Confessions

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 4, 2009

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OBSERVATIONS

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George Orwell criticized Dickens for “always pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change of structure.” If Dickens did that, it may be because a change of heart or spirit must precede a change of structure. Before you convert swine, you must introduce them to themselves. In the Soviet Union the structure changed but the heart went from bad to worse.

*

Dissidents win even when they lose in so far as they keep the tradition of dissent alive.

*

Both Tevye the Milkman and Bernard Madoff are members of the same tribe. Now then, go ahead and generalize.

*

It is easy to have all the answers if you ask the wrong questions.

*

There are two kinds of divisions, (one) dog-eat-dog, and (two) Armenian, and of the two, the second runs deeper.

*

Honesty and dishonesty are two painfully acquired habits.

*

If perfection cannot be improvised, it can't be worth achieving. God did not create a perfect world. What's good enough for God, it should be good enough for man.

*

Power means the power to get away with murder and to have the powerful on your side. Where power enters, justice is orphaned.

#

Monday, October 5, 2009

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ARMENIAN TYPES

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The white-haired elder statesman,

the "mi-kich-pogh" Panchoonie,

the apres-moi-le-deluge and

what's-in-it-for-me wheeler-dealer,

the loud-mouth charlatan,

the inbred moron who assesses himself as a genius,

the phony pundit (whose wisdom

is a figment of his imagination --

sometimes even recycled enemy propaganda:

remember our chic Bolsheviks),

the brown-noser,

and the grub-first-then ethics speechifier.

If I speak with some authority on all these types

it's because at one time or another I have been all of them --

all except the white-haired elder statesman --

my hair is black with only a shake of salt in them.

*

You begin to acquire a moral compass on the day you feel guilty about acts you committed without a single trace of remorse.

*

If some very smart men profess very stupid belief systems, it may be because the aim of belief systems is not to make sense but to satisfy a need, like hunger. The rest is propaganda.

*

God is one, but the lies spoken in His name are without number.

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To simplify matters for the simple-minded, let us say there are two kinds of people: (one) the brainwashed dupes, and (two) those whose ambition it is to be a human being.

*

Most Greeks and Turks (probably the overwhelming majority) are neither Greeks nor Turks, only citizens of Greece and Turkey. As for my fellow Armenians, I will speak only for myself: On a clear day I can trace my ancestry all the way back to my father.

*

History seems to suggest that the most effective way to combat a Big Lie is with bigger lies.

#

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

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LIFE IS SHORT

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Life is short,

art long, but even longer

is the list of things

that must be said and done.

*

You say, “Me wrong? Never!”

and I say “How I wish I were wrong.”

*

I have yet to meet a smart Armenian

who was not self-assessed

and a self-assessed Armenian

who was not a damn fool.

*

How to succeed as a writer?

I don't know.

But I can tell you how to fail:

Be an Armenian writer.

Michael Arlen succeeded

because he pretended to be an upper-crust Englishman.

Saroyan succeeded because he wrote about characters

that were as imaginary as Winnie the Pooh.

Compare the characters in PAPA, YOU'RE CRAZY

and MAMA, I LOVE YOU with their real counterparts –

himself and his two children

whom he disowned like an enraged grizzly bear.

#

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

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IDIOTS (II)

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Simenon, the author of over 500 books, believed it is law-abiding citizens who create murderers.

In his ANTI-SEMITE & THE JEW, Sartre asserts that Jews are created by anti-Semites.

Goethe once said that he can't imagine a crime he is not capable of committing. But not even he could have imagined that some day his fellow countrymen would be capable of incinerating millions of innocent civilians.

Speaking of the Armenian massacres, Toynbee tells us, given the right combination of circumstances, we, all of us, are capable of behaving like Turks.

In novels like CRIME & PUNISHMENT and THE POSSESSED (sometimes also translated as THE DEVILS), Dostoevsky identifies himself with characters who commit unspeakable acts to such a degree that he leaves no doubt as to his inner drives.

Long before the writers and thinkers mentioned above, our own Naregatsi described himself as someone a respectable citizen wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Moral: Only self-righteous and self-satisfied idiots assert moral or racial superiority.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 8, 2009

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HOW TO RECOGNIZE

AN HONEST MAN

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A readiness to speak against one's own interests, or the courage to face and admit openly one's own failings, is the hallmark of an honest man.

By contrast, parading as a holier-than-thou role model is the quintessence of dishonesty.

But the most dangerous form of dishonesty is the assertion that man is fallible in all matters except in his choice of belief systems.

*

When Gandhi, Einstein, and Thomas Mann were offered the presidency of India, Israel, and East Germany respectively, they said, no thanks. Which reminds me of Plato's dictum that those who seek power are the least qualified to handle it. That to me might as well be the most convincing explanation as to why world history is an endless catalog of lies, disasters, and tragedies.

*

Our local paper has a literary critic who manages a bookstore. He contributes a regular weekly column devoted to new books and he is unfailingly kind to all the writers he discusses. Who takes him seriously? Only dupes, and there must be quite a few of them because he has been in business for many years.

*

Closer to home: to defend one's views just because they are one's own, even when the evidence is against them, is another instance of dishonesty. But the most widespread and universal symptom of dishonesty is saying “Yes, sir!” to someone simply because he has more power or money or prestige. Speaking for myself, I don't think those who speak in the name of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) are wiser than the rest of us. If anything, it's the other way around. Which is why I maintain the most egregious case of dishonesty is the assertion by the Catholic Church that in matters of faith the Pope is infallible – an assertion rejected even by some eminent Catholic theologians. Because, if true, all other organized religions, including an important faction of Christians, must be wrong. Which they may well be, but not because they reject the Pope's infallibility.

#

Friday, October 9, 2009

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ASSETS & LIABILITIES

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A writer's two best assets:

the sensitivity of an open wound

and the hide of a rhino.

*

Money cannot solve our problems.

Money may even exacerbate them.

That's because where money enters,

philistinism is bound to follow.

And where philistinism enters,

mediocrity becomes the dominant mindset.

That's the only reason why

our problems remain unsolved.

As for our so-called “conditions beyond our control”--

they are nothing but convenient cover-up words

for our lack of vision and incompetence.

*

The biography of a man

duplicates the history of mankind,

with one difference:

what follows the Dark Ages

is not always Enlightenment.

*

There is so much talk of massacres in our media

that most Armenians are brought up to believe

genocide is the only legitimate violation of human rights.

As for free speech:

no one speaks in its defense because no one cares.

#

Saturday, October 10, 2009

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JUSTICE & THE LAW

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Armenians who oppose the Protocols do so because they are fearful we may lose. Justice, after all, is blind, and the law “is a ass” (Dickens). As a matter of fact, lawyers prefer to speak of evidence and the law rather than justice.

*

Relying on the evidence of insiders, an Armenian editor once published a critical article about the operation of an Armenian organization headed by a national benefactor,who took him to court; and because the insiders refused to testify against the benefactor (they were either hirelings or recipients of his generosity), the editor not only lost but also had a stroke and went bankrupt. That's justice Armenian style for you.

*

I have been to court only once in my life – small claims court. My adversary, an incompetent repairman who refused to do what he was paid to do. I took him to court with the absolute certainty that I couldn't lose. But I lost. He lied and the judge believed him and rejected my version of the story on the grounds that I couldn't produce a witness.

*

Why did I lose? I can think of many reasons. The judge may have been a racist. The repairman, like the judge, had an Anglo-Saxon name. How dare I, an immigrant, question Anglo-Saxon efficiency and integrity?

The judge had had no experience with incompetent or dishonest repairmen – who, after all, would dare to cheat a lawyer or a judge?

The judge's father had been a hard-working repairman who had also been unfairly accused of incompetence...and so on and so forth.

The fact remains that I lost and learned what I should have known all along, namely that, injustice is the price we pay for justice. That's not a contradiction but life, and life, as we all know, is not fair.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 11, 2009

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THE PROTOCOLS

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Our leaders must be celebrating.

They now have another reason to divide the nation.

Why do they oppose the findings of an independent commission?

Words on a piece of paper, agreements, treaties: they can't change reality. They have been ignored in the past, many times, and they can be ignored again. They are binding only if we allow them to bind us, and no one has the power to do that.

Who takes politicians and academics seriously?

A so-called impartial commission does not scare me. It is here today, heard tomorrow, forgotten the day after.

Relax! The sky isn't falling.

Nothing can be more naïve than to confuse the verbal commitments of diplomats with accomplished facts.

If, say, ten or a hundred years from now, an independent commission were to decide there is no God, do you think believers will give up their faith? They didn't under Lenin, Stalin, Mao and their kind.

And speaking of God: the Scriptures tell us, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And yet our leaders keep dividing us. If they can ignore the Word of the Almighty, why can't they ignore the empty verbiage of a commission? If only they had been more skeptical a hundred years ago and ignored the verbal support of the West! There would have been no Genocide and no Genocide commission deciding whether the Genocide was in fact a genocide.

*

The daily quotation of my morning paper today is by Aldous Huxley and it reads: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Go ahead, say it ain't so!

#

Monday, October 12, 2009

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DEAD MEN WALKING

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In a book of abusive terms I once read that Greeks call Armenians “Turkish gypsies.” That was news to me probably because I seldom ventured outside our ghetto outside Athens – though I was fully aware of the fact that Greeks were not particularly fond of us. Not that they had any reason to be. In their eyes we were unwanted interlopers, D.P.'s (a Canadian abusive term for "displaced people"), who lived crowded in a ghetto that looked like a gypsy encampment.

*

Speaking of abusive terms: I have met many Armenians from the Homeland and none of them has ever called me “aghber.” If the natives call us “aghber” in the Homeland, why not in the Diaspora?

I suspect they don't call me “aghber” for the same reason that a white man is careful not to use the “n” word while visiting Africa, or refer to the natives as Japs while in Tokyo.

*

On a number of occasions I have been told when Armenians call their fellow Armenians “aghber,” they mean not “trash” but “brother.” But I happen to know from personal experience that no one can be as abusive to Armenians as a fellow Armenian (see below). If you don't believe me read Naregatsi on Naregatsi. Read Raffi, read Daniel Varoujan on priests, read Baronian, Odian, Massikian, Zarian....

*

I dare anyone to read Odian's FAMILY, HONOR, MORALITY (Istanbul, 1910) and not think of his fictional characters as dead men walking – not in the sense of inmates on death row but as men so degraded and dehumanized that they might as well be dead. And if you think Armenians today – be they in New York, Los Angeles, or Yerevan – are alive, it may be because we don't have writers of Odian's caliber, only Turcocentric ghazetajis and academics who come alive only when they speak of massacres.

What kind of life is it that is fixated on death?

I shiver to think what would happen to someone like Odian today who would have the courage to speak of Armenians not as they wish to be described but as they are.

*

Speaking of his tuberculosis, Albert Camus writes: “The illness comes on quickly, but leaves very slowly.” He fails to note that sometimes tuberculosis may even result in death.

*

Speaking of Armenians being too nice to use abusive terms: I don't mind admitting that on occasion I have myself described some of them as “Ottomanized morons,” “the scum of the earth,” and “inbred morons”-- but always in retaliation of worse insults, whether fairly or unfairly not up to me to decide...remains to be seen...posterity will tell...take your pick!

#

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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HEMINGWAY ON KEMAL ATATURK

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“[He] looks like an Armenian lace seller than a Turkish general. There is something mouselike about him.”

What does an Armenian lace seller look like? I plead nolo. An Armenian lace seller makes as much sense to me as a Patagonian barber or a Syrian carpenter.

But if you are an American writer writing for an American audience, you can say anything and get away with it.

OSHAGAN & DOSTOEVSKY

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Oshagan was wrong when he said he could not write like Dostoevsky because Armenians did not have Dostoevksian characters. But Dostoevsky's characters owe more to his imagination than to his fellow countrymen. Even Russian writers like Turgenev and Nabokov found Dostoevsky's characters unRussian. As for Oshagan: since he could not write like Dostoevsky, he chose to write like Proust, whose French characters are even more unArmenian than Raskolnikov and Dimitri Karamazov.

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TURGENEV ON DOSTOEVSKY

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Whenever he saw anything morbid and strange, Turgenev would say, “C'est du Dostoevsky.”

*

CHEKHOV & ZOHRAB

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When Chekhov discovered he could make money by writing stories, he gave up medicine – he went on practicing whenever the situation demanded but never charged for his services.

Had Zohrab given up lawyering, he could have been as great a short story writer as Maupassant and Chekhov. There was some money in Armenian literature at the turn of the century in Istanbul but not enough for Zohrab's upper crust lifestyle. To give you an idea how much money there is in Armenian literature today: I am told one of our national benefactors financially supported several writers, among them Shahan Shahnour, by sending them a regular monthly check of $8.00 (eight dollars).

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SHAKESPEARE

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One reason he was great is that he had a great audience. He wrote for kings and queens, and even his queens had cojones. An Armenian writer writes for Levantine philistines in the Diaspora and the offspring of commissars in the Homeland. That's why even Turks are ahead of us in literature.

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ON LEVANTINE PHILISTINES

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There is a Turkish saying: “Eshek khoshavdan ne annar?” (What does a jackass know about stewed raisins?”

As for the commissars in the Homeland: they are more like Raskolnikov without a conscience. My guess is, they miss the good old days when they could hunt down and shoot writers like rabbits.

#

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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A RECURRING EXPERIENCE

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When as a child I first heard the story about the Ottoman Bank takeover by a small band of young revolutionaries in Istanbul, who then negotiated their safe passage to a foreign country, but whose actions provoked the massacre of over 5000 innocent civilians: I admired the daring of our youthful heroes, hated the Turks for their cruelty, and suffered with the blameless victims.

That's when I was a child.

Now that I am no longer a child, I have second thoughts.

What kind of heroism is it when the heroes survive and the people perish?

Our revolutionaries justify this colossal blunder by saying, “We made headlines around the world!”

Maybe. But who gives a damn about headlines in newspapers?

The Genocide that followed made headlines too. And again the ship went down, the people drowned, but our captain survived. And we are now taught to say, Long live the captain!

We are also taught to brag about our will to live; and by “our” they of course mean their cunning to survive.

As for the people: the people exist to serve the nation – meaning the leadership. What we are not taught is that this is another definition of fascism.

In a democracy it's the other way around. The state and the leaders (also known as “public servants”) serve the people.

Democracy?

What do we know about democracy?

I have had an Armenian education and I don't remember anyone mentioning democracy.

To speak of democracy to an Armenian audience amounts to explaining the subtle aroma and flavor of rosejam to a jackass.

“If one has character,” Nietzsche tells us, “one has also one's typical experience that recurs again and again.”

One could also say, “If one has no brain...”

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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 15, 2009

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THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL

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Rabbis, imams, sultans and their Christian counterparts in the West: They may believe they speak in the name of God but they speak in the name of a figment of their imagination in which they are, if not God, than one with the Almighty. What makes them powerful is their connection with the collective unconscious, and the unconscious is the source of all evil.

*

You begin to think for yourself only on the day you begin to see the Big Lie that is at the root of all propaganda lines.

*

Call a military defeat a moral victory and you've got yourself a win-win proposition; which may suggest that, in addition to being the first nation to convert to Christianity, we may also qualify as the first nation to be taken in by the "massals" of spin doctors.

*

We have been careless in our choice of enemies and even more careless in our choice of friends who can be even more dangerous than enemies. Our leaders did not massacre us, true, they only made us more vulnerable to massacres.

*

There has been so much oppression, injustice, and slavery in the world that one is tempted to conclude God may not always be on the side of equality, liberty, and fraternity.

#

Friday, October 16, 2009

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REVIEWING THE SHITUATION

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The Jews worshiped Jehovah,

the Greeks Jupiter,

the Russians Jugashvili,

and the Yanks the Almighty –

and I don't mean the Good Lord.

If you see progress here,

I must be blind.

*

The Turks are a nasty folk,

and so am I

because I refuse to be bamboozled.

*

Sartre was an atheist.

He believed in freedom

but supported Stalin, Mao, and Castro,

not exactly friends of freedom.

Sartre's master was Heidegger

whose master was Hitler.

*

In the Ottoman Empire

we were brainwashed

to be loyal subjects of the Sultan.

In the Soviet Union

we were brainwashed to be good comrades

and to kill and die for the Union,

but mostly to die.

We are now being brainwashed

by the brainwashed

to believe we are in good hands.

Now then, go ahead and say

you see a light at the end of the tunnel,

because speaking for myself,

I don't even see a tunnel --

probably because I am blind.

#

Saturday, October 17, 2009

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SONGS OF THE BLEEDING THROAT

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Because history is the propaganda of the victor, we have made of it the consolation of the loser. Our revolutionaries assert they were not terrorists, they were freedom fighters. Americans are familiar with that line and they don't buy it. That's why when it comes to Genocide recognition they side with the Turks. They have other reasons. Imperial powers have neither friends nor enemies, only interests, and American interests are not on our side. We are of no use to them – except in time of elections when they are more than willing to tell us what we want to hear and we are more than willing to believe them. Being dupes comes naturally to us. It might as well be a habit, an addiction, a gorilla on our collective back impossible to shake off. Americans know this. So do our own leaders, whose lies are as bare-faced as those of Yanks running for office.

*

The average book on Turkish atrocities is another atrocity. In our efforts to paint them all black and ourselves all white, we succeed only in exposing our propaganda and damaging our credibility.

I am reading a new book on the Genocide in which our deportations during World War I are compared to the Japanese deportations in America during World War II. There are “loaded” comparisons as surely as there are loaded questions and as such they should be inadmissible, and those who make them ought to know better. It would be fairer to compare the treatment of Blacks and Indians in America with the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

*

So far no book by an Armenian comes close to explaining why a writer of Siamanto's stature hated life in America so much that he preferred to return to Istanbul knowing full well that he could be butchered. Which he was. Or why an intellectual like Roupen Sevag, a medical doctor by profession and another victim of the Genocide, defended the Turks to his German fiancée when she was critical of them and wanted to convince him to move to Europe.

*

Speaking of Oshagan, Zarian writes somewhere that when writers like him speak of Homeland they don't mean Armenia but Istanbul. Several decades before the massacres, Raffi warned the Ottoman Empire was no place for Armenians. And notwithstanding Zarian's own repeated warnings that Soviet Armenia was no place for Armenians, American-educated Totovents and Sorbonne-educated Zabel Yessayan returned to Armenia only to perish in Stalin's Gulags. If our ablest intellectuals behave like dupes, why should we be surprised that there are still Armenians who trust our wheeler-dealers who try to brainwash us into believing we are in good hands and we have nothing to worry about?

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 18, 2009

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WE NEVER LEARN

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“We may think of Turks as backward Asiatic slobs,” Shahan Shahnour warns us somewhere, “but make no mistake about it: when it comes to Armenians, they can be very, very calculating and methodical.”

If the intention of the Protocols was to pit the Diaspora against the Homeland, it was must be declared a brilliant coup -- judging by the Diaspora's venomous opposition to the regime in Yerevan.

*

The Turks are now imposing punitive taxation on their media barons critical of the regime. It seems they respect a free press as much as we do.

I will never forget the conversation I once had with the publisher of a bilingual (English-Armenian) weekly in Los Angeles. He began by informing me that he had received a call from the secretary of a national benefactor.

“What did he want?” I asked, smelling a rat.

“He demanded why I go on publishing you,” was his reply.

“And you said?”

“I said I edit only the Armenian section, someone else handles the English section.”

“Did he buy that?”

I guess he didn't because shortly thereafter I was fired with no explanation, severance pay, or even a thank you note for my decade -long pro bono weekly contributions of book reviews, commentaries, and translations.

#

Monday, October 19, 2009

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COMMENTS

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“Deal may end Turkish-Armenian friction,” reads the headline of a commentary on the Protocols by a British pundit. So far however it has succeeded only in increasing Diaspora-Homeland friction.

*

According to a British diplomat, also quoted in today's paper: “Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery.”

My first thought: That makes two of us.

*

If you can't explain the inexplicable, what's the use of writing?

*

Every morning on waking up sometimes I fail to remind myself that the sun does not rise to hear me crowing.

#

Tuesday, 20 October, 2009

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MAKING CONNECTIONS

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“A dog starved at his master's gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.” (William Blake)

*

To understand history means to see the connecting tissue that binds two apparently unrelated occurrences. Naregatsi's lamentations and a thousand years of subservience. Abovian's suicide and the Genocide. Tolstoy's excommunication and the Russian revolution. The persecution of dissenters and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

*

Perhaps one reason we don't behead our “kings” is that they know how to flatter our vanity. Example: We are a young nation and the oldest civilization.

*

If on occasion I insult my fellow Armenians it may be because so far flattery has not worked for us.

*

If they massacred us because they hated us, does that justify our own hatred for them? What if hatred is toxic to our understanding of our enemies, or for that matter of our friends, and ultimately of ourselves and reality?

*

I never say anything about others that I am not prepared to say about myself. It is through my own failings that I recognize them in others.

#

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

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SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

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Someone voices an opinion, another develops it, a third sees an idea in it, and a fourth formulates a general theory. That's how human thought is advanced. But where there is intolerance, there will be censorship, and where there is censorship, progress will be arrested, creativity aborted, and man moronized.

*

I too am a survivor – not of Turkish atrocities but of moronized fellow countrymen.

*

All men are created equal, but some men are in a better position to say one thing, do the opposite, and get away with murder.

*

Like most men I was educated to be a dupe, but unlike most men I continued to be one even in my advanced years. When an Armenian writer from Beirut once told me he had given up writing because several of his masterpieces had burned during the civil war in Beirut, I believed him. But when I mentioned this to another writer from Beirut, I was told that's a favorite cliché of Beirutsi intellectuals – to blame the non-existence of their works on the war.

*

What we need is an Armenian Human Rights Commission that will expose our dismal human rights record. We are either for human rights or against it. If we are against it, we must be for Levantine charlatanism, Soviet brutality, and Asiatic barbarism.

*

We have a veritable alphabet soup of organizations and bureaucracies run by Levantine wheeler-dealers in the Diaspora and former commissars in the Homeland. What we don't have and need badly is a Human Rights Commission.

Bureaucrats are bureaucrats regardless of nationality. Unchecked by watchdog agencies, they will grab as much power as they can. But what I find even more repellent than power-hungry bureaucrats is the silence of our academics and intellectuals. Mart bidi ch'ellank.

*

I wonder, do Turks have a Human Rights Commission? If they don't, in what way are we different from them? If they do, is it conceivable that they are more civilized than we are? Something to think about.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 22, 2009

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A BLAME-GAME SCENARIO

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On hearing one of our elder statesmen blame our misfortunes on “chezoks” or non-partisan Armenians, I wrote a commentary in which I identified my father as a chezok and explained that he had been too honest to engage in charlatanism, too busy trying to provide for his family in time of war in an alien environment, and too unassuming to associate himself with individuals who thought of themselves as the offspring of heroes engaged in the difficult task of saving the nation.

On reading this, our elder statesman telephoned and said one reason he had said that about chezoks was that he though I was a member of the Party. Had he known I wasn't, he wouldn't have said what he said. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was not a chezok, I was anti-partisan on the grounds that I considered our revolutionaries the source of most of our misfortunes.

*

Finally a new book on the Genocide in which our revolutionaries are described as “a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings,” a “vicious political clique of terrorists” and “experts in deception and distortion.” The last two quotations are by John Roy Carlson (real name Avedis Derounian), a prominent Armenian-American journalist who witnessed the assassination of Tourian in 1933 in New York and wrote a best-selling book on fascist organization in America titled UNDER COVER.

*

Our historians are consistent in describing Armenians as a "historically persecuted race…an orphan nation" that has experienced "massacres, atrocities, and massive destruction" (Dadrian). What they fail to explore is, to what extent our own tribalism, lack of solidarity, and incompetent leadership -- things that have been discussed at some length by our own chroniclers, novelists, essayists, and satirists -- were a contributing factor to our perennial status as losers and victims.

#

Friday, October 23, 2009

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CONSOLATION MANTRAS

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We all make mistakes.

Tomorrow is another day.

Nobody's perfect.

Let bygones be bygones.

To each his own.

Easy come, easy go.

Forget about it.

This too shall pass. (A favorite of sufferers from chronic constipation).

Forgive and forget.

It takes all kinds.

We all die. (Once when I said that to a friend, he said: “Yes, but people like us die every day.”)

*

De Gaulle once blamed his problems on the 254 (or is it 378?) varieties of cheeses the French eat. We are better off. So far no one has blamed our problems on pilaf and shish kebab.

*

Propagandists don't believe in their own propaganda.

“The Pope doubts his faith seven times every day” (Italian saying).

“Idol-makers don't believe in idols” (Chinese saying).

*

Why the need for Ten Commandments? It would have been simpler to instill in us the ability to discriminate right from wrong, or God from the Devil.

*

Because I refuse to recycle chauvinist crapola, I am told I hate myself. That's Armenian logic for you. I wonder, what's Ottoman logic like? I don't know, but whatever it is, it can't be worse than Armenian logic.

*

Success spoils people. Failure by contrast makes them tougher and wiser. Like all rules, this one too has its exceptions, namely, Armenians.

*

One of my favorite lines in fiction: “And then something very unexpected happened.”

*

Armenians don't mind long sermons against sin and longer speeches on patriotism. But when it comes to reading, they have a very short attention span. That's one reason why I write short sentences.

*

Most people fail because they try to excel in someone else's field.

#

Saturday, October 24, 2009

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KISS ME, I AM ARMENIAN

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Like love and hatred, ideologies and belief systems have a tendency to dehumanize men by reducing them to predictable clichés. That's because they create an environment wherein the men at the top behave like wolves and their followers like sheep.

*

To be a leader consists in mastering the technique of flattering and manipulating.

Fools will believe anything they are told provided they are first brainwashed to believe they are too smart to be fooled.

*

The Greeks brag about their past, the Yanks about their present. If you are disposed to brag, you will find something, anything, including military defeats by calling them moral victories, including being massacred by the million by calling it first genocide of the 20th century. I wouldn't be surprised if some day we hear of a jungle tribe in South America that brags about being the only tribe that believes in the divinity of ants and anacondas.

*

In a world where everyone thinks he is the best, he is the chosen, he is superior to all others, our choice is either being like them or defending our humanity even if it means having more doubts than certainties.

*

Though I have written a great deal about history, I am not a historian. But I can recognize a propagandist when I see one.

*

We a small, peace-loving, civilized, landlocked country surrounded on all sides by warlike, bloodthirsty giants? Not quite. We were not always small and we were not always landlocked, and we were not always peace-loving.

*

We are not so much a work in progress as a case of arrested development.

Kiss me, I am Armenian?

I will be grateful to my fellow countrymen if they don't kick me in the balls.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 25, 2009

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

OPTIONS

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

A slave has two options: to obey or to die. An Armenian writer's position today is not much different: he either says “yes, sir!” to our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their flunkies or he starves.

*

Like commissars, readers who are against criticism can be nasty critics and excellent executioners.

*

If you have been taken in by fools, you can't be as smart as you think you are. Now then, consider the number of times we have been taken in by the empty verbiage of promises and treaties of the West, our Big Brothers to the North, and American presidential candidates. I suspect if fools of the world had their own United Nations and we applied for membership, we would be rejected as surely as Turks are today by the EU on the grounds that we are not smart enough to be one of them.

*

If I am the only one who writes as I do, that doesn't mean I am also the only one who thinks as I do.

*

If you disagree with those who speak in the name of God and Country, you will be accused of speaking in the name of the Devil and in defense of treason. And dupes being dupes (present company suspected) will be against you.

*

What if I am wrong?

O how I wish I were!

*

“The unspoken message of everything he wrote was his conviction that far from being the smartest people on earth, his fellow countrymen were the dumbest.”

I would welcome this verdict in my obituary.

*

Words and actions have consequences; so do silence and inaction.

#

Monday, October 26, 2009

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

GOLDEN APPLES

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

One reason I write as I do is to celebrate the fact that I am no longer dependent on the charity of swine. Another is that no one gives a damn. In the kind of environment we have created for ourselves, the status of Armenian writers is (in the expression of Southern hillbillies) lower than a snake's belly full of buckshot.

*

And speaking of hillbillies: There was once and was not an old peasant by the name of Abou Hassan who had a worn out pair of shoes he wanted to get rid of. First he flings them out the window and they come flying right back in – compliments of an irate passerby. Next he takes a long walk and hurls them into a lake. Again they are returned to him by a furious fisherman. Finally he decides to bury them in his backyard. But as he gets busy digging a hole under cover of darkness, he is spied on by a nosy neighbor who thinks old man Abou is trying to hide his valuables...

*

Armenian writers and Abou Hassan's worn out shoes share one thing in common: they are not easy to get rid of. Systematically murdered by the likes of Talaat and Stalin, silenced and starved by our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, they refuse to be cast aside, drowned, and buried.

Why?

To what end?

For what purpose?

*

In Nicholson Baker's latest novel, THE ANTHOLOGIST (New York, 2009) I come across the following three lines from a poem by Coventry Patmore that may provide a tentative answer:

“When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.”

*

Armenian fables have a traditional ending that goes something like this:

“Three golden apples fell from heaven: the first for the teller of the tale, the second for those who heard it, and the third for those who understood it.”

What happens to the third golden apple when no one understands the hidden message of the story?

*

We are told people deserve their leaders. The same applies to their writers. If we no longer have writers like Abovian, Raffi, and Zabel Yessayan it may be because we are buried beneath a Mt. Ararat of rotten apples.

#

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

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

MINOU

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

When a little girl by the name of Minou Drouet published a volume of verse and was hailed as a prodigy by the French press, Cocteau said: “Every child is a genius except Minou Drouet.” And sure enough, she was never heard from again.

*

No one is born mediocre. Mediocrity is premeditated, planned, advertised, and promoted on the grounds that we need factory hands to build cars, construction workers to raise sky-scrapers; we need janitors and garbage collectors more than we need prophets; and above all, we need dupes willing and eager to fight and die for us in the name of patriotism.

*

A coward thinks he deserves a medal for slicing a watermelon; and my guess is, bullies like Bush Jr. and his vice think they deserve to be treated like saviors of the nation for their tough talk.

*

Those who have been exposed to only one side of the story as children, will find it very difficult to believe there may be another side as adults.

*

Who is more guilty: our enemies who slaughtered us or our friends who, for all practical purposes, they might as well have issued an invitation to the slaughter? As for our revolutionaries: all they appear to have learned from their blunders is to make fiery speeches.

#

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

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

PATHOLOGY

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

To hate, to really hate,

means to hate even those

who do not share your hatred.

That's the way our Turcocentric ghazetajis hate.

You can recognize a Turcocentric ghazetaji

by the fact that he writes only against Turks,

and he hates because he has been taught to hate.

He is following orders.

He has been told

Turks are the source of all evil.

As for the arrogance,

the incompetence,

and the stupidity of our bosses:

what arrogance?

What incompetence?

What stupidity?

What bosses?

A dog, it is said, knows his master,

but not his master's master.

Once, when I tried to explain

the dangers of pathological hatred

to one of our ghazetajis, he said:

“But all I am doing is

trying to defend our interests.”

Why is it that with defenders like him

I feel more threatened?

If you live in a world of illusions,

reality becomes a source of dread.

And because I speak of reality

I am identified as an enemy,

and worse, as pro-Turkish.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, October 29, 2009

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

COMMENTS

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

“Education is a womb-to-tomb activity. The person who isn't educating himself is obviously dead.” From INTERVIEWS WITH NORTHROP FRYE (Toronto, 2008, page 68.)

*

I remember to have read somewhere, it is easy to resurrect a corpse; much more difficult to raise the brain-dead.

*

In a recent issue of THE NEW YORKER (Oct. 21, 2009) there is a portrait of Nikki Finke, a Hollywood columnist, where we read that she “portrays many of the town's leaders as jackasses who elbow underlings aside to hog the spotlight... downsize underlings while lining their own pockets, and generally besmirch the fabric of civilization.”

*

Our problems are universal, with one difference: we don't like talking about them and whenever someone dares to do so, we shut him up in the name of patriotism, of course!

*

Our emperors have no clothes because what they need to hide is so tiny that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.

*

Armenians are incomprehensible not because they are too complex but because they are absurd.

*

Is writing for Armenians some kind of anomaly or a complex in need of psychological therapy? I am not sure. Judging by the number of writers we have produced and the zero effect they have had on the direction of our collective existence, it must surely qualify as an exercise in futility and a total waste of time. Perhaps one reason I go on writing is to remind our jackasses that they can't fool all the people all the time, and if there is only one they can't fool today, there may be two tomorrow.

*

I am told there are readers who can't stand the sight of my name on their computer screen. I have an instant solution to that problem: it's called the Spam button. You don't know about it? Ask a child.

*

Ajarian, the foremost authority on the Armenian language, is quoted as having said: “Who among us can pretend to know the Armenian language?”

#

Friday, October 30, 2009

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

OTTOMANISM AND ARMENIANISM

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

“If you have them at your mercy and they are in no position to retaliate, be merciless!” That's the Ottoman way. The Armenian way? About the same. If on occasion I show no mercy in my dealings with our jackasses, it's for a good reason: to let them have a taste of their own venom.

*

“Before they start accusing me of sins I have never even dreamed to commit, let me plead guilty to all of them to satisfy their blood lust.” This may well have been Naregatsi's state of mind when he sat down to compose his LAMENTATION. And judging by the astonishing number of sins he enumerates, the 11th century must have been our Golden Age of Backbiting.

*

It is written: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Armenian translation: “If he is innocent and you are guilty, stone the bugger to death before he has a chance to expose you.”

*

There is an inflexible law in our collective existence: “The better you get, the worst they treat you.” You want evidence? Make a list of our best writers and consider the manner of their deaths. And remember to include Talaat's and Stalin's victims because they were betrayed by their fellow Armenians. Americans treat their dogs with greater kindness. My guess is, the reason why we have a veritable alphabet soup of cultural and charitable foundations is to cover up our philistinism and Ottomanism.

#

Saturday, October 31, 2009

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

IN PRAISE OF THE OPPOSITION

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

Only the insecure read to have their prejudices reinforced.

As a Catholic I enjoyed reading books that were on the Index.

I was taught to believe Turks were bloodthirsty savages. I now have Turkish friends with whom I enjoy exchanging views – something I cannot say about my fellow Armenians.

After a brief stay in New York City, an anti-Semite friend of the family from Greece paid us a visit. “I saw quite a few Jews there,” he said at one point. “Guess what. They are people like you and me!”

I have met several Armenians, among them a poet and a businessman, who on visiting Turkey, they became infatuated with Turks. I have also met Armenians who after visiting the Homeland and on their return to America, they went down on their knees and, like the Polish Pope, kissed the tarmac.

I have learned more about Tashnaks by reading Ramgavars and vice versa.

I am a liberal who enjoys reading the NATIONAL REVIEW, and one of my favorite contemporary American writers is Buckley's son, Christopher.

Friends justify your blunders and cover up your failings, they thus do more harm than good. I have learned more about myself by reading my critics. Perhaps one reason we have been going backwards as a community is our collective fear of criticism and dissent.

Mart bidi ch'ellank!

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 1, 2009

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

MALEFACTORS

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

If I write what I think, it may be because so far no one has paid me to write what he thinks. And since no one has made that kind of indecent proposal, I have not even been tempted to surrender my virginity.

*

I don't trust the judgment of the powerful and the rich.

The greater the wealth, the emptier the suit.

In an environment where benefactors are kings, only brown-nosers prosper.

*

The establishment our capitalists support is reactionary, anti-intellectual, narrow, and intolerant.

It is against dissent and dialogue.

It is for decline and degeneration.

To our hirelings they may be manna from heaven, but to all honest men, they are no better than malefactors.

*

Turks quote me?

So what? I don't consider that a liability.

They quote me not because I am anti-Armenian or pro-Turkish but because I expose Armenian lies, in the same way that we quote Turks who expose Turkish lies.

Not all Turks are liars and not all Armenians are honest men.

If and when Armenians and Turks develop a consensus it will be because of the effort of dissidents, not those who trumpet chauvinist crapola from podiums and newspaper editorials.

#

Monday, November 2, 2009

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

RECAPITULATIONS

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

Our propagandists tell us we are the smartest people on earth.

Our writers are unanimous in telling us we are our own worst enemies.

How smart is that?

*

After creating an environment in which only bottom-feeders are allowed to survive and prosper, our propagandists tell us we are survivors par excellence.

*

Everyone likes to be told he is smart.

No one likes to be told he is dumb.

Our propagandists know this, but like all propagandists, they view deception as an integral part of their job.

*

Propaganda consists in exploiting lies.

Literature consists in exposing them.

You may now guess which branch of human endeavor prospers and which starves.

*

Ignorance, intolerance, and subservience to authority are not assets but they are touted as such by all propagandists.

*

The fact that I disagree with propagandists may well be irrelevant.

What is relevant however is that propagandists disagree with one another too – and I am not talking about Armenian versus Turkish propagandists but Armenian versus Armenian propagandists.

Case in point: Once, many years ago, after I interviewed a Tashnak leader, a Ramgavar wrote a letter to the editor in which he accused the Tashnak of being a compulsive and habitual liar. But what really surprised me was the fact that in his defense, the Tashnak did not deny the charge; instead he retaliated by dismissing the Ramgavar as a brainwashed Bolshevik.

Hatred of Turks also means hatred of fellow Armenians who do not share our ideology.

*

The two pillars of propaganda, loyalty and respect for authority, have been at the root of some of the worst crimes against humanity, including our own genocide. So much so that, “following orders” is no longer thought of as a legitimate legal defense.

*

No one can be as easily manipulated as a cowardly ignoramus. Such a one can even be brainwashed to die like a hero -- or, as the Armenian expression has it, as an “esh nahadag” (=a jackass martyr).

*

To brainwash innocent children is not thought of as a crime against humanity but as education; and to brainwash a nation is thought of as a patriotic duty.

*

On the Genocide: I am so busy examining my conscience that I leave the legalities to lawyers.

*

If you are arrogant enough to think that you know and understand all you need to know and understand, learning will become such an unbearably humiliating experience that ignorance will be seen as the more comfortable alternative.

*

Where there is a pundit there will also be a counter-pundit.

Whom to trust?

My answer: The pundit whose views are less flattering to my ego.

#

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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

HISTORY AND HISTORIANS

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

Historians don't understand history, or so we are told by historians themselves, who, as a rule, are also critics of their predecessors and contemporaries.

In his criticism of Karl Marx, Toynbee tells us one cannot explain historic occurrences by the faulty distribution of wealth. In other words – to somewhat simplify matters – money is not the only source of evil in human affairs; sometimes it's faith or organized religions. That's why he concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by saying mankind will know peace only when all religions are reorganized on the basis that Truth (Gandhi's definition of God) is One. The rest is propaganda.

Trevor-Roper criticized Toynbee – criticized? make it, savaged; make it, tore him to shreds – for being not a historian but a mystic and a prophet.

Were Toynbee and Trevor-Roper fair in their critiques of Marx and Toynbee respectively?

*

After an interview with Hitler in the 1930s, Toynbee stated “Herr Hitler is a man of peace.”

And Trevor-Roper: after publishing a best-selling book on the last days of Hitler, he authenticated Hitler's diaries which were later exposed as forgeries.

We all have our blind spots and historians are no exception.

Do Historians understand history?

They do, but only a fraction of it.

*

What about our own historians?

I am afraid the massacres in the Ottoman Empire have acted on them the way the Greek mythological figure of Medusa is said to act on those who beheld her: they (the massacres) have turned them(our historians) into stone.

*

Has any one of our historians been successful in explaining our decline and degeneration?

Why is it that for six hundred years we were not only subservient to a brutal empire but also acquired the reputation of being its “most loyal millet [subject nation]?”

To what extent subservience and massacre have combined to make of us what we have become?

Finally, has any one of our historians attempted to expose the absurdities of our propagandists?

Why not?

Is their intellectual blindness a result of ignorance or cowardice?

#

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

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

QUESTIONS

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

Never ask “Is he with us or against us?”

Ask instead, “Am I right or wrong?”

*

I like this thought by Jean Rostand: “In a future age we shall be just as astonished to find that we have had politicians as leaders as we are, today, to find that we once had barbers as surgeons.”

*

Gostan Zarian: “With us, the emphasis is on cunning: a character trait of slaves, devoid of creative impetus, never a source of strength.”

*

Nietzsche: "What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness."

*

Eric Hoffer: "Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."

*

Is what I am doing of any use to anyone?

I have no idea.

Why am I doing it?

I don’t know.

If I fall silent, will anyone miss me?

I doubt it.

After twenty years of hard labor have I accomplished anything?

I don’t think so – unless you consider perforating a few swollen egos

an accomplishment….

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 5, 2009

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

WHAT IF I AM WRONG?

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

That would be too good to be true!

Because if I am wrong, it means our writers from Khorenatsi (5th century) to our own days have been wrong in accusing our political leadership of incompetence and corruption.

It means no foreign or domestic tyrant has ever been successful in dividing us.

It means our bishops and benefactors have at no time used to the power of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) to divide us.

It means when Raffi said “treason and betrayal are in our blood,” he was only voicing his deep-seated hatred of his fellow countrymen.

It means when Baronian said, “If you want to wine and dine every day, be a bishop,” he was writing under the influenced of cynical and atheist French intellectuals who were in vogue at the turn of the last century in Istanbul.

It means our revolutionaries were at no time taken in by the empty promises of the West and the Turks had no reason to exterminate us because, as “the most loyal subjects” of the Empire, they needed our help against foreign and domestic enemies who were unanimous in their desire to see the Empire dismembered and buried never to rise again.

It means our post-World War II repatriates were treated by the natives not as “white trash” but as “brothers.”

Finally, it means when Gostan Zarian returned to the Homeland during Khrushchev's thaw, he was treated by his fellow writers as a literary giant rather than as an undesirable midget.

#

Friday, November 6, 2009

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

GREED

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

When belief systems are bureaucratized, they become interchangeable.

The Vatican and the Kremlin: two opposing systems, same number of innocent victims.

Criticism becomes treason when it targets in Infallible.

Greed for power turns decent men into cannibals.

That is why the wise shun power and in doing so they become victims.

In a dog-eat-dog world, the wise defend their humanity and are devoured.

*

An Armenian writer's first and only commandment:

“Thou shalt not write a single word that may offend a future source of income.”

Nothing comes easier to an Armenian writer than to verbally abuse a fellow writer.

I once heard an 80-year old writer refer to Zarian as “boy” and to an empty suit as “baron.”

*

Americans were defeated in Vietnam, but as far as I know no American ever called it a “moral victory.”

Moral victories are for losers.

No one ever goes to war to prove the moral inferiority of his enemy.

*

Can God speak to man?

Of course He can.

God can do anything!

But can man understand God?

Of course he cannot.

If man understood God, there would be only one God as opposed to ten thousand of them.

#

Saturday, November 7, 2009

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

MY FRIEND, THE RABBI

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

I have been cheated so many times

by so many people

in so many different ways that,

theoretically speaking,

the only time I should feel comfortable

is when I do the cheating,

which I never do,

not because I am morally superior,

but because I have had so little practice

that I am liable to get caught and fry.

*

“Why do the wealthy cheat the poor?

Why would someone who has everything

cheat someone like me who has nothing?”

I said, and he explained:

“How do you think they got to be wealthy?”

*

If an Armenian can be a friend to the devil,

he can be a friend to the Turk.

But to another Armenian? -- that's different.

*

EMPTY SUITS

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

First, they exploit their workers,

then they overprice their product

and after they make their first billion

they hate paying taxes

and love parading as kings,

and then they realize

being an Armenian is a bloodsport.

I speak from experience.

I write for them

*

Kirk Douglas defines an actor

as “someone who loves rejection.”

Hollywood stars and Armenian writers:

who would have thought?

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 8, 2009

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

FOOLS

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

They don't brag about their culture

and they have a Nobel-Prize winner.

We brag about ours,

and what have we got?

Ask an Armenian to name a contemporary Armenian writer

and he will give you a dirty “Who-gives-a-damn?” look.

*

Will Safire (may he rest in peace) once said

Germans have a tendency “to look the other way

when moral values are threatened.”

Ask an Armenian

what a moral value is

and the chances are he will give you

a “What-the-hell-is-that?” look.

Ask him what a human right is

and he will give you a hostile “Don't-waste-my-time” look.

Ask him if we are civilized, progressive, and smart

and he will reply

“Of course we are!” with a look that says

“How dare you ask such a dumb question, you fool?”

*

After centuries of life under sultans and commissars,

we might as well be blind

to moral, aesthetic, and democratic values.

*

No use blaming others.

The fault is in us or rather

in our mini-sultans and neo-commissars.

*

All nationalists lie

when they speak about themselves

and their enemies.

*

“For a fool he sure is smart!” I used to think,

until I realized he was not the fool,

I was.

#

Monday, November 9, 2009

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

LIES

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

If a man marries seven times

it only means one thing:

he is a poor judge of feminine flesh.

Likewise, if a nation has been subservient

to alien tyrants for a thousand years,

it only means one thing:

its unspoken motto is not

“freedom or death”

but “survival at all cost.”

*

Instead of raising our children

to brag about our survival,

we should teach them honesty.

And since we don't have an Armenian word for honesty,

we should invent one.

The alternative is rewriting history

and engaging in double-talk.

*

No one likes liars.

Even liars prefer to deal with honest men.

*

We are divided because both sides

are too busy covering up their lies

to be honest with themselves,

their counterparts, and the people.

*

For an adult to believe in Santa is bad enough,

but what is infinitely worse

is to be an habitual and compulsive liar

and to brag about one's honesty and love of truth.

#

REPLIES

TO A STUDENT'S QUESTIONS

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

Question: Do you believe what the Turks did to the Armenians in 1915 was genocide?

Answer: I do.

Q: Do you believe it was a deliberately adopted and systematically implemented policy by the Turkish government?

A: No doubt about that. It was planned and executed in cold blood. The evidence -- the testimony of survivors, eyewitness accounts, historians who have studied the record, not all of them Armenian, some of them Turkish -- is overwhelming. Besides, no nation in the history of mankind has ever fabricated a genocide and believed in it for nearly a century.

Q: Do you know or have you ever met a survivor?

A: I grew up in a ghetto near Athens, Greece, populated by several thousand survivors. Most of them were not educated or literate. They didn't like to reminisce. Besides, they were engaged in the serious business of surviving World War II, the German occupation, blockade by the Allies, the Greek Civil War... The poverty was appalling. The housing a disaster area -- as bad as the worst slums in South America and India.

Q: Some say the so-called deportations were flight from the violence – true or false?

A: My father was a teenager in 1915 and he was lucky in that a friend of the family, a Turkish cop, warned the family of the coming deportations. He was able to flee the violence but only with the shirt on his back. My mother was only a tiny baby who ended up in an orphanage in Lebanon run by Catholic nuns.

Q: Do you think the Armenian genocide has had any impact on the world?

A: None whatever! There have been more genocides in the last century than at any other time in the history of mankind.

Q: In your opinion, what is the most important thing you have heard concerning the genocide?

A: The unimaginable cruelty of the sadistic criminals – and they were criminals – who carried out the deportations.

Q: Do you believe that the deportations and marches of Armenians in 1915 were deliberately designed by the Turkish government to lead to the death of the deportees, or do you believe that it was unintentional?

A: It was deliberate and intentional – no doubt about that. The only explanation I have is that, the Turks were convinced they were fighting for their own survival against overwhelming enemies from without as well as from within, among them the Armenians.

Q: What do you think is the most important thing that people can learn from the Genocide?

A: Like all belief systems and ideologies, nationalism can also be abused. It was in the name of nationalism that our revolutionaries challenged the might of the Ottoman Empire, and it was in the name of nationalism that the Young Turks thought the only way to defend the integrity of their nation was to exterminate the Armenians.

Q: What are your impressions of people who say it wasn't really a genocide?

A: People can be brainwashed to believe anything. Luckily not everyone is vulnerable to being brainwashed. There is now a generation of Turkish intellectuals that no longer believe what their politicians dictate.

Q: Did your mother or anyone you know who went through the genocide ever mention concentration camps, mass burnings, starvation or massacres?

A: Both my father and mother were among the lucky ones who did not witness or experience these things – except near starvation and abominable poverty in an alien environment.

Q: What is the single most important thing you would tell someone who questions the reality of the Armenian genocide?

A: Only this: state propaganda cannot be a reliable source of information.

#

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

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

DIARY

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

With reasonable men, reason is enough.

With children, repetition has a better chance.

*

No one can be as dumb

as he who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.

*

According to Northrop Frye, the foremost Canadian authority on the Scriptures, the aim of the Bible is to expand human consciousness.

*

Philosophers are more modest than prophets. They don't pretend to speak in the name of God. No one has ever declared a war or tortured a fellow human being in defense of Plato's or Schopenhauer's theories.

*

The day man invented God,

he let loose the equivalent of ten thousand atomic bombs.

Who thinks of God as a weapon of mass destruction?

And yet...(the saddest words in the English language, it has been said).

*

For writing as I do, once upon a time I would have been sliced into ribbons and fed to the dogs by the Pope's henchmen.

*

Believing in miracles is bad enough.

Believing that man is worthy of them is worse.

*

To punish the guilty, sometimes Canadians send them back to their homeland.

I can't imagine a worse punishment.

*

Are we worthy of our martyrs?

What about our heroes?

Do we have them?

*

Every house in which I have lived has been torn down by either war or real-estate developers. My alma mater is now a motel. Which is almost like saying, my childhood sweetheart is now a bordello madam.

*

I have been a source of disappointment to everyone I have met, including myself, and I cannot decide whether that's an asset or a liability.

*

Good Armenians?

One in a thousand --

and I belong with the 999.

*

Eduardo Galeano in his MIRRORS writes: “Those who knew Leonardo said he never embraced a woman. Yet from his hand was born the most famous portrait of all times. A woman.”

And:

“Queen Elizabeth of England and the Sun King of France ate with their hands. When Michel de Montaigne ate in a hurry, he bit his fingers.”

*

When an old Indian predicted a bad winter and was asked how he can tell, he replied: “White man make big wood pile.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 12, 2009

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

DIARY / 2

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

“What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”

I copy these lines from a magazine article for those of my readers who say we need solutions.

*

To be a dupe in our context means to be deceived by frauds who have deceived themselves to believe they are leaders of men.

*

Let us not confuse anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.

*

Martin Scorcese: “...thanks to a professor named Haig Manoogian I discovered that I could express everything I felt through film.”

*

Salman Rushdie: “My father was a great religious scholar, but he wasn't a believer.”

*

David Lynch on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “I owe him the discovery that the possibility for happiness dwells within us.”

A hundred years before Maharishi, Tolstoy based a belief system on a 2000-year old dictum: “The kingdom of God is within you.”

*

There is only one religion: the search for meaning.

*

There is a type of reader who reads not to learn but to settle scores; not to engage in dialogue but to insult; and an insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre, perhaps because it is verbal massacre.

*

Nothing human is beyond criticism, including the Word of God as heard, interpreted, written down, translated, read and understood by man.

*

According to Buddha: “That which is spoken, heard, and understood are three different things.”

*

What a scathing book review Buddha would write of the Bible and the Koran!

#

Friday, November 13, 2009

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

DIARY / 3

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

To understand Turks, all I have to do is examine my own heart.

To understand Turkish lies, all I have to do is consider our own.

*

Why should I trust the judgment or integrity of men who hire belly-slitting lawyers whenever their sensibilities are offended?

*

Northrop Frye on a common misconception of God: “...the ferocious old bugger up in the sky with the whiskers and the reactionary political views, who enjoys sending people to hell.”

*

When I hear or read the word Islam, the first four words that come to mind are: giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad; and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.

*

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?

*

There is something in our partisans that doesn’t like disagreement, dissent, criticism, dialogue, democracy, free speech, human rights, honesty, straight talk, common sense….

*

The disagreement of a single honest man means much more to me than the agreement of a thousand fools and ten thousand dupes.

#

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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

DIARY / 4

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

Sooner or later all lies are exposed and replaced by other lies.

*

Truth is not a noun but a verb – it consists in shedding lies.

*

Ottomanism, Sovietism, Armenianism: the only difference between them is the number of dupes and hoodlums they control.

*

Northrop Frye's explanation of deconstruction: “Rousseau wrote on the origin of language, but he was primarily interested in masturbation.”

*

Eduardo Galeano: “Hunting Jews has always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill.”

*

Men need to believe in something, even if it is a lie that will enslave them.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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

DIARY / 5

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

When an American capitalist first heard the passage in the Scriptures that says a wealthy man cannot go to heaven in the same way that a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle, he hired a succession of theologians and demanded an explanation. Only one came up with the answer that pleased him which was this: The “Eye of a Needle” was the name of a narrow passage under a low bridge in Jerusalem. That theologian went home with a fat check in his pocket.

*

I suspect if you were to ask one of our bishops to explain the line “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he will say neither can a house with rotten foundations, and what could be more rotten than a heresy?

*

Theologians are like lawyers, they will plead not guilty even if their client is a serial killer who may kill again.

*

“The law is the law,” they say. So is the Word of God. But both cease to be what they claim to be if they are interpreted to mean the opposite of what they say.

*

I enjoy reading pundits who are on my side. I enjoy even more reading pundits of the opposition. But my very favorite pundits are liberals who turned conservative and vice versa.

*

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

*

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

#

Monday, November 16, 2009

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

DIARY / 6

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

What Romans did to their Christians,

Christians did to their heretics.

Religions and regimes may change,

but man stays the same

and the scum of the earth

always rises to the top.

*

The people who do the most harm to mankind

are, as a rule, the least aware of it.

They may even think of themselves

as the best and the brightest,

or promoters of virtue,

or representatives of God on earth.

Kings, popes, imams:

we may be justified in calling them

certified moral morons.

*

Something to remember and repeat:

Self-criticism is not unpatriotic.

Silencing critics is.

*

It was Kant who said that very often

ignorance is nothing but

cowardice in the face of knowledge.

*

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?”

#

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

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

DIARY / 7

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

I am grateful to all charlatans who,

with their example, taught me the value of honesty.

*

People profess to love the truth

but live as though they were afraid of it --

hence the old Armenian saying:

"If you speak the truth,

you will be chased out from seven villages."

*

The very same people

who pour venom on every line I write

and sling mud at me

(hoping some of it will stick),

accuse me of being negative.

*

In a dictionary of philosophy:

“Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure.

The megalomaniac represents himself

as he would like to be

but as he is not.

Megalomania may also be a symptom

of the decline of one’s critical faculties.”

*

On dogmatism:

“It stands in direct contradiction to criticism,

skepticism, empiricism, and realism.

It fosters intolerance and fanaticism.”

*

To be read by friendly readers:

nothing unusual in that.

To be read by hostiles:

That’s where the money is,

because it means being allowed the opportunity

to introduce ideas where none exist.

#

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

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

ON THE DEATH

OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE

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

Poverty should not be confused with destitution.

Poverty is the total absence of all luxuries.

Destitution means anxiety, fear, subservience, uncertainty, degradation, envy, anger, hatred, and worse of all, dependence on the charity of swine.

This may explain why our writers, who ought to know better, are more than willing to crap on one another and kiss the posterior not only of an empty suit with money but also his flunkies and hirelings.

Their central concern is not producing a decent line but getting closer to the money tree even if the tree bears poisoned fruit.

*

What is an old man if not a fool with wrinkles?

*

A common Armenian misconception promoted by our ubiquitous and dime-a-dozen Turcocentric ghazetajis: to equate anti-Turkism with pro-Armenianism.

*

Our collective self-esteem is so low that it needs constant positive feedback. Hence the mantras first nation this and first nation that...

*

There is no such thing as an average Armenian. An average Armenian is a self-assessed genius and an unappreciated and misunderstood Armenian.

*

Asked what he thought of Nietzsche, Jules Romain replied: “There are too many unnecessary letters in his name.”

*

After reading one of my things,

an old friend writes: “I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that

I loathe patriotism.

I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality;

and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 19, 2009

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

CANADIAN VALUES

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

Two widely held views on Canada by Canadians:

“This country was founded on Christian values.”

“Canada is ours: we stole it from the Indians fair and square.”

*

ARMENIAN VALUES

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

It makes no difference whether you cut a writer's tongue out or you silence him.

Neither does it make any difference whether you kill him or you ignore him.

The result will be the same.

*

CATECHISM 101

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

Q: Do you believe Jesus was the son of God?

A: Aren't we all? We don't say “Our stepFather who art in heaven,” or “Our Father-in-law...” We say “Our Father...”

Q: Do you believe He rose from the dead?

A: I believe he never died. All gods are immortal. They don't die. That's a rule without exceptions.

*

DENIALISTS

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

Q: How do you explain American academics who deny the Genocide?

A: Promise an academic a regular salary and he will deny his own existence.

Q: What about Jews who deny the Genocide?

A: Jews don't, Israeli politicians do, and politicians have no principles, only interests.

*

ON TREASON

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

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly, but the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. “

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42 BC

#

Friday, November 20, 2009

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

ON REPETITION

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

Advertisements and propaganda

appeal to our lowest instincts

and they thrive on repetition.

Do I repeat myself?

Why shouldn't I?

If repetition works for the devil,

it can work for Jesus,

which is what Martin Luther said

when he adapted drinking songs to church hymns.

*

CRITICS

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

To subscribe to a belief system

means to reject all others

as aberrations, deviations and heresies.

To say I am against criticism

is also criticism.

*

INFANTILE CRITICISM

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

Because I write against prejudice,

I am accused of being prejudiced.

Because I write against subservience and ignorance,

I am accused of both transgressions.

The offspring of perennial victims,

I am accused of being on the side of victimizers.

Because I refuse to be a dupe,

I am told I am a dupe of enemy propaganda.

I call this type of criticism

tit-for-tat, senile, or infantile criticism.

*

LIES

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

What is the biggest Armenian lie?

That Armenians are honest.

What is the dumbest Armenian lie?

That Armenians are smart.

#

Saturday, November 21, 2009

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

TO MY CRITICS

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

If you have irrefutable evidence that suggests I am wrong,

then I must be wrong and I plead guilty as charged.

If, on the other hand, your evidence is based

on hearsay, propaganda, or a belief system,

then I suggest it is suspect

and therefore inadmissible.

*

Belief systems are infallible only to their dupes.

*

Knowledge based on propaganda

(and the favorite medium of all belief systems is propaganda )

is worse than ignorance.

*

When belief systems speak in terms of certainties,

they lie. And because they lie,

we have heresies, holy wars, and jihads

all of which operate like licenses

to commit crimes against humanity

in the name of an idol parading as God Almighty.

*

In a biography of Churchill I read today that

one of his favorite mottoes when in trouble was:

KBO = Keep Buggering On.

Perhaps that’s what I have been doing all along too

but didn’t know what to call it.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, November 22, 2009

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

ON INDEPENDENCE

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

Simon Rodriguez is a 19th-century South-American writer and educator who could have had Armenians in mind when he wrote: “We are independent but not free. Something must be done for these poor people, who have become less free than before. Before, they had a shepherd king who did not eat them until they were dead. Now the first to show up eats them alive.”

On education: “Teach children to be curious so they learn to obey their own minds rather than obeying authorities the way the narrow-minded do, or obeying custom the way the stupid do. He who knows nothing, anyone can fool. He who has nothing, anyone can buy.”

*

ON JUSTICE

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

We should speak about the Genocide less to demand justice and more to remind ourselves where we live. Justice is a noble goal but it is not always attainable.

*

YANKS

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

You want to know why Americans refuse to recognize the Genocide? Read their history and their treatment of Blacks, Indians, and Latinos; or listen to their music; or watch their gangster movies in which the criminals are the heroes.

*

PIERRE BOULEZ SPEAKS

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

On funerals: “It's depressing to revive a part of your life that's dead. I am not one who goes to funerals for enjoyment.”

On patriotism: “I heard too many of Petain's disgusting speeches during the Occupation to give patriotism a single thought.”

#

Monday, November 23, 2009

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

ON KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

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

The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for its brainless(*) to assume they are the brains of the people.

*

First they assumed to be smart – which was a serious blunder.

Then they assumed to know better – another serious blunder.

And now they spend most of their time and energy covering up both blunders – which is the greatest blunder of all, because it keeps them so busy that they don't have the time to identify and focus on our present problems.

*

The solution is obvious:

the first step is to admit they are not as smart as they think they are. But even if they were, that doesn't mean they are without limitations. Even the wisest men on earth don't know and understand everything.

*

To be smart or to know better does not mean to understand reality. No one can truly say he understands all of reality. The very best we can do is understand a small fraction of it.

*

When asked why things exist, all scientists and philosophers can say is, existence “is just one of those things,” which translated into dollars and cents means “we don't have a clue.” Which also means, to know a great many things does not mean to know the most important things. Or, to be the best Oriental carpet dealer in the world does not mean to know how to lead a dog to the nearest fire hydrant or to catch a cold in a flu epidemic.

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

(*) Avedik Issahakian's characterization of our leadership.

##

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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

GEOGRAPHY

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

To those who blame our misfortunes not on our rotten leadership but on geography, consider the following passage from Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS, which may best be described as history stripped of all propaganda.

After decapitating everyone who had taken part in the Boxer rebellion in China at the turn of the last century, we read, “Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Japan, and the United States...sliced up China as if it were a pizza, and each took ports, lands, and cities that the phantasmal Chinese dynasty bestowed upon them as concessions for periods of up to ninety-nine years.”

Closer to home, consider the case of the natives in America, Mexico, and Canada who were too busy slaughtering one another to present a united front to the handful of white men who ended up slaughtering them. Now then, tell me, what part did their geography play in their defeat and subjection?

*

Elsewhere, Galeano identified Heinrich Goering, father of the Nazi Hermann, as “one of the perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century.” The victims are identified as the Hereros of Namibia. The order for their annihilation, we are told, was issued and carried out in 1904. And, “Of every four Hereros, three were killed, by cannon fire or the desert sun.”

If you don't know who the Hereros are and where Namibia is, no matter. Very probably, my guess is, the Hereros, like so many Canadians I have met, don't know either who the Armenians are and where Armenia is.

#

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

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

MORE FROM GALEANO

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

Armenians are not mentioned in the index of Eduardo Galeano's MIRRORS but are discussed on page 300, where we read:

“The Ottoman Empire was falling to pieces and the Armenians paid the price. While the First World War thundered on, government-sponsored butchery did away with half of the Armenians in Turkey:

homes ransacked and burned,

columns of people fleeing without clothes, water, or anything else,

women raped in town squares in broad daylight,

mutilated bodies floating on the rivers.

Whoever escaped thirst or hunger or cold died by the knife or the bullet. Or the gallows. Or by smoke: in the Syrian desert, Armenians driven out of Turkey were forced into caves and suffocated with smoke, in what foreshadowed the Nazi gas chambers to come.

“Twenty years later, Hitler and his advisers were planning the invasion of Poland. Weighing the pros and cons, Hitler realized there would be protests, diplomatic outrage, loud complaints, but he was certain the noise would not last. And to prove his point, he asked:

“Who remembers the Armenians?”

*

Galeano is identified as “one of Latin America's most distinguished writers [whose] work has been translated into twenty-eight languages."

I have every reason to suspect if MIRRORS is ever translated into Turkish, this passage quoted above will be omitted. But if it isn't and the translator is an Armenian, he will be accused of insulting Turkish honor, arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to ninety-nine years in prison.

Lord have mercy on honest witnesses for they shall never be forgiven by crooks.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, November 26, 2009

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

MORE IS LESS

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

A Turkish-Armenian is more Turkish and less Armenian.

A Soviet-Armenian is more Soviet and less Armenian.

An Armenian-American is more American and less Armenian.

An Armenian from the Middle-East is more Levantine and less Armenian.

Something similar could be said of French-Armenians, Greek-Armenians, Italian-Armenians (assuming there are some left), and so on.

That's because, in Krikor Zohrab's words: “As impressionable as soft wax, the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices of the country in which he happens to be living.”

And I remember a retired Armenian schoolteacher in her eighties (may she rest in peace and may the blessing of the Lord be upon her) saying, “Armenians are fast learners of all the wrong things.”

*

When Isaac Babel was silenced by the Soviet regime, he said he had invented a new genre: “Silence.”

*

To those who brag about our survival, I say, I would like to hear the testimony of those who did not survive – victims of massacres, earthquakes, starvation, betrayal, and idiots pretending to be leaders of men.

*

Literature flatters no one. Propaganda flatters everyone -- hence its popularity.

*

My severest critics are readers who have not yet mastered the difficult art of understanding simple sentences in the English language.

*

I have discovered that one of the hardest things to explain to a smart (self-assessed, of course) Armenian is this: to refuse to say “yes, sir!” to idiots is not treason.

#

Friday, November 27, 2009

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

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE WORLD

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

The disciple of an infallible master will think of himself as infallible.

*

When asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, Diogenes (4th century BC) replied: “Freedom of speech.” Ask one of our commissars what's the worst thing in the world, and he will give you the same answer.

*

There are those who believe our religion has civilized us. There are also those who believe our religion has made of us passive cowards and ideal subjects of tyrants (both foreign and domestic). Who is right? It depends on your choice of evidence: historic reality or narcissism; facts or wishful thinking.

*

Standards have fallen so low that if a man with money can draw the outline of a fish, write a grammatically correct sentence, and quote a line from Shakespeare, he is immediately declared to be a scholar, a gentleman, and a Renaissance man.

*

Armenian Ottomanism? Observe a brother on the warpath trying to get even with a fellow Armenian who has dared to question his judgment.

*

Armenian stages: acceptance, suspicion, dissent, anger, disgust, resignation, despair, alienation, assimilation.

*

Kierkegaard's question: “How many so-called Christians are really Christian?

#

Saturday, November 28, 2009

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

WHAT A WORLD!

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

When the judge and jury are murderers and the defendant is also a murderer whose motive is as clear as daylight, why should we be surprised if he is found not guilty by reason of insufficient evidence? That's one way to explain why the Yanks refuse to recognize the Genocide.

*

It was a case of the blind leading the blind, but they blame the Turks, they blame the West, they blame the opposition, and some of them even blame the victims for their refusal to join their ranks, after which they parade as men of vision.

*

What would you have done in their place? I am asked again and again. Probably what they did and what they are doing. Understanding must begin somewhere and the best place is the self.

*

“A writer without a homeland is like a king in exile,” writes Golo Mann. Speaking for myself I feel more like the inmate of a Gulag whose existence the regime denies and is believed by dupes.

*

If you ask a serial adulterer why he is always the one to cast the first stone, my guess is, he will answer: “It's good PR!”

*

An alienated Armenian is one who after rejecting his Ottomanism, Sovietism, Levantinism, and Americanism, is now in search of his humanity.

*

A headline in my morning paper reads, “Want monogamy? Marry a swan.” The first line of the article informs us: “Actually, it turns out swans cheat, too.” Who would have guessed we live in a world where even swans behave like swine?

#

[arabaliozian]

Entretien avec l’écrivain Ara Baliozian

par Liana Aghajanian

IanyanMag, 13.10.2009

« Les deux atouts majeurs d’un écrivain : une sensibilité d’écorché vif et le cuir d’un rhinocéros », écrit Ara Baliozian sur son blog, qui héberge ses réflexions quotidiennes sur des thèmes allant de la religion à l’argent, la politique, la littérature et naturellement des thématiques arméniennes. Les écrits de Baliozian, auteur et traducteur, lui valent nombre de flèches de la part du lectorat arménien, mais cela ne l’empêche pas de distiller ses critiques et observations.

Né en Grèce et éduqué à Venise, Baliozian vit actuellement à Kitchener, au Canada. Il a publié plusieurs ouvrages, dont Armenians : Their History and Culture et In the New World et en a traduit beaucoup d’autres. Il publie maintenant ses œuvres principalement sur des forums internet arméniens, mais il a accepté de répondre à quelques questions pertinentes.

- Liana Aghajanian : Ma première question sera simple, mais il sera peut-être difficile d’y répondre : pourquoi écrivez-vous ?

- Ara Baliozian : J’écris parce qu’écrire est devenu une habitude et, comme l’on sait, il est plus facile de conserver des habitudes que de s’en défaire.

- Liana Aghajanian : Quel est le meilleur conseil que vous donneriez à un jeune écrivain arménien comme moi ?

- Ara Baliozian : Etre honnête avec vous-même et vos lecteurs. Ne rien accepter sur quelque autorité que ce soit. Dans notre monde actuel, plus les gens s’élèvent, plus ils mentent.

- Liana Aghajanian : Beaucoup d’écrivains de votre génération, qu’ils soient arméniens ou non, ne se sont pas adaptés à internet avec votre facilité. Comment et quand avez-vous commencé à utiliser internet pour faire partager vos écrits ? Quel a été l’élément déclencheur ?

- Ara Baliozian : Je dois ma pratique d’internet à mon cher ami Noubar Poladian, qui est venu me voir à plusieurs reprises depuis Toronto (96 km) pour m’apprendre à utiliser un ordinateur alors que je lui disais ma résistance à abandonner ma vieille machine à écrire.

- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos rituels d’écriture, si tel est le cas ? Ecrivez-vous à tel moment de la journée ou dans un lieu particulier ?

- Ara Baliozian : J’écris très tôt le matin, quand tout le monde dort et qu’il fait noir au dehors. Je n’écris qu’une simple page. Il m’arrive de prendre des notes durant la journée, dont j’écarte la plupart le matin venu.

- Liana Aghajanian : Que pensez-vous des protocoles entre l’Arménie et la Turquie et comment voyez-vous ceux qui dans la diaspora font campagne contre ces protocoles ? Si vous êtes opposé à ces protocoles, quelle est l’alternative ? Et selon vous, quel est le meilleur moyen pour la diaspora d’exprimer ses inquiétudes ?

- Ara Baliozian : Je suis totalement pour une amitié avec nos ennemis, du moment que nous pouvons obtenir davantage de concessions de leur part comme amis, plutôt que comme ennemis. J’ajoute que je ne prends pas au sérieux ces protocoles. Mais c’est un début, ce qui est mieux que rien. La mère patrie et la diaspora ont des priorités différentes. Il serait égoïste de notre part de considérer nos priorités comme supérieures ou plus urgentes que celle de la mère patrie. Laissons les choses suivre leur cours. Laissons la mère patrie gérer ses affaires. De toute manière, les Turcs savent que l’Arménie ne représente pas la diaspora. Quant à nos inquiétudes, je pense que les Turcs en sont aussi conscients. Et si leur intention est de nous diviser, à nous de ne pas tomber dans le piège.

- Liana Aghajanian : A quelles sortes de concessions pensez-vous ?

- Ara Baliozian : On pourrait commencer par demander aux Turcs de nous permettre de prendre soin de nos anciens monuments à Ani, Van et ailleurs. Quant aux concessions territoriales, il me semble que si nous nous dirigeons vers une sorte d’Union ou une liberté de circulation dans le cadre d’Etats-Unis du Moyen-Orient ou du Caucase, les frontières de l’Arménie historique et de l’Azerbaïdjan deviendront obsolètes.

- Liana Aghajanian : Vous faites l’objet de rudes critiques de la part de nombreux Arméniens qui n’approuvent pas vos écrits et vos opinions, allant même jusqu’à vous insulter à de nombreuses occasions. Comment vous en accommodez-vous et qu’est-ce qui dans vos écrits dérange les Arméniens ?

- Ara Baliozian : En règle générale, je suis insulté par des lecteurs endoctrinés, exposés à d’innombrables prêches et discours, sans avoir lu le moindre écrivain. Ce qui les dérange c’est le fait que je me refuse à recycler une propagande chauviniste. Des choses comme la bataille d’Avaraïr (dont même certains de nos historiens nient l’existence), être la première nation qui se soit convertie au christianisme (la véritable question est : avons-nous jamais été de bons chrétiens ?), la première nation à avoir été la cible d’un génocide (au nom de quoi s’en vanter ?). Nous serions intelligents ? En politique nous n’arrivons même pas à nous qualifier sur le tard.

- Liana Aghajanian : Vous avez récemment écrit sur votre blog : « J’estime que le génocide résulte de deux erreurs monumentales commises par des nationalistes fanatiques et forcenés des deux côtés. Il va sans dire que le massacre de civils innocents est un crime bien plus grave que la stupidité et l’ignorance. Il se peut que l’ignorance soit la plus innocente de toutes les transgressions, mais dans la vie c’est celle qui est la plus sévèrement punie. S’il est des lois inflexibles dans la vie, celle-ci en fait à coup sûr partie. En parlant de lois inflexibles, en voici une autre : si vous refusez de tirer quelque enseignement de vos erreurs, vous vous condamnez à les répéter. Qu’avons-nous appris de notre génocide ? Que dire, sinon que nous sommes à la merci de conditions historiques inévitables ou de forces qui nous dépassent ? Même erreur, même propagande, même Super Mensonge fabriqué et recyclé par des hommes qui sont trop paresseux ou stupides pour penser par eux-mêmes. » - Pourriez-vous être plus explicite ? Quels ont été les erreurs majeures de la culture arménienne en tant que telle ? Pouvons-nous faire des progrès, selon vous ?

- Ara Baliozian : Notre grande erreur – ou plutôt celle de nos révolutionnaires – a été de croire dans les promesses verbales des grandes puissances. A cette idée que leur soutien nous rendait invulnérable. Dans la diplomatie internationale, les promesses verbales, même les traités, n’ont aucune valeur si l’on n’a pas les moyens de les mettre en œuvre.

Notre seconde erreur est d’imputer nos malheurs actuels (l’expatriation et l’assimilation dans la diaspora – qualifiée aussi de génocide blanc) à des conditions sociales, politiques et culturelles qui nous dépassent… autrement dit, d’adopter une position passive, au lieu d’assumer un rôle actif en nous organisant, nous montrant solidaires, en mettant fin à des conflits et divisions mutuelles.

- Liana Aghajanian : Avez-vous des regrets, professionnels ou personnels ?

- Ara Baliozian : L’un de mes plus grands regrets est d’avoir attendu la trentaine avant de me consacrer à temps plein à l’écriture. J’aurais dû le faire plus tôt.

- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos héros dans la vie ?

- Ara Baliozian : Platon, Gandhi, Thoreau… pour n’en citer que trois parmi tant d’autres.

- Liana Aghajanian : Si vous deviez choisir, quels seraient, selon vous, les meilleurs modèles ou dirigeants dans la communauté arménienne dont les Arméniens pourraient beaucoup apprendre ? Et s’il n’y en a pas, selon vous, pourriez-vous expliquer pourquoi ?

- Ara Baliozian : Nous pouvons apprendre un tas de choses de nos écrivains – Grégoire de Narek, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zohrab, Zarian, Massikian… Hélas, je ne vois personne de nos jours qui leur arrive à la hauteur !

- Liana Aghajanian : Pourquoi, selon vous, est-il si difficile pour les Arméniens d’avoir un débat franc et raisonné sans confrontation, préjugé ou a priori ?

- Ara Baliozian : Ceux qui ont subi un lavage de cerveau ont tendance à être dogmatiques, autrement dit, intolérants. Or les intolérants ne peuvent s’engager dans un dialogue, ils préfèrent donner des sermons et pérorer.

- Liana Aghajanian : Quand vous n’écrivez pas, que faites-vous de vos loisirs ?

- Ara Baliozian : Rien ne me fait davantage plaisir que jouer du Bach à l’orgue.

- Liana Aghajanian : Ayant décidé de vouloir être un écrivain, vous auriez pu facilement ne pas écrire à propos des Arméniens. Pourquoi avez-vous décidé de le faire ?

- Ara Baliozian : J’ai commencé par écrire et publier des romans, qui m’on valu plusieurs prix littéraires et bourses du gouvernement canadien – jusqu’à ce que je réalise que le but du roman est de divertir la bourgeoisie. Comprendre et expliquer la réalité : voilà ce que je veux faire maintenant… et j’y éprouve davantage de plaisir qu’à écrire des histoires d’amour ou, pour citer Sartre, sur « les affres mutuelles de l’amour ».

- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos livres favoris ?

- Ara Baliozian : En arménien : Le Voyageur et sa route, de Zarian. En russe : Pères et fils, de Tourgueniev. En anglais : Reconsidérations, de Toynbee. En français : Les Mots, de Sartre. En grec : Zorba le Grec, de Kazantzakis.

- Liana Aghajanian : Quels sont vos plats arméniens favoris ?

- Ara Baliozian : Je suis végétarien.

Liana Aghajanian est rédactrice en chef d’IanyanMag, tout en étant éditeur à temps plein et écrivain à ses heures à Los Angeles. « Je prends mon tchaï sans sucre, mais mon dolma avec beaucoup de yaourt ! »

Blog d’Ara Baliozian : http://baliozian.blogspot.com/

Source : http://www.ianyanmag.com/?p=1230

Traduction : © Georges Festa pour Denis Donikian, 10.2009

[arabaliozian]

Notes: Sunday, November 29, 2009

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

ON SELF-ASSESSMENT

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

Popes, imams, dupes, and fanatics – that is to say, the majority of mankind – are never wrong. They may say “man is a fallible creature,” but they believe it doesn't apply to them. To everyone else, yes. To them, hell no!

*

If Mt. Ararat were allowed to assess its own height, it would say it is higher than Everest.

Mt. Ararat?

Make it, a hill of beans.

Even better, make it a pile of sh-t!

*

The greater the number of doubts, the greater the number of aggressively asserted certainties.

*

Power and propaganda are Siamese twins. Separate them and they both die.

*

One reason why imperial powers like Russia and the United States oppose democratic reforms in other countries, including our own, is that they hate to be at the whim of the people. Another reason: corrupt regimes are more easily bribed, blackmailed, and manipulated.

*

Why did Nobel Prize winners like Knut Hamsun and Sartre support Stalin and Hitler? My only answer: where emotions enter, common sense exits. Both Hamsun and Sartre saw only the positive in an alien system and the negative in their own.

#

Monday, November 230, 2009

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

REFLECTIONS OF A CYNIC

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

To commemorate the massacre of 70,000 Protestants in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck. So much for religious tolerance, Christian charity, and Papal infallibility.

*

When two men speak badly of each other, I am tempted to believe both . When they praise each other, I smell a conspiracy.

*

Armenian anti-Semites say the Young Turks were Semites. Speaking for myself, I am less interested in knowing what others (be they Semites or goyim) did to us, and more interested in knowing what we, or rather our leadership, did for us.

If they did something, what exactly?

If nothing, what kind of leaders do nothing but pull their dick in time of crisis?

*

Blaming our misfortunes on others is a dead end because it only reinforces our image as perennial losers and victims. Recognizing our blunders and learning from them however may teach us not to behave like idiots in the future.

*

Hugo Grotius was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher whose famous last words were: “By understanding many things, I have accomplished nothing.”

Speaking of understanding, my favorite famous last words are Hegel's: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn't understand me.”

*

Karl Marx understood Hegel, and those who read and understand Marx call themselves Marxists. But Marx himself said he was not a Marxist, probably because he knew where there is an -ism, or an ideology, or a belief system, there will also be swine like the above-mentioned pope, who not only did nothing to stop the massacres but celebrated the occasion as a victory.

*

What does the papacy and our leadership share in common? The pope struck a medal, our leaders raise monuments and build museums.

#

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

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

WORTH REPEATING

& REMEMBERING

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

“An Armenian's tongue is sharper than a Turk's yataghan.” (Zarian)

*

“Soft words can break bones.” (Anonymous)

*

“Where Armenian blood flows, look for an Armenian hatchet.” (Raffi)

*

“You want to save your fellow men?

Prepare yourself to be crucified.” (Raffi)

*

“A nation's history is an extension of its character.” (Nejdeh)

*

“Armenian literature is a cemetery and

writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as going to a funeral.” (Massikian)

*

“Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom.

We are now afraid of free speech.” (Garabents)

*

“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.” (Zarian)

*

“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds,

divisiveness of evil ones.” (Yeghishé)

*

“You must burn in order to enlighten.” (Toumanian)

*

“Let us learn to be human by observing animals.” (Aramais Sahakian)

*

“A hungry vegetarian can be as dangerous as a carnivore.” (Yeznig Palig)

*

“Teaching consists in opening the mind.

The mouth will open by itself.” (Avedik Issahakian)

#

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

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

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

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

In an environment where no one thinks, thinking becomes a risky business. Socrates was not the only thinker who was condemned to death by a so-called enlightened and progressive democracy. You may be surprised to learn that the overwhelming majority of thinkers did not die a natural death but were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, burned alive, beheaded, committed suicide, and executed; or like Plato, Aristotle, and Voltaire, lived in fear of their life. For more on this subject see THE BOOK OF DEAD PHILOSOPHERS by Simon Critchley (London, 2008).

*

The shortest list in the world? That of great Armenian statesmen.

*

In judging others, I judge myself, or an aspect of myself that continues to reside within me even if only as a memory.

*

I have many doubts about many things but about one thing I am certain: those I have insulted will neither forgive nor forget me.

*

I condemn no one by calling them fools, dupes, and swine.

I have been called worse names and I feel just fine.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 3, 2009

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

COMPASSION

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

Yesterday, when I said something to the effect that the majority of philosophers, beginning with Socrates, met a violent end, a gentle reader took it upon himself to point out that I had nothing to worry about. I am, of course, fully aware of the fact that Armenians do not as a rule condemn their writers to death. They only betray them to the authorities, even when the authorities happen to be bloodthirsty barbarians like Talaat and Stalin. After all, it is not for nothing that we are universally respected as the first nation that converted to Christianity, a religion based on compassion, which is a word we don't have in Armenian, and if we do, we never use it. My own dictionary translates it as "koot," which means pity rather than compassion, which means suffering with.

*

Propaganda allows bloodthirsty barbarians to say their aim is to advance the cause of civilization. As for their victims, propaganda allows them the luxury of bragging about their moral superiority.

*

If individual freedom is God's gift to us, as theologians are eager to explain, why is He more protective of the barbarian's freedom and less of the victim's? Is it conceivable that the Almighty is an unequal opportunity defender in Whose eyes the barbarian's freedom is of greater concern than the freedom of the defenseless victim?

*

Mao said, “Let one hundred flowers bloom, let one hundred schools of thought contend.”

Napoleon said, “A man with an idea is my enemy.”

Mao spoke like Mao but acted like Napoleon.

That's politics for you. You tell them what they want to hear and do what you have to do even when what you have to do stands in direct contradiction to what you tell them.

*

Propaganda is a win-win proposition, or a lottery in which everyone wins the first prize.

#

Friday, December 4, 2009

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

THIS AND THAT

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

Repetition is the most powerful tool of persuasion. Commercials, slogans, prayers, sermons, and speeches rely on repeating a handful of predictable lines and ideas.

If thinkers have been unpopular with their contemporaries it may be because they refused to repeat what everyone wanted to hear.

*

There are those who believe patriotism consists in emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative. If a doctor were to behave like a patriot, the mortality of his patients would escalate dramatically.

*

The man who has stolen a billion dollars will plead not guilty, hire a dream team of lawyers, and cut a deal with the prosecution.

*

What could be more cowardly than insulting someone anonymously and from a safe distance?

*

One of the worst mistakes I have made in my life is treating some of my fellow men as if they were human.

#

Saturday, December 5, 2009

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

WANTED: WORDS

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

We don't have a word for compassion, and if we do, we never use it – at least I have never heard anyone use it, which may suggest we think of it as an irrelevant abstraction devoid of all cash value.

Life has taught us to think in terms of you are either with us or against us and if you are against us you might as well be a Turk in disguise. By life, I mean of course our former masters – be they Soviet, Ottoman, or any other Asiatic barbarian you care to mention.

Deviate a fraction of an inch from the line established from above and you are toast. I can tell that by the kind of insults hurled in my direction by gentle readers who operate on the assumption that as men of God and capital (make it, Capital and god) our bosses, bishops, and benefactors must know better than a lowly scribbler who can't even make ends meet.

If we don't have words for honesty, compassion, and compromise, let's borrow them. Nothing wrong in borrowing. Most of our words are borrowed from other languages to begin with. But if we have words for them, let's resurrect them by all means, and even more important, let's use and practice them. A nation of dishonest, uncompromising men devoid of all compassion is a nation on its way to the devil – if not already there.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 6, 2009

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

SAFE ASSUMPTIONS

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

The chances are everything you were taught as a child when you couldn't yet think for yourself is a lie.

*

Any idea that divides our fellow men into them and us is based on a fallacy.

*

They did to us what we would have done to them. Our so-called moral superiority is nothing but an extension of military inferiority.

*

If reason is against us we drown it in an avalanche of empty verbiage.

Where there are too many long-winded speechifiers there are as many lies.

*

Where speechifiers are a dominant minority, dialogue will be seen as suspect.

*

The bigger the mouth, the smaller the brain.

*

Freedom of thought begins on the day we teach ourselves to say “No, sir!” to those who expect us to say “Yes, sir!”

*

Anything that justifies wars and massacres is wrong and anyone who justifies them is a liar.

*

I may know something you don't know, but that doesn't make me better or wiser.

*

The worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by fools who thought they knew better or they had God on their side.

#

Monday, December 7, 2009

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

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

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

In a message to the Venetians, Pius II wrote in 1458:

“How much of your ancient character have you lost

as a result of too much intercourse with the Turks!”

Makes you think, doesn't it?

*

“La donna e mobile” says a famous Verdi aria.

So are (alas!) Armenian friends.

I have made and lost friends on the flimsiest of reasons.

I have made friends because I was Armenian,

and I have lost friends because

I did not share their anti-Semitism.

*

“An Armenian loves to eat

and he eats to hate,”

says an Armenian song.

And speaking of eating and hating:

“One Armenian eats one chicken,

two Armenians eat two chickens,

three Armenians eat each other.”

*

In a letter from a friend:

"If, as you say, Armenian literature is a dead end,

why not give it up?"

I write for two totally non-literary reasons:

to fight boredom and

to acquire friends;

and with every book I have published,

I have acquired a new friend;

also made not two but twenty-two enemies?

*

Raffi: "Even those among us

who have taken it upon themselves

to educate the people

are nothing but uneducated ignoramuses."

#

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

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

DECEPTION

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

If no one deceives us,

we deceive ourselves into thinking

we are the center of the universe

and what we think and say matters.

*

Deception works because we like to be deceived.

We like to be deceived so much that

we are more than willing to compensate our deceivers.

Some of the most highly paid men today

are professional, full-time deceivers.

They call themselves consultants,

public relations men, spin doctors,

advertisers, diplomats, lawyers, historians,

social engineers, chief executive officers, pundits,

senators and heads of state.

In the Vatican they are identified as

“propagators of the faith.”

Their counterparts in America

call themselves televangelists.

In Nazi Germany they worked for Dr Goebbels

and it's amazing the kind of people

that were taken in by their lies.

*

Do deceivers believe in their own lies?

If they do, they are dupes.

If they don't, they are crooks with a forked tongue.

In either case they deserve our contempt and ridicule.

*

Anyone who pretends to know and understand

more than he does is a deceivers.

And anyone who says “yes, sir!”

to someone he views as infallible is a dupe.

*

Chekhov was right when he said:

“If I cannot answer the most important questions,

am I not deceiving my readers?”

*

Today's quotations in my morning paper

is by Elbert Hubbard and it reads:

“Genius may have its limitations,

but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

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

SHUT UP AND TALK!

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

“Those who know don't talk;

those who talk don't know.”

I don't know and if I talk

it's only against those who know even less.

*

According to Garcia Marquez

everyone has three lives:

“a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”

The same applies to nations.

But in our case even our public life is secret.

*

One good thing about my choice of occupation is that

the alternative is working for money

and I can't imagine anything more repellent.

*

To be politically correct, they call it Islamophobia,

but I don't think that's what it is --

if we judge Islam by its history and number of victims

as opposed to the propaganda of its imams.

*

Everyone speaks of solutions,

no one even mentions implementation

and, in our case, that's where the devil resides.

#

Thursday, December 10, 2009

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

REFLECTIONS

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

An intelligent man does not overestimate his IQ.

Only idiots do that.

*

Forgive my careless choice of words.

Far better men than myself

have chosen their words far more carefully

without any results.

Ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice

are not open to diplomatic suggestions,

polite circumlocutions, and courteous petitions.

*

Not all nationalist historians are patriots

in the same way that not all garbage collectors love garbage.

*

As a physician deals with disease

a reasonable man deals with unreason –

with one difference:

the unreasonable will insult you.

*

In America, when they say god,

they mean Gold;

and when fanatics in the Middle East say God,

they mean the Devil.

“Allawa akhbar” in Arabic means

“The Devil is great!”

*

It makes little sense to support one side against the other

when both sides belong to the dustbin of history.

*

When the old fight,

it is the young who die.

When the rich fight,

it is the poor who die.

If it were up to the old and the rich

to do the dying,

we would have no more wars.

#

Friday, December 11, 2009

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

USES AND ABUSES OF PATRIOTISM

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

Patriotism does not mean loyalty to the leadership, especially a leadership that has not been democratically elected and is therefore self-appointed and non-representative, as our leadership has been throughout our millennial existence. Loyalty to such a leadership is not patriotism but subservience to despotism.

*

The mightier the country the more arrogant its citizens. This rule has one exception: Armenia.

*

The lower the self-esteem, the higher the need to emphasize the positive.

*

To justify his hatred for his fellow countrymen, an Armenian will identify them as Turks in disguise. I will never forget the elder statesman who once said to me: “We have men within our organizations who are Turkish agents. They speak Armenian fluently, they know our history and all there is to know about us, but don't make them fool you: they are Turks as surely as two plus two makes four.”

*

What is the difference between an Armenian who uses his tongue like a yataghan and an executioner? The executioner thinks of himself as a law-and-order man. The Armenian believes his superior brand of patriotism allows him to engage in verbal massacre – the real thing being against the law...

*

Freedom and patriotism are weasel words: they can be defined in a number of contradictory ways. Freedom could also mean the freedom to deceive, exploit, and enslave. And what could be more absurd than to say my patriotism is good but my enemy’s patriotism is bad?

#

Saturday, December 12, 2009

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

HAVE A NICE DAY!

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

No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. Only a self-satisfied ignoramus will think otherwise.

*

We may use the same words but we don't mean the same thing. To the poor the word “bread” in “Give us this day our daily bread,” means bread; to the rich it means enough money to buy several bakeries.

*

The rich know how to manipulate and exploit; and the poor know how to pretend to be grateful to bloodsucking buggers.

*

Their divide-and-rule tactics have been so successful that we remain divided even after they have ceased to rule.

*

They tell me I write as I do because I am failure. What a nightmare it must be to them to think that some day I may achieve success.

*

More often than not a majority is nothing but a conspiracy of idiots.

*

I no longer read our pundits or listen to our speechifiers because I ascribe all our misfortunes to their empty verbiage.

*

A true story: In search of his roots, an Armenian-American returned from the Homeland a thoroughly disappointed man because they didn't serve his favorite brand of cereal for breakfast.

*

MEMO TO A YOUNG WRITER

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

When brainwashed idiots enjoy reading you, you can be sure of one thing: You are in deep sh*t.

#

[arabaliozian]

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

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

THE ARMENIAN PRESENCE

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

In the last five books that I checked out from the library, I ran into Armenians in all of them.

*

In NATASHA & OTHER STORIES by David Bezmozgis (New York, 2004) there is a student identified as an “Armenian” and named "Arnan" (probably Arman).

*

In Ted Sorensen's political memoirs, COUNSELOR (New York, 2008), the Armenian mentioned and discussed is Anastas Mikoyan.

*

In Edmund Wilson's LITERARY ESSAYS & REVIEWS OF THE 1930s & 1940s (New York, 2007) there are two pieces on Saroyan, one of which is a review of THE ADVENTURES OF WESLEY JACKSON and the other a long overview of Saroyan's works, where we are told Saroyan was more influenced by Hemingway and less by Sherwood Anderson.

*

In VENICE: PURE CITY (London, 2009) by the prolific Peter Ackroyd we read about the Armenian island of San Lazzaro, “Where Byron travelled to learn the Armenian language as a way of exercising his mind among the more sensual pleasures of Venice.” The next sentence reads: “There as a colony of Turkish merchants, established as the Fondaco dei Turchi, where a school for the teaching of Arabic was maintained.”

*

In THE RICHNESS OF LIFE: THE ESSENTIAL STEPHEN JAY COULD (New York, 2006) the Armenian is George E. Boyajian, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a study “on ammonite suture lines.”

Elsewhere Gould speaks of “our cursed tribal tendency to factionalize, fight, and then, so often in righteous certainty, to define our opponents as vermin and try to expunge either their doctrines (by censorship and fire) or their very being (genocide).”

#

Thursday, December 17, 2009

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

REVOLUTIONS

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

When a revolution succeeds, the revolutionaries turn against one another and engage in cannibalism. This is what happened with the French and Russian revolutions.

When a revolution fails, it becomes a footnote.

But when a revolution results in genocide, it traumatizes the brain so severely that reality becomes a blur, and the line that separates fact from illusion is obliterated.

*

The study of history deals not only with what others have done to us, but also with what we have done to ourselves. To emphasize one at the expense of the other is to distort our perception of reality.

*

Our history is not just a catalog of crimes committed against us by others, it is also a much longer catalog of miscalculations and blunders committed by us.

*

God does not extend His support to those who don't support one another.

*

The first step in all solutions to our problems: To approach a new idea with an open mind.

*

The greatest truths are also the simplest.

*

I repeat myself?

Why shouldn't I?

TV commercials repeat themselves all the time.

And it works.

It must!

If it didn't, they wouldn't waste millions on them.

#

Friday, December 18, 2009

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

POWER & MONEY

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

Nothing can be more deceptive and dangerous than to believe the religion and history taught in schools. If Americans, Armenians, Turks, and any other nationality you care to mention were not duped as children into believing what they are taught to believe, they would no longer be loyal, that is to say subservient, subjects of their rulers. Which means, they would refuse to pay taxes (which is something they would like to do in any case) and even more important, in time of war, they would do their utmost to avoid being conscripted.

All rulers know this and none of them would even consider changing things even if it means continuing to legitimize ignorance, prejudice, lies, hatred, wars, and massacres.

That is why to speak the truth in a world of liars and dupes is considered a capital offense. That is also why to seek wisdom means to provoke persecution, exile, execution, and assassination.

On the day mankind sees the light, we will have only one God and one history, as opposed to ten thousand lies.

If mankind prefers to live in darkness, it may be because the exercise of power has always been more enticing than knowledge and understanding.

It is amazing the things people do for money. Even more amazing is the things they do for power. And power is like money in that one can never have enough of it.

#

Saturday, December 19, 2009

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

SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE

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

My greatest blunders were committed with total unawareness.

So much so that it didn't even occur to me to question their moral validity.

That doesn't make me feel less guilty today.

If anything, the opposite is the case.

I know now that I cannot plead not guilty

by reason of ignorance of the law.

Jung is right: unawareness is the greatest sin.

*

Lies have a propensity to generate more lies.

It is not at all unusual for a single Big Lie

to kill six million truths

and as many innocent lives with a clear conscience.

*

To be unable to read between the lines

is also a form of illiteracy.

*

To say or think “i am smart,”

is the surest symptom of arrested development,

and in some cases,

advanced moronism.

*

The hardest thing to master in the art of writing

is the art of deleting.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, December 20, 2009

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

LIES

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

Lies. I was brought up on lies - lies spoken in the name of patriotism and self-esteem, but lies all the same.

I was told being an Armenian was a rare privilege.

I went into the world thinking the world owed me something - respect, sympathy, apology, admiration.

I soon discovered the world had no time or interest in taking notice of my existence. The world didn't give a damn about me.

The world didn't even know who Armenians were.

That's when I began to understand why some smart Armenians changed their names and assimilated.

Others preferred to stay away from their fellow countrymen.

Still others of mixed parentage hid their Armenian fraction.

What the hell was going on here?

Was the world full of ignoramuses and traitors?

It took me a while to realize that the world was what it has always been; and that I was the ignorant one in thinking there was something special in being an Armenian.

I know now that we are a people like any other people, or we would be, if we didn't try so damn hard to appear better or superior.

One could even say that, what makes some of us inferior is thirst for superiority.

#

Monday, December 21, 2009

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

ACADEMICS

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

Never judge a nation by its history as written by its own historians. A Turk who believes in Turkish historians is as much of a dupe as an Armenian who believes in Armenian historians.

All historians write with a bias, and I don't just mean nationalist, racist, or religious bias. Case in point: in a recent edition of the ENCYCLPAEDIA BRITANNICA the entry on Talaat, as written by a Turcophile historian, mentions only one violent death, Talaat's own by an Armenian assassin.

How to explain this outrage? Very easily:

(one) the historian treated the Turks as useful political allies of his own nation;

(two) there are many more potential buyers of the Encyclopedia in Turkey than in Armenia;

(three) since academics these days are a dime-a-dozen and the competition is fierce, they are willing to write anything for thirty pieces of silver.

I am not saying this particular academic is a bad man and a shameless liar willing to prostitute his discipline and expertise. I am saying, we live in a world with the moral standards of a bordello, and Armenians are no better (see below).

It is to be noted that this particular academic cannot plead ignorance of the Armenian genocide in view of the fact that in one of his first books on Turkey he mentions and discusses the Genocide in some detail. My guess is, that's when the Turks invited him to Turkey, gave him the red-carpet treatment, and made him see the light. They did the same thing to Toynbee with the same result, but not quite. Though he became a Turcophile, Toynbee never denied the Armenian genocide, but he did deny the republication of his book on the Genocide.

And speaking of red-carpet treatment, and this time by Reds: A prominent Tashnak leader was once invited to Yerevan by the Soviets and returned to America a chic Bolshevik. Whenever I would publish an anti-Soviet commentary in our weeklies, he would write me poison-pen letters and call me nasty names.

#

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

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

BIG EGOS & SMALL DICKS

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

An Armenian knows better not because he is wiser, older, more experienced, or more widely read, but because he assumes his fellow Armenians to be dumber than he is.

*

To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say, “With Armenians like you, who needs sultans and commissars?”

*

No matter how hard I try I cannot pretend to be a proud Armenian. Proud of what, may I ask? A thousands years of subservience to scum? – and I don't just mean foreign scum.

*

Jacques Chirac: “Sumo wrestling is a fine art, which is not always the case with political combat.”

*

Life has a way of cutting down to size anyone whose assessment of himself exceeds his real worth.

*

The reason why some men have big egos is that (according to Freud, Jung, and Adler, who agree on nothing but agree on this) they have small dicks.

#

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

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

NOTES / COMMENTS

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

“If he speaks as if he were somebody, let's treat him like a nobody to bring him down to our own level.”

*

The secret of success consists not in cultivating your own garden but in inventing it.

*

You can tell he has a college degree because he uses words like dichotomy, existential, and paradigm.

*

Ideas? If you have the money, you can hire philosophers (provided they are not Marxists) and theologians who don't take the Scriptures literally and believe Capital to be a blessing from god.

*

The world has no interest in someone who knows a great deal about a great many things. The world is more interested and more willing to reward someone who knows everything about one thing.

*

If the liquid in the glass is poison, it makes no difference whether it is half empty or half full.

*

A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma over love and charity, is an invention of the devil.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, December 24, 2009

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WE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD

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We are few.

We are weak.

We are vulnerable,

Therefore, we are divided.

Which is like saying:

“I think.

Therefore I am not.”

*

In our environment,

the devils come disguised as angels.

I once heard a bishop say:

“We are for unity.

It's the opposition that is against it.”

Did he believe what he said?

I am not sure.

But his audience did,

on the grounds that God does not lie.

Neither does a man of God.

*

Hitler knew what he was talking about when he said,

“The bigger the lie, the more believable it will be.”

*

We are divided.

So what if we cease to exist?

*

Cease to exist? No way!

We have existed for thousands of years.

We must be doing something right.

You call a thousand years of subservience to scum existence?

You call a series of massacres and a genocide existence?

I call it worse than death.

*

Liars are not born but made

and they are made by dupes.

Who is guiltier, a liar or his audience of dupes?

*

You can rate the IQ of a nation

by the lies of its sermonizers and speechifiers.

*

We have two kinds of mortal enemies:

those who want to kill us

and those who want us to commit suicide.

We never had it so good.

#

Friday, December 25, 2009

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RAFFI'S WARNING AND

CHARENTS'S MESSAGE

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To prove to a visiting Venetian painter what the neck of a beheaded man really looks like, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, also known as the Lawgiver, had a prisoner brought before him and beheaded.

It is said that the Venetian painter was so shocked by the bloody spectacle that he left that same night under cover of darkness.

That is the difference between that Venetian painter and us.

The Venetian left.

We stayed

We stayed even after Raffi warned us the Ottoman Empire was no place for us because Turks had no respect for human life.

We ignored Raffi's warning in the 19th century as we ignore today Charents's final message concerning our “salvation.” By “we” I mean less the people and more the leaders who speechify during the day about survival and turn into gravediggers under cover of darkness at night.

*

In my next commentary I will explain why “treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi).

#

Saturday, December 26, 2009

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TREASON & HEROISM

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A nation or a community run by traitors will constantly emphasize the importance of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism. In such an environment, heroes will invariably outnumber traitors.

*

Traitors don't think of themselves as traitors. They think of themselves as patriots who are doing what must be done to safeguard the survival of the nation. But since in politics, as in war, there are either winners or losers, losers will be classified as traitors by their political adversaries.

Case in point: After the liberation of France, both Petain (a hero of World War I) and Laval were condemned to death by a French tribunal on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Nazis and they were therefore traitors.

*

Were Krikor Zohrab and Anastas Mikoyan traitors or heroes?

If we judge them by their actions alone (as the French tribunal chose to do) they do not qualify as heroes. Zohrab saved Talaat's life from the Sultan's secret police; and Mikoyan carried out the Stalinist purges in Armenia so thoroughly that to this day only unprincipled mediocrities survive. In other words, their actions resulted in defeat and tragedy.

*

Are our dividers in the Diaspora today heroes or traitors? If we judge them by the Biblical dictum “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” and by Charents's final “message,” they cannot be said to be heroic figures.

*

One could of course explain and justify the actions of traitors by pleading extenuating circumstances, which might as well be inadmissible in our context.

The fact remains that both Zohrab and Mikoyan were not just wrong, they were catastrophically wrong, and both paid a heavy price for their blunder. Zohrab was murdered by order of the same man whose life he saved by risking his own, and Mikoyan spent the final years of his life in constant fear to such a degree that he slept with a revolver under his pillow with the intention of killing himself if they ever came to arrest him in the middle of the night.

As for the nation: I will let you decide whether their actions contributed to our collective profile as winners or losers.

#

Sunday, December 27, 2009

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AN INVITATION TO THE BEHEADING

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

The French have a saying: “This little beast is nasty; when attacked, it defends itself.” Except that in our case, the little beast was a wounded tiger with nine lives, and we were no better than a toothless lapdog.

We were slaughtered because we have been thrice cursed with “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders” (Avedik Issahakian); and ever since these brainless leaders have been trying to convince us there is nothing wrong with them; it's the rest of the world that's rotten; and what is even more unbelievable is that we believe them.

We lost because we believed the Christian West would not allow the massacre of brothers by bloodthirsty infidels – notwithstanding the fact that the West had already allowed a series of massacres to take place without lifting a finger (see VISIONS OF ARARAT: WRITINGS ON ARMENIA by Christopher Walker [New York, 1997]).

We were slaughtered because our Christian brothers in the West were at war and too busy slaughtering one another to give a damn about an obscure tribe of Christians being slaughtered by infidels on another continent (see the Preface of G.B. Shaw's ANDROCLES AND THE LION).

We lost because “we were tiny islands in a Turkish sea” (Hagop Oshagan).

We lost because our revolutionaries were long on enthusiasm and short on experience. One contemporary scholar refers to them as “twenty somethings” (see Michael Bobelian, CHILDREN OF ARMENIA [New York, 2009]).

We lost because we underestimated the strength and determination of the Turks to defend their 600-year old homeland.

We lost because we believed in the professed brotherly love of serial killers. (Consider the case of Zohrab saving Talaat's life by risking his own.)

We lost because we were divided. (See the correspondence between our revolutionaries and Artin Dadian in Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993).

We were slaughtered because we have been fed “a steady and monotonous diet of shameless flattery and transparent lies” (Stepan Voskanian).

We were slaughtered because our conception of history has been shaped by “deceivers... the smoke of incense, and the sound of sharagans” (Nigoghos Sarafian).

Far from being an unexpected and unforeseeable Tragedy that “fell on us like a thief in the night,” our genocide might as well have been “an invitation to the beheading) (Nabokov).

#

Monday, December 28, 2009

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THIS AND THAT

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

Patriotism is an irrefutable argument only to patriots.

So is fascism to fascists.

*

If faith and truth were one, we would have only one religion and no jihads.

Faith guarantees nothing.

To say that faith is beyond criticism is to justify a big lie with a bigger lie.

*

Deceivers exist because deception works.

It is astonishing the number of great men who were taken in by Hitler and Stalin, both of whom made a mafia godfather look like a benevolent uncle.

*

To an overly sensitive person, a wrong word can be as catastrophic as a volcanic eruption or an earthquake.

*

Turning points in one's life may happen not in noteworthy events but in insignificant occurrences that may at first escape notice.

*

To most Armenians the Genocide is only a page in our history – the darkest page, granted, but still only a page.

Books, including history books, are one thing, life another.

The average Armenian is much more seriously wounded by an insult than by any single page in history.

*

To ignore or cover up our problems is also to reject in advance all possible solutions.

*

We will mature as a nation only when we take ideas as seriously as money.

#

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

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MY QUARREL

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

It is not safe to stand between a hungry lion and his kill.

Likewise, between a crowd and its cherished illusions.

*

I write what I think because deep down I know no matter what I say, I will be ignored. That's the way it has been in the past, and I see no evidence to suggest that things may not continue on the same path in the future.

*

My quarrel, my real quarrel, is not with my fellow men. My quarrel is with myself for allowing deceivers to brainwashed me in the name of a false deity or big lies.

*

They emphasize the importance of love because they are hateful and they know it. Was it love that drove Jesus to use the whip against the money-changers in the temple?

Was it love that drove the Orthodox Church in Russia to excommunicate Tolstoy, or the Catholic Church to torture and massacre heretics?

To those who say that was then and this is now: may I remind them that the Russian Church, like our own Etchmiadzin, went on to legitimize Stalin's regime, and the Catholic clergy engaged in serial child molestation.

*

Dupes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but leaders with the moral quotient of swine.

*

I call an enemy a friend if what he says enhances my understanding of my fellow men and myself.

#

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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The original aim of nationalism was to liberate the nation from the tyranny of imperial powers. In theory. In practice, however, it simply replaced one tyranny with another. That's the way it is with organized religions, ideologies, and mass movements: they begin as liberation and end as oppression.

*

Analysis and flattery (or propaganda) are mutually exclusive concepts. You can have either one or the other. You cannot have both.

*

On more than one occasion I have heard it said, “If you criticize benefactors, they will stop giving.” I have never heard anyone say, “If we starve writers, they will stop writing.” Which may suggest, money is everything, ideas nothing. Which may also explain why as a nation we are so brain-dead that even the Turks are ahead of us. This assertion may outrage some, but not as much as it outraged me when I first heard it about forty years ago.

*

Our editors and activists have been dishing out anti-Turkish venom for such a long time that it has acquired the authority of a Decalogue.

*

There is a kind of vulgar bluntness that is the soul of elegance.

*

Speaking of his fellow Americans, Thoreau once said: “The greater part of what they call good I believe in my soul to be bad.”

*

Anonymous: “A live dog is better than a dead lion.”

#

[arabaliozian]

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Edited December 30, 2009 by arabaliozian