolated poems now and then, here and there,

but Milton, Dante, and T.S. Eliot, no!

As for Pushkin: I might as well be deaf, dumb, and blind.

I have always suspected that in poetry

manner is more important than substance.

Q: Do you think Armenians read enough?

A: Somewhere Zarian says that what Armenians preferred to read

at the turn of the century in Istanbul were best-sellers

like Zevaco and Eugene Sue – whom no one reads these days.

I know Armenians who love books for purely cosmetic reasons,

to make an impression on visitors.

I am beginning to suspect an Armenians’ greatest enemy

is neither the Turk nor his fellow Armenian

but the written word.

#

Saturday, February 09, 2013

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

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

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

Gandhi once said you can evaluate a civilization

by the manner in which it treats its animals –

and, I would add, its writers.

If you make a list of our writers

you will be astonished to discover

an astonishing number of them

were either silenced, ignored and exiled or

betrayed to the authorities,

murdered and committed suicide.

*

Armenia has been called “the cradle of civilization”

by an Irish academic who enjoyed the financial support

of the Gulbenkian Foundation,

the wealthiest foundation in the world, it has been said.

But it would be even more accurate to call it its grave.

*

And speaking of Gulbenkian:

Why did he leave only 7% of his wealth to Armenians?

Did he know something we don’t know?

Did he guess that if he were to leave

all his wealth to Armenians,

93% of it would end up in the wrong pockets?

I am not casting aspersions,

just asking question and searching for answers.

#

ara baliozian · February 13, 2013

Sunday, February 10, 2013

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

HOLY BOOKS

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

We all have our own.

To some it’s the Bible,

To others the Koran,

to still others the UPANISHAD.

In my twenties my holy book was

Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

in which there are endless arguments

about all the important issues in life.

The two fictional characters who engage in these arguments

are Naphta (authoritarian, mystical, fascist)

and Settembrini (a liberal humanist).

The arguments are so convincingly done that

at the end you cannot tell who is right and who wrong.

*

In my thirties my other holy book was

Toynbee’s RECONSIDERATIONS

(volume xii of his STUDY OF HISTORY)

in which ideas about the past, that is to say life,

are carefully analyzed and discussed at considerable length.

*

It is to be noted that Mann’s character of Naphta

is based on the famous communist critic and philosopher Lukacz

with whom he was personally acquainted

(Lukacz was later to write a book on Mann);

and in RECONSIDERATIONS Toynbee quotes

many of his critics except Hugh Trevor-Roper

whose attack on him was so ruthless and rude

that its intent was not to question Toynbee’s ideas

but to destroy him personally.

*

Also to be noted, both Mann and Toynbee

were great readers of the Bible.

Mann even wrote his longest book,

the tetralogy JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS,

based on an episode in GENESIS.

*

When told the Bible was written by the Holy Ghost,

Shaw is said to have replied,

“All books are written by the Holy Ghost.”

What about LOLITA, one is tempted to ask.

LOLITA too, Shaw would have replied

(the book was published after his death)

because THE SONG OF SONGS in the Old Testament

fully qualifies as an erotic rhapsody in which,

Hebrew scholars tell us,

there is even talk of oral sex – obviously lost in translation.

#

Monday, February 11, 2013

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

SOUND BITES

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

*

COMMON KNOWLEDGE

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

“The small state, racked by internal dissension,

invites the foreign conqueror.”

This is a line that occurs in a short story by Mary McCarthy.

I quote it to point out the fact that far from being

the best and the brightest, we are a cliché known by all except us.

That’s how cunningly and thoroughly we have been brainwashed.

*

SUICIDE

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

Instead of blabbering endlessly about murder,

we should speak of suicide by a thousand self-inflicted cuts.

*

THE ENEMY

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

He who is his own worst enemy

does not need an enemy.

*

THE WAY OF THE COMMISSAR

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

You don’t like what he says?

Shoot him.

You can't shoot him?

Silence him.

You can’t silence him?

Call him “son of a Turkish whore.”

*

TRANSLATION

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

“A government by the people for the people.”

Translation:

“A government by the mafia for the mafia.”

*

WORDS

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

Instead of analyzing my words

teach yourself to analyze your actions.

Unawareness, according to Freud and Jung,

is the source of all evil

*

PROPAGANDA

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

The real aim of propaganda is not to misrepresent lies as truths

but to moronize the people,

and the most effective way to moronize the people

is to call them seven times smarter than Greeks and Jews.

#

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

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

CONTROL FREAKS

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

The Pope telling Galileo what to think

and imams telling women how to dress

spring from the same source:

ignorance, arrogance, and greed for power.

*

Unmask religion and expose the primitive in man.

*

If you cannot deal with reality,

invent your own fiction.

*

A man of faith believes his faith to be infallible

and with God on his side he can do no wrong.

This fallacy has claimed more innocent lives than any other.

*

There are as many paths to God or Truth

as there are human beings.

To say otherwise is to legitimize intolerance

and ultimately war and massacre.

This is not theory but reality,

that is to say, history.

*

The same applies to patriotism.

There are as many variants of patriotism

as there are patriots.

To say, suggest, or imply that your kind of patriotism

is better than mine or anyone else’s is to justify

all kinds of aberrations, including crimes against humanity.

*

To say my faith, my God, my Truth and no other

is to be on a path that leads not to God but to the Devil.

#

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

The phoniest Armenians are those

who never miss an opportunity

to assert their superior brand of patriotism.

*

As children we are taught big lies

and forbidden to speak little ones.

*

Because I expose contradictions

I am told I hate myself.

*

The biggest lies are fractions of the truth.

*

In a trial by jury,

the function of the jury is not to separate

the guilty from the innocent

but to decide which side

has the more competent lawyer.

*

Nationalist historians are not liars;

they only emphasize the positive

and cover up the negative.

I know how that’s done because I have done it myself.

See my ARMENIANS: THEIR HISTORY & CULTURE.

#

ara baliozian · February 16, 2013

Thursday, February 14, 2013

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

WHO LOVES ARMENIANS?

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

In his youth Zarian loved Armenians

because he saw himself as a messianic figure

and his fellow Armenians as a crucified nation.

In his old age he saw himself as a victim

of intolerance and envy,

and he died with the conviction that

he had been murdered.

*

Saroyan loved the whole world including Armenians

but he couldn’t stand his own family

including his half-Armenian son and daughter.

*

Michael (GREEN HAT) Arlen loved his fellow Armenians too

but he warned his half-Armenian son to stay away from them.

The son followed his father’s advice

with only one interruption

that lasted long enough for him to write

PASSAGE TO ARARAT that became a best-seller.

*

Because I hate myself, some of my critics tell me,

I am in no position to love or understand my fellow Armenians,

and armed with that conviction

they feel justified in calling me “son of a Turkish whore,”

among other abusive terms.

*

I have noticed that Armenians who speak endlessly of love

are the least lovable specimens

and though I have tried very hard to love them

I have failed.

But that’s my fault rather than theirs.

#

Saturday, February 16, 2013

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

LIES, BIG LIES, AND

CONTRADICTIONS

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

In politics don’t judge the man,

judge the men behind the man.

*

The same Leonardo who said war is

“pazzia bestialissima” (the most beastly madness)

also designed war machines.

*

Even Jesus failed to unmask Judas

until it was too late.

*

If Zohrab was Talaat’s dupe,

who among us will dare to say

he is nobody’s dupe?

*

One reason I keep coming back to dupes is that

I have been one most of my life…

with no end in sight.

*

If I were to make a list of Big Lies we believed in,

I would begin with

“The Turks would not dare to massacre us,” and end with

“Russians are our Big Brothers.”

*

To preach love and legitimize hatred is a contradiction,

and yet most religious leaders appear to be unaware of this fact.

*

Love of God (religion) and love of homeland (patriotism)

have justified more crimes against humanity

than hatred of the Devil.

#

Saturday, February 16, 2013

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

WHO LOVES ARMENIANS? (II)

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

There are systems of ignorance as surely

as there are systems of knowledge

and we choose both by the degree of flattery they contain.

*

Christians believe they are worthy of the Crucifixion,

Jews believe they are the Chosen,

and Muslim believe non-Muslims to be “infidel dogs.”

*

What about Armenians?

To begin with we don’t much care

about Turks, Kurds, Azeris, Georgians,

“onion-head” Russians, and the so-called “civilized West”

which fought its lousy World War I

instead of coming to our aid.

Neither are we fond of Protestants and Catholics

even when they happen to be fellow Armenians.

Native-born Armenians look down at Diasporans (“aghber”) --

I have myself been called “a piece of shit” by a fellow Armenian

born and raised in the shadow of Mt. Ararat.

*

Who loves Armenians?

Not even Armenians.

As the popular refrain has it:

“Mart bidi ch’ellank!”

Literally: “We will never acquire the status of human beings.”

#

ara baliozian · February 20, 2013

Sunday, February 17, 2013

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

US/THEM

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

As a child I was told many things

that as an adult I rejected.

As a Catholic I was brought up to believe

the only reason Martin Luther had divided the Church

was to fornicate with a nun.

*

More often than not the hidden aim

of all categories, differences, and labels

is to assert some kind of phony superiority.

*

Shaw once said that the reason why

he was successful in creating believable female characters

is that he did not think of women as different from men.

When the French say “Vive la difference!”

I have every reason to suspect

they have in mind only anatomical differences.

*

An old lady from Kharpert once told me

they viewed women from Izmir (Smyrna) as sluts

because they (Izmirtsis) used make-up;

and a woman from Izmir once told me

they view Kharpertsis as Kurds.

For every label there will be a counter-label.

*

Native-born Armenians versus Diasporans

(or aghber = white trash).

As a non-native Armenian I suspect native-born Armenians

to be former Bolsheviks, even Stalinists.

*

We are all brought up to look down on our fellow men

for reasons that on closer inspection reveal themselves to be

based on ignorance, prejudice, fear, and fallacies.

I feel therefore justified to formulate

the following categories of my own:

human beings who view their fellow men and women as equals

and dupes who suffer from a psychological aberration

known as infantilism which consists

in clinging to illusions, lies, and prejudices instilled in them

when they could not yet think for themselves and

whose hidden aim is to make them feel superior or privileged.

#

Monday, February 18, 2013

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Why is it that people who view abortion as murder

don’t see war as murder?

*

The Enlightenment did not put an end to the Dark Ages;

neither did Christianity expose false gods.

*

Whenever a reader calls me pro-Turkish

I know he has run out of arguments.

If memory serves, it was Goebbels who said:

“Making noise is an effective means of opposition.”

*

As a pessimist I hate to be right.

*

Because I make Armenianism

(its cheap, loathsome variant) look hateful,

I am accused of hating myself.

*

Be a dupe, join a group.

*

The contempt of idiots and fanatics

is as valuable an asset as the affection of good men.

*

When Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is within you,”

the rabbis thought, there goes my bread and butter.

*

Among us success is harder to survive than failure.

*

In real life all stories have an unhappy ending

if only because at the end everyone dies.

#

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

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

ON PATRIOTISM

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

The most patriotic Armenian is neither

the devout church-goer nor

the dedicated partisan

but an honest man.

*

If you can’t think of me as a critic

(someone who exposes contradictions)

think of me as the devil’s advocate.

As far as I know no one has ever identified

a devil’s advocate with the devil.

*

Where there is money there will be prostitution

in one form or another;

and where there is patriotism, there will be treason,

and more often than not it will the real traitors

who will accuse the real patriots of treason.

*

Armenians who criticize no one and nothing

(except perhaps Turks and Kurds)

will criticize critics and their favorite mode of criticism

will be slinging mud in the hope that some of it may stick.

*

Our critics – and we have had our share of them –

have made no difference in our collective existence

probably because our idiots outnumber the rest 99 to 1.

I may be wrong in this.

The correct ratio may well be 98 to 2.

#

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

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

WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING

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

“In their place I would have done a better job.”

That’s not what I have been saying.

What I have been saying is

having committed blunders

I would not spend the rest of my life

trying to cover them up

in an effort to project a positive image.

Neither would I declare myself to have been

a proud member of the Communist Party

(as Sylva Kaputikian is said to have done).

or any other party, for that matter.

Or having divided the community

I would not portray myself as a statesman of vision

whose number one concern is the welfare of the nation.

Neither would I judge a regime or a power structure

by the number of privileges and powers it bestows on me

and to hell with everyone else.

As for brainwashing children into believing

we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands:

I would consider that adding insult to injury

and raising another generation of brainwashed idiots.

Now then, go ahead and accuse me

of making too many demands on our “betters”

who may not be perfect but are doing their best

under difficult conditions:

and if you believe that you will believe anything!

#

ara baliozian · March 23, 2013

Sunday, February 24, 2013

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

TRUTH AND LIES

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

We love the truth and hate lies

or so we say and like to believe.

But truth is one and elusive

and lies are real and without number.

*

The 99% don’t think.

They let the 1% do the thinking for them.

Until very recently the 99% didn’t even know

they were 99%.

*

The 1% may know better

but to know better is not the same as to know.

The 1% is the most dangerous people on earth.

*

We are not survivors.

We are dead men walking.

So is all of mankind.

*

The real aim of justice is to legitimize injustice.

Slavery and the torture of heretics

were as legitimate undertakings

as the massacre of innocent civilians was

and continues to be today.

*

Our real enemies are not other people.

Our real enemies are politicians beginning with our own.

*

Literature is powerless against propaganda.

A ballpoint pen is not mightier than a tank.

Writing is a waste of time.

#

Monday, February 25, 2013

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

ON BEING SMART AND PROGRESSIVE

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

History is not written but rewritten,

and rewritten history is a political tool.

*

Where politics enter,

deceivers and dupes are sure to follow.

*

We like to believe we are smart and progressive

and that it was these two attributes

that allowed us to foresee

the advent of Christianity as a universal religion.

The question is:

Why is it that we failed to foresee the Genocide?

*

Not only did we fail to foresee it,

we also ignored the warnings of those who did.

“Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” some said;

and “the Turks wouldn’t dare!” said others.

*

One is therefore compelled to conclude that

being smart and progressive are not

permanent but ephemeral conditions

and worse: even the smart can be systematically moronized.

*

Now then, imagine if you can a political candidate

running for office on a platform that says

we are or have become a bunch of moronized dupes.

My progressive instinct

(whatever traces are left in me) tells me

such a candidate will have a far better chance to be elected

if he runs as a deceiver and treats his supporters as dupes

by saying they are the opposite of what they really are–

namely smart and progressive.

#

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

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

HOMO IGNORAMUS

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

Turks are brought up to believe

they are noble specimens of humanity

and it is their patriotic duty to be proud

of who they are.

*

Armenians are brought up to believe

they are smart, progressive, civilized, compassionate

and so on and so forth

and an Armenian who is not proud of his identity

must be classified as the lowest scum on earth.

*

More often than not conflicts and disagreements arise

from the clash of two sets of lies

as opposed to lies and the truth.

The bigger the lies

the more ferocious the disagreement.

Hence Voltaire’s dictum:

“Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.”

*

The biggest and most universal lie is

to speak in the name of God (in theory)

and to do the Devil’s work (in practice).

*

Religious and political leader may disagree

on many important issues but they are unanimous

in the necessity of brainwashing children

and deceiving the masses.

*

More often than not our choice is not

between a lie and the truth

but between a lie and a bigger lie.

#

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

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

THEORY AND PRACTICE

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

God is love.

Justice for all.

All men are created equal.

Generalities, abstractions, and theories are one thing,

reality another.

*

The unspoken aim of all ideologies, belief systems,

and political parties is to moronize the masses

and turn them into dupes.

*

Justice favors the mighty.

Justice is on the side of top dogs.

Justice is with the more competent lawyer or dream team.

Justice is for the 1%.

Justice is anything but justice.

Justice is full of holes.

*

Marxist theory contradicts Marxist reality.

Communism is state capitalism.

Or, in the words of a Polish slogan:

"In capitalism man exploits man.

In communism it’s the other way around."

*

To the 99% I say: Don’t be duped by the 1%;

and it makes no difference if his first name is Serge or Raffi.

#

Thursday, February 28, 2013

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

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…

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

Nothing changes.

Life continues to be one damn thing after another.

Everybody tells a writer what to write

and writers tell everybody what to think.

Result: no one profits from the other’s advice.

There you have it:

a profile of our history and culture.

*

Our destiny as a nation has been shaped

not by statesmen or philosopher-kings

but by sultans, shahs, *****s, padishahs,

czars, commissars, our own wheeler-dealers,

and mass murderers

like Abdulhamid II, Talaat and Stalin.

The only variable in this equation has been

the number of victims per year.

*

Will anything change in the foreseeable future?

Can anyone see the distant glimmer of a light

at the end of our endless tunnel?

You say we have survived

and we will continue to bugger on –

or is it buggered on?

You may call it survival if you are so inclined;

I call it the death of ten thousand cuts.

#

Saturday, March 02, 2013

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

ON PRIDE

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

If proud Turks, Armenians, Americans, Germans,

Greeks, Russians, Jews, and the rest of mankind

were to spend five minutes reflecting

on their own failings, blunders, and unsolved problems,

they would have a thousand reasons

to be humble and not a single reason to be proud.

*

If you were to say Russians could be proud of their literature,

I would say, if we were to take a closer look

at the lives of their great writers

we would discover that most of them

were persecuted, excommunicated, misunderstood,

rejected, exiled to Siberia, murdered and on the whole

treated the way most other nations,

including Armenians, have treated their own great writers

and thinkers beginning with Greeks and Socrates.

*

Why do nations treat their best and brightest abominably?

The answer must be,

because those in power are almost always hopeless mediocrities

and moral midgets whose greatest enemy is excellence.

To cover up their status as nonentities

they preach, promote, and legitimize pride,

that is to say, prejudice and contempt for others

and ultimately hatred, war, and massacre.

#

Saturday, March 02, 2013

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

ON NATIONALISM

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

The first time I heard a Canadian say

“We stole the land from the Indians fair and square,”

and no one contradicted him,

I remember to have thought:

“So it is possible to be objective about one’s homeland

without being accused of treason!”

*

One way to judge your degree of objectivity

is to consider the distance that exists

between your infantile illusions

and adult convictions.

The greater the distance,

the more objective the judgment.

*

How did Urartu become Armenia?

Was it marriage or rape?

*

An empire without plunder

is like an omelet without eggs.

*

In the 19th century nationalism made perfect sense

because it was an ideology

that opposed imperialist oppression.

*

An infallible dupe is a contradiction in terms,

and yet, there are so many of them!

#Sunday, March 03, 2013

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

HISTORY: WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN

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

When Madoff and his most important clients

were identified as Jews, my first thought was:

“They trusted Madoff; they did not trust Jesus.”

*

Has anyone ever written an autobiography

in which the stress is not on what was done

but on what was not done

out of ignorance, stupidity, and fear?

Sartre came close with his memoir, WORDS,

whose final message is:

literature is a useless passion

and writers are dreamers

who hate to give their infantile illusions.

*

What happened to Urartu?

Until the appearance of the Armens,

Urartu was an empire that successfully resisted

one of the mightiest military powers

in the history of mankind,

namely the Assyrians next door.

*

When the Armens appeared from the West

they were either welcomed or tolerated;

and that, in retrospect, may have been

the worst political blunder Urartu made.

*

For unlike Urartians, Armens were not warlike and,

to compound the felony,

their sense of solidarity was deficient.

Again unlike Urartians,

they were not a single entity with its own

clearly defined ethos and character,

but a collection of wandering tribes

that either refused or could not give up their tribal ways.

The rest, as they say, is history.

*

And that is the kind of unwritten history

I would like to read – a text in which

the emphasis is on blunders as opposed to victories,

be they military, moral, or imaginary.

A text moreover in which all facts

would be as clearly seen and accessible

as traffic signs.

#

Monday, March 04, 2013

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

ENCOUNTER WITH A PARTISAN

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

One of our elder statesmen came to see me once.

During the course of our conversation I noticed two things:

(a) he didn’t agree with my definition of words, and

( he couldn’t stand being contradicted.

At one pointed he even raised his voice and lost his temper

reminding me of the Chinese dictum

“He who loses temper has wrong on his side.”

*

I never saw him again.

Shortly thereafter he died

(may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul).

*

Who among us will dare to suggest that

(a) in political action we have been consistently guided

more by reason and knowledge

and less by emotion and ignorance; and

( emotion is a more reliable guide to action

than objective judgment, knowledge, and understanding?

#

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Dashiell Hammett on speechifiers:

“The cheaper the crook,

the gaudier the patter.”

*

Syria today: what happens to a country

whose leaders cease to think of themselves

as public servants.”

*

Armenia today: Syria without the bloodshed.

*

A world without Turks:

What a subject for an Armenian science fiction novel!

*

When God created angels,

he also created devils, which may suggest

God rates balance or equal opportunity

above love, truth, mercy, and justice.

*

He who trusts liars

cannot be an honest man.

#

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

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

AS I SEE IT

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

Individually we have excelled in all fields of human endeavor;

collectively we have developed the profile of useful idiots.

For 600 years we were faithful servants to Turks

and for 60 years little brothers to Russians.

*

To console ourselves we count the number

of tribes, nations, and empires that have ceased to exist.

*

What matters in writing is to say

what everybody thinks but refuses to say it.

*

No one knows all there is to know or, for that matter,

knows enough to form an infallible opinion.

*

There is an old saying:

“If you sit by the river long enough,

you will see your enemy’s carcass float by.”

The opposite is also true:

the carcass may be yours

and the fellow by the river your enemy.

#

Thursday, March 07, 2013

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Our enemies come in all sizes and shapes

but their favorite disguise is

as Armenian political leaders.

*

At the beginning the Turks were few

and we many…

*

I do my utmost to avoid my fellow Armenians.

I can deal with them only in my writings

which I do at a safe distance.

*

I became an atheist on the day I realized

God was not on my side.

*

Of how many Armenians I could say,

“To contradict is a temptation he cannot resist.”

*

Isolated voices of dissent have no effect

on a brainwashed majority.

*

Madmen at the top

outnumber madmen at the bottom.

*

We were defeated by our enemies,

destroyed by our own leadership.

#

Friday, March 08, 2013

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

PREDATORS

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

With the blessing of a bishop,

a regular paycheck from a boss

or the financial support of a benefactor,

any idiot can assert moral, intellectual,

and patriotic superiority.

There you have it:

the profile of an average fund-raiser,

Turcocentric ghazetaji, academic, speechifier

and sermonizer whose main function is

to brainwash children

and to convince the masses that

they never had it so good

because they are in the best of hands.

*

In the 19th century we were

“sheep without a shepherd” (Raffi).

Today we are sheep at the mercy of wolves

disguised as shepherds.

*

Our elites are the scum of the earth.

#

Saturday, March 23, 2013

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

After we were overrun by barbarians

we became barbarians.

Some day we may be civilized.

But that is only a hope

and hope is not a policy.

*

To be an authentic Armenian means

to be constantly engaged in shedding

the impurities of alien cultures.

*

To paraphrase a Mexican saying:

“Armenians: so close to Turkey,

so far away from God.

*

“Because we hate to say we don’t know

and we don’t understand,

we have created gods, angels, devils,

and life after death –a veritable Tower of Babel

without foundations.

*

I don’t write for my friends;

I write against my enemies

beginning with myself.

*

People tend to be more fanatical when they are wrong.

One could go further and say,

fanatics are wrong even when they are right.

#

Sunday, March 10, 2013

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

QUESTION

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

The average patriotic Armenian sees himself

through the eyes of our historians, speechifiers, and sermonizers.

I see myself as a member of a perennially divided nation

that has suffered a long series of defeats

– some of them catastrophic –

and continues to be at the mercy

of corrupt and incompetent leaders

who appear to be more interested

in their own powers and privileges

than in the welfare of the people.

*

Now then, gentle reader, tell me

who is closer to reality?

Who is more objective?

Whose judgment is more to be trusted?

Finally, who is more patriotic --

the dupe who believes everything he is told

or the other, who thinks twice before saying “Yes, sir!”

to someone whose number one concern is number one?

#

Monday, March 11, 2013

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

AS I SEE IT

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

To be objective means to ask:

What if what others (including our enemies)

think of us has more merit

than what we think of ourselves?

*

“Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,

for he will despise the wisdom of your words.”

PROVERBS, 23:9

*

How could I have said or done that?

Happy is the man who doesn’t ask that question

at least once every day.

*

The longer I live the greater the distance

between my countrymen and myself.

*

After the break-up of the Soviet Union,

we are told, over a million Russians emigrated.

Which raises the question:

Is Armenia on its way to becoming a no-man’s land?

#

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

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

SLAVES

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

A thousand years of subservience to bloodthirsty tyrants

has taught us to value pilaf and shish-kebab above ideas.

We even have a popular saying to that effect

that has been quoted to me on several occasions by my critics:

“You cannot cook pilaf with words.”

*

If you say, “What choice did we have?”

I will invite you to reflect on the following words

of William Pitt:

“Necessity is the plea

for every infringement of human freedom.

It is the argument of tyrants;

it is the creed of slaves.”

The creed of slaves!

Some words are worth repeating

even when they cannot produce a single spoonful of pilaf.

*

Mankind may be divided into masters and slaves

and the ambition of every slave is to be a master.

This has been said before

but it bears repeating.

Moral superiority is a fiction of our collective imagination.

*

An empty bag cannot stand upright.

Likewise, an empty brain cannot be right.

#

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

Good laws are useless in a country of bad judges.

*

The truth is never in the lines

but between the lines – unseen, unread, ignored.

*

Lies come in all sizes and shapes – small, white, big…

and worst of all, propaganda.

*

Disagreements are almost always

between dupes and opponents of propaganda.

*

Armenians and Turks agree on nothing

because they continue to trust their propagandists

more than their dissidents.

*

We are divided because we see all our hidden failings

in the opposition.

*

I judge my success by my degree of popularity:

the less popular I am, the better I feel.

*

We are not what we could have been.

After centuries of subservience we are not even the shadows

of what we could have been.

#

Thursday, March 14, 2013

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

WORTH REMEMBERING

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

Two things that we forget at our own peril:

(one) a belief system can be as misleading as a big lie;

and (two) where there are sheep there will be wolves.

*

To have all the answers is a luxury

only dupes and fanatics (but I repeat myself) can afford.

*

Our understanding of history is never finished,

only interrupted.

*

There is a good reason why

we prefer to speak more about the past

and less about the present.

We can blame the past on our enemies…

#

Saturday, March 23, 2013

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

PROBLEMS

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

The source of all our problems,

too much history – and bad history at that.

*

Brainwashed dupes are blind to contradictions.

They would be fully justified in pleading not guilty

by reason of insanity.

*

The road to hell is paved with propaganda.

*

Seeing the invisible and questioning the infallible –

that indeed is the aim of literature.

*

Armenia’s destiny is now in the hands

of thieves, liars, and brown-nosers.

In short, nothing has changed and

it’s business as usual.

#

Saturday, March 23, 2013

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

SATANIC RELIGIONS

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

When Salman Rushdie published his SATANIC VERSES

many intellectuals, diplomats and politicians in the West

sided with the imams who issued a fatwa (or contract) on him

on the grounds that he was guilty of insulting “a great religion.”

But there is no such thing as “a great religion.”

It is a mistake to judge the magnitude of a religion

by the number of its adherents or dupes.

One could go further and say

the greater the religion

the greater the number of its victims,

or crimes against humanity,

or death of innocent civilians.

Think of what’s happening today in Syria.

And consider the number of victims

of illegal abortions and AIDs in South America and Africa

all because the Catholic Church refuses to sanction

the use of condoms and legal abortions.

#

Saturday, March 23, 2013

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

DANGEROUS WORDS

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

The two most dangerous words in the world:

“I believe.”

*

Like most people I too was brought up

to respect men of faith.

I now view them as potential criminals

without a conscience.

*

As a child I too subscribed to many fallacies

one of them being all Armenians to be my friends.

*

Half-truths can be as dangerous as big lies.

*

Any one who claims to have found the truth

is an enemy of mankind.

*

Once upon a time,

for every faithful member

of the Communist Party in Soviet Armenia,

there was a “chic Bolshevik” in America

who believed Russians to be our big brothers.

Speaking of such a specimen a friend once said to me:

“I don’t blame him. He was sincere in his beliefs.”

I know now that to be sincere in one’s beliefs

is the same as pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

If you say “I know many men of faith

who have harmed no one,”

I say, when we speak of faith and belief systems

in a historic context, we mean not the sheep but the wolves;

we mean not the meek and the humble

who believe what they are told

but the policy-makers.

*

In a historic context the meek and the humble

might as well be anonymous, irrelevant,

and marginalized to the point of disappearance.

#

Monday, March 18, 2013

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

A BILLION CATHOLICS

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

Q: There are a billion Catholics in the world,

and yet you expect me to believe

they are all wrong and you are right?

A: Why not? There are a billion Muslims in the world

and you expect me to believe they are all wrong.

Q: You may have a point there…

A: Listen, when it comes to belief systems,

numbers are meaningless.

All religions are minority religions.

The overwhelming majority of mankind

is neither Catholic nor Muslim

but Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Mormon, and so on.

Q: But you are against all of them, right?

A: When it comes to belief systems I say

to each his own. What I am really against

is brainwashing children.

I will go further and say I consider brainwashing children

if not a crime against humanity

than the source of intolerance and

countless wars and massacres.

#

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

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

GREAT IDEAS

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

Great ideas are conceived by great men,

implemented by nameless mediocrities,

and perverted by faceless nonentities.

That may explain why

if a belief system preaches love

it ends up practicing hatred;

and if it preaches communism

it ends up practicing state capitalism.

*

Sooner or later all belief systems and ideologies

degenerate to the point of becoming their own contradictions

because where power enters,

greed is sure to follow;

and when greed becomes the driving force

nothing good survives.

*

Martin Luther was right when he said

you don’t need the Pope to go to heaven;

all you need is a copy of the Bible.

But he was wrong when he failed to predict

the advent of televangelists.

*

And speaking of bloodsuckers:

Republicans tell us the 1% are job creators

even when recent history tells us they are job killers;

and if they create jobs they are not motivated by altruism

but by self-interest, that is to say, greed,

and where greed enters

catastrophe is sure to follow.

*

I therefore feel justified in saying,

if you ever come up with a great idea,

mankind maybe better off if you keep it to yourself.

#

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

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

FOR THE RECORD

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

Q: Let me begin by quoting some of your critics.

Are you a denialist?

A: No!

Q: A self-hating Armenian?

A: I can’t say I am particularly fond of myself, no.

Q: Why not?

A: Because like most Armenians

I allowed myself to be moronized by morons.

Q: Do you hate Armenians?

A: Only the shish-kebab and pilaf variants,

Turcocentric ghazetajis and their dupes.

Q: Turcocentrism: could you define the word for us, please?

A: The misconception that all our problems

begin and end with Turks.

Q: Isn’t the recognition of the Genocide a central issue?

A: So is the responsibility of our leadership

that promised freedom and our historic lands

and delivered the hell of massacres

followed by dispersion, division, alienation,

and assimilation or bloodless slow-motion genocide.

It seems to me, it is dishonest to emphasize their responsibility

and cover up our own.

Q: How do you explain our survival?

A: You call it survival;

I call it the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts.

Q: So far you have said nothing positive.

A: The only positive I can think of is our literature.

Notwithstanding the fact that our ablest writers

were either systematically slaughtered or silenced

for refusing to moronize the people

by recycling the propaganda of foreign and domestic apes,

they carried on. They are our greatest heroes

and our only hope.

#

Thursday, March 21, 2013

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

ON GOLDEN AGES

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

The trouble with golden ages is that

they don’t last and they are not even golden.

This is as true of the Greek Golden Age (5th century BC)

as it is of our own (5th century AD).

As for the American Golden Age: they don’t have one.

Their brief history may be divided into two distinct periods:

barbarism and neo-barbarism --

(I am now paraphrasing better men than myself).

*

Both Socrates and Dostoevsky were condemned to death

for exercising their fundamental human right of free speech.

The execution of Socrates was carried out;

Dostoevsky’s wasn’t because seconds before the execution

the Czar sent a messenger with a pardon.

The experience so traumatized Dostoevsky that

he became more Czarist than the Czar.

In today’s parlance, he was born again

as a member of the Tea Party.

*

As for our treatment of our own writers:

it has been more Ottoman and Stalinist than Armenian.

Like the rest of mankind we too appear to be infatuated

with our own limitations, prejudices, and ignorance.

*

American writers are seldom silenced

by repressive administrations;

they prefer to silence themselves

by committing suicide or becoming alcoholics

or drug addicts.

#

Friday, March 22, 2013

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

WAR OF WORDS

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

Turcocentrism is a recent misconception or fallacy.

It is absent in the works of Baronian and Odian,

and more recently in Arlen and Saroyan.

There is even a key passage in Saroyan

where he states we should feel sorry for Turks.

*

Turcocentrism is less an ideology

and more a tool of propaganda

whose ultimate aim is to convince dupes

there is nothing wrong with us

because we are role models

of what a nation should be –

united against all enemies foreign and domestic

and immune to corruption,

therefore morally superior.

It further states, whatever problems we have

we must ascribe to Turks.

If it weren’t for Turks we would now be living

in our own Eden happily ever after.

*

To combat this propaganda line

Turks have come up with their own

whose aim is to convince their dupes that

like all truly civilized and progressive people

Turks are against violations of fundamental human rights,

except when they do the violating;

and they have always been against murdering

defenceless civilians except when they do the murdering.

#

Saturday, March 23, 2013

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

DEAD OR ALIVE?

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

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Stalin is dead but Stalinists continue to rule.

Jesus was crucified but supporters of crucifixion

are very much alive.

They may no longer use trees, hammers and nails

but they exist as surely as racists

in post-Civil War America.

*

Nothing bad ever dies.

Moral progress is an illusion.

There is no such thing as collective enlightenment.

Instead of a single sultan

we now have many mini-sultans,

and we cannot say “Forgive them, Lord,

for they don’t know what they are doing,”

because they are too damn smart

to plead not guilty by reason of ignorance.

#

ara baliozian · March 27, 2013

Monday, March 25, 2013

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

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

If both sides believe Truth to be on their side

it must be a Big Lie.

If both sides believe God to be on their side,

it must be the Devil.

In a historic context Homo sapiens may be defined as

a being who cannot tell the difference

between God and the Devil.

*

Q: Is it true that you are more critical of Armenians

than of Turks?

A: As an Armenian I criticize Armenians.

I leave to Turkish critics the task of criticizing their own.

*

When tyrants silence writers,

they invariably target the best.

*

The reason I am a pessimist or see the dark side of things

is that I refuse to be moronized by the 1%.

*

In murder it may be “cherchez la femme.”

But in war and crimes against humanity

it’s cherchez moral and intellectual hoodlums

parading as statesmen.

*

The 99% don’t make history;

they only suffer it.

#

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

NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS

OR GENOCIDE BY OTHER MEANS

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

Learning also means unlearning

what you were taught as a child.

Loving your people also means hating their enemies.

The average dupe loves to brag about the lies

he has been taught as a child

and to ignore the evidence to the contrary.

*

We in Canada are brought up to brag about

our multiculturalism and to forget that

there was multiculturalism in the Ottoman Empire too;

so much so that after 600 years of “brutal oppression”

we produced literary giants like

Baronian, Odian, Zabel Yessayan, and Zohrab.

*

Now then, name a single Canadian-born Armenian

who is capable of writing a single decent line

in his mother tongue.

*

I have heard smart Canadians define multiculturalism

as “let them dance.” Obviously because

they can read between the lines of their state propaganda

better than outsiders like us.

*

In the obituary of the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe,

I read the following this morning:

“He spent much of his adult life in the United States

but resisted literary honors from a government

he refused to accept.”

In other words, he refused to be taken in

by a policy of genocide by other means.

*

If you want to read more about the many ways

the 1% has of misleading, deceiving, confusing, bamboozling, flimflamming, exploiting, and hoodwinking the 99%

read MYTHOLOGIES by Roland Barthes.

#

IDIOTS

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

Armenians who say there are divisions everywhere

are simply parroting the words of an idiot

whose sole aim is to explain and justify

his own powers and privileges.

*

There are divisions even in the most advanced democracies?

It is equally true that, unlike us,

advanced democracies have a centralized power structure

because they have been successful

in overcoming their tribalism,

namely the misconception that

my political party, my church, my backyard

and my chickens matter more than all others.

*

There are divisions everywhere?

There are also rapists and murderers everywhere.

Should we therefore accept them

as inevitable facts of life

and adopt a live and let live stance

in the name of compassion, tolerance and patriotism?

*

There are divisions everywhere?

There are also crooks and idiots everywhere.

Does that mean we should allow them

to be in charge of our collective destiny?

#

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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

MEMOS TO MYSELF

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

Political leaders prefer dupes to dissidents.

*

The plea of not guilty may be available to dupes

but not to their deceivers.

*

Power corrupts, weakness castrates.

*

On the art of writing: the less art the better.

*

To write too much is not a sin;

to discard too little is.

#

ara baliozian · April 13, 2013

Saturday, April 13, 2013

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

SERMON

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

In what way am I morally superior

to a cold-blooded killer if I harbor a killer within me?

In what way are Americans morally superior to Muslims

if they (Americans) have killed more Muslims

than Muslims have killed Americans?

In what way Muslims are morally superior to Americans

if the only reason they have killed fewer Americans

is military inferiority?

*

Closer to home:

we have been so busy exposing Turkish criminal conduct

that our own moral status has become an alien dimension.

As Zarian would say: “Danger, danger, danger!”

*

There is only one way to feel morally superior

and that is (to echo Saroyan) by feeling sorry

for the morally inferior.

*

The Scriptures tell us there is no difference

between an adulterer and a man

who lusts after another’s wife.

Likewise there is no difference between a killer

and a man who preaches hatred and revenge

which he identifies as justice.

*

Perhaps what I have been trying to say here is

we all swim in the same sh**!

#

Saturday, April 13, 2013

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

THEOLOGY

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

The aim of human speech

is to say one thing

and do the opposite:

to say God is love and truth

and to worship lies and the Devil;

to say “Thou shalt not kill”

and to go to war;

to call Diasporan Armenians “aghber” (trash)

and to behave like trash.

Theologians and sermonizers are familiar with this phenomenon

but prefer not to speak about it.

*

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

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

As soon as the Kremlin realizes

the present regime in Yerevan to be a liability,

it will replace it with another.

Will anything change?

It remains to be seen.

“No one gives up power without a bloody fight,”

Hegel tells us.

Is he right?

We may have an answer soon.

*

DOES POWER CORRUPT?

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

Power does not corrupt.

It only exposes the corruption

that was already there.

*

AMERICA AND ARMENIA

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

Unhappy is the nation

whose two most important sources of education are

TV ads and state propaganda.

#

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

In life nothing works as planned.

An honest autobiography would be

a long list of disappointments.

*

My first book was a best-seller.

My second book was banned.

That’s when I knew I was on the right track.

*

We adopt a belief system because we are told

all the others don’t make sense.

*

If you write in defense of dupes,

deceivers will conspire against you.

#

REMEMBER!

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

Patriotism is the favored word of tyrants.

*

Political parties need honest men

as surely as religions need saints.

*

“A man of principle is a majority of one.”

#

Saturday, April 13, 2013

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

SITUATION / SH*TUATION

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

In the eyes of the world

our regime in Yerevan has lost its virginity.

The people are against it.

But even if replaced

nothing will change.

*

Believe nothing you are told.

There are no good guys in politics.

Power prostitutes.

*

Some of our greatest brains

praised Lenin and Stalin.

Even our best and brightest are no better

than a bunch of dupes.

*

Where there is too much talk

of freedom and independence,

oppression is sure to follow.

*

Throughout our millennial history

foreign tyrants have always relied

on their Armenian collaborators

to moronize the people.

#

TURCOCENTRISM REVISITED

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

In Turcocentric circles I am know only as someone

whom Turks like to quote.

All I can say in my defense is that

the Devil too can quote the Scriptures.

Does that mean the Good Lord is pro-Devil?

*

I gladly admit to being not a Turcocentric

but an Armenocentric writer.

So were Baronian and Odian;

or for that matter Zarian and Massikian;

and before them Naregatsi

who in his LAMENTATION blames no one

but himself for his many failings and transgressions.

*

A human being is not a lump of clay

at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

The Turks did not recreate us in their own image.

We consented to be recreated.

That is worth repeating and emphasizing.

We are what we have become

because we chose freely to be who we are.

The rest is propaganda

and our favorite sport: the blame game.

#

DIARY

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

“I enjoy reading you.”

I am less interested in your enjoyment

and more in your torment.

I don’t write to entertain.

Flattery is as irrelevant to me

as the words of a brainless critics or dupe

who believes what he is told

especially what he is told

flatters his ego.

*

In Deirdre Bair’s SAUL STEINBERG: A BIOGRAPHY

I am informed that if you are depressed

you can go to the nearest emergency

and ask to see a shrink.

This may be common knowledge but it’s news to me.

*

I remember once when asked by a French friend

if I have ever been analyzed

I said something to the effect that

analysis is for the bourgeoisie

and that as a perennial slum-dweller

it has never even occurred to me

to visit a shrink.

I was astonished when he informed me that

in France analysis is available to everyone

free of charge.

*

Perhaps deep inside somewhere

I continue to be a subject of the Ottoman Empire

where the insane were treated like criminals.

#

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as i see it - Pt. IV

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