Confessions

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, September 12, 2010

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SCORPIONS

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Whenever I hear an Armenian bragging about survival, I consider it my duty to remind him that scorpions and spiders have survived too, you don't hear them bragging about it.

Our brainwashed phony patriots consider me unpatriotic because I dare to point out failings visible to everyone but themselves.

I don't like braggarts. No one does! And yet, we are taught to brag.

*

To be a slave of former slaves means to be paralyzed with fear not only of the master's shadow (who may well be dead and buried to begin with) but also of any idea that may be remotely connected with reality.

*

For almost a century now we have been clamoring for justice, and what have we accomplished?

We pretend to be for dialogue but only from a fixed position, which is an oxymoronic position visible to all except morons.

*

One of my gentle readers once described me as a “self-appointed critic,” as if critics qualify as such only when appointed by God or a representative of His on earth, say, like the Pope, the Sultan, or some other source of authority.

Because I dare to speak for no one but myself, they think I can safely be dismissed as an undesirable and unqualified interloper whose testimony should be ignored.

*

The problem with braggarts is that they are too satisfied with their own lies to be useful to anyone but themselves. Their unspoken motto seems to be, “Don't fix that which ain't broken,” or “One should not mess with perfection.”

*

Once, when I was accused of comparing Armenians to scorpions, I said I had no desire to insult scorpions who can always plead not guilty by reason of the fact that evolution had failed to endow them with a brain -- a plea which is not available to us.

#

Monday, September 13, 2010

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DOGMAS

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Taliban slogan: “Throw reason to the dogs.”

*

Taliban come in all sizes and shapes and there is a Taliban in all of us.

*

The higher you climb on the tree of knowledge,

the greater the area if ignorance that comes into view.

*

When they run out of arguments, they insult you. In a different time and place they would have you arrested on charges of treason. Let us therefore count our blessings.

*

Speaking as a layman, I find some scientific theories as incomprehensible as religious dogmas. The Big Bang is to me as unbelievable as the pandemonium and paraphernalia of fornicating Greek gods in whose name Socrates was arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed.

*

The Koran-burning controversy and the protests in Muslim countries have proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: the true aim of Islamists everywhere is to intimidate and control the West the way they intimidate and control their women. And since in order to survive their women adopt a passive stance, they expect the West to do likewise. And they are outraged to the point of hysteria when it doesn't.

*

As for moderate Muslims: consider the case of the imam in New York who keeps saying, if he is not allowed to build a mosque near Ground Zero, Americans will make themselves vulnerable to a billion Muslims around the world bent on revenge.

#

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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IS GOD AN ARMENIAN?

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They adopted the role of masters, which they assumed to be their manifest destiny, to the same degree that we adopted the role of slaves (and more recently, that of slaves of former slaves).

*

In reference to the Watergate scandals, Nixon once stated: “When the President does it, it's not illegal.”

The Turks now expect us to believe we are in no position to question or doubt the legality of their actions performed at a time when they were masters and we their slaves.

*

Some people are so addicted to brag that they will brag even about the fact that they massacred innocent and unarmed civilians (“We taught the Armenians a lesson they will never forget!”) and we brag about the fact that we are the first nation in the 20th century to be targeted for extermination.

*

The final act of this tragedy of illusions and lies has not yet played itself out. We are now told by our leaders they will see to it that justice is done, notwithstanding the fact that so far, and after a hundred years of trying, we have not seen a single red cent in reparations, or a single square inch of soil annexed, or a single victim resurrected.

*

Instead of doing what must be done or what is within their power to do (such as enhancing our solidarity, shedding their tribalism, or respecting our human rights) they promise to do what only God Almighty can do but so far has consistently refused to do.

*

Does God recognize the Genocide?

I for one cannot claim to read His mind.

I can only say that He allowed it to happen and it was done in His name.

*

To those who say I repeat myself, I say, I see nothing wrong in repeating my truths as often as they repeat their lies.

#

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

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FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE

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Religions are popular not because they are true

but because they make sense

the way Leonardo's Mona Lisa makes sense to lovers of art,

Beethoven's 6th Symphony makes sense to lovers of music,

and algebra and trigonometry make sense to mathematicians.

The Greek myths made sense to the Greeks

to the same degree that Islam makes sense to Muslims,

Christianity to Christians, and atheism to atheists –

with one difference:

whereas there is only one trigonometry,

there are many religions that contradict one another.

*

It's astonishing how little men know

about the world around them and themselves.

A man's area of ignorance is infinitely greater

than his area of knowledge.

Men like Beethoven and Einstein may have know

everything there is to know about music and physics respectively

but little or nothing about many other subjects,

including, say, Armenian history and culture.

Even though I have myself written several books on the subject,

my own knowledge of our history and culture

may be said to be less than 0.01% of the total.

Which may explain why dupes outnumber the wise,

and even the wise are no better dupes.

Hence the number of great 20th-century

philosophers, writers, and Nobel-Prize winners

who were Catholics, atheists, Stalinists,

and members of the Nazi Party.

#

__._,_.___

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, September 16, 2010

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THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

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When a religion, or any movement for that matter, acquires a leader, it becomes authoritarian, which means, the authority of the leader becomes an issue of paramount importance, and those who dare to challenge it face death – either spiritual (by excommunication or expulsion) or literal (by fatwa).

*

One of the curses of authoritarian belief systems is their ruthless exploitation of fear. A God of love, compassion, and mercy does not rule by intimidation and blackmail. This may suggest that organized religions are inventions not of God but of the Devil.

*

When imams and popes preach love, they speak with a forked tongue. That's why only the naïve and the ignorant take them seriously. As in all organizations whose central concern is power, only unprincipled mediocrities, and ultimately bloodsuckers, killers, and child molesters are promoted.

*

We need rules and we need enforcers of rules, true, but history tells us some of the worst offenders and abusers of law and order have been the police.

*

Those who speak of another world are charlatans because we know nothing about it and what we pretend to know is nothing but a figment of our imagination.

As for the world in which we live: we know very little about it, and the only thing we know with some degree of certainty is that it is occupied by “weeds, rubble and vermin” (Nietzsche).

*

If a member of a party or organization were to tell me 1+1=2, I would immediately reach for my calculator to make sure I was not being bamboozled, hoodwinked, and flimflammed.

*

Herbert Butterfield: “The blindest of all the blind are those who are unable to examine their own presuppositions, and blithely imagine therefore that they do not posses them.”

#

Friday, September 17, 2010

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SUCCESS

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At the age of thirty-one he was charged with sedition, arrested, tried, found guilty, condemned to death, and executed.

Was he a success or a failure?

More recently, as a teenager he joined a quartet of singers who composed their own songs, eventually achieved fame and fortune, and became, in his own words, “more popular that Jesus Christ.”

Was he a success or a failure?

*

To define success as achieving fame and fortune is the surest recipe for promoting failures. If failures outnumber successes a thousand to one today it's because children are brainwashed to believe their options are limited, and their options are defined by the inflexible laws of demand and supply. As a result, a less than mediocre lawyer, accountant, or dentist is equipped to make more money (the surest index of success, we are told) than say, a prophet who may alter our perception of reality for centuries to come.

*

Gulbenkian probably spent more money in a single day than J.S. Bach made throughout his life. If asked whether he would like to be Gulbenkian or Bach, my guess is, the average American (who may pronounce Bach Batch) will choose to be Gulbenkian.

*

Ask a mother, any mother, whether she would like to see her only son crucified at the age of thirty-one, my guess is, she will say she would much rather see him live to a ripe old age as a mediocre carpenter.

*

Early this morning, in Nabokov's INVITATION TO A BEHEADING, I read the following passage in which an executioner delivers the following line to a condemned man: “...you must not be childish. The public, and all of us, as representatives of the public, are interested only in your welfare – that must be obvious by now.”

It's always the same story: the very same people who urge you to follow a path that is not your own, pretend to have your best interest at heart.

*

To those who say not everybody can be a genius, allow me to recount the following anecdote. About fifty years ago, a little girl by the name of Minou Drouet published a book of poems that was immediately hailed as the work of a prodigy. Jean Cocteau's comment on this prodigy: “Every child is a genius except Minou Drouet.”

*

Every child is a genius because the Kingdom of God is within us.

#

Saturday, September 18, 2010

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TWO ENEMIES

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To trust someone means to make yourself vulnerable to betrayal.

*

I have had some sinister experiences in the hands of authority figures who pretended to know better.

I have earned the right to trust no one.

*

If I am proud of anything it's the fact that what I write has no cash value – or so I am told by individuals who deal in cash.

*

Dealing with people who deal in cash:

I can't imagine anything more carcinogenic.

*

My guess is, in the next world – if there is one – money will be abolished. Which means the annual income of a prince and a pauper, or a benefactor and a poet will be the same.

*

I have written two kinds of books: propaganda and anti-propaganda, and of the two, the propaganda books have sold many more copies.

*

I did not set out to write propaganda books. I wrote such books at a time when I was led to believe it was my duty to lie in the name of patriotism; and when I lied I did not think of it as lying but as speaking a self-evident truth.

*

We are told, in science to be right means to be slightly wrong, because in science, as in many other disciplines, there are no final answers, and if there are, they are known only to God who so far has consistently refused to share them with us.

According to Karl Popper, scientific as well as political solutions “can never be more than provisional and are always open to improvement.”

There is no such thing as history, only historic interpretation.

And according to Sartre, “history must be constantly rewritten.”

*

What does it mean to be an Armenian?

First and foremost it means demanding justice for past injustices.

Let's demand justice by all means, but in the process let us not commit a greater injustice.

There is more to life than past crimes against humanity.

Let us not allow our obsession with Turks to turn us into pillars of salt.

We have enemies, no doubt about that. But we also have an enemy within, and of the two, the second can inflict more damage.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, September 19, 2010

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JUDGE AND JURY

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Don't believe anything I say until and unless you see it with your own eyes and experience it on your own skin.

*

It seems what I say matters only to those of my readers who disagree with me and would like to see me silenced. To the rest, I repeat that which is obvious.

*

No one in the history of mankind has ever been all things to all men. Naregatsi had his critics, Gandhi his assassin, and Christ his Judas.

*

I hold a mirror up to them and when they don't like what they see, they blame it on me instead of themselves.

*

Our religion teaches us to love our enemies, including fellow Armenians who may not agree with us. I wonder if any one of our speechifiers and sermonizers has ever expanded on this theme.

*

One of my gentle readers accused me the other day of trying to advance a “personal agenda.” I suggest speaking in defense of free speech is not a personal but a human agenda. But I don't expect my dehumanized readers to see this.

*

Why is it that a dehumanized Armenian allows the Turk within to assume the role of both judge and jury?

*

Remember, even what you think is not what you really think but only the echo of a shadow. A thousand invisible forces stand between you and reality which is as elusive as an incomprehensible metaphysical abstraction.

*

Because we don't know everything, we operate on partial evidence. Only fascists silence dissenting voices to cover up that part of the evidence that is against them. As a result their verdict is bound to be overturned by a higher court.

#

Monday, September 20, 2010

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NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

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Because a few non-representative Armenians challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century, countless Armenians were slaughtered, starved, and deported.

If I have a problem, you have a problem.

None of us is an island.

No one can say “Your problem is not my problem. Go and peddle your wares elsewhere.”

*

It has been said of China that it is a country of “a million truths.”

It could be said of us that we are a people of a thousand and one half-truths, and sometimes a half-truth can be as dangerous as a big lie.

*

It is a mistake to ascribe the slaughter of two generations of our ablest writers to Turks and Russians because on both occasions Armenian traitors played a key role. Raffi is right: in all our defeats and catastrophes search for the Armenian traitor. The only thing that has remained constant in our culture is our propensity for treason.

Because I say this, am I a hostile witness whose testimony should be dismissed because it is based on inadmissible evidence?

We can learn from history only if we know it.

*

The chances are those who pretend to know better know nothing because they allow their little knowledge to blind them; and when the blind lead the blind...

*

Toynbee on Russians:

“As heir of an Orthodox Christian cultural heritage, they could not find the practice of totalitarianism either unfamiliar or shocking.”

I see parallels where others pretend to see nothing.

When the blind...

*

Armenian fascism is the elephant in the room.

#

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

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HOW DO I KNOW I AM RIGHT?

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I don't!

Mine is not an open and shut case.

My evidence is circumstantial and based on hearsay.

What I know with some degree of certainty is that

(one) where there is a power structure,

there will be propaganda,

and where there is propaganda,

there will be dupes;

(two) where there is an authority figure

there will be subservient subjects

who cannot think for themselves ;

(three) between dupes and dissidents

I will always be on the side of dissidents;

(four) where there are victims and victimizers,

I will refuse to join the ranks of the victimizers.

*

And now from the general to the specific:

when it comes to our political bosses

I choose to be on the side of Hagop Baronian

(in whose eyes they are no better than

loud-mouth irresponsible charlatans);

Yervant Odian (who portrayed them

as sh*t-disturbers forever in need of financial support);

and Gostan Zarian (who described them

as useless mediocrities whose greatest enemy is free speech).

*

When it comes to our historians,

I agree with Naregatsi who consistently and stubbornly refused

to play the blame-game and focused instead

on his own failings and shortcomings.

When it comes to nationalism

I am on the side of many 20th-century eminent thinkers,

among them Arnold Toynbee and Roland Barthes

(who described it as one of the three pillars of fascism

(the other two being anti-intellectualism and anti-semitism).

*

Judges pronounce a man guilty

based on the evidence. And yet, again and again

innocent men have been found guilty and condemned to death.

This is especially true in case of political prisoners

under totalitarian regimes.

*

I have read books written by Turkish scholars

that assert Armenians are liars, traitors, and terrorists

who killed many innocent civilians,

and more recently, equally innocent diplomats

who were not even born before World War I

and cannot thus be held responsible

of any crimes against humanity.

I have also read books by Armenian scholars

who portray Turks as bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians

guilty of countless atrocities

against unarmed and innocent women and children.

*

What is an outsider to think?

My guess is, he will trust neither side and

he will dismiss both Turks and Armenians

biased and unreliable witnesses.

After which he will conclude

he has better things to do than waste his time

getting involved in a controversy

that has lasted almost a century

with no prospect of consensus in sight.

His final verdict may well be

“A plague on both your houses!”

and once more the Turks will win.

#

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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The best way not to solve a problem is to say more research is needed.

*

To be part of a power structure means to be prepared to do anything to advance your position in it, knowing that if you don't do it someone else will.

*

What is the significance of the cosmos with its countless stars, planets and vast distances if not to remind us of our insignificance?

*

We like to say power corrupts. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that only the corrupt seek it.

*

Whenever during a walk I see an ant on the sidewalk, I am careful not to step on it. But sometimes I get tired of being careful. In the eyes of the powerful we are no better than ants. And in the eyeds of God...

*

Only propaganda has all the answers.

*

A cheerful thought: Any day now, and in cosmic time, in less than a fraction of a second, we will all be dead and all our problems will be buried with us.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, September 23, 2010

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ON CHARITY

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Had I been a contemporary of Baronian and Odian, I wouldn't have written a single line. Either that or I would have written love stories. Which is what I did at first. For nearly a decade I wrote nothing but love stories.

*

When I think of my past blunders I feel like digging a hole and burying myself in it.

I am always a little surprised when I see an adult laughing.

I suspect Alzheimer's can't be all bad.

*

I write as I do because no one dares to say what must be said.

Those who say we need solutions imply that when it comes to our problems our writers have been of no use. Zarian is right: they say that to cover up their own uselessness and fear of free speech.

Not only do they say we need solutions, they also teach children to view critics as unpatriotic witnesses.

When they don't like what you say -- because what you say may threaten to expose their own uselessness – they say: “We don't need critics. We need solutions.” That's their way of saying “Shut up!”

*

This morning on the radio: “How can you tell if, instead of supporting charities, your charity money supports fund-raisers?”

Canadians dare to ask such questions because they believe in free speech. Once upon a time we did too.

A hundred years ago Odian made savage fun of our fund-raisers.

Who dares to question the ethics of our charitable organizations today?

Next time you make a contribution to a charity, don't be afraid to ask questions. Remember, it is your right to know. Asking questions may well be the most important contribution you can make.

*

Ask questions but don't believe everything you are told.

Honesty has never been a priority in our culture.

What culture?

If you want culture, get a tub of yogurt. You will find more culture there than in all our cultural foundations combined.

#

Friday, September 24, 2010

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DEAD END

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Because I was critical of Armenians, I acquired several Turkish friends.

And because I became critical of Turks, I lost them.

Easy come, easy go.

*

That's another thing Armenians share with Turks: intolerance of criticism.

As long as they remain intolerant, reason will find no opening in their negotiations, and without reason there can be no dialogue, no compromise, and no consensus.

*

After saying they are for democracy and human rights, both Turks and Armenians suppress dissent.

Both delude themselves when they assert moral superiority.

Who believes them?

Only themselves.

*

Asserting the reality of the Genocide and denying it has become an industry among them. Both sides refuse to see the obvious, namely that, they were so blinded by hatred of the other that they slaughtered indiscriminately whenever they had the upper hand. But because Turks were a majority, Armenian victims outnumbered Turkish victims.

*

How to live in peace with their history?

They can't.

Hence their tendency to rewrite it.

*

Free speech is a meaningless commodity to those who don't know what freedom is and whose conception of speech consists in saying “Yes, sir!”

*

Armenians and Turks may reach a consensus only on the day they see reflection of themselves in the other. Until then their history will stand still.

*

For an Armenian, the idea that he may be as bad as a Turk is so repellent that it might as well be treason and blasphemy.

The same applies to Turks.

You may now draw your own conclusions.

#

Saturday, September 25, 2010

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QUOTATIONS

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Fidel Castro: “Obama is not Nixon who was a cynic. Neither is he Reagan who was an imbecile.”

*

A Vatican insider: “Half of the Vatican is homosexual. So is the Pope, I think.”

*

Ingrid Betancourt: “There are things you do because you have to. You don't always calculate the consequences. And sometimes you do very stupid things because of that.”

*

John Adams: “Neither philosophy, nor religion, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor interest will ever govern nations or parties against their vanity, their pride, their resentment or revenge, or their avarice or ambition.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, September 30, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Social aberrations like racism, fascism, and more recently, political correctness, are as a rule so gradual that the average dupe and conformist (but I repeat myself) submits to them the way he submits to winter cold and summer heat.

*

Why is it that religions are against conflict between classes and for warfare between states?

*

Whenever they tell you “We had no choice,” they lie. Subservient subjects may not have a choice but decision-makers do.

*

There is a core of truth in all religions, but instead of emphasizing the core, religious leaders emphasize such aberrations as intimidation, mumbo jumbo, and the collection plate. In Brecht's words: “Grub first, then ethics.”

*

Where truths are covered up, lies rush in; and where lies become the common currency, wars and massacres are sure to follow.

*

Sooner or later all our organizations turn into fund-raising agencies.

*

If both sides are to blame, why feel the need to support one side against the other? If in judgment impartiality matters, why assume the role of a pro-bono lawyer?

*

God and the Devil are man-made classifications. So are heaven hell. As they say of hallucinations: “It's all in your head.”

*

There are people out there whose sole aim in life is to exploit, deceive, and mislead their fellow men, and most of them are not crooks but pillars of society.

*

Nationalism is good in so far as it stands in opposition to the many abuses of imperialism. Nationalism is bad in so far as it legitimizes fascism, whose abuses and crimes outnumber those of imperial powers. Compare the Hamidian massacres (committed in the name of Ottoman imperialism) with the Genocide (whose perpetrators where Turkish nationalists).

*

Don't be taken in by our own nationalists. If they appear harmless today it's because they are without power.

#

Friday, October 1, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Toynbee's definition of God: “Absolute Reality approached anthropomorphically.”

My translation: The Unknowable and Inomprhensible as a bearded grandfatherly type.

*

As a boy I could not imagine anyone taking a dislike at me. As an old man I live in solitude because I have no desire to foist my unclean presence on others.

*

Violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, oppression, and lies are universal aberrations and none of us can plead not guilty – none except brainwashed nationalists who have 20/20 vision when they judge others and are blind when they assess themselves.

*

He who worships his ego can worship nothing else.

*

One reason Marie Antoinette was beheaded is that she thought bread could be easily replaced with brioche. A similar fate awaits those who think propaganda can replace free speech.

*

You want to do the right thing? Follow the example of Socrates and Jesus as opposed to that of their executioners.

*

In CASSELL'S FOREIGN WORDS AND PHRASES (London, 2000) I read the following: “Cantaloupe: a small, round, ribbed musk melon, from Cantaluppi, a papal estate near Rome, where it was first introduced from Armenia.”

#

Saturday, October 2, 2010

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STICKS AND STONES

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“What have you got against the Armenian people?”

“Wrong question. Ask instead what have the Armenian people got against writers?”

“The Armenian people worship their writers. If you go to Armenia, you will see monuments, museums, and libraries dedicated to them.”

“That's only after they were dead and buried.”

*

Yesterday on the radio when asked “How would you like to be remembered after you die?” David Suzuki replied: “I don't give a sh*t what they say about me after I am dead and buried.”

*

“What you write annoys the hell out of me.”

“Use your delete button. To be read by the likes of you is as pleasant an experience as falling in the crapper.”

*

Nobody is ever duped for his own good.

*

Where there is power there will also be mumbo jumbo.

*

If you want to have an idea of infinity, think of human ignorance.

*

If my critics were pennies, I would be a wealthy man.

*

A definition of government: “A disease masquerading as its own cure.”

*

“Be more constructive!”

“You want constructive? What you need is standup comedians.”

#

[Guest angelababy]

Dear arabaliozian ! Are You pessimist or optimist ... I find more of the first in your postings ...

[Kars]

Dear arabaliozian ! Are You pessimist or optimist ...

Neither.

Mr. Baliozian is just one of those self-loathing Armenians, who are, unfortunately, abound in the Western-Armenian Diaspora.

But let’s not interrupt him. He is interesting to read, after all.

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 3, 2010

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ON DISSENT

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One reason why dissident Armenians are thought to be a tiny and non-representative minority is that they are not organized and they don't have a propaganda machinery with which to broadcast their opposition. Every alienated and assimilated Armenian is a dissident. It is the partisans and superpatriots that are a minority, and it is their intolerance that is at the root of dissent, alienation, and asssimilation (or “sbidak chart” = white massacre).

*

It is an illusion and a dangerous one to think that we know all we need to know to do what must be done and we have no use for dialogue with those who disagree with us. I would go as far as saying that we owe the Genocide to this kind of arrogant mindset.

*

You can silence dissent but you can't bury the truth. Not even a tyrant with the power of a thousand Stalins can do that.

*

Popularity, fame and fortune are false gods that you worship at your own peril.

*

Being cannot imagine nothingness and vice versa: nothingness (or death) cannot imagine being (or life after death).

*

In his REBEL LAND: UNRAVELING THE RIDDLE OF HISTORY (London, 2010), Christopher de Bellaigue (an English writer and a former Turcophile and Kemalist who has spent a number of years in Istanbul but who has finally seen the light) writes: “To the west, on the other side of the Turkish border, there rises the glowing, incandescent, inaccessible past: Mount Ararat, Armenia's eternal symbol, in enemy's hands.”

Only a born-again human being could produce such a sentence.

#

Monday, October 4, 2010

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ON THE UNIVERSAL NEED TO BELIEVE

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Some people believe in politicians because some people will believe anything.

And some people will believe anything because there is a dupe in all of us.

Consider the number of gods mankind has invented and believed.

Did our Savior really save us?

Before you answer that question, think of the countless innocent victims of wars and massacres.

About the Fall of Man:

What kind of loving God would penalize not only the perpetrator but also all his children, grandchildren, and descendants “from here to eternity”?

And what was the perp's crime, may I ask?

Tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (as opposed to sticking to what? -- trees of ignorance?)

Mankind fell because of that victimless crime?

What could be more cruel and unusual punishment?

Why couldn't He see that planting that damn tree in the middle of the Garden was a blunder on His part?

Why couldn't He see that placing a serpent in the Garden was entrapment?

No wonder the majority of mankind are infidels.

What am I driving at?

Only this: Once you establish yourself as an authority figure, you can get away with all kinds of nonsense because you can always rely on the fact that most people are dupes, or in American parlance, there is a sucker born every minute.

One reason why political and religious leaders see eye to eye is that they are both in the same line of business, namely, that of swindling, bamboozling, flimflamming, and hoodwinking the ignorant masses who will believe anything!

#

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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In Ovid's METAMORPHOSES (AD we read:

“...creatures whose nature is wild and fierce, Armenian tigers and raging lions, bears and wolves delight in butchered food.”

*

All men are brothers – except my critics.

My critics are more than my brothers.

They are what I was.

There is no falsehood that I have not subscribed to or even recycled as an adult.

*

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

*

Perhaps we are too obsessed with the past to focus on our present problems.

In some perverse way the Turks continue to be in charge of our destiny.

We have not yet emancipated from our Ottoman phase.

*

An Armenian hates Turk because they massacred his ancestors. An Armenian will also hate his fellow Armenians because they are not as wise or as infallible as he is. And because I write as I do I have been told on several occasions that I hate not only my fellow Armenians but also myself.

*

At one time or another we have all practiced false modesty; also false vulnerability – pretending to be outraged or offended when in fact we didn't give a damn one way or another.

*

The wrong answer will be readily accepted if it flatters one's ego.

*

Samuel Butler (NOTEBOOKS): “What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be: ‘I bet my Redeemer liveth.’”

#

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you want something very badly you will be disappointed regardless of the outcome.

*

More about the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge: Who among us has not been tempted to disobey an order, especially one that doesn't make any sense? And please don't tell me the Good Lord who knows everything didn't know this.

*

The superpatriot who will do anything for his country except give up his little luxuries in the Diaspora; and the superpatriot who will gladly live in the Homeland provided he can afford a villa in the countryside and a condo in Yerevan.

*

To all those who at one time or another have attacked or insulted me, I say:

“Thank you for being a source of inspiration to me. Next time you see a reference to your person in one of my comments, please rest assured that you are not an incipient paranoiac.”

*

An Armenian fool will never agree with his Turkish counterpart. On the day fools cease to represent us, we may have a better chance to come to terms with one another.

#

Thursday, October 7, 2010

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

A REMARKABLE FILM

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

Las night I watched Robert Guediguian's JOURNEY TO ARMENIA, a film that raises some important questions -- among them:

Why is it that the best features of the Soviet system have been abolished and the worst have been retained?

Why is it that Stalin (and his mustache) continue to be the role model of men whose job it is to enforce the law (in a lawless land)?

Why is it that these outrages become apparent only to outsiders but are accepted as inevitable facts of life to the natives?

Why is it that most Diasporan Armenians instinctively conspire with the regime to cover up that which should be exposed?

*

My tentative answer to that last question is:

That's what they have been brainwashed to do by their bosses, bishops, and benefactors.

We deserve better.

The poor and the powerless in the Homeland deserve better.

I say to all Armenians who speak or write about the Homeland:

Please, let's cut out the buffoonery.

Let's behave like responsible citizens.

Honesty and objectivity are not unpatriotic.

On the contrary!

Very much on the contrary.

*

This is a remarkable film achieved by disarmingly unremarkable means. While watching it I was reminded of an observation made by an English traveller at the turn of the last century: “What magnificent landscape, what miserable people!” -- or words to that effect.

#

Friday, October 8, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When you read the Greeks you realize they have settled most arguments, and yet people go on arguing.

*

Eminent thinkers and great statesmen have called the United States “a mistake,” and England “a nation of shopkeepers.” I have every reason to suspect these gentlemen would have serious problems trying to accept our own assessment of ourselves as first nation this and first nation that.

*

My Credo would begin with the words: “I believe in the Unknowable and the Incomprehensible, the source of all good and evil. I believe nothing that popes, imams, rabbis, and the mobs that follow them, say. I would believe them only if they were to admit openly that what they say they believe is motivated less by love of truth and more by wishful thinking.”

*

Toynbee on patience: “A capacity to suffer fools gladly and to do this with gusto, not as a martyrdom, but as a fine art which the practitioner can practice with zest.”

*

More about popes, imams, and rabbis: I agree with all of them when they say the others are charlatans. With one difference: I wouldn't call them infidel dogs or heretics in league with the Devil. I would, however, call them dupes.

#

Saturday, October 9, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

God must love moral morons – He has made so many of them.

*

There is a tendency in all of us to say yes to the status quo even when its architects and supporters are cretins.

*

Education, ideas, culture, environment, climate, cuisine, friends and many other factors combine to shape our character and worldview – also and especially the amount of sh*t we were exposed to in our formative years.

*

The rich like to believe their wealth is a blessing from the Good Lord. The poor know they are bloodsucking crooks who overprice their product and underpay their workers.

*

When a chauvinist who recycles crap says: “Criticism must be constructive!” what he really means is: “If recycling crap is good enough for me, how dare you think otherwise?”

*

I don’t read to have my ego massaged or prejudices reinforced, but for the exactly opposite reason.

*

Dostoevsky began his literary career as a liberal and became a conservative. By contrast, Thomas Mann began as a conservative right-wing nationalist and ended as a left-wing liberal. I enjoy reading both. I enjoy them even when they express views with which I am in complete disagreement.

#

[arabaliozian]

to write is an act of optimism.

thank you for reading me! / ara

[Kars]

to write is an act of optimism.

thank you for reading me! / ara

Ara akhpar, please let me humbly ask for your permission to convey my opinion.

For normal Armenians you’re a nuisance. I’m the only exception, perhaps. Because I see some intellectual value in your writings. I can see it, even keeping in mind that most of your writings (if not all) are perverted – from any Armenian political or social point of view.

But, please, continue. I’m one of your fervent readers.

[arabaliozian]

Ara akhpar, please let me humbly ask for your permission to convey my opinion.

For normal Armenians you’re a nuisance. I’m the only exception, perhaps. Because I see some intellectual value in your writings. I can see it, even keeping in mind that most of your writings (if not all) are perverted – from any Armenian political or social point of view.

But, please, continue. I’m one of your fervent readers.

thanks again for your kind words and for reading me.

one minor correction: you are not the "only" exception.

i have a friendly reader in every major armenian community center in the world.

if i am a nuisance it may be because dissent has never been popular in authoritarian environments where brainwashing seems to be more popular and acceptable.

for more on the subject, see below:

Sunday, October 10, 2010

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

PROPAGANDA & DISSENT

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

For eight years I worked in an insurance company that employed thousands.

What did they produce?

Nothing. Only paperwork.

What did they sell?

The certainty that if you die tomorrow or next year, your family will be awarded a goodly sum – depending on the amount of insurance you bought and provided you paid your monthly, quarterly, or annual premiums.

There is money in certainty no matter how unfounded and false.

There is none in doubt no matter how justified.

*

People hate uncertainty perhaps because there is so much of it in life.

They need to be told there is life after death -- even eternal bliss provided you do what you are told.

Propaganda (be it religious or political) pays because it deals in certainties and it is constructive in so far as it speaks of dreams -- even as it delivers nightmares. Propaganda promises the millennium -- that is, peace and prosperity for a thousand years, even as it delivers war, the concentration camp, and the Gulag.

By contrast, all dissent can do is expose lies.

What could be more negative and destructive?

*

The best dissent can do is question and doubt, thus replacing optimism and hope with pessimism, despair, and anxiety.

Once in a while I get letters asking me, sometimes even begging me, to be more positive and constructive – never more objective and truthful.

I regret to say I am in no position to promise eternal bliss or, for that matter, seventy-three virgins. And yet, that's what the average dupe wants me to do – to deliver empty promises, illusions, and lies.

That may explain why propagandists are amply compensated with power and money and dissenters are ostracized, persecuted, silenced, sometimes even tortured, starved, and killed.

#

[arabaliozian]

#

Monday, October 11, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Nowadays almost everyone has either written a book or is busy writing one. When asked to identify my racket, I say I am a retired church organist. A writer has as much prestige today as a mental masturbator.

*

You can behead kings and assassinate heads of state but there isn't much you can do to a faceless and anonymous bureaucrat who may exercise more power on you than any king of head of state.

*

The greatest blunder committed by Turks at the turn of the last century was to think that a tiny and non-representative group of misguided young fools with their heads in the clouds could be a threat to the survival of the Empire.

*

The problem with speechifiers and sermonizes is that they don't even recycle their own crap. What they do is recycle someone else's who did the same. What they say has therefore as much value as the evidence of a comatose parrot.

*

You cannot change that which you hate: that may explain my failure. Perhaps what we need is not critics but messiahs. Anyone interested in being crucified?

*

A partisan thinks it is his patriotic duty to defend everything his party does and to agree with everything the boss says. But I happen to be of the opinion that the Pope is not infallible, Mussolini was not always right, and Suleiman the Magnificent was not magnificent. I further believe the Good Lord has given us a brain with which to think and judge for ourselves, and there is nothing praiseworthy in subservience even when it is promoted in the name of discipline, loyalty, patriotism, and truth.

#

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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

NARRATIVES

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

For every narrative there is a counter-narrative.

*

Our perception of reality is limited.

The human eye, like the eye of a camera, can take in countless details, but the human mind can select and focus only on a limited number of them.

In the Soviet era, for example, the Kremlin provided its own narrative and dissidents like Solzhenitsyn provided a counter-narrative. And for a good number of years, or until Khrushchev's withering speech against the cult of personality, the dissidents' counter-narrative was dismissed by most Sovietologists as reactionary propaganda subsidized and disseminated by the capitalist West.

*

Another case of narrative and counter-narrative is the Turkish version of the Genocide. According to the Turkish official narrative, our genocide is fiction. But according to such dissidents as Pamuk and Akcam, the official narrative is state propaganda.

*

The central concern of our official narrative today is the Genocide. If we had a counter-narrative, its central concern would be democracy and human rights.

We may not have a counter-narrative today, but we had one at the turn of the last century and two of its most important exponents were Baronian and Odian, both of whom are now identified as humorists. Their main concern, however, was neither to entertain nor to amuse their readers, but to expose our moral bankruptcy.

*

Why is it that we had a counter-narrative in the Ottoman Empire but not today in the land of the brave and the free?

The answer is: Under the Sultan, our bosses, bishops, and benefactors did not have the power to control the press.

*

Moral I:

Where there is only one narrative, it can be asserted with some degree of certainty that the counter-narrative has been suppressed.

*

Moral II:

Where crooks and liars are in charge, the press will be controlled; and where the press is controlled, the fundamental human right of free speech will be violated.

#

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

There are those who say if you believe in a Big Lie, that lie ceases to be a lie. I am not one of them. I don't believe in faith as magic because i don't believe in magic.

*

What happened to us was not inevitable. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar who is too arrogant to admit that like the rest of mankind he too is prone to error.

*

I may sound like an angry young man but I am in fact a serene old man who has come to terms with his own limitations.

Everything I say contains a silent mea culpa.

I don't accuse, I confess.

And by confessing I hope to achieve a higher degree of serenity.

Consider that a symptom of my Catholic upbringing.

*

There are many little truths in all organized ideologies and religions, but their core is a Big Lie.

*

Truth has never been a central concern of organizations.

Power, yes.

Truth, never!

*

Truth is a metaphysical abstraction with no counterpart in reality. And of reality we are equipped to perceive only tiny fractions. Which is why no two men will ever agree on everything.

*

I don't write to be popular.

I believe there is more merit in unpopularity than in fame and fortune.

And I rate indifference to fame above fame.

*

Did you know that Mongolia's population is 2.7 million? – which means there are many more mongoloids than Mongols – meant to say, many more Armenians.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 21, 2010

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

LAMENTATION

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

The lies that flatter us

cease to be lies and don the vestments

of self-evident truths.

It is this that allows our phony patriots

to declare pride in their Armenianism

momentarily forgetting that our past

is nothing but a concatenation

of defeats, subservience, degradation, and massacre.

As for the empty boast, “We survived!”

I say, the worst, yes.

The best no!

Ottomanism and Sovietism, yes;

Armenianism (assuming such a thing exists,

and if it does we can recognize it when we see it)

certainly not!

*

Unhappy is the man

whose sole source of pride is propaganda;

and unhappy is the nation

whose leadership's central concern

is to moronize its children.

*

I sense the disintegration of our communities

by the fact that in the company of my fellow countrymen

I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

*

How many bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs do we have today?

I don't know and I don't care to know.

But I do know that you can count the number of intellectuals

on the fingers of one thumb.

There is money in charlatanism,

only unemployment, insults, and starvation

in dedication to ideas and principles.

#

Friday, October 22, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

There are less than 3 million Mongols in Mongolia today. But there are as many as 60 million Turks (former Mongols) in Turkey. There is only one rational explanation for this glaring disparity: rape and concubinage (legally sanctioned rape).

*

Has anyone ever read a Mongol poet or novelist? One is therefore justified in wondering to which fraction of his DNA does Orhan Pamuk owe his Nobel Prize?

*

I know now that everything I was taught as a child – except perhaps the rules of grammar – was wrong.

And speaking of grammar: There is a saying in French to the effect that even kings must obey the rules of grammar. And yet, Frederick the Great couldn't even speak German fluently, and the several books he authored (some with Voltaire's help) were written in French.

*

When we speak about the meaning of life, what we really mean of course is the meaning of death, or rather its meaninglessness.

*

Once upon a time when Turkey was discussed in diplomatic circles or in the international press, Armenians were also invariably mentioned. Just finished reading a long commentary on Turkey in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper in which Armenians are nowhere to be seen. We appear to have lost our relevance. Either that or we have ceased to be a political football.

*

If you pretend to know more than you do, sooner or later you will run into someone who will call your bluff and you will be caught with your pants down.

To rely too much on someone else's ignorance is an enterprise doomed to end in failure.

*

The older I grow the more frequently I catch myself saying “I don't know,” and “I don't understand.”

#

Saturday, October 23, 2010

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

LAMENTATION (II)

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

To the same degree that they have been Armenianized,

we have been Ottomanized.

I see symptoms of this malaise

in all our institutions – be they political, cultural, and religious.

*

Nothing can be more depressing to me

than the spectacle of a childhood friend

turning into a hireling and mouthing the party line,

and doing so with the unshakable conviction

that he is serving the community and the nation.

So what if in the process he is also making a comfortable living?

Why shouldn't he?

Isn't it the duty of every responsible man

to provide for his family?

Why should there be a contradiction

between his duty as a husband and a father

and his patriotism?

*

Never underestimate the cunning of crooks

and their ability to behave like their own dream team

of defense lawyers.

*

For every dissident,

the Soviets had ten perhaps even a hundred commissars

and a thousand brainwashed citizens

who believed they were law-abiding citizens

and dissidents were criminals.

But ultimately what brought down the Soviet Union

was not dissent but lies.

*

When the best are marginalized,

it is the worst that reach the top.

And when that happens,

death is sure to follow.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 24, 2010

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

KILLERS

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

The daring with which some readers challenge my views is exceeded only by the cowardice with which they say “Yes, sir!” to the most asinine lies that issue from the mouth of a boss, bishop, or benefactor.

That too may be said to be a symptom of our Ottomanism and Sovietism – or should I say, sultanism and Stalinism?

*

And speaking of sultans (may they all burn in hell!): when they demanded and got a thousand concubines, I wonder, did any one of their advisers, servants, or subjects raise as much as an eyebrow even when alone, in bed, in a dark room, after midnight, his head covered by a thick charshaf?

*

I remember once when I said something critical about a bishop, a gentle reader rebuked me with the words: “Remember, whatever he says or does, he never ceases being a man of God.”

So were the sultans – who were to Muslims what popes are to Catholics.

*

Turks believe it is the bloodthirsty and savage Armenians who massacred the law-abiding and peace-loving citizens of the Empire. That only proves that they have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they will believe anything!

*

This reminds me of the story about an Englishman who on seeing the Duke of Wellington in the street, went up to him and said: “Mr. Smith, I believe.” To which Wellington replied: “If you believe that, you will believe anything!”

And I say, if you believe the Sultan was a man of Allah, and Kemal (like Mussolini) “ha sempre ragione” (is always right) you will believe anything! And worse. Whenever a charlatan with a degree or title challenges you, you will not only drop your pants, but you will also bend over.

*

It's astonishing what a thousand years of subservience will do to a man. Unbelievable as it may seem, it may even remove surgically, painlessly, and without anesthetic, his cojones

*

If you think I am saying something that hasn't been said before, listen to Toynbee who wrote what follows half a century ago:

“In the life which Man has made for himself on Earth, his institutions, in contrast to his personal relations, are the veritable slums, and the taint of moral obliquity is still more distressing in the least ignoble of these social tenements of the Human Spirit – for instance, in the churches and academies – than in such unquestionably malignant institutions as Slavery and War.”

Translated into dollars and cents, this simply means: when it comes to lies, bishops and imams are worse than thieves and killers.

#

Monday, October 25, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The ability to see only the dark side should be seen as an asset rather than a liability in an environment where everyone is brainwashed to see the bright side.

*

If you think I am mean, nasty, and disagreeable it may be because so far you have been exposed only to the flattery of our speechifiers and sermonizers. Speaking for myself: I believe nothing they say, and if I believe anything it's the exact opposite of what they say.

*

The aim of our educational system is to raise another generation willing to submit itself to taxation without representation.

*

There is nothing like power to awaken the Turk in us. I have yet to meet a boss, bishop, or benefactor whose secret ambition was not to be another Suleiman the Magnificent.

*

“You should change your last name – why go about bearing a Turkish label?” an old friend once demanded to know.

Change my name? I wouldn't think of it. When a telemarketer calls me on the phone and has trouble pronouncing it (and it's amazing how many of them do) I say, “Wrong number!” and hang up. It's a time-saver.

*

Mother Teresa lost her faith but kept it a secret. I suspect there is a Mother Teresa in all of us. We may have lost faith in our institutions and fellow Armenians but we like to pretend we never had it so good.

*

As children we were taught to memorize the territories conquered by Dikran the Great. What we were not taught: how much of his humanity he surrendered.

*

Mike Tyson on Hannibal: “He was very courageous. He rode elephants through Cartilage.”

#

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

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

THE WAY OF THE WORLD

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

Nabokov in INVITATION TO A BEHEADING:

“...but as there is in the world not a single human being who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human...”

*

To those who accuse me of repeating myself and bitching too much, I plead extenuating circumstances. And to those who urge me to be more like Saroyan, may I remind them that Saroyan too was accused of repeating himself.

*

My father lost literally everything in two world wars – first time in the Ottoman Empire, second time in Greece. My mother was educated in an orphanage run by nuns; and I was educated by monks. I was born in a ghetto and now live in a slum – according to a real-estate agent who so informed my next-door neighbor when he wanted to sell his house.

*

Sooner or later we have no choice but to come to terms with reality, or with the fact that we can't be all things to all men, and it makes no difference if, like Saroyan, you love the whole world, or like myself, you are disposed to see only the dark side.

*

Speaking of love: It is not true that there is more hatred in me than there is love. I love many people – very probably as many as Saroyan. But most of those I love were either condemned to death (like Socrates and Christ), assassinated (like Gandhi), misunderstood (like Bach) or excommunicated or exiled (like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Zarian).

*

By contrast, Nabokov was born a millionaire and died as one thanks to a little slut called Lolita. But in between he experienced a revolution (during which he lost not only his fortune but also his father to assassins), exile, destitution, and rejection. He knew what he was talking about when he spoke of scarcity of humans in the world.

*

Blessed be the condemned to death, the assassinated, the misunderstood, rejected, marginalized. and persecuted, for they shall be rewarded with love and admiration in saecula saeculorum, amen!

#

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

“Fiscal accountability,” and “Hold them accountable”:

Two expressions I should like to see more often in our press.

*

Refuse to parrot a political line and make an enemy of all parrots.

*

The challenge all politicians face is to do the opposite of what they say and get away with it. Which is why the ideal community is a collection of idiots – which is what we were trained to be under the sultans and commissars and which is what we continue to be by habit, tradition, and culture.

*

In our environment, if you prove someone wrong, you make an enemy for life.

*

Because I speak of reality, I am ignored.

Because I speak of honesty, I am insulted.

Because I call self-assessed geniuses dupes, I am hated.

*

Toynbee on Russians: “As heirs, malgré eux, of an Orthodox Christian cultural heritage, they could not find the principle of 'totalitarianism' either unfamiliar or shocking.”

Something similar could be said of Catholics, Muslims, and Armenians.

*

Where bishops and imams are popular, free speech will be an alien concept.

Where there is too much talk of God, there will not be enough talk of human rights.

Where Allah is King, dissenters will be viewed as agents of the Devil.

*

Toynbee on wealth: “In general, wealth is represented, not as a material boon to be envied and, if possible, expropriated, but a spiritual impediment to be deprecated.”

Translation: Poverty may not be a blessing, but wealth might as well be a curse.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 28, 2010

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

UNDIPLOMATIC OBSERVATIONS

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

It is written: “He who has the gold, defines the golden rule.”

*

It is also written: “Revolutions may change the men at the top, they don't change human nature.”

*

The economic crisis engineered under Bush and embraced by Obama proves one thing: Sooner or later both capitalism and communism degenerate into gangsterism.

*

Obama's mistake was to seek the advice of men from Wall Street to fix Wall Street on the grounds that it takes a thief to catch a thief. But in this case the thieves didn't get caught; they got away with more loot, that is, taxpayers' money.

Obama behaved like Shaw's “gentleman” who steals from the poor to help the rich.

*

I have myself been called all kinds of nasty names by our bloodsuckers and brown-nosers because I refuse to play the game by their rules – that is to say, to be one of them.

*

A disgruntled insider once told me, shortly after the Earthquake in Armenia, one of our fund-raisers in New York demanded and got $100,000 salary plus expenses; and I assume he transferred the collected funds to his counterpart in Yerevan, who distributed them to his own counterparts in the affected areas, and so on.

This may explain why, disgusted by this kind of “trickle-down” charity, 1.5 million Armenians decided to emigrate to America and Turkey, among other countries, in order to find employment and support their families back home.

*

To those who tell me I should be more diplomatic in what I write, I say: Diplomats are highly trained and skilled gentlemen who get paid good money for their work. Nobody is paying me to be diplomatic.

#

Friday, October 29, 2010

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

ON SURVIVAL

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

Notwithstanding its countless blunders, dogmatism, intolerance and crimes against humanity, the Catholic Church has survived for two millennia. One reason why I don't rate our own survival as a worthy achievement worth mentioning or discussing. After all, the Ottoman Empire lasted longer than most empires.

*

Sometimes to survive means to be as bad or even worse than the competition. Cobras and scorpions owe their survival to their venom and not to their sweet disposition, altruism, and love of truth. To say therefore that we owe our survival (if that's what you want to call it) to our civic virtues, tolerance, and love of democracy, is to lie.

*

One reason I write short sentences and paragraphs is that I am afraid by the time I finish writing longer ones I may no longer have an audience. I am not implying I have one today – three or four readers an audience to not make – but they are better than no audience. Call it the consolation of a loser.

*

If an explanation is endorsed by a political party, it can't be right. Truth and politics are as mutually exclusive concepts as fire and water.

*

If I knew how to pray, I would say: “Please God, teach me how to forgive my own transgressions. Because then and only then I may learn to forgive those who transgress against me.”

#

Saturday, October 30, 2010

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

REFLECTIONS

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

If it is the dury of every true patriot to sacrifice himself in defense of his fellow countrymen, how many of our revolutionaries qualify?

I am not casting aspersions (as they say in westerns), just asking an innocent question.

*

When a member of the Party criticizes me, he does so with the certainty and daring of a prophet with 20/20 vision. But when it comes to critizing his own Party, he becomes deaf, dumb, stupid, and brain-dead.

*

The offspring of the same revolutionaries who challenged a mighty empire a hundred years ago are now afraid to challenge the shadows of their own faceless and anonymous bosses.

What a great subject for a comedy!

*

If “War is hell,” and “Hell is other people” (Sartre), it follows, peace is hell too.

*

The only way to explain and reconcile the idea of an all-loving God and the murder of an innocent child, or for that matter, the senseless death of two or seven million innocent civilians, is to think of time (be it the lifetime of a human being or that of the universe itself) in relation to cosmic time or eternity, as only a fraction of a second.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 31, 2010

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

LESSONS

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

The lesson to be learned from our genocide is not that Turks are bloodthirsty savages (under certain conditions even the most civilized people on earth will behave like a primitive savage tribe) but that

(one) those in power are not always morally superior or infallible;

(two) when exposed they are not always willing to admit their blunders or the magnitude of their crimes;

(three) they can always rely on a majority of dupes to believe them; and

(four) in such a climate dissenters will be identified as traitors and enemies.

*

To those who say the difference between Turks (Asiatic barbarians) and Germans (civilized) is that Germans, unlike Turks, admitted their guilt, I say:

Germans admitted their guilt because they lost the war.

Turks refuse to admit their guilt because they won, and because history is written by the victor.

Had the Germans won, the chances are I would now be writing these lines in German and I woud be parroting the official German denialist line; and what's even worse, you would believe everything I say the way a devout Catholic today believes in the encyclicals of the Pope on the grounds that the Pope is infallible and he speaks in the name of God.

*

It is not my intention here to suggest that we have no choice but to behave like dupes. If anything, I am saying the exact opposite, namely: there is a tendency in all of us to embrace a big lie as if it were a self-evident truth.

*

At all times and everywhere, truth is well hidden from us.

What is trumpeted is only a fraction of reality that might as well be a perversion of the truth, that is to say, it is a bare-faced lie delivered by crooks whose number one concern is number one, and whose number two concern is to cover up this obvious fact. The men at the top – be they popes, imams, kings, or statesmen, are liars and he who believes them is a damn fool who deserves to be taken to the cleaners, as we have been.

#

Monday, November 1, 2010

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

UNFORGETTABLE LINES

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

There are some lines that once heard or read are never forgotten.

Some random samples follow:

*

Anonymous (French): “He who can kiss can bite.”

*

Anonymous (Chinese): “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.”

*

Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”

*

Anonymous (Jewish): “Sleep fast, we need the pillows.”

*

Anonymous (Turkish): “When the house is finished, death enters.”

*

Anonymous (Turkish): "Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Cat play is mouse death.”

'

Dostoevsky: “Do you realize how powerful one man can be?”

*

Anonymous (Jewish): “A girl in good shape is often the reason why a man is in bad shape.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “To the poor everyone is generous with advice.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Pigs never see the stars.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian):

“One Armenian eats one chicken;

two Armenians eat two chickens;

three Armenians eat each other.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “A dead jackass is not afraid of wolves.”

*

Anonymous (Armenian): “Soft words can break bones.”

*

If you have unforgettable lines of your own, let's have them.

I for one look forward to hearing from you.

#

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

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

A TRUE STORY

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

Once, many years ago, when a friend took me to a community center, the two things that I noticed and remember to this day are,

(one) the famous Soviet-Armenian writer who was scheduled to deliver a lecture, stank like a skunk – no doubt having taken his regular yearly bath eleven months ago; and

(two) immediately after the question period, the national benefactor who was in the audience was surrounded by a phalanx of brown-nosers – to protect him (I heard later) from direct assaults by riffraff.

Whenever the benefactor made a public appearance (my friend explained later) people would go up to him and apply personally for a grant, that is, demand cash; to which the benefactor would invariably say, “Talk to my secretary.”

*

Because I spent most of my time in solitary confinement reading, I was told again and again that one may learn a great deal from books, but one may also learn different things not available in books by meeting people – most of which, I now think, not worth knowing.

*

There is a P.S. to this story:

Shortly after independence, the famous writer was murdered by the hit men of a mafia don in retaliation of the murder of his own son by the writer's son, who after the deed went underground and, as far as I know, has not surfaced since.

*

P.P.S.

The lecture at the community center was financed by the benefactor, which may suggest, some Armenians have so much money that they don't mind investing it on crooks parading as intellectuals and role models to future generations. Either that or they (benefactors) rely too much on the advice of secretaries who can't tell the difference between an honest man and a KGB agent.

#

BOOK REVIEW

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

1001 DAYS THAT SHAPED THE WORLD.

Edited by Peter Furtado.

960 pages. New York, 2008.

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

Three randomly selected days discussed in this wrist-wrenching and lavishly illustrated tome are:

“May 1, 1274 – Beatrice Glimpsed (Beatrice Portinari inspires Dante's greatest work).”

“June 4, 1913 – Suffragette Trampled to Death.”

“January 2, 1973 – Abortion Legalized.”

*

Armenians are not mentioned.

Turks and Kurds, yes.

Armenians. no.

So much for first nation this and first nation that. Which may suggest that our propaganda is designed to deceive us and no one else.

But that's the way it is with all propaganda regardless of race, color, and creed.

No one but Jews believe they are the Chosen People.

No one but some Aryans believed they belonged to a Superior Race.

And until very recently, no one but Southern bigots believed in the superiority of “Anglo-Saxon democracy” and in the inferiority of Jews, Blacks, and Catholics – that is to say, the rest of the world.

Charity, it is said, begins at home.

So does deception, alas!

*

Closer to home:

Why is it that when people identify themselves as smart they behave like idiots?

Why is it that the lowest scum on earth identify themselves as “superior”?

If in a crime it's “cherchez la femme,” in propaganda it must be cherchez the self-evident truth that it tries to cover up.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 4, 2010

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

FACING FACTS

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

When academics discuss the great achievements of Greece,

they mean of course ancient Greece.

They know, and they assume their readers also know,

that the only two thing modern Greeks

share with their ancient counterparts

is the territory and the language.

Nothing else!

During the last twenty-two centuries

Greeks have had so many conquerors –

from Macedonians and Romans

to Turks and Germans – that they have been

thoroughly bastardized.

*

Please note that I am not advocating racial purity.

What degrades and degenerates nations

is not mixed marriages

but subservience to the foreign conqueror,

which gradually evolves to

subservience to domestic wheeler-dealers

who speechify in the name of patriotism,

subservience to empty suits with fat bank accounts,

and subservience to fornicators who sermonize against sin.

*

Why do I say these things?

Simply to assert the fact that

not all Armenians are dupes

or cowards afraid to face reality.

There is hope in confronting challenges no matter how severe.

There is no hope in lies, illusions, flattery, and wishful thinking.

#

Friday, November 5, 2010

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

THREE STORIES / FIVE MORALS

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

Because 2500 years ago the Greeks condemned a thinker to death,

he became the most celebrated philosopher of all time.

*

Because 2000 years ago they crucified an obscure preacher

-- so obscure in fact that most of his contemporaries were not even aware of his existence –

he acquired billions of followers from one and of the world to the other.

*

Because the Kremlin at the apex of its power tried to silence an unknown, unarmed and peace-loving dissident by exiling him to Siberia, he was awarded the Nobel Prize and is now generally recognized as the greatest Russian writer of the Soviet era.

*

Moral I: If you want to sell toothpaste, you spend millions advertising it in the media. But if you want to promote the ideas of a thinker, reformer, or dissident, you silence him.

*

Moral II: Fascists dig their own graves because they refuse to learn from history.

*

Moral III: The easy, convenient, or obvious solution may not always be the best solution.

*

Moral IV: If you think the right thoughts in the solitary confinement of your room, you will be overheard ten thousand miles away (according to an old Chinese proverb).

*

Moral V: Actions have unforeseen consequences not always to the advantage of the actors.

#

Saturday, November 6, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Because I rated what I read above reality,

I fell into the same trap as Don Quixote and Madame Bovary.

That's my way of pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

Leader: I can't think of another word with more sinister historic connotations.

Why say “leader” when we can say “public servant”?

*

The first known case of compounding a felony:

After planting that damn tree in the Garden,

He introduced the Serpent.

*

Recent economic and political developments in the United States have made it abundantly clear that capitalism means free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.

*

Did you know that most of our kings were odars?

Our sons of bitches were not even ours!

*

Armenia the cradle of civilization?

There is something incongruous in grave-diggers speaking of cradles.

*

He thought diarrhea was a compulsive need to keep a diary.

*

All fascists operate on the assumption that if you deliver a lie in a loud voice and repeat it often enough, you may have a better chance to fool most of the people most of the time.

*

Something to look forward to:

a new book by Eric-Emmanuel titled

TO THINK THAT BEETHOVEN IS DEAD WHEN SO MANY MORONS LIVE.

*

To the question, “What is the difference between the rich and the poor?”

Hemingway is said to have replied "The rich have more money.”

What is the difference between winners and losers?

Winners know something losers don't, namely how to win.

We may enjoy more international support on the day we de-victimize ourselves.

#

[Kars]

We may enjoy more international support on the day we de-victimize ourselves.

#

Oh yeah? Interesting. I wonder: how come Jews have never thought about it, and yet...

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 7, 2010

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

ON LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP

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

There is a sheep and a goat in all of us.

We may believe what we are told

by those who know better

(or pretend to know better)

but we also entertain doubts.

*

We have more questions than answers

and no one has the final answers.

Leadership consists in dividing and deceiving.

*

Armenians and Turks share one important thing in common:

they are both dupes of their own leadership.

*

There are no good leaders;

only good public servants.

In an ideal world anyone with leadership qualities

(and I can't imagine a more repellent quality)

would be treated as a potential criminal in need of a shrink.

*

If as a community we are a disaster area today

it is because of the phenomenon known as

too-many-chiefs-and-no-Indians.

*

If there are two sides to every story,

there will also be leaders willing

to exploit the dupes of one side against the other.

Everything that is bad in life we owe to leaders;

and everything that is good to public servants.

*

As long as there are imams and popes

there will also be infidels.

What could be more oxymoronic as well as moronic

than to think the only way to assert one's own humanity

is by dehumanizing others?

*

Where am I going with this?

My aim is to understand that which is incomprehensible.

My ambition in life is to take a single step in the right direction

in a field without signs and without a center.

*

Mankind will always be at the mercy of leaders

willing to divide by stressing the interests of one side against the other.

If we could only teach ourselves

to think against ourselves.

*

To the self-righteous I say:

Get used to the idea that you may not be

as right as you think you are.

No one is – especially those who have no doubts.

In life, the questions will always outnumber the answers,

and the doubts will always outnumber the certainties.

To think otherwise is the source of all evil.

*

Who is a dupe?

If you think your leaders care more about you

than about their own powers and privileges, you qualify!

And may the Good Lord

(if He exists)

have mercy on your soul

(if you have one).

#

Monday, November 8, 2010

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

REFLECTIONS

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

While reading an article on Istanbul written by two Canadian tourists, I was wondering if Armenians would be mentioned; and sure enough they were, but not by the tourists but by an Oriental carpet dealer trying to sell them a kilim. “Why,” he demands to know at one point, “don't more Americans visit? Is it because of the Armenians who died after the First World War?” -- implying, we all die sooner or later; no one lives forever; what's so special about these damn Armenians who are out to starve me?

*

Turks say we massacred them.

Why did we do that?

The obvious answer must be: Because after six hundred years of subservience we had had it up to here! And if that's not a good enough reason, I like to know what is.

*

We say they massacred us.

Why did they do that?

Again, the obvious and common-sense answer must be: They thought if we win, they will have to be subservient to us.

Subservience may be good enough for inferior races like the Armenians, but unthinkable for those born to rule.

Which may suggest that, no matter how you slice it, they were racists and what they did qualifies as a crime against humanity.

*

What if we too are racists?

If we are, it may be because we earned the right – when we let them rape our daughters and use our sons to satisfy their imperial greed by forcing them to kill and die in their own wars.

*

The difference between Turkish and Armenian racism is similar to that which exists between murder one and self-defense. The sentence for the first is life imprisonment, and for the second, not guilty (which of course is not the same as innocent).

*

Anyone who says or implies you don't have to think for yourself because I will tell you what to think on the grounds that I know better (and this is as true of our former rulers as it is today of our Ottomanized elites), uses persuasion as surely as a castrator uses a knife, and the organ he itches to delete is much more valuable than the other one.

*

Readers who would gladly see me destroyed urge me to be more constructive.

*

Armenians are not smart.

It is my ambition to repeat that as often as our propagandists say Armenians are smart.

There is no such thing as a smart dupe.

All dupes are dumb.

*

Wake up Armenians! You have nothing to lose but your nightmares.

#

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

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

THEORY AND PRACTICE

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

If I keep things short it's because I am myself so easily bored by what I read that I have developed an acute phobia of boring my readers.

*

When fornicators preach chastity, they say: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Why should anyone be allowed to make a comfortable living by doing the opposite of what he says?

Imagine a cop who delivers lectures on law and order during the day and turns into a serial killer at night.

Imagine a political leader who promises peace and prosperity for a thousand years and delivers war and pestilence.

On second thought, no need to imagine anything, just read a history of the 20th Century.

Imagine a lawyer – strike that! Bad example.

*

No one likes to be called a crook, especially crooks.

Likewise, no one likes to be called dumb, especially the dumb.

Everyone prefers to be called smart, including the dumb – especially the dumb.

Which may explain why we call ourselves smart.

Self-flattery is as Armenian as pilaf and shish-kebab.

*

A few years ago, one of my books, titled FRAGMENTED DREAMS (out of print now), was withdrawn from classrooms because some parents thought it may lower the self-esteem of their children.

Because I judge a nation by its history as opposed to its propaganda, I have acquired enemies among Turks as well as Armenians.

Some people (present company suspected) are so abysmally insecure that they think truth, instead of setting them free (as the Scriptures tell us) will shatter their image in their own eyes.

*

As for our academics who, even as I write, are busy shaping the character and worldview of the next generation: I am acquainted with several of them and they strike me as individuals who will say and do anything in exchange of a regular salary.

*

The problem with speechifiers is that after they deliver the same speech three or four times, they start believing in their own nonsense.

No one who submits his intelligence to individuals who don't have much of it themselves (namely, bosses, bishops, and benefactors) can claim to know better.

#

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

A reader once called me “a self-appointed critic,” as if popes and imams, or for that matter, commissars and our own Jack S. Avanakians are in the habit of appointing their own critics, and unless you have a license to practice, what you say ain't worth a sh*t.

*

Speaking of his fellow countrymen, Ben Hecht once said: “The American does not aspire to overthrow the thieves and oppressors half as much as he does to become one of them.”

If you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that we are morally superior, I would like to see it.

*

Do you remember the very first question you were asked as a child? I do! “Whom do you love more, your father or your mother?” That's when I began to suspect adults are nuts.

*

Sheep go where their shepherds take them; but there is a wolf in every man, as there is a Spartacus in every slave. This is a rule with only one exception: Armenians. The average Armenian dupe is a sheep in sheep's clothing.

*

Writing for Armenians means making yourself vulnerable to the insults of readers who are equipped to understand only recycled crapola. Deviate an inch and run the risk of being called an idiot by idiots.

*

If I continue to function today it's because I work for nothing and I can't be fired.

*

Like all -isms Armenianism too has its deceivers and dupes. With one difference: our dupes don't consider themselves dupes because they think they are too smart to be dupes.

Well, I've got news for them!

#

[arabaliozian]

The overwhelming majority of jewsdon't discuss the Holocaust.

they are too busy doing many other things -- making movies, formulating the foreign policy of several nations, writing books on science, sociology, astronomy, medicine, history...even making fun of their fellow Jews (see Philip Roth's fiction)...

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 11, 2010

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

BOOMERANG

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

In my morning paper today, under a headline that reads, “Ambassador blasts Austria over treatment of Turks,” I read: “The Turkish ambassador accused Austria of treating his compatriots like a virus.” Further down he is quoted as having said to the Austrians: “You must learn to live together with other people. What's Austria's problem?”

Hear. hear!

*

Everything that you do unto others, shall be done unto you.

In life nobody gets away with nothing!

*

Are you easily offended by double-negatives.

I am not.

Greeks have been using double-negatives for millennia with no discernible ill effects.

For example: instead of saying “I have nothing,” (“Exo tipota”), they say “I don't have nothing” ("Then exo tipota").

Speaking for myself:

I prefer the Greek way. It may not make sense, but then in life, what does?

*

Today is Remembrance Day – a day we remember the end of World War I and our heroes who died in defense of our country and freedom.

Today is also a day in which we are encouraged to forget that our heroes also did some serial killing of their own.

#

Friday, November 12, 2010

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

SITUATION / SHITUATION

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

The shortest poem in the world?

“Adam

Had 'em.”

(Meaning, microbes.)

*

The shortest proverb in the world?

“Kirk, krik.”

(Turkish for “Forty, broken” -- in reference to the fact that most health problems begin at forty, that is, at the threshold of old age.)

*

One of my mother's favorite sayings was:

“Kimini chok chok,

Kimini hich yok.”

(Turkish for “Some folks have too much, other folks have nothing.”)

Karl Marx in a nutshell.

*

Turks knew their onions, alright!

They conquered and ruled over many lands, and came into contact with many people and as many cultures; and because they were in a position to choose, they chose the very best – the most beautiful girls for their harems, the strongest boys as Janissaries, the most competent and gifted architects, artists, and musicians.

How much of Turkish culture is Turkish?

My guess is, no more than 1%.

*

How much of Armenian culture is Armenian?

When I compare our contemporary music, architecture, and literature to that of our Golden Age (5th Century AD) and Silver Age (late 19th Century), my guess is less than 1%.

No one wants to admit it but the evidence is irrefutable on this point: we are a nation of rejects and mediocrities -- fornicators who sermonize on chastity, enemy agents who speechify on patriotism, and bloodsuckers who raise funds for the needy.

*

It is not only Turks who are to blame, however. Before them the Byzantine Greeks did the same; and more recently the Soviets. Some of the greatest military and political leaders of the Byzantine Empire were not Greek but Armenian. Very much like Turks and Byzantine Greeks, the Soviets kept the best for themselves (Anastas Mikoyan and his brother Artem of MiG fame, Aram Khachaturian, among many others) and in successive purges systematically eliminated anyone and everyone who dared to be more Armenian and less Soviet.

*

I say these things not because I am a cynic out to promote defeatism and despair but to point out the fact that our genocide in an ongoing process that began long before we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Turks. Unless we understand this very obvious fact and we segregate the goats from the sheep, we are doomed.

#

Saturday, November 13, 2010

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

DEPROGRAMMING

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

One of the hardest things in life

is convincing a dupe that he is a fool.

*

If you don't understand yourself,

the chances are you will misunderstand everyone else.

*

If a truth contradicts another truth,

both must be lies.

*

A French thinker (may have been Voltaire) once said,

if it weren't for the miracles in the Bible,

there would be many more Christians.

Religion and magic are incompatible concepts.

*

When two belief systems clash,

their adherents would be justified in saying:

“I believe, therefore I am wrong.”

*

To those of my readers who are willing to share their wisdom with me,

may I be so bold as to suggest that

I am old enough to learn from my own mistakes,

thank you very much.

*

I should like to see academic fields

on “Armenian anti-Armenianism” and

“the flora and fauna of the Armenian psyche.”

*

If I were to write a history of our literature,

I would have to conclude it with the words:

“After surviving bloodthirsty sultans and murderous commissars,

Armenian literature expired under our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 14, 2010

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

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

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

In a dishonest environment nothing is as severely punished as honesty.

Socrates, Christ, Luther, Gandhi, Martin Luther King:

what was their offense?

By being honest they exposed the dishonesty of those in power.

*

What is criminal in dissent?

What else but the daring to suggest that

when the mighty of this world speak in the name of truth or God

(whom they neither know nor understand) they lie.

They say all men are brothers

but they divide mankind into those who are for them

and those who are against them.

They say God is love

but they behave as thought He hated infidels unto death.

They speak of eternal life

but what they say has the stench of death

(if not of the body than of the spirit).

*

Only damn fools persecute and kill in the name of love.

Only charlatans invent dogmas that legitimize intolerance.

If I could, I would replace the word “God”

with “the Powers that be,”

and if I knew how to pray,

I would introduce my prayers with the words:

“To whom it may or may not concern.”

#

Monday, November 15, 2010

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

SUMMING UP

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

We disagree for two important reasons:

(one) we use only an extremely small fraction of our brain; and

(two) we perceive only an extremely small fraction of reality.

Science tells us the eye is like a camera, it takes in an infinite number of details (countless droplets of water, for instance), but the brain is satisfied to see only a single occurrence (rain).

*

Disagreements will always outnumber agreements; and the agreements will likely be of the a priori kind – that is, judgments rendered before the evidence is in, or decisions based on predisposition and prejudice.

We will be predisposed to agree with friends and disagree with enemies even when friends are wrong and enemies are right.

We will be predisposed to say “Yes, sir!" to those we view as our betters, and to say “No way!” to those we believe to be against us.

Catholics will trust the judgment of the Pope as surely as Muslims will chant “Allawa akhbar! with their imams.

As a result, our judgments will be based more on hearsay and less on admissible evidence.

*

It is the absence of admissible evidence that makes wars and massacres possible. We may have the semblance of law, order, and peace where we live (only a small fraction of the world) but anarchy, insurrection, and war in the world.

The men at the top may be fully aware of what I am saying here but in politics and diplomacy self-interest and power will invariably trump reason and common sense.

*

On the day mankind is civilized, all men that place self-interest or their own powers and privileges above reason and the common good will be perceived and treated as enemies of mankind.

But as long as we place our trust more on charlatans and crooks and less on that most valuable of all possessions that God or nature has bestowed on us (our brain) we will have wars and massacres, and the first victims of our lies and misconceptions will be peacemakers and dissidents – Socrates, Christ, Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn.

*

THE MOUSE IN THE ROOM

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

A cartoon: two elephants having a drink as one says to the other: “Notice how everyone is avoiding the mouse in the room.”

*

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

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

Gore Vidal in a recent interview:

“What I like about Montaigne is that he devoted one of his greatest essays on lying, which is the American malady. If we go down crashing one day, it's because everybody lies about everything.” (NEW STATESMAN, October 11, 2010, page 27.)

#

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

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

POLITICALLY INCORRECT OPINIONS

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

Those who are against abortion are as a rule for war

on the grounds that to kill the unborn is murder

but to kill the born is one's patriotic duty.

*

To speak of organized religions objectively

is to be politically incorrect

and nothing gives me more pleasure

than to infuriate fascists – both political and religious.

*

Most believers (regardless of their belief system)

are convinced that anyone who is not a member of their club

must be either a heretic or an infidel.

*

It is a serious error in judgment

to dismiss idiots as irrelevant.

I take idiots seriously

because I take the study of history seriously.

*

If you have power and God on your side,

reason and tolerance become subversive commodities.

*

A history of human rights in a religious context

would be an endless catalogs of crimes against humanity.

One is therefore justified in suspecting that

to subscribe to a belief system

is to be a dupe and an idiot,

and a dangerous idiot at that – judging

by the number of victims

that religions have generated.

#

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

All propaganda is open to criticism

except our propaganda.

*

God created man in His own image --

except Hitler, Stalin, Talaat, serial killers, rapists,

child molesters, racists, liars, dupes...

Is that 99% or 98% of mankind?

*

I take myself seriously only when others do.

Deep inside somewhere I am flattered

when I am silenced by our bosses, bishops, benefactors,

and their hirelings.

*

As an underdog I hate no one but top dogs;

and I feel sorry for dupes who, like dogs,

will be grateful to anyone who feeds them,

thus allowing their brains

to become an extension of their intestines.

*

Nobody but Armenians believe

in the Armenian version of history.

The same applies to Turks, Americans, Zulus,

Patagonians, Bolsheviks, capitalists...

*

History may be defined as a big lie told by top dogs

and believed by dupes with single-digit IQs.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 18, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When I hear a lie I instinctively guess the truth that contradicts it.

The more outrageous the lie, the more obvious the truth.

One reason I never run out of things to say

is the fact that we swim in an ocean of lies.

*

Asked to define art and its function in society,

a Brazilian painter is quoted as having said:

“I don't know. All I know is this:

art is art, or it's sh*t.”

*

One of our elder statesmen

once mentioned a distant cousin of his in Paris

who had slept with Brigitte Bardot,

implying we Armenians have another thing to brag about.

*

What if the universe, as we know it,

is only a short footnote on the main text of existence?

*

I don't believe in prophetic dreams.

But I do believe that on some subconscious level

we may grasp the meaning of our past and where it's taking us.

*

By dying we return to our pre-born state.

We continue to exist as atoms but not as consciousness.

*

Wealth enslaves man as surely as poverty.

*

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

*

Some of the most offensive e-mails I have received

are from academics – men with degrees in degradation.

*

It takes less than 25 years (or a single generation)

to Americanize an Armenian.

Now imagine what 600 years (or 24 generations)

in the Ottoman Empire may have done to us!

What if the Genocide is only a small fraction of the total damage?

#

Friday, November 19, 2010

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

When asked why he robs banks,

a gangster is quoted as having said:

“Because that's where the money is.”

If you were to ask one of our fund-raisers

or Turcocnetric ghazetajis

why he speaks of reparations,

my guess is, he will give you the same answer.

*

When a reader insults me anonymously

I know I have hit paydirt and I dig deeper.

Intolerance is my favorite muse.

*

We are told our problems are not ours but the world's.

It is our duty therefore to educate and reform the rest of mankind,

beginning with Turks.

To which I can only repeat the words of the Duke of Wellington:

“If you believe that, you will be anything!”

*

You don't agree with me?

Our bosses, bishops, and benefactors

don't always agree with one another either.

Why should we?

*

If as an Armenian writer you can go on speaking

after you have been silenced

and surviving after you have been starved,

you have earned the right to repeat

Jimmy Cagney's famous last words in WHITE HEAT:

“Top of the world, ma!”

*

I like to quote famous men,

including gangsters and imperialist warmongers,

to underline the fact that not everything I say

springs from my own narrow and biased view of reality.

#

Saturday, November 20, 2010

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

SUMMING UP (II)

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

What I really write about when I write about Armenians is the human condition.

Why do men behave as they do?

Why do they believe and think as they do?

What are the hidden forces that shape their character and motivate their actions?

*

Nazis in Germany, Bolsheviks in the USSR, Fascists in Italy and Spain, proud Yanks in America who believe America to be “the land of the brave and the free”:

I maintain they are all dupes of state propaganda.

In “Rule Brittania” Brits sing “An Englishman cannot be a slave.”

And Armenians, who have been slaves for most of their historic existence, think by replacing the words “teshvar, ander”* in their national anthem with “azad, angakh”** they cease to be slaves.

*

I believe the function of propaganda is to enslave men, and the function of literature is to liberate them by exposing lies and illusions.

Everything I write has a single unspoken message: “If you want to be free, become aware of your present dehumanized condition of subservience.”

If you allow others to shape your thoughts, you cease to be who you really are and become a parrot; and parrots can say and repeat only two words, “Yes, master!”

God (if He exists) does not enslave men, men do, especially men who speak in the name of God – make it, especially men who lie in the name of God.

*

Once upon a time our betters were sultans and commissars, which amounts to saying, our betters were the worst scum on earth. And if you believe this is no longer the case, you will believe anything!

=======================================

(*) “Miserable, without a master.”

(**) “Free, independent.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 21, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

“You don't know how to develop ideas,” writes a reader. “You should take a course in writing.”

I have more critics than a dog has fleas.

You want developed ideas?

Read our Turcocentric ghazetajis and listen to our speechifiers: they have been developing their idea(s) since the turn of the last century.

*

“After they walk past an elementary school (or is it a kindergarten?) they brag about their degrees from prestigious universities,” one of our elder statesmen (may he rest in peace) once told me.

If our elder statesmen spoke publicly as they speak privately, I would have fewer fleas.

That's politics for you: it makes liars out of honest men.

*

“Why do you persevere if you know you can't win?”

Because I am an Armenian.

*

We were subservient to our Turkish masters for six hundred years. Is that reason enough for us to be subservient to our own masters for six thousand years?

*

I have been a dupe and I have engaged in charlatanism. That's why I have nothing but contempt for both charlatans and dupes.

*

How many times were you wrong when you thought you were right?

Never? Brother, you are in deep sh*t!

*

If you think oppression, injustice, and lies are alien concepts that apply only to others, i suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

*

What we don't know far exceeds what we know. On the day we see the light we may also see that what we called knowledge was another word for darkness.

*

Because I am Armenian, my former friends outnumber my present friends a hundred to one.

*

The dupe who recycles crapola and the smart operator who deals in the same commodity because that's how he makes a comfortable living: the world is full of them.

*

I have yet to meet a self-assessed “better” or “more patriotic” Armenian who was not certifiable.

*

With age comes wisdom. But not in politics.

#

Monday, November 22, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If most Turks and Armenians think alike it's because they trust their “betters.”

Moral I: Trust no one's judgment but your own.

Moral II: Only the worst pretend to be better.

*

If we judge men not by their words (speeches, sermons, dogmas) but by the number of their victims, we shall have no choice but to conclude that popes and imams are worse than serial killers.

*

Popes pretend to be better than imams and vice versa, and they are believed by their followers and dupes. As for their Armenian counterparts: the less said about them the better.

*

Speaking of George W. Bush's memoirs, a pundit in today's Op-Ed page writes: “Many presidents go a little loco.” So do many popes, imams, kings, emperors, czars, and chiefs.

*

“What would you have done in their place?”

How should I know? I don't even know what my own place is. I am in a search mode. And I am so busy trying to be honest in a dishonest world that I have no interest in imagining myself as a crook.

#

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

The difference between them and us is that they have several dissidents, among them an internationally known Nobel Prize winner...

Among us, dissidents are as popular as Talaat, Kemal, and the Sultan combined.

*

They have one set of leaders.

With us it's more chiefs than Indians.

Some things are worth repeating – in case I have said this before.

*

If you have nothing to lose, you speak the truth.

The greater the possession at risk, the bigger the lies.

*

Whenever I am attacked or insulted anonymously

I add cowardice to our long list of failings.

*

“Your call is important to us.”

Translation: “Why don't you shut the f*ck up!”

*

The language of the poor is down to earth, simple, limited in vocabulary. Its sole aim is survival.

The language of the rich is subtle, rich, versatile. Its aim is deception.

*

Seek for the hidden contradiction and you will find it.

*

We either admit our failings or we cling to them by covering them up.

*

Our heads may disagree but our feet take us to the same destination. No exceptions to this rule.

*

We don't have a word for “gentleman” probably because we have so few of them.

What about "a man of honor"?

That's what mafiosi call their godfathers.

*

In an environment where the official line is being positive, being negative becomes as irresistible as the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

*

In defense of his self-interest, a smart Armenian will go as far as pretending to be deaf, dumb, and stupid.

Americans have given freedom a bad name. Armenians have done the same to self-interest.

*

Louis XIV once said: “I almost had to wait.”

#

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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LAW AND DISORDER

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

In the same way that some chief executive officers on Wall Street make more money than the President of the United States, some Indian chiefs and councilors (82 of them to be exact) make more money than the Prime Minister's annual salary of $317,574, according to a published report today.

When asked by reporters how come, a spokesman for the chiefs is quoted as having said, “We don't discuss such matters with the media.”

I have had less diplomatic reactions by some of our own chiefs.

*

There is a hyena in all top dogs.

*

Abuse of power comes naturally to top dogs; and assuming a passive stances means allowing them to reinsert the knife and give it another twist.

*

Dissent is a necessary ingredient if only because it introduces a touch of objectivity and balance. Suppression or absence of dissent is invariably followed by disaster.

Because the Catholic Church failed to assess its performance objectively it spawned Martin Luther and a succession of wars and massacres; and because the Reformation failed to do the same, it spawned televangelism.

Closer to home: ...but I will let you draw your own conclusions.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 25, 2010

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DIARY

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

After a silence of more than half-a-century, a call from an old friend (now in his 80s) .

It soon becomes apparent that he has been too busy in community affairs – church, politics, sports, fund-raising – to have read a single line I have written.

I doubt if I will hear from him again.

Why did he call?

He didn't say and I didn't ask.

Whatever the reason, it couldn't have been nostalgia.

*

Monster snowflakes.

Winter is here.

We may now look forward to Spring.

*

Reading three books:

a biography of Lesley Blanch – the author of one of the most fascinating books of all time: THE SABRES OF PARADISE, about the Caucasus, which I have read three time and I look forward to reading again if and when our library replaces its lost or discarded copy;

Antonia Fraser's MUST YOU GO? -- MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER (I have read several of his plays but none of her books);

and the memoirs of Christopher's Hitchens.

In all three books there is talk of encounters with many celebrities, including kings and queens, even emperors and empresses.

*

How many celebrities have I known? None. Only a letter from Saroyan and another from Lawrence Durrell (Zarian's name is mentioned in both).

Saroyan knew Zarian but “couldn't figure him out.”

By contrast Durrell understood Zarian and wrote about him more insightfully than any Armenian I have ever read.

*

Because we rate money above ideas, we treat our benefactors as kings and we starve our writers. If I am slightly overweight it's because I have enjoyed the financial support of the Canadian government – and not because I am an agent of the CIA, Mossad, Grey Wolves, or the KGB -- as my critics have alleged at one time or another.

I remember once when Zarian's name came up, one of our elder statesmen who paraded as an eminent teacher, poet, and critic, accused Zarian of being a KGB agent – and this in his efforts to convince me that translating Zarian was a waste of time; I should translate him instead.

#

Friday, November 26, 2010

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DIARY

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

“Did you ever write about what that priest did to us?” my sister wanted to know last night.

“I didn't.”

“Why not?”

I had no answer.

Because I wanted to forget about it.

But how can I?

*

It happened almost a year ago.

In accordance with her wishes, Mother was cremated.

When asked to bless her grave, the Armenian priest refused.

“It's against our rules,” he explained. “We don't believe in cremation.”

My guess is, his refusal had another reason.

He knew as an Armenian writer I work for nothing and I would probably pay him less than minimum wage. I suspect that because immediately after he added, “I cannot do it unless I ask permission from the bishop,” thus implying exceptions are made, especially if the ashes belong to an Oriental carpet dealer – there are several of them in the neighborhood.

It would have taken him less than a minute to call the bishop, but I guess neither Mother nor my sister (both, unlike me, devout church-goers) deserved the courtesy of a phone call.

#

Saturday, November 27, 2010

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

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

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

Privately they brag: “We taught Armenians a lesson they will never forget.”

Publicly they assert: “It was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.”

You want to unmask compulsive liars?

Nothing easier.

Think the opposite of what they say.

*

When we speak, we confess.

With every word we utter we say “Guilty as charged, your Honor.”

*

“Among ten men nine are sure to be women,” Turks confess.

Hence the slaughter of unarmed women and children.

*

What matters is not that I have only two readers three of whom would like to see me silenced.

What matters, what really matters, is that I am no longer dependent on benefactors (“the charity of swine”) and editors, about whom one could say: “Among ten Armenian editors, nine are sure to have been Ottomanized or Sovietized.”

*

What really matters is that even if I have only one reader today and if – repeat if! -- what I say is worth reading, I may have two tomorrow; and if I have two, I may have more-- if not the day after than next month or year. Not because time is on my side, but because time is on no one's side.

*

I don't paint a pretty picture, granted.

If pretty is what you want listen to our speechifiers and read our Turcocentric ghazetajis, all of whom make a comfortable living – thank you very much – by dishing out what you want to hear and read.

*

What matters is not that I don't have a high opinion of these gentlemen.

What really matters is that neither do they. Hence their subservience and cowardice.

Hence their habit of saying one thing publicly and the exact opposite privately.

#