Writers

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, April 9, 2009

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TO EACH HIS OWN

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To us, the Genocide is a tragedy.

To the Turks, it's an embarrassment.

To American politicians running for office, a cash cow.

To our own leadership, a distraction from present problems and their reluctance or inability to solve them.

To our Turcocentric ghazetajis, an endless source of venom and an opportunity to play the blame-game as well as a chance to assert moral superiority.

As for Turcophile historians who say it was the Armenians who massacred the Turks; I for one am not surprised. So what if after 600 years of subservience that gradually degenerated to brutal oppression, some Armenians took justice into their own hands? Would anyone dare to assert that, had the Ottoman Empire been an Armenian Empire and Turks an oppressed minority, they would have said, “Let bygones be bygones. Let us smoke the peace nargileh and forever after live like brothers?"

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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY

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We are told when God created angels and He gave them a free will, half of them turned into devils. It is therefore safe to assume that if sometime in the future the Good Lord were to give His angels another crack at freedom, another 50% of them would make the wrong choice. Which is why so far God in His infinite wisdom has not made the same mistake. Which is also why, when God wants to destroy a man, He gives him more power, because more power means greater freedom.

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P.S.

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Yesterday I listed four books that I have read three times. I should have included another – Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.

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WORDS OF WISDOM

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Chinese saying: “Extreme cleverness is as bad as stupidity.”

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Friday, April 10, 2009

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A MENSCHE

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In his THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION, Robert Fisk dedicated an entire chapter to the Armenian genocide. He does the same with his latest book, THE AGE OF THE WARRIOR: SELECTED ESSAYS (New York, 2008). After tearing to shreds Turkish and “gutless” American denialists, among them President Bush, General Petraeus, ambassador Ryan Crocker, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he turns his outrage on Armenians themselves. When an interviewer in Yerevan makes a reference to Turkey's “lack of democratization,” Fisk demands to know: “What about Armenia's pliant press? And why was it that present-day Armenia seemed to protest much less about twentieth-century's first Holocaust than the millions of Armenians in the diaspora, in the U.S., Canada, France, Britain, even Turkish intellectuals in Turkey itself?...Long live the Soviet Union.”

A man after my own heart!

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Saturday, April 11, 2009

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THE USES AND ABUSES OF FAITH

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Whenever I replace the word “God” with “the Unknown and the Unknowable,” what I read makes either more sense or no sense at all – as in “God loves you.” If God loves us, His definition of love is more akin to hatred.

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Most of mankind's problems, including our own, stem from the fact that those who have God or capital (make it, Capital or god) on their side, consider themselves beyond criticism.

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When a man is devoid of honor, compassion, and understanding, he adopts race, color, and creed as criteria.

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Faith is an essential ingredient in one's life, we are told. Maybe so. But what if faith allows us to call anyone who does not share our belief system an infidel dog who doesn't deserve to live?

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What do I think of mysticism? Let me quote my favorite mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila: “It is the humblest among you who are the most perfect not those who are favored in prayer or with ecstasies.”

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[shun]

JACK AVANAKIAN's OBITUARY

Or, The Real Enemies of Armenian Writers

By Ara Baliozian

When Comrade Panchoonie dies it is not Odian who pens the obituary but a faithful member of the Party. And when Jack S. Avanakian, Panchoonie's Armenian-American counterpart, dies the eulogy is delivered by who else but a fellow avanak. And when one avanak eulogizes another, every other sentence will contain such expressions as “a dedicated patriot,” “a role model to our youth,” “a man of vision,” “a Renaissance man,” “a source of inspiration to all of us,” “a man of contemplation as well as action,” “under his leadership our community life experienced a golden age,” and “we shall not see his like again!”

If only that were true!

Odian couldn't have been more wrong. Had he known the truth, he would have written a lamentation rather than a satirical novel, a tragedy rather than a farce.

Did you know that all of Odian's works were published in the Homeland during the Soviet era, except COMRADE PANCHOONIE? That to me is as clear an admission of guilt as a signed confession that says “We are all Panchoonies.”

Who would have thought a hundred years ago that our Panchoonies and Jack S. Avanakians would conspire and successfully exterminate our Odians on the grounds that they (our avanaks) are builders and our Odians are destroyers?

Sartre is right. Literature saves nothing and no one. We are all condemned to be at the mercy of meddlers who are at it 24/7 speechifying, proselytizing, brainwashing, organizing, fund-raising, starving and silencing. They may speechify about life but their real business is death.