arabaliozian

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. #

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? #

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.” #

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. #

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. #

sorry, the right spelling is: Djelalian.

ask his armenian translator: Hagop Jelalian: he is on Facebook. good luck! / ara

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. #

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). #

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? #

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. #

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. #

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. #

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. #

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. #

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. #

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. #

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.#

Sunday, December 09, 2012 *************************************** CHAPTER & VERSE ******************************* Speaking of an elder statesman, Puzant Granian (may he rest in peace) once said to me: “He was so naïve that I once heard him say 'Churchill does not lie.'" There you have it in four words: the fallacy of our revolutionaries: “The West does not lie.” * Poor Armenian revolutionaries. After 600 years of subservience to a bloodthirsty tyrant what did they know about politics and diplomacy – that is to say, the real world? * But the more relevant question to be asked is: “What have they learned?” And if they have learned nothing, can they even lead a dog to the nearest fire hydrant? Can they even read and understand what they are reading? * Last Saturday I saw on Armenian television another one of our dime-a-dozen elder statesmen bragging about our translation of the Bible – “the Queen of translations.” Instead of bragging he should have asked: What have we learned from the Bible? Do we read it? And if we read it, can we understand what it says? * “When the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch.” “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” “Without vision the people perish.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” “Put not your trust in princes.” “A fool’s mouth is his destruction.” “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” “The wages of sin is death.” And I could go on and on… # Monday, December 10, 2012 *************************************** LABELS *********************** After millennia of wars, deportations, abductions, rapes, and mixed marriages, mankind has been so thoroughly bastardized that whenever I am introduced to a fellow Armenian, I ask myself: what do I share in common with this fellow? And more often than not the answer is “Nothing!” His mother tongue and mine may be the same but his favorite medium is Russian and mine is English. * It has been said that if the history of mankind were 24 hours long, we may be able to trace our ancestry for a few seconds or even a minute or two, but beyond that it’s Bagratunis and Mamikonians (Jews and Chinese respectively). * If a man does business with Armenians or lives in an Armenian neighborhood and doesn’t know who and what he is, he will identify himself as an Armenian. The same applies to Turks, Americans, Australians, and in general all other tribes, nations, and empires. * We are Christians not because Christianity is the best religion or it makes more sense than all the others, but because that was the only religion we were taught as children. * The only legitimate and verifiable label I recognize is “human being,” and so few qualify. As for Homo sapiens: since what we don’t know outweighs what we know a million to one, a more accurate label would be Homo ignoramus. * Speaking for myself: I have said this before and it bears repeating: on a good day I can trace my ancestry all the way back to my father. * You have every right to find me unreadable. I rate objective judgment above flattery and propaganda. # Wednesday, December 12, 2012 ************************************** LEADERS ********************* My ambition in life: to convince my enemies that we have many more reasons to be the best of friends. (This tactic doesn’t always work with Armenians.) * Every time you say “Yes, sir!” to a liar, you dig a deeper hole for the truth. * Every time you put your trust on a bad leader, you raise another obstacle on the path of a good leader. * Let others speechify and sermonize about our heroes and martyrs. I will continue to write about blunders and their innocent victims. * It has been said that a competent leader is first and foremost a consensus seeker. You may now draw your own conclusions. * Let’s not fool ourselves: our leadership is as keen on divide-and-rule tactics as our worst enemies. * A divided nation is on its way to the devil. Only idiots refuse to see this. And when idiots are in charge the result may be another genocide. # Wednesday, December 12, 2012 ****************************************** LITERATURE & POLITICS ********************************** Reason tells us there is strength in unity. It follows; reason has at no time played a central role in our political affairs. * It can truly be said of us that our literature has shaped nothing and no one except a handful of scribblers, versifiers, daydreamers, and mental masturbators. * What has been the role of our political leaders? The answer is and must be that of gravediggers. * “Let us not deceive ourselves” is a favorite line of mine. But even as I write I go on deceiving myself into thinking my words may be read, and if read may make a difference. * I am told I am too extreme and inflexible in my views, intolerant of alternative ideas, reluctant to engage in dialogue, unable to compromise. Which raises the question: Is compromise possible with charlatans who do not even acknowledge your existence? Or with wheeler-dealers who have silenced far better men than myself? Can one negotiate from a position of non-existence? * So many readers disagree with me that whenever on those rare occasions someone agrees with me my first reaction is to think I must have said something wrong. * Our educational system is at the mercy of dupes of former dupes whose most important project is to create a new generation of dupes. * If the Genocide taught us nothing it only means that we are unteachable. #

Thursday, December 06, 2012************************************* ELIMINATION*********************************** Who is responsible for the present global economic crisis? If you say that’s not an easy question to answer, I say: Nonsense! Let’s proceed by the method of elimination. It wasn’t you and me. It wasn’t plumbers and taxi drivers. It wasn’t the homeless, the poor, and the unemployed. Neither was it the middle classes. That takes care of the 99%. See what I mean?*Who is responsible for the Genocide? That’s an easy one if only because our academics have published a thousand books on the subject.What about the books of their academics? What academics? You mean hirelings of the régime, brown-nosers of the state, Kemalist charlatans. *Who is responsible for the mass exodus from the Homeland or “white massacre”? Surely not the Armenian whose sole aim in life is to work and provide for his family! *Who is responsible for the high rate of assimilation in the Diaspora? That’s an easy one too if you happen to be a brainwashed dupe: “cultural, political, and economic conditions beyond our control.”*Moral I: Don’t believe everything you are told. Moral II: Bastards know how to take care of their own.#Friday, December 07, 2012************************************ INVESTIGATIONS************************ Whenever I say anything remotely critical of Armenians I am accused of hating myself, as if it were the patriotic duty of every Armenian to be a narcissist.*Our problem, our real problem is not assimilation but dehumanization, which may happen in New York City as surely as in Yerevan. *You may have noticed that fund-raisers don’t like speaking about corruption. That would be like biting the goose that lays the golden egg. *We have not beheaded a single king. I consider that to be a serious failing on our part. *National benefactors die disappointed men. Partly their fault. They like to surround themselves with brown-nosers,and after 600 years of subservience to Turks we easily qualify as the best brown-nosers money can buy. I am now paraphrasing one of our elder statesmen, in case you thought I was an investigative reporter. *Investigative reporters cost money. They have expenses. We can’t afford them. We can afford bishops and archbishops by the dozen but not a single investigative reporter. For most of my dissenting view I rely on the wisdom and experience of our elder statesmen (may they rest in peace).#Saturday, December 08, 2012*************************************** INVESTIGATIONS (II)*********************************** Has anyone ever bothered to calculate the millions we could save if we had one cathedral instead of two, or one church instead of four? -- millions with which to feed the hungry and house the homeless? *A cathedral or a church is first and foremost a house of God. We believe in the same God (or in the absence of the same God, if you are an atheist); we read the same Bible; we sing the same hymns or sharagans. We all agree that God is neither a Catholic nor a Protestant, or for that matter, neither an Etchmiadznagan nor an Anteliassagan. *Let’s adopt a gradual approach. Let’s reduce the number of churches to one in which we could have a separate service for each denomination, so that members of one denomination coming in would meet members of the opposition going out, which may give them an opportunity to realize that they are not much different from one another notwithstanding the lies of our dime-a-dozen shit-disturbing propagandists -- if you will forgive my French.*Speaking of lies: I was brought up as a Catholic and I was taught to believe Martin Luther had divided the Church in order to fornicate with a nun. *And speaking of fornication: An Irish Catholic priest to a little girl after Sunday school: “Tell me child, what do you want to be when you grow up?” “A prostitute.” “What did you say?” “A prostitute.” “Thank God for that. I thought you said a Protestant.” *Moral I: To divide a community is almost to commit “white massacre.” Moral II: If we have a single house of God as opposed to four we may cease being a joke in the eyes of the world.#

December 2, 2012****************************************** ARE WE OUTNUMBERED?***************************************When I speak to an Armenian I am never sure if I am speaking to him or to his schoolteacher. I have no use for academics who spin massals and try to convince me that that once upon a time we were a great nation. What I am more interested in is knowing why have we fallen so low? Is military defeat the only reason of our moral and intellectual bankruptcy? If yes, why are we afraid to admit it? Do the bastards outnumber us a thousand to one?*When an Armenian sees the light, it can truly be said of him that he becomes a born again cadaver.*An Armenian philosophical assertion: I am smart, therefore I can pretend to know better.*When I read a writer I want to read someone smarter than I am; and, if not smarter than more ruthless in his treatment of our failings and contradictions. *To all our future critics I say: Don’t you worry about our sensibilities. We can take it. We are tough mothers. We took it from the Turks for 600 years; we can take whatever a scribbler can dish out.#Monday, December 03, 2012**************************************** SHOP TALK******************** You want to survive as a writer in our environment? Kissing ass is not enough. You must also say it smells like roses. You want to be perceived as a patriot? Loving your country is not enough. You must also be subservient to the leadership. Teach yourself to say “Yes, sir!” even when the right answer is “Nuts!” You want to be perceived as wise, tolerant, and virtuous? It is not enough to be these things. You must also make it abundantly clear that you owe everything to the wisdom, tolerance, and virtues of our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their buffoons, namely hirelings, hangers on, flunkeys, and brown-nosers. You want to solve our problems? Pretend we have none. You want to be popular? Convince yourself and others we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. You want me to explain why I do none of these things and yet I have survived? The answer is I have done all these things, that’s why I speak with some authority on the subject. As for my survival: to die the death of a thousand cuts may also appear as survival up to the 999th cut. You want evidence? Read a history of our literature and may God have mercy on your soul, if there is a God and you have a soul.#Tuesday, December 04, 2012************************************** CAN WE LEARN FROM HISTORY?************************************************** We all know what the Turks did to us. What we need to know now is what we did or failed to do. Relax! I am not trying to assign guilt. I just want to learn from our blunders if only because I don’t want to see them repeated. *We all make mistakes. No use covering them up. To do so in an effort to appear infallible convinces no one. *Where did we go wrong? Was our blind trust in the West justified? Was the Genocide inevitable? Was it our “jagadakir” (written on our forehead)? If yes, why didn’t we see it coming? *Far from being passive victims, we did adopt and implement a policy. Did we have leaders who advocated less passion and more reason? What made us choose passion and reject reason? Who among us would dare to suggest that passion in time of crisis is a better guide to action than reason? *Obviously, as human beings we behaved as human beings, that is to say, prone to error. If we committed errors, let’s name them. We learn nothing by asserting it was all someone else’s fault. Because even as I write these lines history is repeating itself. We are experiencing another genocide – exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora. Do we repeat ourselves by saying we are not to blame because we are doing what must be done?#Wednesday, December 05, 2012***************************************** THE BRAINS & THE BRAINLESS************************************** We now have a generation of brainless political activists who believe they are the brains of the people. If they are the brains of the people, does that mean the people are brainless? What else, may I ask? *Our activists may be smart enough to think they have brains of the people but not smart enough to see the implications of what they are saying. So what else is new? *Another question: How much brains does it take to lead the brainless? Obviously, hardly any. Nothing further your Honor. *You may have noticed that when an Armenian assesses himself as smart, he also gives himself the license to speak and act like a certified moron. *If the people are brainless, it follows they will be stupid enough to believe everything they are told. *Still another question: If our political activists shed their blood for freedom, as they claim to have done, why is it that they are now afraid of free speech? (This final question comes with the compliments of the late Jack Karapetian, a.k.a. Hakop Karapients, distinguished author and broadcaster. *During the last century we have suffered two calamities, the other being an educational system and a press controlled by political activists. This is as true of the Homeland as it is of the Diaspora. We now also have a generation of dupes who believe everything they are told.#

Thursday, November 29, 2012 **************************************** LA CRÈME DE LA SCUM *********************************** If our political leaders in both the Homeland and Diaspora saw themselves as we see them, they would wither away and die a slow lingering death. If they appear to be completely comfortable in their own skin it may be because they have a different image of themselves. Consider the oligarchs in the Homeland: I have every reason to suspect they see themselves as honorable gentlemen that history has thrust into their present position of responsibility which they are discharging to the best of their abilities. Unlike their predecessors and role models – Stalin and his henchmen, among them Mikoyan – they are not serial killers, and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths or anywhere else for that matter. * And I can’t help thinking of myself when young and brainwashed. I saw our bosses, bishops, and benefactors in a completely different light. Saw? Strike that. Make it, I was brainwashed to see; and no man can be as blind, deaf and dumb as the brainwashed, especially when he is brainwashed to believe he is not just smart and patriotic but that rarest of all beings: an Armenian dedicated to the cause of justice, an idealist willing to die for his cause, knowing full well that the chances of that happening are so remote that it doesn’t even occur to him to contemplate the possibility that he may well be an orthodox coward whose number once concern is number one. Or, as the Turkish saying (probably of Armenian provenance) has it: “Among ten men nine are sure to be women.” * Let us catch up with reality by admitting the inadmissible: the Soviet Union and the Levant have produced a species of Homo sapiens that ought to be a source of embarrassment to all men with a minimum sense of decency. * This may explain why Armenians survive only in the Levant and the former USSR. Anywhere else they shed their identity and assimilate. And they assimilate not because of “cultural, economic, and political conditions beyond our control,” but because they see the light. * To those who say there are some things that should not be said in public, I say: our actions speak louder than words. Who we are, what we are and how we behave are like a city set on a hill: they can’t be hidden. Besides, what I am saying, has been said before by far better men than myself. I am not here to speak the unspeakable but to paraphrase, repeat, and remind readers who might as well be advanced cases of artificially induced Alzheimer’s. # Friday, November 30, 2012 ******************************************** THE MOST BEASTLY MADNESS ******************************************* When the rich fight it is the poor who die. When the old fight it is the young who die. When fanatics fight it is the moderates who die. When the mighty of this world fight it is the powerless who die. When the insane die…you may now finish that sentence. * As for American corporations: they don’t fight because they are not people. They let African-Americans and Latinos do the fighting and dying for them. (Romney, you are wrong again!) * In his Notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci, who painted war scenes and invented war machines, calls wars “pazzia bestialissima” (the most beastly madness). * We are told the war of Troy was fought because a dickhead raped or fornicated with a floozy. WWI was fought because an empty suit (or should I say wardrobe) was assassinated by a crazy Balkan anarchist. World War II was fought because of World War I which was meant to end all wars. And more recently, consider the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Consider the Crusades and the colonial wars conducted by the so-called civilized West against native tribes in Africa, America, and Australia. * There is no such thing as a just war. Even so-called defensive wars inevitably lead to the commission of crimes against humanity, such as the deportation or forced exodus of innocent civilians which, if not ethnic cleansing, might as well be damn close to it. * As soon as a war is fought (won or lost, it makes no difference) an entire class of men – from poets and ghazetajis to military historians, diplomats, and wheeler-dealers, make it politicians) start brainwashing the masses into believing “our” side was absolutely right and “their” side dead wrong. * To say with Marx that all wars have an economic reason is to cover up the greed of a ruling class that has the morality of cannibals and the tactics of a pack of wolves. # Saturday, December 01, 2012 ******************************************** CONFESSION *********************** All dupes pretend to know better. I am not casting aspersions. I am speaking about myself when young. * CASTING ASPERSIONS ******************************* I have dealt with enough bosses, bishops, and archbishops, also benefactors and their flunkeys and hirelings, to know that they think they have reached such brilliant, perhaps even unattainable, heights of eminence that no one in his right mind would dare to question their integrity, of which they have none. As for our former and present commissars in the Homeland: I would place them in the same category as pirates and pickpockets. * MORE ASPERSIONS ***************************** All careerists are brown-nosers who know instinctively whose ass to kiss and whose to kick. * The 99% are easily duped by the 1%; but even the 1% has its 99%. * With old age comes wisdom. Call no Armenian a friend until he is dead and buried. #

Sunday, November 25, 2012*********************************** TO THINK MEANS TO THINK AGAINST ONESELF***********************************************As an Armenian I have no interest whatever in knowing that once upon a time we were, or we had the potential to be, a great nation. I don’t feel the need to assert superiority over any man and such need I consider racist megalomania. Once upon a time we may have had the chance to achieve greatness. If we lost that chance it may be because we are losers. Now the ambition of every loser is to be a winner in order to lord it over other losers. I want no part of that farce. All I want as a human being is to do the best I can without deceiving anyone beginning with myself.*The world is a rotten place inhabited by rotten people. Unless you have something to say against yourself, say nothing.*Honest men can be wrong too. But the dishonest, even when right, they are wrong because they exploit that single instance of honesty to enhance their credibility.*My ambition, my real ambition is to be neither popular nor great but not to give a damn about popularity and greatness.*A criminal lawyer pleading not guilty for his client who happens to be a sadistic serial killer is less dangerous to me than an academic who recycles state propaganda.*If you say the wrong thing some people will disagree with you; but if you say the right thing, many more. That’s because at all times and everywhere the brainwashed outnumber those who can think for themselves.*All power structures (be they democratic or totalitarian) support the freedom to brainwash,#Monday, November 26, 2012******************************************** ZEN AND THE ART OF KICKING ASS******************************************* Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century -- some say the greatest – was a member of the Nazi Party. *If the Gulbenkian Foundation (the wealthiest foundation in the world, it has been said) had not awarded a hefty grant to Prof. David Marshall Lang, would he have written a book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION? *Why do you think the favorite subjects of our own academics today are the Middle Ages and the Massacres? And speaking of massacres: we all know what happens to a Turkish academic who dares to speak of the recent past with any degree of honesty and objectivity. *Imagine if you can a Soviet professor of economics under Stalin teaching the superiority of the free enterprise system or an American professor in the McCarthy era teaching DAS KAPITAL.*Every academic has a sign hanging down his neck that says, “For Sale.” If on occasion I am rude, crude, or offensive it’s because Zen masters tell us kicking ass is a far more effective tool of enlightenment than kissing ass. Brown-nosers are better at teaching subservience. But I have selfish reasons for favoring the Zen method. An insulted Armenian has the memory of an elephant, and I don’t mind asserting with some degree of certainty, even pride, that I have by now insulted enough Armenians to guarantee my immortality.#Tuesday, November 27, 2012********************************* NOTES & COMMENTS**************************************** Because I was a dupe I thought I had all the right answers.*I have dealt with too many self-satisfied idiots who thought they were my betters to be even remotely tempted to assert superiority over anyone.*Whenever I entertain a positive thought about my fellow men and myself events conspire to prove me wrong.*I am much more interested in finding reasons for co-existence with our enemies than in asserting our moral superiority over them.*To say, I am an Armenian therefore I am smart is as bad as saying: I am a loser therefore I am a winner.*All belief systems rely on a propaganda line that is both convincing and flattering to one’s ego.*No matter how hard I try I cannot convince myself that to be positive means to cover up the negative.#Wednesday, November 28, 2012********************************************** ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES**************************************When those in power kill, exile, jail or silence anyone who dares to challenge their authority, they do so not only to punish the transgressor but also to intimidate all others to mind their own business. *On the day the first heretic was tortured, my guess is more than one boy or girl decided to leave theology to theologians. On the day Gandhi was assassinated I suspect more than one Indian mother was overheard advising her son to leave politics to politicians. No doubt something similar happened on the day Socrates was condemned to death, Jesus was crucified, and Joan of Arc burned at the stake. *That’s one way to explain why some animals evolved into sheep and others into wolves; also why at all times and everywhere there are more soldiers than philosophers; and why yes-men and academics outnumber dissidents and intellectuals a thousand to one.*No emperor, king, or czar, ever said to think is a criminal offense or against the laws of the land, but their actions, the policies they adopted and implemented, and the laws they enacted and enforced made that abundantly clear. Leave thinking not only to the 1% but also to the 1% of the 1%. *In his STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee explains that during the Ottoman era sultans thought of themselves as shepherds and their subjects as sheep; which may explain why Jesus is represented as a lamb. Unmask a pope and expose the sultan. Unmask a speechifier and sermonizer and expose the Judas.#

Thursday, November 22, 2012 ************************************** IMMORTALITY **************************** Yesterday I achieved immortality in the eyes of a reader: I called him an idiot. * A SORE LOSER ************************ Romney is now complaining that Obama won because he promised all kinds of freebies to Latinos, and other minorities. As for him, he promised nothing except not to raise taxes on the 1% and to look the other way as they transfer their money to Swiss and offshore banks. * THE BLAME-GAME REVISITED **************************************** We have been taught by charlatans to believe we are a progressive nation because we were first to convert to Christianity. We now have another set of charlatans who tell us Christianity is at the root of our decline as a nation. You want to know what I think? I think truth and charlatanism are mutually exclusive concepts. * TRIANGULATION ********************************** When I want to know more about Tashnaks I speak with a Ramgavar and vice versa. I prefer a contradiction to a big lie. * IDEAS *********************** “A man with an idea is my enemy,” said Napoleon. Armenians are different. They welcome a new idea as long as it’s theirs. # LET MY PEOPLE GO ******************************* We are told, following independence 1,500,000 Armenians emigrated from their homeland to America and a number of other countries including Turkey; and they did this on their own initiative without the political guidance of a Moses-like leader who went up to the Pharaoh in Egypt land and said, “Let my people go.” And I cannot help thinking that if a similar number of Armenians had emigrated from the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century we would now have fewer victims to lament. * Moral: Left to their own devices, people will make wiser decisions than so-called patriotic and charismatic speechifiers and sermonizers. I would go further and say, our leaders may well have been at the root of all our misfortunes. * Wars, revolutions, counter-revolutions, massacres, mass deportations, purges, systematic violations of human rights: they can all be traced to a megalomaniac, that is to say, a psychologically damaged ego that pretends to know better or to speak, if not in the name of Allah than in the name of truth or what’s best for the people. * Next time such a specimen visits your community, my advice is to stay away from him because he is either a vampire or a grave-diggers or probably both at once. # ON LITERATURE **************************** The chances are what you were taught to believe as a child you will continue to believe as an adult. That’s the only way to explain why the West is predominantly Christian and the Middle East Muslim. * A hundred or a thousand great writers cannot undo the damage done to the human brain by a single mediocre schoolteacher, parish priest, mullah, or rabbi. The brainwashed cannot be unwashed by reason alone. * Under all authoritarian systems literature is systematically purged and distorted. If so far Armenian literature has failed to detribalize the nation it’s for this reason and this reason alone. * Those who have been in charge of our literature (from academics to commissars of culture) have systematically perverted its central message. Naregatsi is not just a religious mystic but also an astute political commentator. When he make a long list of his sins, failings, and aberrations (“a wicked servant, an abusive contradicter” and so on) he speaks not only for himself but also the nation and its leadership. * There is a tragic dimension in Baronian, Odian, and Massikian’s satire. It exposes the moral bankruptcy and degeneration of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. * Perhaps what I am trying to say here is that it will take more than a messiah or a dozen of them to put us on the right path. If our genocide failed to teach us anything, what can? Surely not the verbiage of a vodanaVORji or a medaVORagan. #

Sunday, November 18, 2012************************************** DARK AGES************************* After its Dark Ages the West had its Renaissance.We never had one. Our Dark Ages never came to an end. To those who say we are a wounded nation surrounded by powerful enemies,we need to be more positive in our assessment of the present situation, I say: Let’s have the truth even if it opens more wounds. We are a tough bunch. We can take it. We took it from the Turks for 600 years and from the Bolsheviks for more than 60. If being positive means covering up the criminal conduct of our dividers in the Diaspora and KGB agents in the Homeland, let us at least have the common decency not to fool ourselves into thinking we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. We are neither “azad” nor “angakh"; and we are worse than “tshvar” and “ander.” We are at the mercy of bloodsuckers who will be satisfied only if they drink our blood and reduce us to the status of a carrion.# SMART ARMENIANS******************************* Smart Armenians are a dime-a-dozen. Honest Armenians? No comment. Smart Armenians who are honest? I know they exist because I have met one or two myself.*Where does obedience end and subservience begin?*In one of his celebrated wartime speeches Churchill spoke of the beginning of the end. If an end has a beginning, it must also have a middle and an end. Where are we? Can you guess?*We need the Russians. What we don’t need is their kleptocrats. We need our own even less. That’s the solution to our problems. Solutions are a dime a dozen. Implementation is everything! Next time you hear someone say “We need solutions,” classify him under idiots.*Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside.” You may now guess the sentence that follows. America and Armenia share much more than a few letters of the alphabet.*The unspoken principle of our ruling classes: “Preach vegetarianism, practice cannibalism.”*An objective history of Armenia: Will it ever be written?And if written, published?And if published read? And if read not discarded into the nearest waste paper basket after the first page?#BROTHERS************************ You and I are brothers if only because we were both brainwashed to believe we are what we are not. Let me begin at the beginning. Like everyone else I too was brainwashed by the scum of the earth to believe I am la crème de la crème. And more precisely I was educated as a Catholic. Millions of others were educated as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Bolshevik atheists and so on. Not only were we all brainwashed but also taught to look up to our abusers as teachers and role models who allowed us entry into an exclusive and privileged club and to look down on the rest of mankind as poor buggers on their way to the devil. As Armenians we were taught to believe Turks are bloodthirsty barbarians and as Turks they were taught to believe whatever the hell they were taught to believeand to be proud of it. However, both history and science tell us after thousands of years of wars, rapes, abductions, slavery, and intermarriage, there is no such thing as a Turk or an Armenian, or a Palestinian and a Jew, but only dupes who were brainwashed to believe what they obviously were not.#REFLECTIONS OF A LOSER************************************** Once upon a time I used to get a great many letters by snail-mail most of which began with the words: “Sorry if I am late…” followed by a transparent lie. No one ever dared to say “I had better things to do than waste my valuable time on a loser.” *If success as a nation in our case means achieving solidarity, progress, peace, and prosperity, call me an orthodox pessimist. *If the Genocide failed to teach us solidarity, nothing can! If I am a pessimist it’s because I have been disappointed too many times. *I can’t imagine a day when I will come to terms with our Bolshevik brothers in the Homeland who operate on the assumption that they know better because they are more authentic Armenians. Neither can I imagine a day when I will see our Levantine dividers in the Diaspora as dedicated patriots, which is what they think – or are brainwashed to think -- they are. *And, by the way, when I speak of solidarity I don’t simply means coexistence with our brothers (fellow Armenians) but also with our half-brothers (Turks and Azeris). *Now then, gentle reader, is there any conceivable way in which you can come close to convincing me that we have the chance of a snowball in hell to succeed as a nation?#