as i see it - Pt. III

[ara baliozian]

TO MY PRO-ARAB FRIENDS

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

Can we learn democracy by adopting such

crypto-fascist tribal losers like the Arabs as our role models?

How about Turks? -- less tribal, more democratic….

*

RAGE

***********

Never speak in anger.

It is written: "Anger is a short madness."

It is also written: "When rage speaks, reason is silenced."

And who can forget the Chinese saying:

"He who loses temper has wrong on his side."

*

ON MORAL SUPERIORITY

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

The truly moral man does not assert superiority.

Nothing can be as phony as the self-assessed moral superiority

of a perennial loser.

The same applies to self-assessed intellectual superiority.

The word "intelligent" used by odars in reference to Armenians

is a euphemism that stands for crafty wheeler-dealers.

*

ON PROPAGANDA

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

I am accused of recycling American propaganda

by individuals who recycle mullah crapola..

*

CIVILIZATION VERSUS SIPHYLIZATION

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

One mark of civilization is the ability to engage in dialogue.

Have you ever heard of two Armenian bosses or bishops

who engaged in dialogue, compromised and reached a consensus?

With such educators, leaders, and role models….

*

LOSING FACE

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

There is nothing wrong in losing face

if by losing it we expose a better one.

*

THE CITY OF ANI

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

In his recently published book VIAGGI IN ARMENIA

(Travels in Armenia) Pietro Kuciukian writes that

while in Ani he saw two large panels

narrating in Turkish and English the history of the city.

Among the people who lived and contributed to its construction

mention is made of Arabs, Persians, Seljuks, Turks,

Mongols and Russians, but not Armenians.

*

AMERICA

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

Is there anything we can say against America

that has not been said by Americans themselves?

Is not American literature from Thoreau and Mark Twain

to Mailer and Gore Vidal,

not to say such Nobel Prize winners as

Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison,

essentially a literature of criticism and dissent?

Even the aim of such popular films as CITIZEN KANE

and DR. STRANGELOVE,

not to say of such sitcoms as ALL IN THE FAMILY,

is to expose the ugly side of American life.

*

ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

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

Did you know that PRAVDA’s

anti-American propaganda department

was handled by a single young woman in a cubicle

whose routine consisted in reading the NEW YORK TIMES

and selecting and translating all the negative news?

*

EVIL

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

After we establish the fact that Jews and Yanks

are the source of all evil, then what?

For over a century now

we have been clamoring and crying that

the Turks are bloodthirsty savages and butchers

of innocent women and children:

what have we accomplished?

*

REALITY

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

We either understand reality

or wallow in rage and self-pity.

Rage is punishing yourself for someone else’s stupidity and self-pity is cancer.

*

WMD

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

There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?

What nonsense!

Was not Saddam himself the greatest WMD since Hitler and Stalin?

*

LEARNING

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

We either learn from winners (Jews, Yanks) or losers (Arabs).

But what could losers teach us that we don't already know?

[ara baliozian]

SEMANTICS

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

When we disagree,

we don't argue;

we engage in verbal hooliganism

and call it dialogue.

That’s because we are experts on any given subject

except one: semantics.

*

We are informed that

the murder rate in the United States

is the highest in the world.

Murder is, of course, a relative term.

When Stalin and Hitler kill millions of their own subjects,

they don't call it murder but final solution or purge

or some other harmless euphemism.

When Saddam and his sons torture and kill

they don't call it murder either but statesmanship.

And when a Muslim fanatic kills innocent civilians

it is not classified as murder

but as an act of heroism by a martyr

who will be rewarded in heaven.

Allahu akbar!

*

What is an Armenian discussion forum?

A place where we may profit from

one another’s knowledge and experience.

But only in theory.

In practice it is a vipers’ nest

where venom is spewed and old scores settled –

and when I say scores I don't mean

scores against enemies but against brothers.

*

Verbal hooliganism doesn't work.

I speak from experience.

Verbal hooliganism not only alienates

but also befouls the atmosphere

and debauches your arguments,

so that even if you are right

you give one the impression of being irrational.

*

How do I know these things?

Knowledge has nothing to do with it.

All it takes is objective observation.

*

Truth is a virus that has no known antibodies.

Once it enters your bloodstream

you become its captive for the rest of your life.

*

Once upon a time

my main concern was to justify my status as perennial loser

by asserting moral and intellectual superiority.

Which is why when I meet someone

who voices views that I held twenty years ago

I am not taken in.

*

Once upon a time to justify my status as perennial loser

I established beyond a shadow of a doubt

that the world was an evil place

inhabited by the scum of the earth –

Turks, Kurds, communists, capitalists,

fascists, racists, charlatans,

fanatics, murderers….

In short, everyone was to blame except me.

I know better now.

*

Win an argument and lose a friend.

Refuse to be taken in and make an enemy for life.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, May 10, 2003

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

What do you call people

who have problems of their own

but prefer to solve someone else’s?

Armenians.

*

They say the West divided the Middle East.

They say the CIA divided the Armenian Church.

All empires divide and rule.

Nothing new in that.

It’s been going on for thousands of years.

But even the mightiest empire cannot divide

without the consent of the ruled.

*

What do you call people who love Middle-East regimes

more than the natives?

Armenians.

*

My health will improve greatly

if I give up writing for Armenians,

my doctor (herself an Armenian) tells me.

I ask her if she too thinks Armenians

are carcinogenic agents….

*

What do you call people who

instead of fighting their own petty little demons

assault (but only verbally and from a safe distance)

someone else’s giant demons?

Fools and cowards.

*

After reading some of the criticism leveled against me,

a concerned friend quotes the Bible – something to do

with pearls and swine….

*

What do you call people who think

if they ignore their problems

they will go away?

Nincompoops!

[ara baliozian]

STATE OF THE NATION

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

You cannot solve problems by silencing dissent.

This simple truth has not yet penetrated

the thick skulls of people

programmed to be subservient to authoritarian rule.

*

Every Armenian is some other Armenian’s Turk.

*

Progressive people have problems

and they recognize them as such.

Tribal people pretend their failures to be successes,

and their military defeats to be moral victories.

*

It is not easy writing for Armenians;

neither is it easy writing for the lunatic fringe:

but I repeat myself.

*

The Middle East is the lunatic fringe of the world.

*

Only after we de-Ottomanize and de-Stalinize ourselves

may we qualify as members of the human race,

or so I thought until recently.

But after a few exchanges with friends from the Middle East,

I think we should also be de-Arabized.

[axel]

"He who loses temper has wrong on his side."

 

I will just pick this one sentence. I have no time to address the other falsehoods your writings are plagued with.

 

 

<<[...] "Tu te fâches, donc tu as tort" disait un ancien.Cette parole est aussi fausse que célèbre. L'homme qui se fâche a souvent raison. Je dirais bien plus volontiers: "Tu te fâches, donc tu aimes." L'homme qui s'emporte est presque toujours un homme qui aime beaucoup. C'est la "colère de l'amour", disait encore Joseph de Maistre.

L'homme qui discute avec violence, qui poursuit l'adversaire de ses accusations, qui veut à toute force emporter la place d'assaut, convertir, persuader, celui-là est plein de tendresse. La fureur apparente qu'il témoigne contre vous n'est qu'un désir ardent de s'assimiler à vous, et de vous emporter avec lui aux régions de la paix et de la victoire. Si vous le repoussez absolument, il finira par se taire; c'est alors qu'il n'aimera plus. Dans les discussions des hommes bien élevés, celui qui menace de s'échauffer, c'est celui-là qu'on accuse de haïr: c'est celui-là qui aime.

Celui qui garde une mesure parfaite, qui ne laisse échapper un mot en dehors de la prudence et du calcul, celui qui demeure irréprochable dans l'expression et dans l'apparence, c'est souvent celui-là qui n'aime pas. L'autre se donnait, celui se réserve, et semble doux parce qu'il est indifférent.

La haine n'est pas une violence; elle est une réticence. Elle n'est pas une ardeur; elle est une froideur. Elle est une quantité négative; elle n'est pas un transport, elle est une abstention. [...]>>

 

Ernest Hello, Le Siècle

[nairi]

Axel, I didn't know a faithful Christian justified anger

 

Seriously though, keeping in mind our primitive conscious and thus also our primitive understanding of reality, who says either of your quotes (i.e. yours and Ara's) are not falsehoods, or truths for that matter?

 

Sorry about my previous behavior btw.

[vava]

Good point Nairi,

 

Where one is a poetic justification of rage (albeit a good one), the other is an wholesale dismissal of anger. Both polar extremes, and both (IMO) bearing some truth, but neither entirely true. I would suppose that the truth would actually lie somewhere in between...

[axel]

Nairi, FYI, Ernest Hello happens to be a nineteenth century catholic writer, that is to say, his writings have a strong christian connotation

 

Vava, I would not say his stance is the exact opposite of the one he attacks for he does not say he who has anger necessarily has right on his side. However, he observes that this is often the case. But the essential point IMHO is what he adds right after and that is, he who has anger is often the one who loves the most. I would personally add, as a christian, that the only Truth in the absolute is Love but I guess "relativistic" Nairi will disagree with me for she does not seem to believe in the absolute

 

PS: Actually if Ara Baliozian were to say the sky is yellow and I were to denounce it as a blatant falsehood and point out that it is blue, I bet Nairi would argue that neither of us hold the truth, that this is a question of point of view LOL.

Edited May 14, 2003 by axel

[vava]

Well then, I suppose it comes down to perspective. 'He who is angry, is therefore wrong' is equally as invalid as 'He who is angry, often loves the most' - and the corollary Hello mentions ' 'He who shows no anger, often does not love'.

 

Again, there may be some measure of truth to both propsitions, but I think I would than fall ino Nairi's camp of "relativists". Where if Ara was to say, 'The sky is yellow', and you were to respond, 'No, the sky is blue' - then, Yes both are true. Given the sky were to be composed of CMYK colours - For though it appears BLUE, there is YELLOW in it.

 

PS - Please forgive my computer-geek colour analogy

[Guest Fadi]

Axel, if Nairi do such, she may be right... who said the sky is your blue ? I mean, what evidences you have that the blue you percieve is the blue that others percieve ? What proves that the blue you percieve in fact would be the red I percieve but interprate it as blue because there is a name that I attached to that blue ? :-) I have a lot to times to kill today, so let bore you a little more.

 

This color is called blue for you, and for me, but what proves that I do not percieve what you percieve as this, as that. And that everytime I see this, I call it blue, and that the only reason that you may say that I am right, is because you see what I see as that as this. So we call it the same way, but nothing proves we percieve the same thing. So the sky is blue, because we call the color of the sky blue, and that the ligh wave that is attached to that is the "nm" of the spectral mesurment that we call blue. But nothing, like I said above, proves in fact that the blue you see would be interprated by you the same as the blue that I see.

 

A little correction vava, if both peoples may have few things said that could be right, this does not prove that the truth is somewhere in between, but it could very well be a question of statistic, like telling b.s like 1+1 = 5, 1+ 2 = 5, 1+ 3 = 5, and finally 1+ 4 = 5, statistically like you see, taking the same start, and continuing like this, the person will end up having the good answer...

 

... O.K before you guys start jumping on me and say: "What on god have you smoked Domino" I will just shut the f. up.

Edited May 14, 2003 by Fadi

[Sasun]

Hey Domino, sometimes I also think the same about colors and tastes. So, some people like sweet, some like bitter taste. We don't know if they actually have the same perception when they eat sugar, for example. Same goes with colors like you said.

 

About anger, I don't know what Axel's French post says, so sorry if I repeat. I think anger can be two types, rational and irrational. Both are ways of response to a certain event or thought. Rational anger is what we feel towards Turkey's denial of genocide, for example. Irrational is when we express anger towards any given Turk, another example.

 

Either way, patience as opposed to anger is the right choice IMO (patience is a virtue!). And what Ara Baliozian said has some truth at least. But when he generalizes and presents a not very deep and questionable thought as truth, it causes both rational and irrational anger (depending on the person and time)

[axel]

Well Domino & Vava, I was expecting this answer LOL. The TRUTH is you do have time to waste Edited May 14, 2003 by axel

[nairi]

Lol! Ya'll talking behind my back in front of my face

 

Nairi will disagree with me for she does not seem to believe in the absolute

 

The only thing I believe in is that I don't know.

[vava]

Lol! Ya'll talking behind my back in front of my face

I suppose that this is an example of Nairi's relativism?

[nairi]

LOL

[ara baliozian]

12 May, 2003

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

At one time or another millions of people

have believed in millions of idols, gods, religions,

superstitions, orthodoxies, heresies and ideologies.

But since the truth (if it exists)

is known only to God (if He exists)

it is safe to assert that

men of faith are also men of lies.

*

If all men were honest,

who would take notice of an honest man?

In an honest environment,

what would be the worth of honesty?

*

The function of literature

is to be a pain in the perforation of philistines,

fools, fanatics, phonies and flimflam artists.

Which is why, whenever a reader insults me,

I know I have hit the bull’s eye

and a sure source of b.s.

[ara baliozian]

13 May, 2003

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

It is written: "In an argument take care of your emotions;

your logic will take care of itself."

*

Underestimating the enemy

is the mother of all defeats.

*

Unlike the Pope of Rome, Stalin and

Suleiman the Magnificent,

I have been wrong many times

and I will be wrong many more times in the future.

I will go further and say that

I wouldn't be surprised in the least

if someone comes along tomorrow

and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt

that I have never been right.

You have nothing to fear from me

or anyone else, for that matter,

who has come to terms

with his own status as a fallible human being.

*

When a French prostitute,

who had slept with German soldiers during the Occupation,

had her head shaved, she declared:

"Mon cul est international,

mais mon coeur est toujours francais!"

This noble line of defense

is not available to individuals

whose most important organ

is neither the mind nor the heart

but the ass.

*

No one can be as consistently and spectacularly wrong

as the ass who assumes he knows everything

and is never wrong – except perhaps he who reads

only to justify and reinforce his prejudices and bias,

such as an Armenian who reads only

Armenian historians.

*

After suffering centuries of oppression,

abuse, and deception, Armenians have earned the right

to be suspicious of others and of one another,

but never – repeat, never – of their own judgment.

There it is: the genesis of all our pundits

on any given subject,

including the Middle East.

*

There are many kinds of readers;

the worst are the ones who are so abysmally insecure

that they demand that you echo

their sentiments and thoughts,

especially if these sentiments and thoughts

are extensions of their own doubts, anxieties and fears.

*

An Armenian pundit is one

who understand the past and knows all there is to know

about the present, and is thus in a position

to predict the future.

One is therefore justified in wondering

why is it that with so many pundits in our midst

we were unable to avert any one

of our many catastrophes.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

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

Anyone who has ever been exposed

to any one of our speechifiers and sermonizers

will have to agree with me that

brevity and honesty must be

just about the two most quintessentially unArmenian virtues;

which is why I love them dearly

and I consider them to be

the highest of human assets.

*

Here is an example of brevity:

When a 19th-century French prince

became smitten with a celebrated French actress

he sent her a note that said:

"Where? When? How much?"

Her reply read:

"Your place. Tonight. Free."

*

And here is an example of honesty,

as recounted by Sartre in one of his essays:

"A French journalist in Cincinnati,

disgusted by American puritanism,

once nobly declared:

‘I, a man of thirty-five years

with a croix-de-guerre and four children,

I masturbated this morning’"

*

At one time or another

I have committed every transgression

known to man and beast

if not in action than in thought;

but the blunder that I keep committing

daily and compulsively

is voicing right thoughts to the wrong people,

unlike some of my friends

who have been successful in making a name for themselves

by expressing wrong thoughts

to the "right" people.

[ara baliozian]

15 May, 2003

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

All Armenian discussion forums

should have the following motto on their home page:

THE ABILITY TO ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE

IS ONE OF THE SUREST SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION.

*

"Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another,"

Zarian noted in his diary shortly before he died.

There are days when I feel like a vegetarian

surrounded by restless natives.

*

I don't need much to be happy.

All I have to do is remind myself that

my critics and I don't live in the same neighborhood

and none of them is a commissar of culture.

*

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Also a nation tribalized.

*

What stands between tribalism and nationalism?

Tribal chiefs whose number one concern

is taking care of number one.

*

What stands between Arab and Arab nationalism?

Saddam-like sultans and their assorted sons,

sycophants, parasites and bloodsuckers.

*

What stands between us and nationalism?

Bosses, bishops and the benefactors who support them.

*

What makes tribal people hidebound

and incapable to learn from their past blunders and defeats?

The answer must be obvious by now: blind hatred.

In our case hatred of Turks,

in the case of Arabs, hatred of Jews and Yanks.

*

Hatred is an extension of fear

and fear is bad policy.

*

Pythagoras: "All living beings are akin to one another."

*

I quote an old saying.

A reader quotes a new saying that contradicts it.

A silly game.

Since there are countless sayings,

any saying can be contradicted by another

provided one ignores the context and its nuances.

*

It is written: "When you chop wood chips will fly."

*

He who supports terrorism

will engage in verbal hooliganism.

*

Historians operate on the assumption that

the past can be a reliable index for predicting the future.

Terrorists operate on the assumption that

even if they failed in the past

they will succeed in the future – with the help of God.

Who is right?

Next question:

What has been the role of God in our recent past?

*

Hitchcock’s epitaph (as written by himself):

"This is what happens to bad little boys."

*

Hitchcock once ended a speech with the words:

"I am told that a murder takes place every minute,

so I don't want to waste your precious time.

I know you’d like to get back to work. Thank you."

[ara baliozian]

WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE ARE

OUR NATIONAL BENEFACTORS?…

AND RELATED ATROCITIES

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

"I hire and fire people like you,"

one of our benefactors is quoted as having said

to a distinguished intellectual, poet, educator

and author of several textbooks.

("I promote and purge scum like you!"

I imagine one of our commissars saying

to Mahari, Bakounts and Zabel Yessayan.)

*

Another one of our celebrated benefactors

wanted me to translate into English…

no, not Abovian, Raffi, or Massikian,

but the diary of his own grandpapa –

an Oriental rug merchant.

*

Still another wanted me to write his memoirs.

*

MEMO

TO OUR NATIONAL BENEFACTORS:

You don't need writers to write your memoirs;

all you need is a calculating machine or an accountant.

*

Have you ever noticed that Armenians

take their arguments (make it, verbal massacres)

so seriously that it is almost as if

the future of the world depended on the outcome?

*

"There is something in us wiser than our head,"

Schopenhauer tells us. I am beginning to suspect

that elusive "something" has been extinguished in us

during six centuries of brutal Ottoman oppression.

*

If tomorrow Turks disappear from the face of the earth,

Armenians will not miss them because

they will be more than happy

to be one another’s Turk.

*

We are the best, the brightest, and

in the ablest of hands. It follows,

since we have no problems of our own,

we can dedicate ourselves to solving

the problems of the Middle East and

other trouble spots around the globe.

You believe that, don't you?

*

It is said that when a total stranger

approached the Duke of Wellington in the street

and said: "Mr Smith, I believe."

The Duke replied:

"If you believe that, you'll believe in anything!"

*

Last night I lost another friend from the Middle East

when I dismissed his anti-Semitic tirades as nonsense.

One of the preconditions of Armenian friendship:

total agreement on all conceivable subjects.

*

Weakness makes us insecure,

and insecurity makes us cowards,

and cowardice makes us pick enemies

who are themselves double victims:

victims of alien powers

and victims of their own tribal leadership –

very much like Arabs:

victims of Jews and Yanks

and victims of their own sadistic

and sodomizing Saddams and

bloodsucking sultans, some of whom, I am told,

have amassed two hundred billion

(not million, but billion) dollars in foreign banks,

and to deflect their people’s discontent,

they encourage mullahs to preach hatred

of Jews and Yanks, and to legitimize

the murder of innocent civilians.

*

Between a lie that flatters

and a truth that hurts,

we shall always reject the truth

and bury our heads in a cesspool of lies.

[ara baliozian]

SOLUTIONS

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

If others are the source of our problems,

it follows we are dependent on their goodwill.

If we are dependent on their goodwill,

it also follows there isn't much we can do

except perhaps to be nice to them.

But I suspect deep down somewhere we know better.

We know that the Turks and the Great Powers

are only a fraction of our problems.

The other and more substantial fraction is ourselves.

Which is why we are nasty to others

and even nastier to one another.

Which is also why our problems remain

unsolved as well as insoluble.

*

THIS AND THAT

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

When words fail,

the passage of time

may have a better chance to succeed.

*

It is not at all unusual for an Armenian

to see secret and invisible connections

between the status of his ego

and the fate of the cosmos.

*

AKHTAMAR

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

While visiting the Island of Akhtamar on Lake Van,

Pietro Kuciukian (in his book TRAVELS IN ARMENIA)

notices a solitary girl in the grass

drawing a sketch of the church.

When asked she identifies herself

as a student of architecture from England.

And what does she think

of this masterpiece of Armenian architecture?

"I didn't know it was an Armenian monument,"

she replies. "I thought it was Byzantine.

Isn't Armenia on the other side of the border?"

*

MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER

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

Always remember to cherish your critic.

They may be an excellent source of stimulation

unless of course you plan to specialize in pastoral poetry.

In almost every other genre – from fiction and drama

to satire and polemic – critics can be a valuable asset.

Be careful how you handle them.

Do not try to silence or to demolish them

even when it is within your power to do so.

Demolishing them would be like

killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

This much said, however, I must also warn you

not to confuse critics with detractors.

Literary criticism is a respectable genre worthy of study;

verbal vandalism is not,

and that’s exactly what detractors are:

verbal vandals whose central concern is

asserting some kind of self-assessed

and therefore non-existent superiority

and ultimately in silencing you.

It is from their ranks that totalitarian and fascist regimes

draw their censors, commissars and executioners.

Remember then to cherish your critics

but to ignore your detractors.

[ara baliozian]

MEANWHILE, ON PLANET EARTH…

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

What could be more ephemeral

than an Armenian club of mutual admiration?

*

"With a loud voice

one cannot think subtle thoughts,"

Nietzsche once observed.

Likewise, with a large ego.

One could even say that

the larger the ego,

the smaller the brain.

(If I have said this before, it bears repeating.)

*

The most powerful force in the universe

is a combination of ignorance and vanity.

It is the source of all murders, wars and massacres.

Compared to it, self-interest (or Marxism)

is not even a joke but the shadow and the illusion of one.

*

What is that mighty force

that allows an inbred moron to assess himself as a genius

and to hold forth on the meaning of our history and culture?

What else but a combination of ignorance and vanity?

*

What is that irresistible force

that makes a horny bugger imagine

the existence of a harem of virgins

waiting impatiently for his triumphal entry into heaven?

Ditto.

*

And what is that dark force that allows me to think

what I write may be useful to some of my readers?

What else?

*

When reality clashes with illusions,

the fool will question not his illusions but reality.

*

When I witness a gang rape,

the least I can do is whisper:

"This is wrong! This is wrong."

Perhaps all the wisdom of the West,

from Socrates to Solzhenitsyn,

is nothing but that inaudible whisper.

*

As a child I had messianic ambitions,

but I gave them up on the day I realized that

for every messiah mankind produces

a hundred crucifiers,

a thousand assassins

and a million dupes willing and eager

to believe charlatans.

[ara baliozian]

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

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

Unreasonable thinking is open to reason,

but irrational or perverse thinking is not.

*

The paradox of all paradoxes:

people in need of light

prefer to live in darkness.

It has been observed that

when the blind recover their sight,

their first instinct is to take refuge in dark rooms.

*

I was brought up to believe

we are the best and the brightest.

I know now that only the blind among us

refuse to see that our history

is a succession of miscalculations and blunders

committed by the worst and the dumbest.

Smart Armenians exist, no doubt about that;

but all of them – from Byzantine emperors

to Mikoyan and Deukmejian – operated

in alien environments and served alien,

sometimes even hostile, interests.

*

To engage in double-talk

comes so naturally to some that

they are not even aware of it,

perhaps because that’s the way

they were brought up.

My own father was so busy trying to survive

in a hostile environment in time of war

that he never had a chance

to teach me the tricks of the trade

or the art of living.

He never taught me how to lie, cheat and deceive.

He thus cursed me to be an honest man

in a dishonest world.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

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

If God ever decides to write His memoirs

or the history of mankind in ten or a hundred volumes,

then and only then we may know the truth.

Until then we shall have only versions of the past

and whenever there are two versions of the same story

we should reserve the right to doubt both

even if one side is Turkish and the other Armenian.

And if an Armenian comes along and says:

"Truth is on our side, so is God,"

I would want to know where was God

when we needed Him the most?

*

Some of my readers think I am trouble.

Obviously they don't know the meaning of the word

or they are advanced cases of Alzheimer’s.

After a long series of military defeats,

occupation by bloodthirsty tyrants,

six centuries of murderous regimes

(the Ottoman and the Soviet being only

the two most recent),

purges, massacres, genocide,

dispersion and slum life,

I am trouble? -- because I exercise

my fundamental human right of free speech

and I refuse to recycle their favorite brand of crap?

If I am trouble it’s only to spineless worms

who are terrified of their own shadow.

*

Armenians who support such slogans as

DEATH TO JEWS and DEATH TO AMERICA

are a living proof of the fact that

they have learned nothing from history

because they think genocide is the only solution.

[ara baliozian]

NEXT YEAR IN MECCA

 

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

 

If we don't trust one another

 

why should anyone else trust us?

 

If the majority of Armenians

 

don't support their political leaders

 

why should the rest of the world

 

take them seriously?

 

If Bush is a moron,

 

is Kocharian a genius?

 

If there are anti-Jews among us

 

why not pro-Turks among Jews?

 

If after countless memoirs by survivors,

 

confessions by Nazi leaders,

 

and eyewitness accounts

 

there are holocaust deniers among us

 

why not genocide deniers

 

among Turks, Jews and Yanks?

 

If CNN is hogwash what makes anyone think

 

the many articles on the massacres

 

published in the NEW YORK TIMES

 

and other newspapers are not baloney?

 

Perhaps what I am trying to say here is that

 

our self-appointed pundits are no better

 

than panchoonies and our smartasses,

 

like all smartasses around the world,

 

are more ass than smart.