Confessions

[arabaliozian]

June 17, 2010

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A SUGGESTION

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Juvenal: “No one ever reached the depths of wickedness all at once.”

*

Since so far divisions have been of no discernible use to us, why not give solidarity a chance to fail on its own demerits?

*

Divisions begin as aberrations by overambitious leaders who care more about their own powers and privileges than the welfare of the people. It's never too late to see this and begin a movement in the opposite direction.

*

Divisions are expensive luxuries. By contrast, solidarity is much cheaper. One school, one community center, and one place of worship for every large community, would save enough money to feed and house thousands of families living below the poverty line in the Homeland.

*

It should be mandatory to include the initial “S” (for Solidarity) in the acronyms of all our organizations.

*

WANTED

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

Speechifiers who will unleash a verbal torrent thick with insults to dead ancestors; and comedians who will make merciless fun of our dividers.

*

READING

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I have been reading two books on the ephemeral nature of power and wealth, especially when they are illegally, not to say criminally, obtained:

THE MADOFF CHRONICLES by Brian Ross (New York, 2009), and

KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS: THE LAST TESTAMENT, Translated and edited by Edward Cranshaw (Boston, 1974).

*

Brian Ross on Bernard and Ruth Madoff's lifestyle: “They sought the 'old money' look, even though their money was freshly stolen.”

*

Khrushchev hated Stalin but loved using the power amassed and concentrated by him.

*

ONE-LINERS

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Among Armenians, yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.

*

I repeat myself because I am told again and again that the earth is flat.

*

The credo of all ideologues and partisans should begin with the words: “I believe in a false god….”

*

If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.

#

June 18, 2010

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FROM ZERO TO INFINITY

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Not all stories in one's life have a clear or even a discernible beginning and end. “At the beginning was the word” is a sentence conceived and written by men, not by God or Reality. It is more likely that both beginnings and ends in one's life take place when we are asleep, sometimes even long before we were born.

Our genocide began 600 years ago when we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan, and even long before that, when we welcomed our enemies by failing to present a united front to them.

*

READING KHRUSHCHEV

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

In his memoirs Khrushchev speaks of “loafers, charlatans and toadies who overcrowd our institutes, bloating the staffs and gobbling up state funds without giving anything in return.” And I think of our own institutes – schools, churches, centers, political and cultural organizations – and above all newspapers (with their respective publishers, editors, assistant editors, and correspondents) of which we have a good number when one or two will do just as well – assuming their function is to publish news (as opposed to pushing their respective propaganda line) and not to provide employment to loafers, charlatans, and brown-nosers.

*

“SMALL PEOPLE,” AND “LIFE BACK”

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It is in thoughtless moments that we reveal our real thoughts – as BP executives may have realized by now.

*

DOSTOEVSKY SPEAKS

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“Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”

There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all time confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.

*

AN ARMENIAN PERVERSION

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Instead of studying our present complexes and contradictions, our academics prefer to study our graves.

#

June 19, 2010

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

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In Saramago's obituary I read this morning: “A militant atheist who maintained that human history would have been a lot more peaceful if it weren't for religion, his novels are preoccupied with the question of God.” Which reminds me of the words of a theologian (Karl Barth?) who said: “You may let go of God but God will never let you go.”

*

First you are taught to respect your elders, then you are lied to.

*

Better a useful idiot than a useless genius.

*

If I disappoint some readers it may be because I dare to think for myself as opposed to delivering the same speeches and sermons they were exposed to as children.

*

To those who accuse me of pessimism, I say: To write is to hope, and to hope is a symptom of optimism.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to communism if only because greed for money is better than greed for power.

*

More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.

*

Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”

*

Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”

*

Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”

*

Once in a while I am tempted to remind my fellow Armenians that there is more, much more, to being Armenian than Turks and massacres.

#

[arabaliozian]

June 20, 2010

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SKINHEADS ARE NOTBORN BUT MADE

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QUESTION: Who is a skinhead? Can you define him?

ANSWER: If you insult those who disagree with you, you qualify. It goes without saying that where there are skinheads, there will also be architects of a context within which skinheads thrive. Likewise, where there is racism, there will also be academics, historians, political and religious leaders and pundits who will equate patriotism with fascism.

Q: Do we have such a thing as a dominant idea today, and if we do, how would you define it?

A: Turcocentrism is our dominant idea and I would define it as the misconception that Turks are the source of all our misfortunes. It goes without saying that Turks deserve all the epithets we heap on them. It is equally true that we could heap the same number of epithets and then some on ourselves and our own leadership.

Q: Such as?

A: Incompetence, lack of self-reliance, ignorance of history, divisiveness, tribalism, intolerance, myopia bordering on blindness, inability to discriminate fact from propaganda, too much dependence on benefactors and charity and hardly any discernible effort on exposing and eliminating corruption.

Q: How do we combat these aberrations?

A: We begin by not silencing or insulting those who disagree with us.

#

June 21, 2010

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READING GANDHI

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“We hold that the civilization that you support

to be the reverse of civilization.”

*

“I am fighting against three opponents:

the British, the Indians, myself.”

*

“Violence is a result of fear.

Dishonesty is fear.

Fearlessness is the key to Truth.”

*

“God is neither in heaven, nor down below,

but in everyone.”

*

This last quotation might as well be a paraphrase of

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

But if the Kingdom of God is within us,

so is the Empire of the Devil.

How else to explain wars, massacres, and man's inhumanity to man?

*

And speaking of fear:

I think of readers

who insult me anonymously

and from a safe distance.

What are they afraid of?

What else but being exposed for what they really are –

skinheads who have been brainwashed by liars.

*

More often than not men look up to liars for moral guidance

and are more than willing to kill and die in the name of a lie.

How else to explain organized religions

and religious wars, persecutions, and intolerance?

*

Primitive man was wiser and more civilized

when he believed in an unknown and unknowable Power

which was the source of all good as well as evil.

#

June 22, 2010

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KIND WORDS

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“What have you really done for your country and fellow countrymen?” I am asked once in a while by readers who, as dupes of “men of action,” have been brought up to believe contemplation is a waste of time and those who engage in it no better than mental masturbators.

To them I say: Sometimes what we don't do can be as important as what we do.

Allow me therefore to tell you what I have not done:

*

I have never said, as God's favorite people, we can do no wrong.

I have never spoken in the name of God (whom I believe to be incomprehensible) or Truth (which I believer to be unknowable).

I have at no time tried to legitimize our failings by saying we have none.

Neither have I covered up our contradictions of which we have many.

I have not treated my readers as dupes who will believe anything they are told.

I have never written a Panchoonie letter that ends with the line: “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money).

I have not violated anyone's human rights by silencing him.

I have never said “Yes, sir!” to leaders whose number one concern is number one.

I have consistently refused to join the chorus of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and speechifiers in ascribing all our defeats and catastrophes to our enemies and phony friends.

*

Have I accomplished anything?

I don't know.

What are my chances that some day I may succeed where far better men than myself have failed?

Probably next to none.

Why do I go on writing?

That is a question I ask myself every day and so far I have failed to come up with a remotely satisfactory answer.

Am I a useless member of the community?

If I am, I do not consider that to be entirely my own fault, but the fault of readers who believe action (even the wrong action) to be superior to contemplation.

*

In a commentary in today's paper I read the following quotation by Al Capone: “You get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”

If so far I have failed, it may be because I have used only kind words.

#

June 23, 2010

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DANGEROUS WORDS

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If I were to name the two most dangerous words, they would have to be “I believe.”

*

The wold is too ready to criticize and condemn Jews for the suffering they have inflicted on Palestinians during the last decades but less willing to criticize the world for the suffering that has inflicted on Jews during the last centuries, not to say millennia. I call this disparity a symptom not of anti-Zionism but of anti-Semitism – an 'ism” or a belief system as dangerous as any organized religion that has declared and fought wars, committed massacres, and murdered innocent civilians in the name of God or Truth.

*

Speaking of religions with their holy books and monopolistic claims: I suggest they should be judged not by their intentions or principles but by their history. Theory is one thing, practice another. Ideologies like nationalism and communism may have good, even noble intentions, but their abuses have been such that even some of their most dedicated adherents had no choice but to reject them.

*

As for capitalism: recent economic and political developments in America have made it abundantly clear that in practice, it means free enterprise for the poor and the unemployed, and socialism for the rich and chief executive officers.

*

Organized religions like Christianity and Islam have not only behaved as though they had a license to kill not only the foreign infidel but also the domestic heretic. Consider the case of Catholics versus Protestants, or Shiites versus Sunnis...

*

A belief system acts on the human brain like a potent drug or alcohol.

*

And speaking of drugs and chief executive officers: Early this morning I heard on the radio that the tobacco industry has given up the claim that smoking is not addictive or that it does not cause cancer. We may now look forward to the day when the Pope of Rome will also give up his absurd claim of infallibility. But I for one am not holding my breath.

#

[arabaliozian]

June 24, 2010

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MORAL OF THE STORY

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To be brainwashed means to be blind to reality.

I speak from experience.

*

If God is love,

why is it that there is so little of it in jungles

(both natural and man-made or asphalt)

or anywhere else for that matter?

Are we to assume gardens are planted by God

and jungles by the Devil?

Who in his right mind

would introduce an evil serpent in a beautiful garden

knowing full well what will happen next?

If we are dealing with symbols

whose intent is to understand and explain reality,

then I suggest the explanation is not a very convicning one.

Which is why it is rejected by the majority of mankind.

God's ways are not our ways?

If so, let us agree once and for all

that He is incomprehensible and unknowable

and theologians who try to explain His actions

are no better than charlatans and blasphemers.

*

Moral of the story:

Don't be a dupe!

#

June 25, 2010

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REFLECTIONS

ON OUR PRESENT SITUATION

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Nothing can be more misleading than to think the men at the top know better.

*

History is made not by people who know better but by charlatans who have mastered the skill of organizing dupes.

*

When a member of the Party writes, it is not his brain that speaks but his loyalty. No one can be as brainless as a partisan.

*

The moment you surrender your freedom of thought to a closed system, you cease to think for yourself.

*

History is the propaganda of the victor, we are told. What we are not told is that losers too have their propaganda line whose intent is to make them look blameless and morally superior.

*

To think of oneself as morally superior is the surest symptom of moral bankruptcy.

*

If there are those who prefer the victor's propaganda to the loser's boast, it may be because they think winners may know something losers don't.

*

The only endeavor in which our Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded so far is grooming another generation of haters and braggarts.

*

Where the profit motive is supreme, there will be first-class merchants and an abundance of dead poets.

*

We have been brainwashed to believe politics is a filthy business, except of course our politics.

*

We don't choose our belief system, it is thrust on us.

*

It is a well-know fact that you can teach children to believe anything.

*

Prejudices are as carefully taught as the multiplication table.

*

That which is good for the few is bound to be bad for the many.

*

Anyone whose powers and privileges depend on the support of the people, will never say anything remotely critical against a system that allows the brainwashing of children.

*

At the root of all crimes against humanity, there will be a generation of brainwashed children.

*

As long as we think criticism and dissent are un-Armenian, we will never acquire the status of human beings – or “mart bidi ch'ellank.”

#

June 26, 2010

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PARALLELS

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The Palestinians have been so consistently wrong in overestimating their military might and in believing they can defeat the Israelis that nothing they say can be trusted. I am not talking about right and wrong here, or about principles and moral values. I am dealing with facts. Morally superior losers are a dime a dozen. Neither am I talking about the Palestinian people in general, most of whom are no doubt very much like most other people, including ourselves, dupes of their incompetent and megalomaniacal leadership, and as such guilty only of poor judgment.

*

When the popes sanctioned the persecution and torture of heretics, what were they defending? God or their own power?

When heretics were willing to die for what they believed in, what were they defending -- beside their freedom of thought?

*

To say that those in power are more interested in the truth than philosophers is to ignore such facts as countless wars and massacres.

*

A charlatan is one who not only claims to have the final answers but also to know better than you what you should think, feel, and believe.

*

Minor errors of judgment are covered up and ignored; but catastrophic blunders are explained, justified, and believed. I suggest truth is not what deceivers and their dupes conspire to believe in.

*

When it comes to reading, we tend to reject ideas, feelings, and values that do not spring from our own experience. It is almost as if the purpose of reading were to reinforce and legitimize our limitations, prejudices, and fallacies. Knowing this, propagandists and charlatans (but I repeat myself) are more than willing to adjust their message to the lies that are most in demand.

#

[arabaliozian]

June 27, 2010

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SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO

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When men in a position of power and responsibility

promise one thing and deliver the opposite,

I call that much worse than incompetence,

I call it criminal conduct.

When our revolutionaries promised

freedom, independence and our historic lands

and they delivered

massacres, starvation, pestilence, and dispersion,

and having done so they now say

none of it was their fault

and they are believed by dupes,

I call that much worse than

b.s., lies, and charlatanism;

I call it the quintessence of evil.

*

I love books that expose b.s.

One such book that I enjoyed recently is

Laura Penny's

YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US:

THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLSHIT.

In this morning's paper

I read that Laura Penny has published another book titled

MORE MONEY THAN BRAINS:

WHY SCHOOL SUCKS,

COLLEGE IS CRAP

AND IDIOTS THINK THEY'RE RIGHT.

I have something to look forward to.

#

June 28, 2010

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THE KING IS DEAD,

LONG LIVE THE KING!

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Prophets and reformers may change the world

but they cannot change human nature.

What have the major religions really changed?

The 20th century has seen more revolutions, wars, and massacres

than at any other time in history.

That's because human nature tends to adapt,

that is to say, to lower

the noblest ideas and ideals

to its own level, namely the gutter.

*

I suspect the honesty and integrity of men

who subscribe to a belief system

simply because as children

they were educated (that is, brainwashed)

to trust and respect their elders.

I am not saying

all Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Marxists are dupes.

I am saying most of them are.

Exceptions exist.

But I don't speak of exceptions.

I speak of rules.

*

Reformers may change the power structure

but not human nature.

And changing the power structure means

replacing one set of rascals with another.

You gain nothing by replacing one sultan

with many mini-sultans,

or one czar with many commissars,

and many commissars

with many more crypto- or neo-commissars.

#

June 29, 2010

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SELF-ANALYSIS

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Confucius: “If you see a good man, emulate him.

If you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”

*

If you want to know what's wrong with us,

Naregatsi tells us, examine your conscience.

Exposing and naming your own sins

is more important than

bitching endlessly about your enemies.

In that sense, Naregatsi, like so many of our writers

from Khorenatsi to Zarian,

may be said to have been a dissident.

*

You want to know why I write the way I write?

To keep alive the voice of dissent in our media.

*

If revolution is organized and armed dissent,

I may be said to be an unarmed and solitary revolutionary.

Which is why I feel justified in maintaining

I am not silenced by the offspring of revolutionaries

who dared to challenge the might of an empire,

but by empty suits whose greatest enemy

is neither the Turk nor the Russian,

but their own fear of being exposed as cowards.

#

June 30, 2010

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ON OUR MEDIA

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Freedom of the press will not turn bad writers into good ones.

Granted. It may, however, de-emphasize Turcocentrism,

which shamelessly exploits our emotions

and distracts us from focusing on our present problems

of which we have many.

*

SCUMBAGS (I)

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A capitalist makes money at other people's expense

and to combat his guilt, he builds churches

and by doing so he compounds his felony

by making the blasphemous assumption that

God can be bribed by scumbags.

*

A MATTER OF CHOICE

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The world or reality provides evidence

for contradictory belief systems.

As a result, both a believer and non-believer

will find all the evidence they need

to justify their choice of credo

and to accuse the other of siding with the devil.

Our convictions are not based in reality

but on our perception of it

and our choice of evidence.

*

SCUMBAGS (II)

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There is a type of scumbag

who thinks the only way to prove he is right

and the other wrong

is by going down into the gutter

on the assumption that a decent man

will refuse to follow him there.

But then he runs the risk

of running into a scumbag like me

who can take it as well as dish it out.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 1, 2010

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ON BEING RIGHT

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Being right has nothing to do with logic, common sense, and evidence. Being right is a state of mind which can be controlled by auto-suggestion. If you want to assert superior knowledge, assume you are right, raise your voice, or pull rank. Once when I disagreed with a bishop, he said: “I have a degree in theology from a university in Rome.” Which is why whenever a coward insults me anonymously and from a safe distance, I say: “You must be a bishop or the son of one.”

*

OUR BETTERS

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Heine's definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.”

We don't have aristocrats. What we have are empty suits with money; and in our environment money doesn't just talk, it sings like Pavarotti even when it brays like an ass.

*

ON SOLUTIONS

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To readers who demand solutions from me, I ask: “How many problems have our Turcocentric ghazetajis solved?” And now consider the number of real problems we could have solved with the money, energy, and manpower wasted on Hai Tahd.

#

July 2, 2010

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THAT WHICH WE SHARE

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Every Armenian is different, granted.

But all Armenians share in common the same history,

the most salient feature of which is

a thousand years of subservience to ruthless and alien tyrants.

In “Rule Britannia” the Brits may sing the words

“An Englishman cannot be a slave,”

but we are in no position to make the same claim.

Subservience – a euphemism for slavery –

comes so naturally to us that

it has become an integral part

of our psyche, character, and worldview.

Our nationalist historians may rewrite history,

but so far none of them has gone as far as suggesting

that we are all reincarnations of David of Sassoun.

*

It is true that at the turn of the last century

we finally did produce a generation of revolutionaries

who dared to challenge the might of the Ottoman Goliath.

But unlike the American, French, and Russian revolutions

ours wasn't exactly a popular uprising;

and worse, our revolutionaries relied less on themselves

to carry out their mission

and more on the Great Powers of the West.

As a result, in addition to being an abortion,

our revolution may be said to have been

one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind.

*

If we were to rely less on our propaganda

and more on historic realty,

we shall have to conclude that

our past is a litany of internecine conflicts,

defeats, blunders, and lies.

*

Am I saying anything that hasn't been said before?

Listen to Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973):

“Our history is a litany of lamentation,

anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception

and abysmal naiveté mixed with the smoke of incense

and the sound of sacred chants.”

*

Raffi (Hagop Melik-Hagopian: 1835-1888):

“We are like sheep without a shepherd.”

*

Baruir Massikian (1912-1990):

“Instead of books, they want basterma.”

By “books” Massikian means writers

who assume the role of honest witnesses.

*

As a nation we have no use for honest witnesses.

We prefer vodanavorjis who, in the words of

Leo (Arakel Babakhanian: 1858-1925):

“...like birds perched on a branch

and at a safe distance from reality,

they have entertained the moon and the stars

by singing songs about roses and virgins.”

*

I am all for emphasizing the positive,

but I am against bare-faced lies,

and I am deeply offended whenever I am treated

like a cowardly dupe whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”

*

Allow me to conclude with a remark

by President Harry S. Truman:

“There is nothing new in the world

except the history you don't know.”

#

July 3, 2010

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THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE

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Because I refuse to recycle propaganda,

I am told I am consistently negative.

Charents said our salvation is in our solidarity;

and all I have been saying is,

solidarity, very much like the Kingdom of God,

is within us.

It is an act of will within everyone's reach.

*

If so far we have failed to achieve solidarity

it may be because we have trusted our fate

into the hands of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.

To those who say our leaders are essentially good men

who are doing their best

under unfavorable conditions, I ask:

How so? By ignoring the word of the very same God

they profess to believe in, and Who tells us

“a house divided against itself cannot stand”?

Who is being consistently negative here?

Those who promote solidarity

or those who divide the nation?

And why do they divide us?

Does anyone know?

Can anyone enlighten me on that score?

*

Our divisions are buried in our past?

What past? If you rewrite history

you can justify anything;

and if you don't want to learn from history

you rewrite it.

It's a vicious circle.

*

Dealing in abstractions is easy.

The question is: What do we do in concrete terms?

I suggest the following:

If you are a Protestant, Catholic, or Anteliassagan,

visit the opposition.

If you are a Tashnak, apply for membership

in the Ramgavar Party and vice versa.

You may discover that all Armenians

regardless of their loyalty to a party or church

are human beings like you

– that is to say, dupes of propaganda.

*

Sooner or later we all have to discover that

not only all Armenians are brothers,

but also all men, including Turks.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 4, 2010

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THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION

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

Nations and empires die as surely as individuals.

Scientists tell us the same fate awaits

not only the planet on which we live

but also the universe itself.

I doubt if I or anyone else

can postpone the inevitable final catastrophe

by even a fraction of a second.

Perhaps I write the way I write

not to save anything or anyone or, for that matter, myself,

but to kill time.

*

The older I grow the more doubts I have

and the more certain I feel

of the essential meaninglessness and absurdity of life.

The idea itself of saving someone strikes me as an empty illusion.

There are those who identify the Messiah as our Savior.

There are also those who assert He,

or rather His followers,

saved no one and nothing;

if anything they made things worse

by legitimizing intolerance, the persecution and torture of dissenters,

and religious wars, among other horrors.

Their intentions may have been good – no one denies that –

but history – including our own -- tells us

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

“No one can save another,” the Buddha has said.

Which, if anything, proves that even messianic figures

contradict one another when it comes to

unraveling the mystery of existence,

or when they speak in the name of

the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible.

*

I believe true knowledge consists less in what we know

and more in what we don't know;

and what we don't know

exceeds what we know to such a degree

that if we had all the answers

what we now think we know would shrink to nothingness.

Why do I write?

Wrong question.

A better question would be,

why mankind has consistently trusted deceivers more than honest men?

#

July 5, 2010

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HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS

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

Propaganda works because it flatters, and flattery is an offer very few people have the strength of character to refuse or reject.

“Fatigue increases suggestibility,” we are told by Pavlov of conditioned-reflex fame. After centuries of subservience and degradation we readily believe in the big lies of our propaganda, among them the illusion that we are smart.

Germans under Hitler behaved like barbarians with the unshakable conviction that they belonged to a superior or master race.

Speaking for myself: in my youth I was so convinced of my high IQ that I refused to learn from those I viewed as my equals or inferiors even when they were far ahead of me in understanding and dealing with reality. Which amounts to saying, those I viewed as my inferiors were in fact my superiors.

*

Do Yanks trust gold more than God? It depends on whether you are a partisan of fact or fiction. It goes without saying that the average American is convinced Americans are the most religious and idealistic people on earth.

If in crime it's cherchez la femme, in propaganda it's cherchez the truth or fact that it attempts to contradict or cover up.

*

Propaganda, Aldous Huxley tells us, “cunningly associates the lowest passions with the highest ideals.” It also contradicts the truth with lies.

When Pope Benedict decided to make his anti-Muslim views public, he quoted a Byzantine emperor on Islam's addiction to violence. A bad choice for which he had to apologize, because, to paraphrase a popular American saying, “Violence is as American as cherry pie,” or again, as Christian as Western imperialism.

A better choice on the part of the Pope would have been Islam's promise of a paradise where sex-starved teenagers are allowed to deflowers a harem of virgins.

Christian paradise promises eternal bliss. No mention of sex. This may explain why we have a lower suicide rate in the West. Who in his right mind would kill himself in the name of a poorly defined metaphysical abstraction?

#

July 6, 2010

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FAMOUS LAST WORDS

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

Hegel's famous last words:

“No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me.”

Who among us can truly claim that he has been understood or,

for that matter, that he understands himself?

*

Confronted with the impenetrable mystery of life and death, men have constructed countless belief systems all of which claim to have a monopoly on truth.

We disagree on what we think we know and understand.

We disagree even more on things we neither know nor understand. Misunderstanding may be said to be our most abundant commodity.

For a thousand years men believed the earth to be flat and at the center of the universe, in the same way that today we believe the dimension in which we exist is the only dimension because we cannot conceive of any other.

*

If God exists, He is not and cannot be what we believe Him to be but something as inconceivable and incomprehensible as the line that scientists tell us separates existence from nothingness -- on the grounds that the universe is not infinite.

The paradox is that to have an idea of nothingness we think of existence before we were born, as if nothingness were an extension of being.

*

What if God exists in a dimension beside which existence as we know it is as nothingness?

Please note that I am not making any assertions, only asking questions, which may well be our only option when dealing with metaphysics -- asking questions without ever giving in to the temptation of making dogmatic assertions. Because, as we should all know by now, the road to hell is paved with dogmatic assertions.

#

July 7, 2010

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

GOOD ADVICE

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

Winston Churchill:

“Never hold discussions with the monkey

when the organ grinder is in the room.”

Which is why I ignore cowardly, loud-mouth idiots

who call me an idiot anonymously and from a safe distance.

They are not my targets.

My real targets are the fascist idiots

who brainwashed them to believe

dissent and free speech are unpatriotic.

*

According to Heidegger,

before we pretend to have the right answers,

we must learn to ask the right questions.

What have we learned from our history so far?

Only this: We are surrounded by ruthless giants,

as opposed to being self-righteous dogmatic midgets

who have learned nothing because they think

they already have all the answers.

*

Which one of our political parties

may be said to be on the right path?

One way to answer that question

is by quoting Samuel Johnson:

“Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency

between a louse and a flea.”

#

[arabaliozian]

July 8, 2010

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

PHILOSOPHY

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

Faith can move mountains?

What nonsense!

God created mountains to be stationary.

Why would anyone want to challenge His will

by moving them?

*

You tell idiots

faith can move mountains

and next thing you know

they raise armies,

go on the warpath

liberating distant lands,

converting infidels,

and engaging in plunder and massacre.

*

If we don't know the meaning of life and death

it may be because God wanted it that way.

Not knowing is not ignorance.

Pretending to know the unknowable:

that's what I call the quintessence of ignorance

compounded by blasphemy.

*

Tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge

can be a risky business.

But when it comes to learning from history

or repeating it,

men have exhibited a marked preference

for repeating it.

*

Three of my favorite philosophical statements:

“Of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates).

“We don't know why things exist” (Heidegger).

“We believe that we believe but we don't believe” (Sartre).

*

“I think therefore I am”?

Countless men have ceased to be

exactly because some moron said:

“I think my belief system to be the only true one

and anyone who does not think as I do

doesn't deserve to live.”

#

July 9, 2010

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

POWEER AND TRUTH

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

Power will listen to truth only if it (truth) can be exploited.

Which amounts to saying,

only in so far as truth may serve a lie.

When I speak of truth, I include God.

And I am not talking in terms of theoretical abstractions here.

I am talking about history; and more particularly

the bloody history of organized religions,

about which Voltaire said:

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

*

A true atheist is not one who denies His existence,

but one who exploits the idea of God to serve the Devil.

*

You think I have a suspicious mind?

Read James Joyce who saw deception and charlatanism everywhere,

including Freud and Jung, who, said he,

enjoy some degree of popularity

with the “yung [who are] easily freudened.”

But when his (Joyce's) daughter developed a mental illness,

he sought Jung's help who was of no help.

Which may suggest that even those who warn us against deceivers

are themselves vulnerable to deception.

*

To be taken in by smart operators is bad enough.

What is infinitely worse is to be taken in by idiots.

I speak from experience.

If I ever write an autobiography,

I suspect the longest chapter in it will be

about idiots who deceived me – or rather,

were smart enough to see my vulnerabilities and weaknesses

and I was idiotic enough to make them visible.

#

July 10, 2010

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

IN THE NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY

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

Experience, it has been said, is not what happens to us,

but what we do with what happens.

So far we have emphasized the Genocide to the point of obsession,

but we have made no effort to deal with it.

As a result, we have only replaced the “red” massacre

with the “white” (alienation and assimilation).

*

At all times and everywhere, Hegel tells us,

man is given two choices:

to say “Yes, sir!” to his Master,

or to risk his own life (or means of survival) by saying “No!”

To behave either like a sheep or a wolf.

*

After six centuries of playing the sheep,

some of us – a tiny and non-representative group

of self-appointed revolutionaries -- turned into wolves

by risking the survival of the community,

and what was bound to happen happened.

The sheep were slaughtered and the wolves survived.

*

The wolves survived and became our new Masters.

Dissent is out!

Saying no is anathema.

In the same way that once upon a time

we were not allowed to say no to the Sultan

(who spoke in the name of Allah),

today we are not allowed to say no to our bosses

(or neo- or crypto-sultans),

or bishops (who speak in the name of God),

or benefactors (who speak in the name of Capital).

*

Christianity, Hegel tells us, only replaced the human Master

with the Divine Master.

Likewise, Capital (according to Marx

who was greatly influence by Hegel)

replaced the Divine Master with, in modern parlance,

the Almighty Dollar.

*

The ambition of every charlatan

is to speak in the name of the Almighty

(be it Allah, God, or Capital) and the punish or silence those

who dare to disagree with him.

The more things change,

the more they stay the same.

*

The choice is yours.

But be warned:

If you choose to play the sheep,

there is no guarantee that you will survive.

But even if you survive,

you will survive not as a man but as a slave.

Not as an Armenian with your own identity

but as a rootless, traditionless, alienated empty suit.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 15, 2010

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

TRUTH AND OBJECTIVITY

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

Those who assert to have truth on their side (lawyers, politicians, theologians) don't like to mention objectivity in the same context, as if truth and objectivity were mutually exclusive concepts.

*

When patriotism meets objectivity, patriotism and those who who speak in its name will invariably emerge the victors.

*

No one cares about us except us, and even we don't care about ourselves – judging by the actions of our leaders -- as opposed to their speeches and sermons.

*

Last Saturday I was exposed to several televised sermons and speeches by Catholicos Aram of Antelias. He spoke of justice, human rights, and of course, genocide, genocide, genocide... He never even came close to admitting that as one of our dividers, he was himself one of the architects of our second (“white”) genocide. I am not implying his counterpart in Etchmiadzin is better. If anything, he is worse.

*

Let them speechify and sermonize on truth all they want. I prefer to speak of objectivity. How much objectivity is there in love, war, faith, and massacre?

*

The most corrupt and incompetent leader will have his loyal supporters, in the same way that the most charismatic and selfless paragon (like Socrates, Jesus, and Gandhi) will have his enemies and killers.

#

July 16, 2010

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

OREOS

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

An Armenian is an Armenian is an Armenian?

Not quite. Some are oreos: Armenian on the outside, Ottoman on the inside.

All dividers are oreos. They divide knowing full well that a house divided against itself cannot stand. So our history tells us; and so also what the Scriptures assert. And why do they divide?

They divide because their self-righteous Ottoman mindset tells them: “So long as my actions are guided by my principles; so long as I am doing the right thing, why should I care if the nation parishes? So long as my conscience is clear, it means I am doing what must be done.”

Deep inside somewhere, if he is half as smart as he thinks he is, he must know that his conscience is as much an illusion as his so-called principles are phony.

How does he define what it means “doing the right thing?”

The real answer to that question is: “I do the right thing when I defend and protect all my powers and privileges.”

Isn't that what the Turks thought too at the turn of the last century?

“So long as we defend and protect the integrity of the Empire, and with it our God-given powers and privileges, why should we give a damn if a million or more innocent civilians perish? Better them than us!”

*

Moral I:

It is easy to speak in the name of God, much more difficult to act with His wisdom.

*

Moral II:

Only dupes believe in the God of imams, rabbis, and popes.

*

Moral III:

All political principles and religious dogmas whose aim is to legitimize intolerance and divisions must be assumed to be inventions of the Devil.

*

Moral IV:

Any principle or dogma that contradicts the dictum “All men are brothers,” can't be right.

#

July 17, 2010

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

TACTICS

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

You want to keep them backward and stupid?

Call them progressive and smart.

We make a big mistake when we underestimate

the ruthless cunning of our leadership.

*

Paternalists are never paternal,

and when they preach humility

they mean subservience for the many

and arrogance for themselves.

*

To divide a nation is the same

as separating its soul from its body.

*

All movements generate a lunatic fringe.

In our case, the lunatic fringe has succeeded

and succeeded brilliantly

to paralyze the movement.

*

All Armenians are my brothers –

but only in the sense that all men are my brothers –

but only in the sense that Cain was Abel’s brother.

*

Never judge an Armenian as an Armenian

but as a human being. As a rule,

Armenians who insist on being judged as Armenians

use the flag to hide their true colors.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 18, 2010

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

SULTANISM

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

Whenever I understand something I didn't understand before, I am seized by an irresistible urge to share it. I can see why this peculiarity of mine can irritate the hell out of some readers who understand everything.

*

No one can be as ignorant as the man who is convinced he knows all he needs to know, and what he doesn't know is either irrelevant or not worth knowing.

*

"I don't trust him.”

"Why not?”

"He is a bad man.”

"Why is he bad?”

"He thinks he is a good Armenian.”

"Can't a good Armenian be a good man?”

"Not if he feels the need to advertise it. A truly honest man does not advertise himself as such even when he is accused of dishonesty. Besides, goodness and honesty are universal concepts. They don't need a national label. To identify someone as a “good German” or a “good Turk” is to imply the rest of them are bad.”

*

Great nations need big lies; small nations need bigger lies.

*

In Herman Melville I come across a new word: “sultanism,” meaning the exercise of power with a touch of sadistic pleasure.

*

A mediocrity will be subservient to any regime or power structure that gives him a regular salary, or a title, or a uniform, or the license to persecute better men than himself. There it is: the root of our sultanism.

#

July 19, 2010

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

CONFESSIONS OF AN ALIENATED ARMENIAN

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

Racism consists in ascribing the crimes of the few on the entire nation or race. And because I am critical of Armenians (not all of them but a small fraction – see below) I am called a racist by functional illiterates who equate criticism with racism and dissent with treason. It follows, Stalin was right when he silenced dissenters. What's next? Heil Hitler?

*

Armenians may be divided into three distinct groups: the assimilated (who no longer identify themselves as Armenian), the alienated (who stay away from Armenian affairs, community centers, churches, schools, and demonstrations -- I count myself among them), and the dupes who believe everything they are told because they are brought up to believe thinking for oneself is a capital offense bordering on treason.

*

The Armenian version of the Jewish incantation “Next year in Jerusalem!” -- “Next year in Los Angeles!”

*

A reasonable man does not give matches to children with the warning not to start a fire. Likewise, a reasonable God does not give free will to man with the warning not to taste the fruit from the tree of knowledge. It follows, an Almighty and All-knowing God cannot be said to be reasonable; either that or His reason is our unreason.

*

When two adversaries negotiate, it is advisable that neither side engage in verbal abuse. That's one reason why I am all for friendly relations with Turks.

*

If an Armenian cannot negotiate with a fellow Armenian or be reasonable with those he disagrees with, what are his chances of reaching a consensus with the Turks?

*

I have a Turkish friends who believes the Armenian Genocide is a fiction of our collective imagination. And I believe Turks are dupes of their own state propaganda. That doesn't stop us from being friends. There is no rule that says friends must be carbon copies of each other. Neither is there a rule that says today's friend cannot be tomorrow's enemy and vice versa – yesterday's enemy cannot be today's friend. But there is a rule that says you can get more out of a friend than out of an enemy.

#

July 20, 2010

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

READING

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

In an interview with Vasily Grossman's daughter, when asked, “Which of your father's works do you most admire and why?”

She replies: “GOOD WISHES – his account of the two months he spent in Armenia in late 1961. This is his kindest, most good-natured work.”

Further down we are informed that GOOD WISHES will be translated and published next year. (NEW STATESMAN. London, 21 June 2010, page 49.)

*

In LE POINT (Paris: 24 June 2010, page 85), I read a glowing review of a crime novel by Nairi Nahapetian (identified as an Iranian writer) titled QUI A TUE L'AYATOLLAH KANUNI? [Who Killed Ayatollah Kanuni?]

*

Here is a good subtitle for a book on the history of Armenian literature:

"From Casting Pearls Before Swine to Sticking Pins into Sacred Cows."

*

Hugh Trevor-Roper in THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER:

“The competitive servility of a court is always odious;

combined with eloquent humbug, it is nauseating.”

We will grow up as a nation on the day we produce writers capable of writing such a sentence.

*

“MENDOZA: I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.

TANNER: I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.”

Shaw, MAN AND SUPERMAN (1903)

*

“He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

Shaw, MAJOR BARBARA (1907)

#

July 21, 2010

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

COMMENTS

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

Think of the human brain as a musical instrument that is perpetually out of tune with reality; and think of faith as an illusion whose aim is to convince us it is in tune.

Hence the popularity of belief systems.

All men of faith will agree with me with only one proviso:

they will say, all faiths are indeed illusions except mine.

*

In Colette I read the following exchange:

“She pays for things: she doesn't give.”

“American style?”

*

Since God is incomprehensible (“His ways are not ours”) whatever you say about Him, especially if it makes perfect sense to you, is bound to be wrong.

*

There must be a special place in hell for people who deceive, exploit, mislead, and sometimes even molest innocent dupes who look up to them for guidance.

*

It is said that a little learning is a dangerous thing; but having met several Armenian academics, I tend to think a lot of learning can be lethal.

*

I have heard some Armenians say we should forgive the Turks, but I have never heard an Armenian say we should forgive our fellow Armenians.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 22, 2010

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

MEDITATIONS

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

In a text on political philosophy I read today of “the inalienable right to resist tyranny and all

illegitimate authority.”

No matter how hard I try I cannot think of a single Armenian authority figure that may be said to have

been democratically elected, and therefore legitimate.

Raffi tells us “treason and betrayal are in our blood.” After long centuries of conditioning, so, it

seems, are tyranny and subservience to tyrants.

Who even dares to speak today of tyranny, subservience, and democracy? We prefer to speak

instead of Turks and massacres, that is to say of past aberrations about which there is little or

nothing we can do, and ignore the present violations of human rights which are within our power to

arrest.

*

Dostoevsky: “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained in us than lying to others.”

This may suggest there is a pathological liar in all of us.

*

“I paint with my prick,” Renoir is quoted as having said.

Some of my readers think with theirs.

*

Always be civil to a writer, especially if he happens to be an Armenian. You never know when he may

choose to get even. I for one never read an Armenian I have insulted. An insulted Armenian is like a

sword of Damocles and I already have a forest of yataghans hanging over me.

*

When confronted with a difficult problem, ostriches bury their heads in the sand, or so we are told.

Men are smarter: they don’t bury their heads, they bury the problem…even if it means burying

themselves in the process.

#

July 23, 2010

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

ONE-LINERS

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

Truth is an invention of liars.

*

Truth is a work in progress, not a finished product.

*

The consensus of a million people guarantees nothing. A billion smart men may be taken in as easily

as a single dumb dupe.

*

Truth may be one but those who speak in its name are many.

*

Lying comes as naturally to men of power as swimming to fish, flying to birds, and slithering to

serpents.

*

I am not here to solve problems but to show their hiding places.

*

Educating children and brainwashing them might as well be synonymous operations.

*

To explain the incomprehensible is to lie.

*

The aim of a religion or an ideology is to assert a monopoly on truth.

*

Monopoly favors the producer, not the consumer.

*

The most dangerous liars are those who speak in the name of truth.

*

Faith allows us to believe in a lie with a clear conscience.

*

There are as many versions of the past as there are historians.

*

Subservience to God also means subservience to those who speak in His name.

*

Subservience is hell.

#

July 24, 2010

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

THREE SCANDALS

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

Dead men don't testify.

Permanently silenced voices cannot sing.

No witnesses, no murder.

All career criminals know this.

Turks know it too.

After eliminating a million potential witnesses

and deporting and scattering another million

to the four corners of the world,

they now say, for every Armenian survivor

there are two or more Turkish survivors

willing and eager to testify that

the Genocide is a fiction of our collective imagination

and that it was the Armenians who tried to exterminate Turks.

But that's not the scandal.

The real scandal is that they are believed

by some members of the jury,

and they need only one

for the judge to issue a verdict of not guilty

or to declare a mistrial.

You think Armenians are smart and Turks dumb?

Think again.

We may have truth on our side

but they have the law on theirs.

*

Who cares about Armenians?

Not even Armenians.

As for our Turcocentric ghazetajis:

they are no better than hirelings

who are paid to vociferate endlessly

about genocide, genocide, genocide

in order to cover up

the incompetence, corruption, and violations of human rights

of their own bosses and paymasters.

The brainwashed may not see this clearly

but those who have retained the ability to think for themselves do.

It is this second scandal

that is at the root of our self-inflicted “white” massacre.

Armenians are smart?

Don't make me laugh!

*

When Jerry Falwell died,

Christopher Hitchens called him

a “vulgar fraud and crook.”

We too have our share of Falwells

but not a single Hitchens, alas!

What we have instead are gutless brown-nosers

by the dozen and by the hundred.

And that, my friends, is our third scandal!

#

[arabaliozian]

July 25, 2010

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

RANDOM THOUGHTS

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

An Armenian will disagree with you even when he agrees. His aim is not dialogue but monologue; not being smart but to appear to be smarter than you; not consensus but oneupmanship.

*

It is not that the world is moving at a faster rate than we are, the situation is much worse. We are moving backwards. Compare the first half of the last century with the present. In the first half we had Oshagan, Zarian, General Antranik, Karekin Nejdeh, Roupen Der Minassian, Nikol Aghbalian, and many others. Today we have nothing but Turcocentric ghazetajis and brainless, faceless empty suit.

*

To those who say our problems are the world's problems, I say: Name a single nation that has been at the mercy of brutal foreign oppressors for as long as we have been.

*

If at times I am merciless in my criticism, it’s because life has been even more merciless to us collectively. Compared to how tough life has been, I don’t even qualify as a marshmallow.

#

July 26, 2010

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

MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

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

They recycle propaganda and call it free speech.

*

No dupe can ever be free.

*

The greatest enemy of liars is not the truth but reality.

*

Instead of speaking about Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, and Turks, we should teach ourselves to speak of human beings. That way we may learn to emphasize that which we share.

*

Shakespeare (THE WINTER’S TALE): “I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty; for there is nothing the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting, drinking.”

*

On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for “I have been verbally abused”) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.

*

Giambattista Vico:

“Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”

*

If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.

*

An Armenian who is about to lose an argument turns into a Turk.

#

July 27, 2010

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

IT TAKES ALL KINDS

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

In his youth Koestler was taken in by Soviet propaganda and became a member of the Communist Party. But after Stalin's show trials and purges of the 1930s he published DARKNESS AT NOON, one of the most anti-Soviet books in world literature.

Stalin's countless crimes have had no effect on our chic Bolsheviks however. To them Stalin is no more than McCarthy's counterpart.

*

Nabokov, the offspring of multimillionaire Russian aristocrats, hated the Communists to such a degree that he even supported the war in Vietnam.

*

As a petit-bourgeois, Sartre hated the French bourgeoisie, including De Gaulle, so much that he sided with Stalin, Mao, and Castro.

*

Thomas Mann wanted to save Germany from the Nazis but he succeeded only in making enemies of his fellow Germans who looked up to Hitler for guidance and accused him (Mann) of treason.

*

Hitler and Mussolini counted among their early admirers many great men in politics and literature, among them Shaw, Churchill, Knut Hamsun, and Heidegger.

*

Even men with 20/20 vision have their blind spots; and sometimes to know more is to understand less.

*

In an environment where Abovian was driven to suicide and Zarian was silenced,

what chance does a minor scribbler have?

Why do I go on?

Call it art for art's sake,

A waste of time.

#

July 28, 2010

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

THE SOUIND AND THE FURY

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

Instead of writing MADAME BOVARY

he should have written MONSIEUR FLAUBERT.

The result would have been

a much more authentic and believable work.

He knew everything there is to know about Flaubert,

little or nothing about the Bovarys

and what he knew about them

was based on hearsay, projection, research, and imagination

and as such, inadmissible evidence.

This is a mistake we all make:

we prefer to speak about things

we know little or nothing about,

and more often than we rely on hearsay.

Consider ideologies, religions, gods, and prophets.

What are holy scriptures if not hearsay?

What is the infallibility of prophets, popes, imams, and rabbis

if not pure fiction and collective illusion?

What are wars and massacres

if not hysterical or psychotic outbursts?

Leave it to historians to see meaning in them,

with the result that one man's meaning or truth

is another's nonsense and lie,

not to say the seed of another war and massacre,

followed by more sound and fury signifying nothing.

#

[arabaliozian]

July 29, 2010

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

MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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

You say it was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.

How so, if

(one) we were tiny islands in a vast Turkish sea;

(two) we were not allowed to bear arms; and

(three) we now live on foreign soil and you live in your homeland which was ours long before it was yours.

*

Armenians are guilty of slaughtering Turks?

There are literally thousands of articles published in the international press that speak of Armenian massacres and deportations in Turkey during World War I some of which have been compiled and published as books. Now then, show me a single article published outside Turkey in which it is stated that it was Armenians who massacred and deported Turks.

*

I understand and even sympathize with your loyalty to your tribe, but I suggest a man is judged more by his loyalty to principles of justice and fair play and less by his loyalty to a regime.

*

Speaking of man and criteria of judgment, I am reminded of the old Turkish saying: “Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”

And speaking of loyalty: I would add that loyalty to a regime is at the root of all fascism.

*

And now let us consider the following scenario: A united Armenia (miracles happen) declares war against a divided, weakened, and demoralized Turkey (after all, even mighty empires fall and vanish from the annals of history) and commits crimes against humanity by slaughtering and deporting innocent Turkish civilians. I assure you there will be honest Armenians (and I like to believe I would be among them) who will denounce the perpetrators in the same way that there are today many honest Turks who have raised their voices against Turkish denialists: you see, we are more alike than you think, with one difference: there are many more of you, which also means more criminals, more fanatics, more liars, and more dupes of propaganda.

*

On a number of occasions I have been asked by Turkish friends: “If we tried to exterminate Armenians, how come there are so many of you around the world?”

To which I can only say: millions of Jews are alive today all over the world as well as in Israel. Does that mean the Holocaust is a lie?

*

Another question: Suppose the Ottoman Empire were an Armenian Empire and suppose Turks were a minority in it. And suppose after six long centuries of Armenian oppression some Turks decided to rise against their oppressors: Would you call them freedom fighters, heroic revolutionaries, or terrorists?

You say the Ottoman Empire did not oppress its minorities. Then explain why even the Turks rose against the Sultan? And if you say Talaat was not a fascist guilty of genocide, then explain why he ran away to Berlin?

*

A final note on truth and propaganda:

Where there are conflicting interests, truth may be difficult to establish, unlike propaganda which is easily identified and defined because it supports one set of interests against another – in addition to flattering the collective ego.

Who needs flattery?

My answer: Maybe the “nine women” mentioned in the Turkish saying quoted above, but surely not the “tenth man.”

#

July 30, 2010

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

#2 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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

You say, “For 600 years Armenians and Turks lived in peace. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, and a time when Turkey was fighting for its own very survival, you decided to side with our enemies and engaged in acts of terrorism within Turkey, thus giving Turks no choice but to take decisive action against you, which is what any state would have done.”

*

What you say contains a number of misconceptions, distortions, and fallacies.

Our revolutionaries were a handful of young idealists.

They did not represent the people.

None of them was democratically elected.

The deportations and atrocities undertaken by the Turkish state

did not target them but innocent law-abiding civilians.

As for Armenian soldiers who fought with the Russians:

again, they did so with no support whatever

from the Armenian people within Turkey.

Besides, no one is accusing the Turks

of killing Armenian soldiers on the battlefield.

*

Now, about the myth (a euphemism for the Big Lie)

of Armeno-Turkish coexistence:

throughout history all oppressors invariably adopt

a paternalist stance towards the oppressed.

They see themselves not as oppressors or masters

but as benefactors and protectors of their subjects;

and they are outraged at any show of discontent or dissent

which they view as ingratitude.

They are convinced the order established by them

has been ordained by the Almighty

and anyone who refuses to accept that self-evident truth

deserves to die.

To tyrants, exploiters, and imperialists,

all revolt is incomprehensible and unjustified.

*

However, the real issue here is not the psychology of oppressors

but why did the Turks target defenseless and law-abiding Armenians?

The obvious answer is,

they adopted a racist stance towards them.

When the American ambassador pointed out to Talaat

that he was targeting friendly Armenians,

Talaat said: “After what we have done to them,

all Armenians will be our enemies.”

Talaat understood and admitted

what you refuse to understand and admit,

perhaps because you continue to think and feel as oppressors.

You think the order established by your military victory

should be seen as a final verdict without appeal

because ordained by Allah.

You are completely blind to the fact that

your military victory was also a moral catastrophe.

*

And if you say, atrocities and deportations

are inevitable consequences of war,

yes, I agree. No one denies that either.

If Armenians see you as Asiatic barbarians

it is less for what you have done to them

and more for denying its reality.

#

July 31, 2010

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

#3 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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

You say,

“In our place you would have done the same thing.”

To which I can only say, and in our place

you would be reacting the same way.

Which means, we may be members of different tribes

but the same race – namely, the human race.

It also means we share more things in common

than we like to think. And yet,

we pretend otherwise

and we expect others to believe us

perhaps because we don't have as high an opinion of them

as we have of ourselves.

This pretense is baseless

because we might as well be transparent.

We both have a highly developed critical sense

when we deal with others, especially those we label as enemies,

and lack objectivity when it comes to ourselves.

You think the world needs you

more than it needs us, and we think

in the long run justice and truth are bound to prevail.

You cannot fool all the people all the time.

We both believe God or truth to be on our side,

thus reducing the mystery of existence to a game.

But life is not a game.

Not only today's victor may be tomorrow's loser

but also because victory on one level

may be defeat on another.

A criminal who believes he is innocent

because he is a law-abiding citizen

will commit the same crime again and again

until he is caught, arrested, tried, and found guilty.

*

A state that thinks only in terms of power and influence over others

is a dehumanized state. That is to say,

a state that has committed moral suicide.

Such a state doesn't have to be killed in order to die

because it is already dead.

I say this with grief in my heart

because it applies to the rest of the world as well,

including ourselves.

#

[arabaliozian]

August 1, 2010

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

#4 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS:

ON NATIONALISM

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

What nationalism does is to create an a priori positive image of one's nation (“my country, right or wrong”) and to automatically reject anything that may be remotely negative.

Nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology – a pathology if only in the sense that it divides mankind into us and them, Abels and Cains, friends and enemies -- the kind of enemies that, if you don't kill them first, they will kill you. As a result, murder one is classified as self-defense or at worst justified manslaughter.

*

My nationalist Turkish friends expect me to believe their version of the past as gospel truth and to reject the version of my own nationalist brothers as a pack of distortions and lies. And because I have been critical of our nationalists too, they think I am on their side and I qualify as an honorary Turk.

I am told some of them even quote me in their writings, websites, and speeches to buttress their denialist position. Which may suggest that they are so hungry for evidence that they are even willing to fabricate it.

*

What they miss is that my anti-nationalism targets not just Armenian nationalists but all nationalists, including theirs.

Their bias is such that it makes them blind to the reality of their position.

In their view it was not Turks but Armenians who committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The bones in the desert are not Armenian but Turkish bones. Talaat is not a criminal but a statesman of vision who did not deserve to be gunned down like a dog in the street by a deranged Armenian assassin.

*

A final comment on the myth of Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire.

Gandhi once called the British Empire “satanic.” As far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever described the Ottoman Empire as more civilized and humane than the British Empire. And if some day an ultra-nationalist Turkish historian somewhere calls the regime of the sultans “angelic,” that should be seen as irrefutable evidence of the fact that nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology, and as such in need of medical treatment rather than philosophical refutation.

#

August 2, 2010

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

GROUPS

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

“On your own you can do nothing. You must join a group,” I am told again and again.

Join a group? How can I if my aim in life is to expose the moral bankruptcy of all groups?

*

What Shaw said of professions (that they are “conspiracies against the laity”) applies to groups regardless of credo, ideology, or political orientation.

*

Speaking of Zarian, a Tashnak editor once wrote to a fellow Tashnak:

“If we publish him he may come to our side.

When he didn't, not only was he silenced but also rumored to be unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and mad.

Later when the Soviets promised to publish him, he believed them and by the time he realized he had been taken in, it was too late. He spent his final years as an outcast in his own homeland and died with the conviction that he had been killed.

*

In their efforts to assert their own intellectual superiority and moral integrity, our mediocrities now spread the rumor that Zarian was an agent of both the CIA and the KGB.

I too have been accused to being an agent of, among others, the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. To which I can only repeat the words of Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”

*

Sooner or later all groups become criminal conspiracies.

*

The longevity of a group or belief system guarantees nothing. Astrology has been with us longer than any organized religion.

*

Where there is a belief system that asserts monopoly on truth, there will also be deceivers and dupes.

*

Where faith enters, lies and prejudices are sure to follow.

*

What needs to be glorified is not faith but doubt.

*

The destiny of blind men is to be at the mercy of other blind men who will invariably lead them into the ditch.

*

A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master.

#

August 3, 2010

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

#5 MEMO

TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS

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

You dare to speak of six centuries of peaceful Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire. You forget that during this so-called brotherly co-existence you raped our daughters and forced them into concubinage; and you abducted our sons and forced them to kill and die in your imperialist wars of conquest. You did these things legally of course because your legal system was rotten.

*

Times change and laws change but you continue to think with the old Ottomanized brain, hence the absurd notion that, like the Sultan before them, both Talaat and Kemal represented the Almighty on earth and as such they could do no wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of treason and deserves to die.

*

A man can get used to anything. You got used to your own vileness and we got used to our own cowardly subservience. In that sense, the Ottoman Empire was not the blessing you like to believe it was, but a curse to both of us.

And if we massacred you whenever we had the upper hand it may be because as your subjects, we adopted and put into practice the values and methods of our masters. Before you blame us, blame yourself.

*

In one of his Anatolian travelogues Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and the future author of a mammoth biography of Kemal, quotes an old Turkish peasant as having said: “We taught the Armenians a lesson the will never forget.” This illiterate peasant understood what educated, modernized, denialist scholars pretend not to understand today, namely that, what you did to us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven or, for that matter, covered up.

#

August 4, 2010

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

DIARY

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

Reading the TALMUD. Some good lines in it. “Love work, hate lordship, and seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”

*

A hundred years ago our writers knew how to deal with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. We appear to have lost the art and with it our cojones. The offspring of our revolutionaries now refer to one another as “boys” and to our benefactors as “baron.” The only lesson they appear to have learned from their experience in the Ottoman Empire is respect for authority and everyone in its neighborhood even if they are no better than yes-men, brown-nosers, and the scum of the earth. Hence the saying, “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” And this in the land of the brave and the free.

*

Because I am critical of Armenians, my Turkish friends think I must be blind to their shortcomings. I will not apologize for disappointing them.

*

Yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.

*

If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.

*

In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: “Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”

There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.

*

In a dictionary, I read the following definition:

“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party and against people’s interests generally.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 5, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

One reason I am overly critical of Armenians is that I see too many of my own failings in them.

*

It is not that like all nations or human institutions tribal people are sometimes wrong; rather, they can do nothing right. Everything they do contributes to their disintegration.

*

A pundit is useless to an audience of superpundits.

*

Capitalism is morally superior to Communism if only because greed for money is less lethal than greed for power.

*

More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.

*

Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”

*

Thomas Hardy: “More life may tickle out of men through fear than through a gaping wound.”

*

Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”

*

Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”

#

Friday, August 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The difference between verbiage and garbage is that garbage may be recycled and verbiage cannot because it may contain dangerous contaminants.

*

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923): “Non-rational beliefs are more important in spurring men to action than logical demonstration.”

It is also true that non-rational beliefs generate masters of persuasion who speak in the name of reason and common sense. Aquinas learned more from Aristotle and less from the prophets.

*

According to Pavese, who killed himself because an American starlet did not return his love: “One does not kill oneself for love or a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”

*

Pascal: “The 'I' is hateful.”

Fichte: “For he who still has a self – in him assuredly there is nothing good.”

It follows, if the “I” or the “self” or the individual is nothing, the state must be everything. Hence the universal appeal of patriotism, nationalism, fascism, and ultimately war and massacre.

I am reminded of Erdogan's dictum: “Muslims don't commit genocide.”

That's because Muslims act in the name of an all “merciful” and “compassionate” Allah. Or rather, their actions are not theirs but Allah's. Now then, go ahead, accuse the Almighty of criminal conduct.

*

It is the questions that cannot be answered that are asked again and again. And it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable that generates the greatest number of explanations.

*

Where there is censorship, seek to be among the silenced.

*

Andre Agassi in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink.”

If life does that to his kind, imagine if you can what it does to the rest of us.

#

Saturday, August 7, 2010

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

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

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

Our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire had little knowledge of the Great Powers, little knowledge of the Ottoman temperament, little knowledge of the consequences of their actions, little knowledge of politics, history, and diplomacy, and no knowledge at all of the proposition that a leader is first and foremost a servant of the people and a revolution without popular support is doomed to fail. And they appear to have learned not little but nothing.

*

The Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian today is as merciless as his prototypes. With one difference: he doesn't have a license to kill. But in every other respect he might as well be an agent of the Sultan or the Kremlin.

*

When a man selects his evidence, seek for the truth in the unselected fraction.

*

The true intention of Turkish denialists is not to convince the jury but to instill the shadow of a doubt in a single juror, because that's all they need for a mistrial.

*

More often than not our disagreements are not between two conflicting ideas but between an idea and nothing, and I consider recycled propaganda less than nothing.

*

Imagine a sardine in a pool of sharks. Imagine an honest Armenian.

*

Rosa Luxemburg: “Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.”

*

Amu Djoleto (African poet):

“What you expect me to sing, I will not,

What you do not expect me to croak, I will.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 8, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The thought that writing for Armenians is a waste of time never leaves me.

*

I am all for tolerance, but I am myself tolerant only when drunk. Koestler may be right. What the world needs is a tolerance pill, if only to numb the crocodilian brain in us.

*

If in the next life (assuming there is one) the riddle of life and death is solved, will we say, “But of course, I should have guessed!” or will we say, “I should never have guessed this!”

*

When after World War II the victorious Allies decided to reduce Germany to a shadow of itself, they divided it into two. We don't need anyone to divide us into two; we can divide ourselves into twenty-two on our own.

*

When asked why he had hardly moved from his house for twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz is quoted as having said: “You don't like my house?” And when asked why he plays Clementi Sonatas, he replies: “You don't like Clementi?”

The other day a reader wanted to know if I was priest. I should have pulled a Horowitz on him and said, “You don't like priests?”

*

And speaking of rabbis, in the TALMUD I read: “He that does not increase shall cease, he that does not learn deserves to die, and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.”

Tough buggers, those old rabbis.

*

Anonymous: “The drowning man has no fear of rain.”

*

Avedik Issahakian: “The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn.”

#

Monday, August 9, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Everyone in Washington is on the take.

So what else is new?

The American Congress is the best Congress money can buy.

Why don't you tell me something I don't know?

What about us? Do you think we are morally superior? What about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? Are they all gentlemen?

What kind of people assert moral superiority?

Only the scum of the earth.

*

When we brag about survival, let us not forget that treason and betrayal also qualify as survival tactics.

*

What if life after death is as different as being is from nothingness?

*

Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies; that’s because for every bitter truth there are a thousand sweet lies and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.

*

Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus. Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs. The gut, yes. The brain, no!

*

The secret ambition of every windbag is to be a fire-breathing dragon.

*

Propaganda is a tree that needs the manure of rhetoric. Truth can stand on its own even in the middle of a desert.

#

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

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

GOOD MEN

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

After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends accuses me of anti-Turkish bias. I try to explain to him that my “bias” is not against people in general regardless of race, color, and creed, but against regimes, and more specifically, against individuals who formulate criminal policies and their underlings who implement them because not implementing them would mean loss of power, prestige, title, and income.

*

There are good men everywhere, granted. But good men cease to be good when they become dupes of leaders who abuse their power.

*

Speaking of good men: I owe my very existence to a kind Turkish cop who warned my father's family of the coming catastrophe, even when this warning, if exposed, would have cost him his job or even his life.

#

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

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

READING

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

What makes Andre Agassi's AUTOBIOGRAPHY compulsively readable is its colloquial style and searing honesty. At one point he identifies his father as an Armenian from Iran who curses in Assyrian (probably because Assyrian sounds more menacing). Speaking of an opponent he writes: “His serve is uncannily accurate. If he misses, it's only by a bee's dick.”

Agassi writes like someone who has been in hell and back. The moral of his story seems to me, never do what someone else wants you to do even if by following his instructions may take you to the top of the world and into the bed of the likes of Brooke Shields and Barbra Streisand (which at the time was rumored to be less a May-December than an AD and BC affair).

*

Some of my readers inform me that I am a pessimist, probably because I have a grim view of our present reality. Others tell me I am an optimist, probably because they think I write hoping I can make a difference or change things. These contradictory reactions confirm my own view of myself as someone who thinks as a pessimist but works as an optimist. As for changing things: to entertain such an illusion would be less optimism and more megalomania bordering on insanity. The only thing I want to accomplish is to give insomnia to our charlatans and bloodsuckers, and I shall consider my mission accomplished even if the insomnia lasts no more than a fraction of a second.

*

Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago (give and take a decade or two) there lived a Roman emperor by the name of Vespasian (no, he was not of Armenian descent). He was a good emperor -- much better than average, according to most historians. But since the Senators didn’t like some of his policies, they demoted him to Supervisor of Public Urinals. Vespasian was not in any way offended or discouraged. He said to his staff, “I intend to discharge my duties as Supervisor of Public Urinals as competently and diligently as I discharged my duties as emperor.”

To this day Italians use his name instead of giovanni (john). To say “I am going to pay a visit to Vespasian,” means I am going to the john.

I think of Vespasian often perhaps because what keeps me going is the thought that, if my detractors are right and I am in fact nothing but an extremely minor scribbler, I will at least be an honest one.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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

REBUTTAL

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

After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends, himself the author of a fat denialist tome, has written a detailed rebuttal which I stop reading when I run into the kind of fallacy that is bound to undermine the validity of everything that follows in addition to demolishing his much vaunted objectivity.

*

My good friend seems to be saying that truth is on the side of big battalions. If revolutionaries win, he explains, they are heroes. But if they lose, they are criminals guilty of a capital offense and as such they deserve to die, and not just they but also their women, children, parents, and everyone else that shares their ethnic origin. That's because in time of war it is not always easy to separate the sheep from the goats even when the sheep may outnumber the goats.

*

Another implication that comes across loud and clear is that, if the overwhelming majority of Western historians assert the reality of the Genocide, it may be because (one) they, unlike my good friend, haven't done their homework, and (two) like most of their Armenian counterparts, they have an anti-Turkish bias. It follows, only historians who deny the reality of the Genocide are true historians. The rest are dupes of Armenian propaganda.

*

Another curious point that I noted about my good friend is that he doesn't like proverbial sayings and he dismisses their wisdom as old wives' tales. I disagree. I love words of wisdom, especially when they challenge my fundamental assumptions and expose my prejudices and bias. I believe a single proverb is worth more than a thousand documents whose relevance and authenticity may well be bogus. Which is why I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from the TALMUD that I read early this morning:

“Let the honor of thy fellow be as dear to thee as thine own. Be not easily angered. Repent one day before thy death. And keep warm at the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coal lest thou be scorched: for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss the hiss of a serpent – moreover all their words are like coals of fire.”

#

Friday, August 13, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Let's get one thing straight: I am not anti-social. Rather, it is society that is anti-individual. And if I am not active in the community it may be because the community has no use for the likes of me and it prefers to deal, support, and compensate bearded hoodlums armed to the teeth with guitars and braying like jackasses, or idiots who hit a ball with a stick. I don't see why I should moronize myself to please my moronized fellow men.

*

Throughout history man has hated in the name of love, committed injustice in the name of justice, and professed dedication to truth in the name of a Big Lie. Which is why after centuries and millennia Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, supporters and opponents of capital punishment, abortion, and war, have failed to resolve their differences.

*

An Armenian has two sets of enemies, Turks and Armenians, and of the two, he hates Armenians more.

*

Eventually all thinking Armenians will have to ask themselves the question: What if it is not God at whose right hand we sit but the Devil?

*

I am willing to concede that all my observations on Armenians are also confessions.

*

“Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”

Likewise, where there is a benefactor, there will be brown-nosers.

And where there is propaganda, there will bedupes and one or more dissidents.

*

No matter how good the theory, there will be another that will contradict it.

*

The American illusion: “We may not be very smart but with the dollar we can hire the best brains.”

*

What if in the next life – if there is one -- the final questions will remain unanswered?

#

Saturday, August 14, 2010

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

TH RELIGION OF DENIAL

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

Assertions are not made in a vacuum but within a context of unspoken assumptions whose absurdity may be hidden to insiders but as clearly visible to outsiders as a city set on a hill. In what follows I will list a handful of these assumptions made by our denialist friends.

*

Our books are based on authentic evidence. By contrast, books of the opposition are based on hearsay, old wives' tales, and forgeries.

*

Some of our key documents are of Armenian origin, and when an Armenian is on our side, he is an honest man; but when he is against us, he is a charlatan, a crook, and a liar whose testimony should be dismissed as inadmissible.

*

The authority of the state is sacrosanct. To challenge it is to incur its wrath.

*

If the authority of the state is sacrosanct, its assertions cannot be questioned. If the present regime says there was no genocide, there was no genocide. End of story.

*

When Talaat and Co. challenged the divine authority of the Sultan, they were right to do so. When Kemal did the same to Talaat and Co., he too was right. But when Armenians did the same, they were guilty of a capital offense and what followed was justified retaliation with some inevitable peripheral casualties.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 15, 2010

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

EXPLAINING AND UNDERSTANDING

THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

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

We all swim in the same soup.

There is a Cain in all of us, including Abel.

Am I saying anything you don't already know?

*

Armenians and Turks will begin to understand one another only when they say, “In their place, we would have done the same thing.”

*

Armenians have no choice but to accept their degrading history of subservience to the same degree that Turks have no choice but to accept their role as oppressors; and of the two I find it difficult to decide which is more morally reprehensible.

*

Do you really want to know what I think of imperialism? True, I don't have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be the subject of an empire; but I have dealt with Ottomanized and Stalinized Armenians, and the best thing I can say about them is that, if they class themselves up two or three notches, they may qualify as the scum of the earth. That's the best thing I can say about oppression and subservience.

Let others believe the Ottoman Empire was a progressive and civilizing force. As they say, there is no accounting for tastes, it takes all kinds, and against stupidity even the Gods compete in vain.

*

What could be more preposterous than to suggest all the nations that rose against the regime of the sultans (and I am not excluding Turks themselves) during the last decades of the Empire's existence were wrong and the Sultan right?

*

Under pressure or when provoked, all people, even the most civilized, are capable of committing crimes against humanity. Now then, go ahead and say six hundred years of oppression does not qualify as provocation.

#

Monday, August 16, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Historian Nial Ferguson to the question, “Are we all doomed?”

“Definitely. The question is, will it be a bus this afternoon, or will I wheeze my last in some old folks' home, aged 90?” (London: NEW STATESMAN. July 26, 2010.)

*

Jean Rostand: “The world belongs to the superior second-raters.” And “Let a dictator perform an act of good sense, and people immediately hail him as a genius.”

Now you know all you need to know about Kemal's popularity. I speak as a “Christian Turk,” and I suspect the only people who will agree with me are “Mountain Turks.”

*

Turks are brought up to believe they are brave warriors – warriors who are now afraid of words – and the words that scares them the most are “Armenians” and “Kurds.” Compliments of Kemal.

*

La Rochefoucauld: “A man is never more easily deceived than when he believes he is deceiving others.”

*

Some day someone may write a history of Ottoman philosophy, but until then I will continue to think of Ottomanism and philosophy as mutually exclusive concepts.

*

La Rochefoucauld again: “It is only those who are despicable who fear being despised.”

*

The victor and the vanquished, the capitalist and the worker, the master and the slave, the boss and the hireling, the rich and the poor: relax the rule of law and they will tear one another to shreds.

*

If there are alienated Armenians today it's because they have had it up to here with Armenian nonsense. You may now guess why the best brains that Turkey has produced in recent times live in exile.

#

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

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

FROM EMPIRE TO NATION

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

Because I am critical of my fellow Armenians, I am thought of as pro-Turkish by readers to whom labels are more important than human beings. Hence the fallacy: You are either with us or against us, and if you are against us the hangman's noose is too good for you.

*

The Ottoman Empire of the sultans was an octopus.

Kemal's Turkey is a monopus – all trunk, no limbs, forever at the mercy of tides. Rejected by Israel, it embraces Iran. It moves backwards thinking it has taken a step in the right direction.

*

The central and unspoken tenet of Kemalism is the refusal to come to terms with the fact that the nation was born from the rotten corpse of the Empire. It is a zombie not a phoenix. On the map, it looks like a castrated member – a dick whose cojones have been surgically removed. A Viagra induced erection that does not flag, neither can it connect, let alone penetrate, the object of its perennial desire – the West.

*

To be at the mercy of imperialists: what could be worse? -- except perhaps to be at the mercy of nationalists.

#

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

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

TURKS (II)

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

The laws of the land are designed to legitimize the power structure and to support the ruling class even when the rulers happen to be cold-blooded sadistic serial killers.

*

The slave is brought up to feel guilty even when innocent. It's the other way with the master – his conscience has been atrophied, his sense of justice perverted; so much so that he can slay the innocent with the conviction that he is discharging his duty in the eyes of the Lord. There you have it: the roots of denialism.

*

I believe Turks when they plead not guilty to the charge of genocide. I also believe these Turks think and feel with the old Ottomanized brain. Deep in their hearts (if you will forgive the overstatement) they have the unshakable conviction that the sultans were always right (remember the Italian slogan, “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right) and their(sultans') function in life was to carry out the will of the Almighty. The difference between the East and the West is that Mussolini was shot and hanged on a public square.

*

To speak of genocide in an Ottomanized context amounts to accusing the Lord of murder – an unthinkable blasphemy that in another time and place would have been seen as a capital offense. If the sultans came back to life today, they would issue a fatwa against all Armenians who utter the word genocide.

Let us therefore count our blessings!

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 19, 2010

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

KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES

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

The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.

Imagine the following scenario if you can:

A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”

*

The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.

The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.

*

Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.

Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!

But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?

*

Genocide? What genocide?

It was a military victory.

Deportations and atrocities?

Collateral damage. All wars have them.

*

Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.

Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.

Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.

But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.

No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.

None of them rewrote history.

None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.

None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.

None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”

None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.

#

Friday, August 20, 2010

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

ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA

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

Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.

*

The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.

In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.

The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.

*

Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.

Prejudices are all guts and no brain.

*

Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.

*

If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.

*

Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.

#

Saturday, August 21, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When I was young I thought I had all the answers.

I know now that I don't even have the questions.

*

Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger

than understand the message.

*

To divide is bad enough,

but to divide in the name of a religion

that asserts “all men are brothers”

is the height of perversion.

*

It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,

I question the sanity of those who do.

*

Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while

that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.

*

To speak the truth means to contradict

one Big Lie,

a hundred small lies,

and a thousand liars.

*

What is censorship

if not fear of being exposed

as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 22, 2010

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

ILLUSIONS

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

We all have illusions.

Mine is the belief that man is open to reason.

*

God did not create belief systems, men of vision did.

Men of vision see things that the rest of us cannot see.

They also hear words that the rest of us cannot hear.

It follows, when we speak of belief systems,

whatever we say will be based on hearsay,

and therefore inadmissible evidence.

*

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” we are told.

But where visions clash, the result will be the same.

Remember Voltaire's dictum:

“Since it was a religious war,

there were no survivors.”

*

One nation's vision may be another's nightmare.

*

Two recent books published in England:

50 PEOPLE WHO BUGGERED UP BRITAIN, and

THE DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL BULLSHIT.

When, O when will our writers write less about massacres

and more about the b.s. of our buggers?

#

Monday, August 23, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

How much of what you think is based on hearsay?

Next question: Can you tell the difference between the inadmissible and the unreasonable?

*

When hungry you don't think of the contents of a sausage.

Keep that in mind next time you fall in love.

*

Men fall in love with their convictions as surely as with a pair of shapely legs in nylons.

*

He who lies to himself cannot speak the truth to others.

*

To express their contempt for English cuisine, the French like to say that Joan of Arc “is the only thing the English have ever cooked properly.”

*

George Orwell (1903-1950), British author: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

*

We are all assassins in the sense that if we are not legally guilty of murder, we are morally guilty of wishing someone dead.

*

Some of the most dangerous lies come to us as religious dogmas and ideological truths, sometimes even as undeniable facts.

*

All speechifiers and sermonizers speak with a forked tongue.

*

A writer cannot make readers think, he can only hope to underline their secret thoughts, thus letting them know there are others who think as they do.

*

If we had the power, would our enemies escape total extinction?

#

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

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

A READER WRITES

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

Some of my most ferocious critics are individuals who have not yet mastered the art of reading and understanding simple sentences in the English language. But I shouldn't complain. I also have readers who are not just with me but ahead of me. A case in point follows.

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

When I first stumbled on your 'reflections',

'notebooks' and 'diaries', I just couldn't help

wondering -- why is this fella trying, with such an

admirable persistence, to do what is so strongly

discouraged in Matthew 7:6 ?

[something to do with pearls and swine, i suspect].

What's the good of

devoting one's precious kilobytes to fighting the

revered ancient wisdom, just to get another

confirmation that the stuff between an Armenian's

squarehead's ears is immune to the 'virus' of the voice of

reason, and his hostility more toxic than the

most deadly roach poison advertised on TV ?

On second thought, however, I realized that was

indeed arrogant and unfair of me to think that

way, for which I apologize. In fact I've been

intending to email you with a little word of

encouragement for a while now, but, firstly, I wasn't sure

you really needed one, or expected any feedback.

In fact, what you say has never sounded to me "so

eccentric and odd that you might as well be an

enemy of the people". Rather, most of the points

you make would seem rather natural if prejudice and

irrationality were put aside, traditional

'taboos' broken, and viewing the situation from an

unbiased perspective, legitimized. But after you

wrote that you felt like a Muslim among Christians,

and like a giaour among jihadists, I

figured a little note that there is someone there

feeling the same way won't do you much harm, after all.

Secondly -- and that was the main reason for not

writing before -- I realized I hardly belonged to

your target audience, as I wasn't among those you

seemed to be trying to reach: reading your posts,

I just felt that agreeable and somewhat

mischievous pleasure of seeing the tenets of my heresy

professed by someone better suited for the

'mission'. It's not that I considered it as a real

heresy; but the truth is, and you know that better than

anyone, that the traditional thinking is so

deeply ingrained in Armenian communities that it is like

a computer virus: reality becomes twisted and

distorted in a way that reason and common sense are

seen as a heresy while religious obscurantism and

genocide fetishism are regarded as the norm. Only

running an antivirus program won't do in this

case: the only way of eradicating it is teaching

people to think for themselves, rather than just

blindly follow what has been drilled into them by the

propaganda, and that's exactly what you've been

trying to do.

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins once wrote that

"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet

somebody who claims not to believe in evolution,

that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or

wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Later he

added that there is perhaps a fifth category,

which may belong under "insane" but which can be more

sympathetically characterized by a word like

tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people

who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked

can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the

massive evidence of science on the one hand, and

their understanding of what their holy book tells

them on the other. It seems that this, mutatis

mutandis, obtains in Armenians: a great many people

who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked

may not dare think for themselves under the

suffocating peer pressure from those who actually are

ignorant, stupid, and, more often than not,

wicked. Like those people who don't believe in

evolution because nobody has ever told them what

evolution is, many sincere an Armenian might not realize

that what they believe in is a prejudice and a

fallacy because no one dared to expose it as a

prejudice and a fallacy.

So it is indeed comforting that some have the

courage of challenging the traditional view.

However, it seems strange that most of your readers won't

engage in any meaningful discussion on this

subject. So keep on

posting your 'reflections', no matter what the

reaction of 'the ignorant, the stupid, and the

wicked' -- that's the only way of engaging a sheep's

brain into the long process of transformation into

that of a human being.

#

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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

CRACKPOTS

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

The function of politicians is to convince the people that they are the most qualified members of the community to count chickens before they are hatched, even when – especially when – they are the least qualified. Recent history, including our own, provides many examples of this abortive claim.

*

Politicians can't learn because their central concern is asserting if not infallibility than the kind of superior wisdom that authorizes them to speak in terms of certainties. But the only thing that is certain in them is their lust for power.

*

When power enters the equation, catastrophe is sure to follow. That's because power acts on the brain like an intoxicant. Power is the opium of politicians.

*

A headline in this morning's Op-Ed page reads: “American leaders often make important decisions based on conjecture, questionable advice and blind faith.”

If this is true of democratically elected leaders, it must be doubly true of our own.

A typical passage of this commentary reads:

“How could such a careful and seasoned statesman [Eisenhower] have concocted such a crackpot scheme [the Bay of Pigs fiasco]?

*

World history, including our own, may be said to be a long catalog of crackpot schemes concocted by screwballs parading as our “betters.”

*

The universe was created not by a tender-loving God but a very tough hombre who can watch crackpots concocting catastrophes without lifting a finger.

#

[arabaliozian]

FOR a free copy of ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION

go to Google.com,

type ZOHRAB: AN INTRODUCTION by Ara Baliozian,

and click on "digitized copy"

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, August 26, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Our body language is a medium that is more accessible to others than to ourselves.

*

Bolivar: “We have seen the light and it is not our desire to be thrust back into darkness.”

That's what I think when I think of my homeland. And my guess is there are millions out there who think and feel as I do.

*

Brazilian saying: “We progress at night when the politicians sleep.”

Judging by the amount of progress we have made, our politicians MUST suffer from chronic insomnia.

*

It took me a long time to realize that the -ian ending was not a guarantee of nobility.

*

Perhaps what I am trying to say is that it is possible to think about Turks without turning into one.

*

Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), American politician: "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

*

The truth is, no one likes to be told he is morally inferior to anyone; and to brag about moral superiority is the surest way of provoking universal contempt, and what's even worse, of forfeiting all credibility.

*

Some readers approach my writings as lovingly as a starving cannibal marinating a fat missionary.

*

Our knowledge is limited and our ignorance infinite. Only fools and fanatics forget this.

#

Friday, August 27, 2010

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

ISLAMOPHOBIA?

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

Irrational fear of Islam?

A complex? A prejudice?

Both?

Not so fast, my Muslim friends.

It seems to me Muslims have as many reasons to fear Islam

as the rest of us in the West.

*

Embedded gangs of terrorists among us plotting to destroy and kill indiscriminately.

Sharia law and its treatment of women.

Endless fratricidal Sunni-Shiah confrontations.

Deranged imams issuing fatwas and declaring jihads.

Bloodsucking multi-billionaire desert kings.

Sex-starved suicidal fanatics.

The destruction of ancient religious monuments.

Fascist regimes.

Contempt for democracy and fundamental human rights.

Honor killings.

*

Accusing the West of Islamophobia makes as much sense as accusing a sardine swimming in a pool of sharks of sharkophobia.

#

Saturday, August 28, 2010

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

DECLINE AND FALL

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

Men of vision show the way,

their followers make signs that say “Dead End.”

*

Jesus and Marx were dissenters.

Their followers see no contradiction in being yes-men.

*

An organization can never live up to the original aim of its founder.

From Marx to Stalin, from Jesus to televangelists and child molesters:

all great movements begin as visions and end as bureaucracies,

and bureaucracies are mechanisms

that promote yes-men and unprincipled mediocrities.

*

The history of all movements

is one of gradual decline and disintegration.

*

In all organizations conformism is in, dissent out.

Where there is no dialogue there can be no progress.

*

All men of power pretend to be better than they are,

and eventually the worst end up parading as the best.

*

Bureaucrats are like dogs who know their master

but not their master's master.

*

Who governs Armenia today?

Clearly not the government.

Armenia's capital is not Yerevan but Moscow.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, August 29, 2010

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

AM I RIGHT OR WRONG?

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

That's up to the reader to decide.

I am not in the business of proving myself right

and my adversaries wrong.

All I am interested in doing is sharing my understanding.

If I were interested in proving myself right

I would write a thesis with footnotes and a bibliography.

But I leave that to academics

who tend to choose a subject and stick to it

to the end of their career.

No one in his right mind

would call writing for Armenians a career

or even a job. If I were to place it somewhere

it would have to be between a hobby

and a complete waste of time.

As a victim, what motivates me is less love of victims

and more hatred of victimizers,

especially the kind that begin by deceiving children

and end by sodomizing them – sometimes literally.

And if you think Armenians are morally superior

to Catholic priests, ask yourself:

Who drilled that nonsense into your head?

What motivates you to believe him, beside wishful thinking?

If some readers disagree with me,

it may be because so far they have failed

to deprogram themselves, which means

they continue to believe everything that happened to us

was someone else's fault

and our sole contribution to history

has been providing victims to alien tyrants.

#

Monday, August 30, 2010

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

ONE OR TWO THINGS ABOUT MYSELF

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

I have a phobia of boring the reader.

My secret ambition:

to write three-line essays as in a haiku.

*

The best Armenian joke I know:

bosses, bishops, benefactors.

*

Books I consider necessities, everything else a luxury.

Books I get free of charge from the public library;

luxuries from the dollar store.

*

Something to brag about:

I have never delivered a speech in my life;

and I have never heard a speech that didn't bore me.

*

I am beginning to think of death as liberation.

Writing for Armenians may have something to do with this.

*

The first time I met an honest Armenian,

I thought he was crazy.

*

Who will disagree with me if I say

to have an Armenian friend is to harbor a potential enemy?

*

I neither preach nor teach. I share.

There is an element of coercion in both preaching and teaching.

A preacher relies on a captive audience,

and a teacher on his own authority.

Sharing is between equals; it does not exploit or violate anyone's freedom.

*

Because Negro spirituals touch my soul

as deeply as our sharagans, my patriotism may well be suspect.

*

To be misunderstood is almost to suffer an injustice.

#

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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

GREED

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

“We defeated fascism and communism,” American like to brag.

Maybe. But it is equally true that both fascism and communism helped them by committing suicide.

And Americans may be next.

*

According to a British pundit, “The banks lost money but the bankers made a fortune and now live in big mansions.”

But according to an American observer: “The salaries and bonuses of chief executive officers are less than 1% of the total."

Whom to believe?

Statistics can lie, of course. The average citizen can't afford to make his own statistics and must therefore rely on statisticians. What matters here – what needs to be carefully and objectively analyzed – is the mindset of the men at the top who focus on their welfare so much that every other consideration is ignored.

So what if millions lose their jobs?

So what if some losers commit suicide?

So what if it's bad public relations?

Bankers pay millions to their PR men: let them earn their keep and bury the problem in statistics, sophistries, and legalities.

*

If Obama loses it will be because he helped top dogs and ignored the plight of underdogs – the very same mindset that toppled fascism and communism.

Even assuming Obama is doing what must be done: his failure consists in his inability to convince the people; and when a politician failes in that department, nothing and no one can save him.

*

A headline in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper today reads: “Billionaires bankrolling U.S. Conservative movement.”

They are saved with taxpayers' money and they demand tax cuts for themselves.

They make so much money that they don't know what to do with it, and they want more! -- more for themselves and less for everyone else.

And they call Obama a communist and a fascist.

Toynbee is right: “Empires and nations are not killed: they commit suicide.”

#

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

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

REPUTATION AND SELF-ESTEEM

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

Whenever I exercise my critical faculties and my fundamental human right of free speech, I am told I besmirch our reputation in the eyes of the world.

Allow me to quote two eminent witness on the subject of reputation:

Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”

Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”

*

It was during the Watergate hearings that I discovered the greatness of democracy.

*

We have swallowed the poison of murderous alien tyrants for such a long time that we confuse their absence with freedom, and our rotten paternalism as a mandate from heaven.

*

Who benefits when we cover up our contradictions? Surely not the people.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, September 2, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

They say “God is great!” and they imply “He is on our side.”

To believe the unbelievable is the source of all fanaticism.

*

The dinosaurs are the Titanics of evolution.

*

Sympathy is seldom extended to those who demand it.

*

Don't write what you think but what you really think,

especially if it is the opposite of what you think.

*

On the day my critics begin to agree with me,

I will start wondering if I have succumbed to senility.

*

Have I said this before? No matter.

If something is worth saying, it is worth repeating.

*

Whenever an adult delivers a cliché, I am tempted to ask:

How old were you when you first heard that line, five or seven?

*

Vanity, it has been said, has a voracious appetite,

which is why I dismiss as a lie any statement that flatters our collective ego.

*

A nationalist historian who believes in his own version of history

has a dupe for a reader.

*

"Makers of idols don't believe in them," says an old Chinese proverb,

and if Italians are to be believed, "Even the Pope doubts his faith

seven times every day."

#

Friday, September 3, 2010

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

SPECULATIONS

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

The number of atoms in the universe is constant.

Birth and death neither add nor subtract from the total.

In birth atoms are assembled and in death they are disassembled.

This cycle is repeated endlessly.

Life moves not from being to nothingness and vice versa

but from organization to disintegration and back to organization again.

*

The dead enter a timeless realm

in which a fraction of a second is as long as a million years.

The time before we were born or even before the universe existed

(or what cosmologists call the Big Bang)

is the realm of timelessness.

*

God exists not in the cosmos that is accessible to telescopes and microscopes

but in a different realm and dimension.

Examples of different dimensions are

the realms of such abstractions as numbers, dreams, or music.

*

In dreams being and nothingness are no longer contradictions

but parallel realms in which the dead live.

An infinite number of organisms also means

an infinite number of realms some of which may become accessible to us

only after we die.

#

Saturday, September 4, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you do the right thing they will laugh at you and say, “That fool doesn't know what's good for himself.”

*

The worst pretend to be better because that's the only way they know how to live with themselves.

*

If you don't know what I mean when I speak of “Ottomanized Armenians,” I suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

*

For the man who is tormented by painful memories, Alzheimer's must be bliss.

*

We are never told everything. We always get a carefully edited version of events, sentiments, ideas, and speculations.

*

To how many of my critics I could say, “I have at no time claimed to be a genius like you.”

*

Among the many signs held by opponents of the construction of a mosque near ground zero in New York City, I notice one that says “BOYCOTT TURKISH GOODS & PRODUCE.” (TIME, August 16, 2010, page 17.)

*

There is a tendency in all bullies and victimizers to choose the defenseless as their targets because it is less labor intensive.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, September 5, 2010

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

POWER

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

The need to believe is universal.

So is the need to manufacture evidence

in order to stress the truth of a specific belief system

that is in competition with many others.

To put it bluntly:

all religions and ideologies lie.

Likewise, all children are taught

to expose the lies of alien belief systems

and to cover up their own.

The first reaction of an organized society

to all alien or new belief systems is to reject them

not because they are lies

but because they threaten the legitimacy

of the status quo.

Regardless of what they profess to believe in,

all men of power are committed to only one thing, their power.

Even a belief system whose central tenet is love

will practice hatred in defense of the status quo.

To say that power corrupts

is to place the cart before the horse,

the effect before the cause,

the headline before the crime,

and not just “b” before “a”

but omega before alpha.

Power is cancer – make it,

terminal cancer of the soul.

#

Monday, September 6, 2010

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

MORE SPECULATIONS...

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

They believe God will provide them with seventy-three virgins.

They say “God is great!” and they mean “God is a pimp.”

When I think of all the things that are said and done in His name,

I have no choice but to conclude

He must be just about the most abused Being in the universe

and the crucifixion is not an isolated incident

but an ongoing process with no end in sight.

Is God a masochist?

Judging by the suffering that is inflicted on the innocent,

one could also conclude that He is sadist.

Do you really want to know what I really think?

I think as long as we are human beings,

even if endowed with the best human brain,

we will never know,

we will never understand,

and it is a waste of time to speculate.

#

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

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

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

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

If I ever meet Atom Egoyan I will ask him so far how many Armenians have submitted screenplays to him. I remember to have read somewhere that Mamoulian went out of his way to avoid helping Armenians. And I once met an Armenian conductor who swore to me he would never again invite an Armenian soloist to play with his orchestra.

*

When dealing with Armenians, it helps to have one eye shut -- both would be preferable of course.

*

I write not to change things but to understand them. Call me an addict of explanations. The harder the nut to crack the sweeter the kernel. To ignore our problems would be like pretending the elephant in the room is a French poodle.

*

May I suggest dividing the nation is not the only way to solve our problems.

*

Compulsive liars are believed only by perennial dupes and retards.

Armenians are smart?

Don't make me laugh!

*

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, massacres, incurable diseases, floods, serial killers and a thousand other misfortunes are God's way of saying “I refuse to get involved!”

#

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

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

GOD AND SATAN

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

One man's God is another's Satan.

*

The God of an American fundamentalist is as alien to me as a Muslim's Allah. Both share more features with Nazis and Bolsheviks than with decent human beings. There are moderate Muslims but they are not the ones who are making history today. They might as well be absentee landlords.

*

The aim of stoning a woman convicted of adultery is less to punish the guilty and more to terrorize the innocent. And they terrorize the innocent because they are themselves terrorized by the prospect of infidelity.

*

Muslims hate one another more than they hate the West. This has been said before and it bears repeating. Muslims have victimized more Muslims in wars, civil wars, and act of terrorism than the West.

*

Not all propagandists speak with a forked tongue. Some believe in their own lies. They are like murderers who not only plead insanity but are in fact insane.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, September 9, 2010

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

THEM AND US

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

“Plan to burn Qur'an is offensive,” reads the headline of a commentary in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper.

Maybe so, but what about another headline that says, “They [Muslims] burn the Qur'an every day with their actions.”

And sure enough, in the fourth paragraph of this commentary, our pundit writes: “There are Muslims who pervert their religion, literally called the path of peace, into a call to armed suppression of women and acts of terrorism.”

*

God may be great indeed, but He seems powerless against those who terrorize and kill in His name.

Are Christians better than Muslims?

No comment!

*

Toynbee: “It is always easier, both intellectually and morally, to debit one's ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”

In other words, to play the blame-game and to paint ourselves all white and the opposition all black.

*

I thought I knew better when I knew nothing.

It takes knowledge and understanding to see the depths of evil that resides in our hearts. This may explain the popularity of ignorance.

#

Friday, September 10, 2010

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

CONSOLATION

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

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

*

There is no evidence to suggest that life will make sense after death. If to die means to enter the realm of nothingness, then nothingness is the only perfection we will ever know.

*

A little learning is the source of all prejudice, conspiracy theories, and xenophobia.

Here is Toynbee's masterful explanation of this phenomenon:

“The danger lay in the opening which a rudimentary universal education gave for propaganda, and in the skill and unscrupousness with which this opportunity had been seized by salesmen for advertising their wares and by news agencies, pressure groups, political parties, and the public relations departments of firms and governments for selling their policies.”

*

The importance of education is constantly stressed to unsuspecting children. What is ignored is the fact that no matter how many degrees you acquire, the chances are you will end up working for an assh*le.”

#

Saturday, September 11, 2010

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

BOOKS

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

There are two kinds of writers: those whose ideas shape the future (not always for the better), and those whose ideas are buried and forgotten with them. To the first category belong Rousseau, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Marx; to the second category, our writers.

*

There are no new ideas. Everything we say has been said before. When told the Bible was written by the Holy Spirit, Shaw replied: “All books are written by the Holy Spirit.”

*

I for one don't believe in the holiness of holy books -- regardless of denomination – when I think of all the wars and massacres perpetrated in their name, not to mention the intolerance, the persecution of heretics, and the countless abuses... More often than not, it seems to me, a holy book is used as a license to kill.

*

Holy books might as well be synonymous with holy wars.

*

Sometimes serial killers plead not guilty by reason of insanity – they say it was God or Satan who ordered them to do what they did. Now then, if you count the victims of serial killers and the victims of religious leaders, you may conclude that the latter are far more dangerous.

*

To those who say we no longer live in the Middle Ages, I ask: Who ordered 9/11? Where does an imam get his authority?

*

I see a direct link between the overpopulation, poverty, and drug wars in Mexico and the Pope's dogmatic interdiction of birth control devices.

*

All religions have dogmas, and all dogmas legitimize intolerance, and ultimately the murder of innocent victims.

#