as i see it - Pt. III

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 17, 2002

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

Mankind may be divided into three classes:

the intellectuals (thinkers, philosophers, scientists),

the workers (the overwhelming majority

that has no time for abstractions

because it is too busy making a living),

and the lunatic fringe (whose aim is power

which it can acquire only by silencing the intellectuals

and misleading the workers).

*

History as we know it is essentially

a history of the lunatic fringe and the biography

of kings, emperors, warlords, sultans, shahs,

*****s, padishas, ayatollahs, mullahs, dictators,

juntas, ideologues, assassins, religious fanatics, commissars….

It is a history of deception, oppression,

exploitation, war and massacre.

*

When the lunatic fringe speaks of justice

it will practice injustice.

When the lunatic fringe speaks in the name of God,

it will do the devil’s work.

*

To join a crowd and to mouth slogans

is to legitimize one’s status as

the confirmed dupe of a lunatic fringe.

*

To write for Armenians is like swimming

in a Brazilian river swarming with hungry piranhas:

most give up after the first bite,

but there are others

(and you can count them on the fingers of a one-handed leper)

who persevere even after they have been reduced to skeletons.

*

My view of women sank on the day I learned

they wanted to achieve equality with men.

*

Armenians worship live benefactors and dead poets.

*

Balzac: "Nature makes only dull animals.

We owe the fool to society."

*

Kant on the difference between ignorance and stupidity:

"There is no cure for stupidity."

*

Albert Camus: "Hell is a special favor

reserved for those who have asked for it insistently."

[ara baliozian]

Monday, November 18, 2002

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

My contempt for our political parties

is shared by our political parties.

My contempt for the Armenian Communist Party

is shared by Tashnaks,

my contempt for Tashnaks is shared by Ramgavars,

and my contempt for Ramgavars is shared by Tashnaks.

So much for our bosses.

About our bishops I will say only this:

Once I read a letter to the editor

(an English-language weekly published in New York City)

in which one of them accused another

of embezzlement and attempted assassination.

*

I have a communist contempt for capitalists

and a capitalist contempt for communists;

and if I were to choose between

the incompetence and corruption of a democracy

and the brutality of a totalitarian state,

I would choose the first and I would spend the rest of my life

exposing the corrupt and the incompetent.

*

In our environment the slogan

"Grub first then ethics" (Brecht)

is adopted even by fat men.

*

On reading the posts in an Armenian discussion forum,

two thoughts occur again and again:

"Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another" (Zarian)

and the dumbest are also the loudest.

*

Truths are resented because they make lies less seductive.

*

As a perennial underdog I resent top dogs

but I have no illusions about underdogs

whose sole ambition in life is to be top dogs.

*

If Diogenes were to come back to life as an Armenian

I would hasten to send him the following message:

"Don't even bother buying a lantern –

it would be a waste of time and money."

*

There is this about the truth:

when exposed to it, it enters your bloodstream,

circulates in your body,

penetrates your brain,

and establishes a permanent residence there.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

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

To those who say, not all Armenians are charlatans,

I say, all rules have exceptions.

*

I just read a mystery story by an American writer

whose private eye is an Armenian

and his assignment is to find a stolen Oriental rug.

If it’s not the massacres, it’s rugs….

*

It’s impossible to make a point or to be funny

without some degree of exaggeration.

Humorless people might as well be functional illiterates.

*

The genocide has succeeded only

in turning us into grim pillars of salt.

*

If religion is opium,

does that mean religious leaders are junkies?

Not quite.

Junkies harm only themselves.

By legitimizing intolerance, hatred, wars, massacres,

torture, terror, and countless other crimes against humanity,

religious leaders have victimized millions of innocent civilians.

*

If a mad dog bites,

he does so for a reason.

If we portray the Turks as mad dogs,

then we must ask the question:

What exactly did we do to avoid their teeth?

*

Authority thrives on ignorance.

Where there are leaders (as opposed to public servants)

there will be spin doctors, cover-up artists,

charlatans, and an uninformed community.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

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

Many years ago an old Canadian writer warned me:

"There are 43 ways a publisher can cheat a writer."

I have since come to realize that

this is a peculiarity not just of publishers

but of human nature in general and by extension,

their institutions.

Shaw expressed this very same view when he said:

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

*

A Canadian poetess:

"As soon as you realize you have been screwed

every possible way, you run across a publisher

who has read THE KAMA SUTRA."

*

All Armenians are critical,

but some are critical of wolves,

others of lambs.

*

Next time you voice a dogma, ask yourself:

"Why is it that there are millions out there

who dismiss it as a fallacy?"

*

To the question: "Why do you go on writing?"

I can only reply:

Resistance. I find resistance stimulating.

It’s my bread and butter.

I suspect on the day

our bigots and jackasses shut up, I will too.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 21, 2002

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

A political party that portrays itself as the brains of the people

assumes the people are brainless.

*

One of the greatest mistakes a writer can make

is to assume that all his adult readers are adults.

*

Whenever a reader expresses a view

that I held thirty years ago when I was arrogant in my ignorance

I know he can't be right.

*

My critics want me to think like them;

they forget that where everyone thinks alike no one thinks.

*

We study the past in order to enhance our understanding of reality

and to answer the question:

Where did we go wrong?

To portray ourselves as the good guys

and everyone else as villains is not history

but its contradiction and it promotes not knowledge

but ignorance and amnesia.

*

Nothing in life is black and white,

not even Turks and Armenians.

[ara baliozian]

Friday, November 22, 2002

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

We underestimated the Turks a hundred years ago.

We now underestimate the Americans.

By "we" I have in mind Armenians from the Middle East.

Armenians born and bred in America

respect their fellow Americans.

By contrast Armenians from the Middle

underestimate not only Americans

but also their fellow Armenians

(aboush amerigahayer=stupid Armenian-Americans).

*

The problem with Armenians from the Middle East is that

they believe in their own propaganda.

Hence the generally held view that

they are not just smart but smarter than anyone else.

*

He who underestimates others

will inevitably overestimate himself.

*

Losers are easy to propagandize and brainwash

because they are more prone to hate than to reason.

*

Winners divide and rule only losers

that are already torn asunder by mutual hatred.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 23, 2002

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

If one is to believe Armenians from the land

of mullahs and ayatollahs,

they have established themselves in the West

not because it is a better place

but because it is the worst place on earth.

And if you ask,

Where is the logic in that?

I will say: Logic? What logic?

Since when mullahs and ayatollahs have needed logic

to do what must be done for the greater glory of Allah!

*

Another reason I am grateful to my country of adoption is that

there are no commissars, mullahs and ayatollahs here,

only their toothless disciples.

*

In my case, to keep silent would amount to

conspiring with my executioners.

*

In our environment to turn the other cheek

means to have both cheeks slapped as well as

ass kicked (both cheeks too)!

*

An angry Armenian editor once demanded of me:

"What makes you think you are the only writer

to be badly treated?" And I said:

"That’s why I speak with the strength of many!"

*

There is nothing wrong in repeating

that which needs to be emphasized

or that which is ignored, forgotten or swept under the rug.

*

Even if you are as good as Homer and Shakespeare combined,

if you can't take crap, you will never make it in this business.

I said crap, I should have qualified it as Armenian crap

because there is no crap like Armenian crap.

I speak from experience –

having been buried beneath Ararats of it.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, November 24, 2002

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

To kill women and children is wrong

but to kill enemies of Allah is all right.

To kill critics of the regime is against the law

but to kill enemies of the people is a duty.

To hate Jews is wrong

but to hate them in the name of Palestinians is okay.

To behave like a hooligan is wrong

but to do so in the name of Mount Ararat is a must.

Now you may be able to see why

religions and ideologies are popular:

they allow you to behave like swine

and to consider yourself as a noble specimen of humanity.

*

Self-reliance means

to rely on the forces of the universe within you.

*

Know your limitations in order to overcome them.

*

Can the cunning be innocent?

Or, should they be allowed to plead ignorance?

[vava]

Barev Ara,

 

I just read a couple of your passages after realising that I have already read some of your books. I found some of your comments interesting, and I thought I would comment:

 

Ara jan, I think you need to find a different sort of Armenian friend. I have managed to retain a few Armenian friends, and I subscribe to neither of the 'isms' above.

 

Hmmmm. I think I have heard this before. It's a very Canadian attitude, non? (Not that that's a bad thing.)

 

Sometimes Ara, I think you're the only man on this earth that makes any sense. Sometimes, I think you're on another planet. Keep it up and good luck.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, November 25, 2002

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

Once upon a time I lived in an ivory tower

of dreams and illusions.

And then the inevitable happened:

reality moved in and kicked me into the gutter.

And yet, once in a while

I am accused of living in an ivory tower,

which may suggest that,

either my gutter looks like an ivory tower to them

or even my gutter has a gutter.

*

Self-reliance should not be confused with ego-reliance.

To rely on the ego is like relying on gasoline

to extinguish a fire.

*

A struggle against evil

should begin with the evil that is within us,

otherwise it will degenerate to a feud.

*

After dividing us by means

of systematic indoctrination and propaganda,

our leaders call us ungovernable.

*

There is hope for the dupe,

but there is no hope for the dupe

who is taken in by another dupe.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

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

Are there any laws in history?

Some say yes, others no.

(So what else is new?)

And I say: If there are laws in human conduct

(such as "If you live by the sword, etc.")

why not laws in history? -- such as,

If you underestimate your enemy again and again,

sooner or later you will bite the dust.

(Our history in a nutshell.)

*

If I were to state the obvious, namely:

like all nations we have produced our share of hooligans,

and if I were to define hooliganism,

it goes without saying that

our hooligans will gang up against me and

disagree not only with everything I say

but also with my existence.

Something similar could be said

about our lunatic fringe and assorted fanatics.

*

There is sophistry and there is perversion

and what’s beautiful about perversion is that

the pervert carries within him

the seeds of his own contradiction

and ultimately destruction.

*

The trick is not to love those who hate you --

any saint can do that! -- the real trick is

to laugh at them, and I don't mean ridicule or,

for that matter, ironic or sarcastic laughter,

but good-natured merriment.

Because nothing can be as offensive as laughter

to grim ones who take themselves seriously.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

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

"I am proud to be an Armenian!" he writes

and signs himself "Anonymous."

*

Whenever I am insulted anonymously, I think:

"He must be a bishop or the son of one."

*

It must be a disappointing experience for smart Armenians

to come across a fellow Armenian

who may not be as stupid as they think he ought to be.

*

Show me a smart Armenian

and I will show you an Armenian

who has a low opinion of his fellow Armenians.

Or: Show me a smart-ass

and I will show you a jackass.

*

The worst punishment for a nuisance:

to condemn him to live with himself for the rest of his life.

*

The internet must be just about the greatest medium

devised by man that allows one to make an ass of himself

in the eyes of the world.

*

Ignorance as an inevitable stage: a universal condition.

Ignorance as destiny: the source of all evil.

*

All verbal hell is bound to break loose

when a complex meets a prejudice.

*

My critics are my most reliable sources of stimulus.

When I read them I feel like a miner

who has hit paydirt.

[nairi]

LOL!

 

Great posts again Ara! (You really do make me reflect each time!)

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, November 28, 2002

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

From a 1952 interview with Arshak Chobanian.

On contemporary Armenian literature:

"We have talented writers as well as nonentities."

When asked to name names:

"In France we have Marie Atmajian, a very gifted poet."

On Armenians in general:

"I have always maintained that

we have produced and we will continue to produce

great talents, what we cannot produce is a [great] community."

On the situation of the Armenian writer:

"An Armenian writer cannot make a living by writing.

Poor [Hagop] Baronian, one of our most brilliant humorists,

went hungry. He had no choice but to work as an accountant

to make ends meet. He balanced books for wealthy merchants."

On Shahan Shahnour: " The poor fellow is a sick man.

He writes nonsense in French and he is even awarded literary prices."

On Manoog Abeghian’s Sovietized orthography:

"I had an argument with Abeghian when I was in Armenia.

How could you devise such an unmitigated fiasco? I asked,

and he replied: "Baron Chobanian, I was ordered to do it.

I had no choice in the matter.

I submitted three systems:

one conservative with very few changes;

the second moderate with more changes;

and the third radical with many changes.

The State chose the third."

[ara baliozian]

Friday, November 29, 2002

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

There is nothing wrong in criticizing America –

Americans have been doing it for centuries.

But criticizing America in defense of bloodthirsty tyrants

has nothing to do with morality, politics and history,

and everything to do with pathology.

*

Likewise, I see nothing remotely questionable

in criticizing Israel – Jews have been doing it for decades.

But criticizing it in the name of religious fanatics

with a genocidal hatred for not only Jews but also the West

has nothing to do with fair play or justice

and everything to do with hooliganism.

*

What could be more oxymoronic than Armenians

supporting genocide? And yet….

*

When Stalin was alive,

there were many Western intellectuals,

among them Nobel-prize winners,

who adopted a pro-USSR and an anti-USA stance.

God help us from the ignorance of the wise

and the hooliganism of dupes, fools and fanatics.

*

Our hooligans: I see them as reincarnations

of our commissars who in successive waves

exterminated our ablest men as ruthlessly and systematically

as Talaat’s henchmen.

The only reason our hooligans are not yet guilty of murder is that

they don't have a license to kill.

Another reason why I am grateful to the West.

*

Our hooligans: I doubt if I have yet done justice to this subject

so central for a better understanding of our past tragedies,

present disarray and future tunnel minus a light at its end.

*

Compare the vocabulary of our hooligans

with that of our Bolshevik hoodlums – traitors,

enemies of the people, peddlers of trash,

brown-nosers of the West,

hyenas with fountain pens,

running dogs of the bourgeoisie,

agents of the CIA – see what I mean?

Revive the KGB, give them a license to kill,

and draw your own conclusions.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, November 30, 2002

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

When a religion of compassion and love

enters a man’s soul,

hatred of the godless and the infidel is sure to follow.

Something similar could be said of ideologies

that promote brotherhood.

*

For another view of our fedayees,

see Gourgen Mahari’s memoirs.

The integrity of our ablest historians has been questioned

but as far as I know no one has yet questioned

Mahari’s integrity, and Mahari’s evidence is not hearsay

but first-person eyewitness.

*

In one of his novels Saul Bellow asks:

"Is our species crazy?" and replies:

"Plenty of evidence."

*

When the American author

of the famous slogan "Follow your bliss!"

wrote to Thomas Mann asking for his approval,

Mann wrote an angry letter in which he said:

"The bliss of a hooligan is hooliganism!"

or words to that effect.

*

If you can say something in two words

rather than three, try to say it in one.

*

A historian should be criticized by other historians

not insulted by hooligans.

A writer should be criticized by literary critics

not verbally vandalized by white trash

who have not produced a single line worth reading.

*

When an Armenian asserts himself as an expert

on any given subject he also anoints himself

as infallible as the Pope of Rome

and as magnificent as Suleiman

and he demands unconditional surrender from all his adversaries.

*

I have had so many sinister encounters with ugly Armenians

that it is no exaggeration to say that

I now trust an Armenian as much as I trust a Turk.

*

Our ancestors lived and survived 600 years

under the Turks. I doubt if I could survive 6 seconds

in the proximity of an ugly Armenian.

And if you were to say "You are yourself an ugly Armenian!"

I would reply: That only reinforces my position

by adding one more name to the list of our uglies.

*

I am personally acquainted with a noted Armenian-American poet

who after visiting Turkey

found Turks more congenial companions than his fellow Armenians.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 01, 2002

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

If I am ever awarded an Armenian prize

I will say: "I accept the cash but I reject the honor."

The trouble with our organizations

(and the bosses, bishops and benefactors who control them)

is that they are interested in art

and I am interested only in money.

*

A historian who enjoys the support of a political party

with a specific agenda can't be right.

If his facts are right,

his selection of them is bound to be wrong.

*

"Because he is a bad writer, we can insult him."

Yes, but even our good writers were insulted as well as

betrayed, ignored, starved, and shot.

Are we to assume that we no longer have hooligans

or, if we do, they have all seen the light?

And since when hooligans can tell the difference

between a good and a bad writer?

*

To beg for favors is not to pray.

If you believe in God and if you have a friend in Him,

what else could you possibly want?

*

Advice to a young Armenian writer:

"Treat your friends with the same degree

of tolerance, understanding and compassion

as you would treat your Turkish enemies

and you will never be disappointed."

*

Before you define such words as

patriotism, idealism, faith and religion, ask yourself:

What if your enemy defines them the same way?

*

If you list 1000 facts in your favor,

your enemy is sure to cite 1001st fact

that may question the integrity of your case.

*

I expose contradictions in our power structures,

and my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement)

expose contradictions in me and in doing so

they think they have solved all our problems.

*

A short list of unemployable misfits:

An amputated ballet dancer,

a deaf music critic,

a blind taxi driver,

an honest politician,

an Armenian writer….

*

"I don't agree with you!"

"That’s good news indeed.

On the day you agree with me

I will have reason to worry about my sanity."

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 02, 2002

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

What if we are driven not by a thirst for truth

and more by a trauma?

*

If you identify yourself with a movement or group,

can you still speak for yourself?

*

Was the Roman Empire right?

The Jews did not think so, they resisted,

and they are still paying a heavy price.

Was the Ottoman Empire just?

We did not think so and we paid a heavy price.

Is America right?

It depends whether or not we reply

with our intestines or brains.

*

My job: to call the corrupt corrupt,

the dupe dupe,

and the fool fool.

Obviously, not as profitable an enterprise as selling Oriental rugs.

*

Charlatanism: how to disguise concern for number one

as concern for number two.

*

The worst thing that can be said about a man:

"He is incapable of doing and saying anything

against his own interests."

*

To be an Armenian means to be at war on three fronts:

Turkish hostility,

world apathy, and

Armenian envy.

*

I am not dangerous,

only the particles of truth in what I say are – though

not as dangerous as the lies they expose.

*

I am not here to enlighten and educate our hooligans.

Hooligans are beyond education.

That’s because what shapes them is not knowledge but power,

and as long as they enjoy the support of the establishment

they will remain beyond the range of common sense and decency.

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

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

Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust:

"If the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless,

there would have been chaos and plenty of misery,

but the total number of victims would hardly have been

between 4,500,000 and 6,000,000 people."

*

General Antranik on the Genocide:

"The blood of 1,500,000 Armenians has been shed,

the blood of children and old men,

the blood of sons and violated daughters.

Where there is a sin,

we must search for the sinner.

We must tie the guilt to the guilty

and the crime to the criminal.

If I am not the sinner, who is?

He must be found and crucified.

Who is the sinner?"

*

General Antranik on our revolutionaries:

" Gravediggers of the Armenian people, Janissaries!"

*

We initiate fresh feuds even as we discuss stale ones.

*

Once upon a time there was a hunter

who took aim at an eagle and missed.

So he returned home and shot a chicken in his backyard.

Isn't that what we do when we insult one another

in an effort to settle our scores

against the Turks and the world?

*

What is more Armenian:

our feuds or the struggle to end them?

*

Arguing with those who speak in the name of God

amounts to arguing against God.

It can't be done.

*

If you can't question the fact,

criticize the context;

if you can't criticize the context,

attack the semantics;

and if you can't do that either,

then insult, swear and curse.

That’s why it is impossible to shake a believer.

That is also why Plato considered Sophists as

his most dangerous enemies.

*

To join a party and to view the opposition as the source of all evil

must be an irresistible temptation to all simpleminded dupes.

*

The more insecure we are

the more we love those who agree with us

even when we are wrong,

and the more we hate those who disagree with us

even when they are right.

Insecure? I prefer the Turkish word "dabansez" –

without a base or foundation.

*

I gave up translating on the day I translated Zarian’s line:

"Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another."

*

On the day we stop learning,

there should be an obituary in the papers

announcing the death of a brain.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

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

As a boy in Greece I was taught to believe that

the 19th-century Greek War of Independence

against the Ottoman Empire was conducted

by heroic men whose monuments

still adorn Athenian parks and squares.

Much later and after reading non-Greek sources

I discovered that these so-called heroes had been

badly organized bands of pirates and cutthroats.

*

History is made by riffraff and written by dupes.

After an interview with Hitler, Toynbee stated:

"I am now convinced that Herr Hitler wants peace."

*

"Martin Luther was a horrible man

who abandoned the Church because of a whore,"

I was told as a boy by a Catholic priest.

He spoke with such conviction that

I never doubted his honesty.

I still don't. I continue to think that

he believed every word he said

because he too never doubted or questioned his source.

*

Suppose the Turks were to vanish

from the face of the earth tomorrow, what then?

A good plot for an Armenian science fiction writer.

For one thing our scribblers and ghazetajis

would run out of things to write about

and go out of business.

*

Solving problems is easy.

The real difficult is in their implementation.

Because there are always people who survive

by pretending these problems are very complex

and it may take one or two generations….

*

How do you convince a man not to be a dupe,

especially a dupe with a messianic ego

who is out to convert you?

*

If you love your enemy and if he happens to be an Armenian,

he will hate you even more.

*

The astonishing ease with which

Armenians give up in disgust and fall silent;

and the cunning of our riffraff who fully aware of this fact

do their utmost to make themselves repellent.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, December 05, 2002

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

It’s easy writing about events,

much more difficult establishing their causes.

Which is why the past is one

but every historian has his own version of it.

*

One should not deliver a lecture against exhibitionism

with a bare ass.

*

"Do not reason with a fool, an ass or a wall."

I am almost sure I first came across this piece of valuable advice

in the Old Testament somewhere…or perhaps in a dream.

*

Even when I write about myself

some readers accuse me of writing about them.

Once upon a time I too believed everything I was told

and insulted far better men than myself

when they dared to contradict me.

Even when I write against charlatans, dupes and riffraff

I write against myself.

*

One reaches truth only after rejecting many errors.

To be born with the truth in one’s soul

is a privilege only of prophets and messiahs.

*

I am not superstitious, neither am I a mouse,

but I hate it when a black cat crosses my path.

*

An honest skeptic is worth a thousand believers.

*

When an Armenian flatters me,

I think of the French saying,

"He who can kiss can bite,"

and I am seldom disappointed.

*

An Armenian poetess once told me:

"When Armenian villagers saw the Turks approaching,

they ran away but to make their escape good,

they left their daughters behind."

Since she was too young to have witnessed this herself,

I assume her source had been either a mother or a grandmother

with a score to settle against men and their cowardice.

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, December 07, 2002

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

When General Antranik called some Armenians "gravediggers"

he didn't have the victims in mind;

and when Zarian called Armenians "cannibals"

he didn't have the alienated and assimilated in mind.

You may now guess who qualifies as gravedigger or cannibal.

May I make a suggestion?…

*

All scumbags share this in common:

they feel the need to assert moral superiority.

Not to achieve it but to assert it.

*

We are all products of different environments,

conditions and experiences. So that, the chances are,

where there is agreement

there will also be some degree of misunderstanding and distortion.

*

"God preserve me from the man I trust.

From the one I mistrust I can defend myself."

*

"There is no spectacle more agreeable

than to observe an old friend fall from a rooftop."

*

It must be reassuring to find the truth

in a single book, pundit or leader – make it führer!

*

"Thou shalt not kill."

Is it conceivable that there was a time

when men were such bloodthirsty barbarians

that they had to be told this?

*

The tendency of the mediocre to seek an audience of fools.

*

He is such an incurable dupe that

he is impressed even by his own erudition and brilliance.

*

An Armenian criticizing the West

reminds me of a bag lady delivering a lecture on fashion

at the House of Dior in Paris.

Before we criticize anyone,

let us take a closer look at our own

Ottomanized and Sovietized institutions.

*

There are some men so consistently wrong

that when they agree with you

you seriously consider revising your thinking.

*

"Love is blind but marriage restores the sight."

*

Those who pretend not to know the past

will also pretend they are not repeating it.

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, December 08, 2002

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

To trust the future of the Homeland

into the hands of Diasporan Armenians

amounts to saying a bordello madam

is qualified to run a nunnery.

What have we in the Diaspora done

to prevent the gradual fragmentation,

disintegration and prostitution of the Diaspora?

And if the Homeland and the Diaspora are interdependent,

what makes us think that our leaders here

are more concerned about the future of the Homeland than

their leaders there?

*

He who is engaged in digging his own grave

should not brag about his genius for survival.

*

If the Turks are ever coerced into admitting responsibility

for the Genocide, they will never forgive us for coercing them.

*

If you are toothless, don't try to eat nuts.

This piece of advice has many applications and variations.

Examples:

If you are a fool,

don't pretend to understand the thoughts of wise men.

If you are a sheep among wolves, don't pretend to be a lion.

*

By systematically exterminating our ablest men,

our enemies allowed the riffraff to fill the void.

Some Armenians know this.

Others pretend not to know it.

And then there are the dupes whose unspoken slogan is:

"Our riffraff, right or wrong."

*

Let’s speak about the East and West.

Subtract British influence from India

and you end up with a bordello of maharajas.

Subtract Marxism from China

and you have a hornet’s nest of warlords.

Subtract American influence from Japan

and you have a totalitarian power structure

with a nonentity at the top pretending to be god.

Subtract Kemal’s infatuation with the West from Turkey

and you end up with a dung heap of sultans, *****s and mullahs.

East minus West equals an anachronistic nightmare.

*

The advantages of rewriting history are many

and all of them consist in flattering the egos of liars and charlatans.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, December 09, 2002

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

If you question the authority of old men,

you will be accused of corrupting the young.

*

I have yet to meet an honest Armenian

who was not alienated

and a holier-than-thou patriot

who was not a charlatan.

*

He who looks up to men of action

will look down at men of thought

even if they think the right thoughts

and will look up at men of action

even when they perform the wrong deeds.

*

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

No one wants corroboration – only collaboration.

No one wants collaboration – only subservience.

*

Everyone has his way of judging nations.

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

A nation that kills its dissidents is a nation of executioners,

and a nation that silences its critics is no better.

*

Every Armenian is either a traitor or an enemy

in the eyes of another Armenian,

and when I say enemy

I mean one who does not deserve to live.

*

A good Armenian is as good as gold

but a bad Armenian is horrid.

The trouble is, with most Armenians

it’s not always easy to tell the good from the bad

and sometimes on closer inspection the good

turn out to be horrid.

*

Why is it that those who preach love,

prefer to practice hate?

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

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

In the Ottoman Empire and in the USSR

we were brought up to fear authority,

to be subservient.

Perhaps one of the most important functions

of an Armenian writer today is to remind his readers that

they no longer live in the Ottoman Empire and the USSR,

and their leaders are neither sultans nor commissars

but public servants.

*

The Armenian bully who insults,

intimidates and threatens in defense of Armenianism

(whatever that may mean)

is a typical symptom of Ottomanism or Sovietism.

And if you were to say,

"You too do your own share of insulting,"

I will say (a) I have at no time asserted

to being an exception to any rule, and

I am in the business of exposing contradictions.

Those who feel exposed will inevitably also feel insulted,

perhaps even threatened, not by my words

but by reality – the reality of being unmasked

as loud-mouth charlatans and Turkish gypsies.

*

From the Turks we have learned

the art of massacre – if not real than verbal.

*

The two most popular solutions to all our problems:

emigration and assimilation.

*

It makes no sense to say that the Turks massacred

our women and children because they were a threat

to their security or territorial integrity.

I suggest they massacred out of pure hatred – 600 years

of silent, accumulated hatred.

*

The best revenge against someone

who calls you an idiot is not to call him

an idiot – that would be repetitive, redundant,

infantile and predictable – but to wait

until someone else calls him an inbred moron, white trash,

a lowlife and a scumbag…and if he happens to be an Armenian

you may not have to wait too long.