arabaliozian Posted August 24, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2011 Sunday, August 21, 2011 ***************************************** ON IGNORANCE… AMONG OTHER THINGS ******************************************** More often than not ignorance is not a result of not knowing but of not wanting to know. * To be a dupe means to place patriotism and propaganda above honesty and objectivity. * My Armenian and Turkish critics sound remarkably alike – no doubt as a result of 600 years of cohabitation compounded by fear of reality. * Dupes come in bunches. Where there is one there will be another. They need each other’s warmth like swine in a cold barn. # Monday, August 22, 2011 ***************************************** UNANSWERED QUERSTIONS ******************************************** Because I support the idea of a united and strong Armenia, I engage in treason? And because my critics are for a divided, weak, demoralized Armenia, they are patriots? But the question, the real question, which nobody cares to ask is: We survived the Turk, will we survive our patriots? * What if, when it comes to extermination, our leaders are better at it than the Sultan, Talaat, and Stalin combined? What if there is more truth in what we hate than in what we pretend to love? What if we serve the Devil even when we speak and act in the name of God? * Because I write in open forums where even Turks can read me, my readers take notice of what I say. Otherwise they would have ignored me. They would have pretended I don’t exist. They would have saved their spittle for their real enemies – the opposition. * For more on this subject, see A FIRST-RATE MADNESS: UNCOVERING THE LINKS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MENTAL ILLNESS. By Nassir Ghaemi. 340 pages. The Penguin Press. $27.95. # Tuesday, August 23, 2011 ***************************************** THEN AND NOW ******************************************** A hundred years ago Armenians had to be forcibly driven out from Turkey; they are now exiting from Armenia on their own. * I should like to see a comparative study of Armenian assimilation rates in the Ottoman Empire and the United States of America. * How many Armenian-Americans can read and write in Armenian today? After two or at most three generations in America assimilation sets in. But even after six hundred years in the Ottoman Empire – that is roughly twenty-four generations – we had a vibrant Armenian literature in Istanbul. Name a single Armenian-American writer today if you can. * We like to blame Talaat and Stalin for the slaughter of two generations of our major writers, but we forget that these writers were betrayed by Armenians. * The only authentic Armenians today are the skeletons of our 5th-century ancestors and even the best of them were odars with mixed blood. * Our nationalists may portray themselves as superpatriots but their true intent is extermination – if, that is, we judge them by their actions rather than by their verbally stated intentions. * When words and actions don’t match you may safely discard words as lies – unless of course you happen to be a certified dupe. # Wednesday, August 24, 2011 ***************************************** ON LEADERS (II) ******************************************** In theory, patriotism, even nationalism, stands for freedom from imperial oppression, beginning with free speech. In practice, try to disagree with one of our superpatriots and see what happens. There is a hangman in all our nationalists. * Only readers who cling to their Ottomanism and Sovietism confuse my anti-Ottomanism and anti-Sovietism with anti-Armenianism. * The God of the Old Testament is a jungle chieftain who thinks men are such ignorant savages that they have to be told murder is a no-no. * The secret ambition of all leaders is to be almighty and infallible, like God. This is as true of the Pope as it is of Stalin. * Who are our leaders? In the Diaspora they are faceless Levantine wheeler-dealers at the mercy of social, political, cultural, and economic forces beyond their control – in short: they are in over their heads. In the Homeland they are dehumanized bureaucrats accountable only to the Kremlin. With friends like these, who needs enemies? # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted August 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 27, 2011 Thursday, August 25, 2011 ***************************************** SUMMING UP ******************************************** The ideal dupe is he who doesn’t believe he is one. * The true believer is he who believes anyone who doesn’t share his belief system is the dupe of a heresy. * Mankind is divided between deceivers and their dupes. As for the silent majority: they might as well be an absent factor. * If we judge an idea by its history, we shall have no choice but to assert belief systems are the source of all evil. * “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.” * If you think religious wars are a thing of the past, think again. * Think again! A useless, not to say, an absurd suggestion to a believer who by believing he declares his inability to think for himself and must therefore rely on someone else’s thinking – no, not thinking but believing, which can also be defined as “not thinking.” * And if you believe the age of prophets, like the age of religious wars belongs to the irrevocable past, I for one will not be surprised to learn that in the eyes of some historians the 20th century is already known as the century of false prophets – Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Kemal…. # “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” Even better: Believe only those who are engaged in rejecting lies. # Friday, August 26, 2011 ***************************************** WORDS ******************************************** We are told “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” We are told to judge a tree by its fruit, a man by his actions, and an idea by its history. What about religion? If religion is such a good thing why has it killed and continues to kill so many people? Who will believe you if you say “my religion is the only true one; all others are heresies? Not even your co-religionists. Consider the case of Catholics and Protestants, Shias and Sunnis, and generally speaking, all orthodoxies and heresies. But contradictions don’t end there. In the Old Testament we are told “Thou shalt not kill.” But elsewhere God commands His Chosen People to slaughter not only their enemies but also their cattle. Are we to believe even God contradicts Himself? Or is it only when He uses words? # Saturday, August 27, 2011 ***************************************** MEMO TO MY TURKISH READERS ******************************************** Do you really think you can run away from justice, like Talaat? Surely you can’t expect us to believe that your sources are more authentic than Pamuk’s, Akcam’s, and countless other western historians among them Turcophiles like Arnold J. Toynbee and Bernard Lewis. Last but not least, you can’t be serious when you dare to suggest you know better than Kemal who at no time denied the reality of large-scale atrocities and the only reason he didn’t use the word “genocide” is that it had not yet been coined. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted August 31, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 Sunday, August 28, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************** We all try to do the best for ourselves and more often than not our best turns out to have been our worst. * To brag is wrong except when a nation does it – and they do it all the time. * We don’t think unless we are cornered into thinking. What we do instead is grab the most convenient or flattering explanation and hang on to it to the bitter end. * The disappointments of success are as deep as the disappointments of failure. * The very same individuals who are against free speech control our educational system, and with it, our perception of reality. * In politics if you win you brag, if you lose you lie. * To combat the dread of death we pretend to live. * It is in the blood (or collective unconscious) of the strong to divide and rule the weak, and it is in the blood of the weak to be divided. * To say free speech is our “greatest enemy” (Zarian) is to imply we are our own greatest threat to our security and development as a nation. In that sense, the enemy is indeed us. * Plutarch: “But when the body called the Five Thousand – which in fact were only Four Hundred…” # Monday, August 29, 2011 ***************************************** OBSERVATIONS ******************************************** There is a type of Latin-American writer, I read today, who is convinced “literature can fend off injustice and ugliness and redeem the world.” Once upon a time we too had such writers. But do we have them today? If you know of one, can you name him or her? * I am constantly urged not to speak about Armenians as I do on open forums, in the same way that Turkish writers are urged, nay threatened, not to speak of Turkish crimes against humanity. Propagandists on both sides are not interested in facts, only in figments of their own imagination. * How easily are love and lust confused? -- also arrogance and self-esteem. Search for the worst in the best and don’t be surprised if you find it. * Man is prone to superstition because he cannot answer the most important questions and his need for answers exceeds his love of truth or his understanding of reality. * We all love to be loved and hate to consider the possibility that we may not deserve it. # Tuesday, August 30, 2011 ***************************************** HYPNOSIS ******************************************** Knut Hamsun on Hitler’s Germany: “It’s mass-hypnosis that does it… Mass hypnosis is an awful thing, just look at theaters and circuses.” * They are hypnotized into thinking Turks are too civilized to have committed atrocities and we are hypnotized into thinking all Turks are bloodthirsty barbarians. One could say that the aim of all propaganda is mass hypnosis. Or, after the subject has been hypnotized, you can convince him of anything. * To the Turks, Kemal is a messianic figure who raised the nation from the rotten corpse of the Empire. If only we too had a Kemal of our own. On second thought, we may be better off without one. * One way to explain an alienated Armenian is to say that he is an Armenian who refuses to be hypnotized. # Wednesday, August 31, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ******************************************** The older I grow, the heavier the burden of memories. Which is why I don’t consider Alzheimer’s an undesirable condition. * Perseverance is a good thing but not when it comes to digging your own grave. * I don’t write to save the nation. I can’t even save myself from boredom. * I drink to drown the Turk in me, but the bugger is a swimmer with Olympic ambitions. * Political leaders of the West were almost unanimous in their desire to befriend Gadhafi. Which may suggest the world is ruled by men whose IQ is lower than that of a backward African mob. * The Buddha is right: no one can save another – especially one who has made up his mind to go to hell. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2011 Thursday, September 01, 2011 ***************************************** AN EXCHANGE ON FACEBOOK ******************************************** “You have only 400 friends? I have 5000 of them.” “Maybe so, but I also have 10,000 enemies.” “That I don’t believe.” “If you agree with me that offending an Armenian amounts to making an enemy for life, do the math! At one time or another I have offended sermonizers, speechifiers, panchoonies, commissars, chauvinists, Turcocentric ghazetajis, bosses, bishops, benefactors and all their gigolos and gigolettes… 10,000 may indeed be a conservative estimate. Yes?” # Friday, September 02, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ******************************************** On the day we succeed in throwing out the rascals we shall come face to face with the void. * Mubarak on trial: How many political leaders would escape the death penalty if they had to face justice? * Gadhafi urging his supporters to kill the “rats” even as he behaves like one. * Tell me who your friends are… even better, tell me who your enemies are and I will tell you who you are. * An honest politician? Only morons believe in oxymorons. * All deceivers begin by deceiving themselves. They are their own first dupes. * I have little sympathy for survivors. All my sympathy goes to the victims who did not survive. * Castrating rapists is barbaric except when the victim is someone I love. # Saturday, September 03, 2011 ***************************************** CANNIBALISM ******************************************** The average dupe does not know who and what he is. Hence his need to identify himself – as if a label, any label, be it ethnic, religious or ideological, will confer on him a reality he does not possess. He may be – or rather his DNA may be – 5% Armenian or Turkish and the rest a Russian salad of many tribes, nations, and races, but in an Armenian environment he will identify himself as an Armenian and in a Turkish environment as a Turk. He will go further and kill and die in the name of god and country – a non-existent or false god and a country that has belonged and will eventually belong to others. * Collective existence is a farce. There are no leaders, only pretenders to the throne whose first and most important project is not to serve the people but to obstruct the path of the opposition. * Religions and ideologies may preach compassion and justice but they all end up practicing cannibalism. This thought occurred to me after listening to a radio documentary on female genital mutilation. * I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if a future study of history from the beginning to our own days will be titled “The Age of Cannibalism.” * A Libyan rebel leader on Gadhafi: “He called us rats, but he is the larger rat.” * Unmask a political leader and expose the rat. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 7, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2011 Sunday, September 04, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************** Overheard: “Corruption in Armenia is like the weather in America: everybody talks about it but nobody does a damn thing." * Life is a game in which after you learn the rules, the rules are changed. * Zohrab is right: in life, those who adopt prostitution as a way of life outnumber the others. * If there is a moral in the Arab spring, it is this: The status quo may collapse when you least expect it. I therefore say to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors: Let that be a lesson to you. * Their lack of awareness is such that they assume their brand of patriotism (which is no better than treason) is superior to selfless intellectual labor. * Our eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not apply tribal solutions to national problems. * I define a good book as one that if you haven’t finished it by bed-time you look forward to next morning with the impatience and anxiety of a lover. * Automatically contradicting what your adversary says is not an argument but a symptom of entrenched prejudice. # Monday, September 05, 2011 ***************************************** REFLECTIONS ******************************************** Armenians are brainwashed to hate Turks. They learn to hate their fellow Armenians on their own. * I question the validity of all miracles but I keep hoping for one: figure that one out if you can. * It is the height of arrogance for a nobody to strike a modest pose. * Men of power depend on kiss-ass incompetents much more than on honest critics. * Not being a masochist I don’t consider the death of a thousand cuts bliss. * A teenager who wins a chess tournament and another who is forced into prostitution: guess who is going to make a headline on the front page. # Tuesday, September 06, 2011 ***************************************** ROBLEMS ******************************************** After silencing me they say they need solutions, not criticism. And they pretend to ignore the obvious fact that without free speech and dialogue there can be no solutions. * Don’t let them fool you. We don’t need solutions. What we need are honest men whose number one concern is not number one. * There are two kinds of solutions: authoritarian and democratic. Authoritarian solutions are based on the erroneous assumption that authority, even when catastrophically wrong, must be assumed to be right. Which also means, anyone who dares to question the validity of this assumption must be labeled an enemy and silenced, excommunicated, exiled, starved, burned at the stake or shot. This is as true of the Kremlin as it is of the Vatican. * Labels change but human nature remains constant. * We are racists not because we hate Turks but because we hate our fellow Armenians. * If you say my criticism is motivated by self-hatred, I could say that your rejection of my criticism is motivated by self-infatuation. * If love of mankind means loving greed, intolerance, prejudice, fanaticism, cruelty, stupidity, and ignorance, I want no part of it. # Wednesday, September 07, 2011 ***************************************** LEADERS AND DUPES ******************************************** Incompetent leaders can do more harm than competent enemies. * It is an established fact known to all except dupes that the criminal rate among political leaders is higher than among ordinary citizens. * I understand dupes: I have been one most of my life. * According to Cicero: “Freedom is participation in power.” If we are free, ours is the freedom of ants, birds, and herbivores – free to be stepped on, shot at, and devoured. * Nothing works as planned. Turks believed they can convince the world. They now know they can’t even convince their own except the dupes who will believe anything. * Subservience to alien tyrants is understandable. But subservience to our own? # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 10, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 10, 2011 Thursday, September 08, 2011 ***************************************** ON LOVE ******************************************** In a scientific text I read the following: “The original purpose of the sense of hearing was to enable an organism to hear the love song of a wooer.” Further down: “The higher forms of life, and possibly the lower ones as well, would have become extinct a long time ago if it were not for the pleasures of love – which are thus more important than anything that reason is able to produce.” * I think therefore I am? Hell no! I love therefore I survive. * Let’s reason together? Wrong! Let’s make love. * Why do you think the memoirs of a bordello madam will sell many more copies than a treatise on reason by an eminent philosopher? * We are a dysfunctional nation because we preach love of country and practice hatred of fellow countrymen. * To our leaders the Homeland is a symbol with which they identify – and when they speak of love in a patriotic context, it is they who want to be loved because they know they are unworthy of anyone’s love. Bugger the old farts! # Friday, September 09, 2011 ***************************************** ON LOVE (II) ******************************************** Only an Armenian who has not “known” a Turkish woman or an Armenian woman who has not know a Turkish man (in the literal as well as Biblical sense of the word) is capable of harboring anti-Turkish sentiments. I will go further and say that there is no such thing as a Turk or, for that matter, an Armenian. National identity is an artificially created label based on propaganda rather than any other factor. * Take a child, any child, place him in an environment whose educational system is controlled by individuals who identify themselves as Turks (or any other nationality you care to mention) and forever after that child will identify himself as a Turk. * It is a statistically and historically established fact that when they first set foot on Armenian soil, Turks (or rather, those who identified themselves as such) were a minority. It follows, after 600 years of co-existence and concubinage, they are now very probably more Armenian than Turkish. * Wars and massacres are declared and committed not by nations but by politicians and their brainwashed dupes. All nations have such criminal gangs and it would be the height of absurdity to assert Armenians are an exception. * I am not denying the fact that “Turks” massacred “Armenians.” What I am saying is that criminals (and their victims) will use any excuse to justify their actions and prejudices respectively; and to ascribe the crimes of a few on the majority might as well be a working definition of racism. * After writing these lines I read the following by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “For what man who is master of himself does not laugh at a king?” Likewise, for what man who can think for himself does not laugh at the likes of Kemal in whose system of thought Kurds are Mountain Turks and Armenians Christian Turks, instead of human beings who happen to be living in a territory called Turkey today but was known by another label yesterday and will be known by still another tomorrow? # Saturday, September 10, 2011 ***************************************** NOTES / COMMENTS ******************************************** Between power and wisdom, who will choose wisdom? * Birth is not a beginning and death is not an end. We think of them as such because our perception of reality is limited. In cosmic time, a lifetime is shorter than a fraction of a second. * From the TALMUD: “Who is rich?” “He that rejoices in his portion.” “Who is a hero?” “He who conquers his urge.” * I like all sentences that begin with the words, “It has been said.” * Lord Byron on Italy: “They make love a good deal here, and assassinate a little.” * On women: “My wife is perfection itself – the best creature breathing. But mind what I say – don’t marry.” * Camus on love: “Loving a human being amounts to killing all others.” * “Les seuls paradis sont ceux qu’on a perdus.” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 14, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 14, 2011 Sunday, September 11, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ******************************************** All children believe in what adults tell them especially in matters dealing with God and Country. The world conspires to make us dupes; and by the time we realize what happened we have either killed or died as soldiers, terrorists, and believers in false gods and big lies. * We are not smart – we never were in things that really matter. For 600 years we dropped our pants and exposed ourselves to the Turks. Tell me, my friend, how smart is that? * The more we try to control events, the deeper the realization of our powerlessness. * The source of all wisdom is within your subconscious, very much like the Kingdom of God. * Strinberg: “Ever since childhood, I have looked for God and found the Devil.” Perhaps because they are one and the same. Either that or our perception of reality is so defective that we confuse one with the other. * The astonishing ease with which blessings become curses. # Monday, September 12, 2011 ***************************************** ON FREEDOM ******************************************** Imperial powers prefer to deal with corrupt regimes because the corrupt are more easily manipulated. This is as true of America as it is of Russia. Remember that next time you speak of our big brothers. * Freedom in a democratic context means much more than free elections. It means freedom from want, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, movement, and faith. Have we ever been free? Do we know what freedom is? Freedom to grow a fat belly – is that the beginning and end of all freedom for us? * During the day they speechify on freedom and patriotism, on God and Country, but at night they engage in wheeling-and-dealing. Hence their favorite slogan, “Do as I say…” # Tuesday, September 13, 2011 ***************************************** CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG ******************************************** On man’s inhumanity to man: If you have ever asked yourself, How can one human being do such a thing to another human being? My tentative answer is: Some human beings cease to be human when they join a party or group that subscribes to a belief system. * They oppressed us with fire and sword. We oppress ourselves with ignorance and intolerance. The result is the same. The massacre continues. * Even people who act in the name of the Devil say “God is with us.” * To fanatics moderation is treason. So is reason to the unthinking. * Freedom of speech allows the fanatic to expose himself as a fool. * We should have a commandment or a constitutional amendment to protect free speech instead of a tacit consensus to violate it. * Memo to my anonymous critics: Democracy and intolerance of dissent are mutually exclusive concepts. If I am wrong I can be corrected. But if those in power are wrong the damage can be as incalculable as another genocide. # Wednesday, September 14, 2011 ***************************************** CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG (II) ******************************************** In theory we are all against the massacre of unarmed and innocent civilians, but give us a chance and we will gladly even the score and call it justice. This is only a guess, of course, based on how mean we can be in disagreement. * To how many of my critics I could say: “Don’t stop, please! Keep writing. You are a living proof of everything I have been saying about Armenians – narrow-minded, rude, intolerant, ignorant, dogmatic, self-satisfied, loud-mouth…” * God is not in the business of explaining the incomprehensible. We must either find a meaning in our genocide or dismiss it as incomprehensible. By making of it a collective obsession we accomplish nothing but reinforce our image as perennial victims and losers. As for justice: let’s leave that to belly-slitting lawyers – we can afford them. * It was only after observing the ease with which we are Americanized that I was able to identify our Ottomanized and Sovietized brothers. * A peculiarity of dupes is that they tend to take themselves and their views very seriously. * Let’s make one thing clear once and for all. They did not divide and rule us. We divided ourselves. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2011 Thursday, September 15, 2011 ***************************************** NARCISSISM ******************************************** It is narcissism and nothing else that allows a political leader to think he is the best thing that happened to his nation… until he is driven to exile, or arrested, condemned to death, or assassinated. There is probably more narcissism in politics than in any other line of work. * It is narcissism and nothing else that allows Turks to believe our genocide is a fiction of our imagination. Likewise it is narcissism of the most primitive kind that allows us to think we are smart and progressive when the historic evidence proves otherwise. * It is narcissism and nothing else that allows the very rich to behave like swine and to believe they are la crème de la crème. * The astonishing ease with which both men and women confuse an ephemeral infatuation with eternal love. * The rule is and must be anything that flatters are vanity should be dismissed as a lie. # Friday, September 16, 2011 ***************************************** THREE HEADLINES ******************************************** The headline of a commentary in my morning paper reads: “Canada’s self-image needs a reality check.” There follows a list of misconceptions and fallacies that have become common currency in Canada, a country with a long democratic tradition and a free press. You may now imagine the number of our own misconceptions that have been consistently covered up by our controlled press and authoritarians power structures. * The headline of another commentary on the same page reads: “Is it time to rethink think tanks?” Can we do that? Do we have them? There are 4500 active think tanks in the world, we are informed here. My question is: Is any one of them Armenian? * In the section dealing with local news, another headline reads: “Region’s suicide rate still high.” Do you know – does anyone know -- our own suicide rate? Does anyone care to know? # Saturday, September 17, 2011 ***************************************** GANDHI ******************************************** Gandhi was a double dissident – critical of British colonialism as well as many facets of Indian life. In a new biography we are told: “This made him a rather more balanced nationalist than the many who remarked on the victimhood of their race or argued for the superiority of their own culture.” See Jad Adams, GANDHI: THE TRUE MAN BEHIND MODERN INDIA (New York, Pegasus, 2011, page 56). # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 21, 2011 Sunday, September 18, 2011 ***************************************** THE GOOD BOOK ******************************************** My ideas are subversive and dangerous? What about the ideas in the Bible? “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” “Without vision the people perish.” “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” “Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The trouble with our censorship is that its ultimate aim is to violate not only my human right but also God’s divine right of free speech. # Monday, September 19, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ******************************************** Divisions don’t bother me as much as the lies that are spoken in their defense. * Liars don’t bother me as much as their efforts to make you believe that they believe in their own lies and they expect you to do likewise. * I may consider making an effort to agree with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors on the day they make an effort to agree with one another. * My answer to those who tell me if I do this that and the other I may be more popular: My obscurity is too well established to be vulnerable to any kind of promotional or advertising campaign. * I have committed so many blunders that I don’t deserve to live. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that almost everyone I know has committed worse blunders yet nothing could be further from their thoughts than suicide. * Instead of voicing your suspicions redouble your vigilance. # Tuesday, September 20, 2011 ***************************************** OBSERVATIONS ******************************************** He who violates my human right of free speech is in no position to determine his degree of guilt or innocence. If it were up to fascists to judge themselves, they would be unanimous in pronouncing their victims guilty. * The sons and daughters of well-known Armenian writers that I have met or heard from prefer solitude to the proximity of their fellow Armenians. That may be because they know something most Armenians don’t -- namely: to survive in our environment one must either lie or be penalized for his honesty. * I repeat myself? That may be because I am a bad writer and you are a worse reader for reading a writer who is not worth reading. * All problems and solutions begin and end in the convolutions of our breains – which of course does not apply to the brainless. * Love is the mightiest creative force of all because it sees somebody in nobody and meaning in the meanigless. # Wednesday, September 21, 2011 ***************************************** READING ******************************************** Gerald Durrell’s memoir MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS (1956) contains a hilarious portrait of Gostan Zarian. Gerald Durrell: not to be confused with his better-known brother Lawrence (THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET) who also wrote extensively on Zarian. * A headline reads: “Syria blames terrorists for country’s violence.” The trick here is and it has always been, to portray yourself as a victim even as you victimize. * In detective stories I am more interested in the dialogue than the plot. * If only there were writers who specialized in rewriting difficult texts – Hegel rewritten by Chekhov. * Dupes hate critics. They view criticism as enemy action. * Poetry, it has been said, is when two words meet for the first time – as in “fearful symmetry” (Blake) and “beeloud glade” (Yeats). * His handwriting is so bad that his “morale” looks like “merde.” * I am a failure because my readers know better. If only I could choose a different audience… # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 24, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2011 Thursday, September 22, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ******************************************** It never ceases to amaze me the greed with which we cling to the illusion of our own importance no matter how often we are exposed as irrelevant. * Our genocide? The West wouldn’t allow it. The recognition of our genocide? If we write enough books, produce enough eyewitness accounts, and organize enough demonstrations, the West may finally see the light. * Historic lands? All of America is someone else’s historic land, so what? * Perhaps truth or reality itself is a territory beyond our comprehension, and God Himself is the negation of the “I” and everything connected with it. * If Calderon is right and “life is a dream,” it may not even be our dream but someone else’s. * In my younger days our elder statesmen would seek me out and give me advice – all of it useless. * History may become more comprehensible if you think of serial killers as failed political leaders. * What if I am wrong? I will be dead wrong on the day I assert infallibility. # Friday, September 23, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************************** If you search long enough for something you are sure to find a substitute. * The more I deal with Turks the more I like my fellow Armenians; and the more I deal with Armenians the better I understand Turks. * A writer is someone who has developed the art of speaking even when he has nothing to say. * My mother believed what she read in the papers except what I wrote. * Spengler: “The less one needs others, the more powerful one is.” * My ambition in life when young: To come to terms with death. My ambition now: to die in order to have the final answer which may or may not exist. * There are no questions and answers in reality – both begin and end in the convolutions of our brains. * We are told space must have an end. We are also told space is being created with the speed of light. It follows, no matter how fast we travel we will never see what’s on the other side of space. * Love means being always on the verge of tears. Love feels as though your insides were being surgically removed without anaesthesia. If you have not experienced love, you don’t know bliss. # Saturday, September 24, 2011 ***************************************** SHRINKS ******************************************** Almost everyone I have been reading about recently has been analyzed. I have never been near an analyst and I doubt very much if I ever will find myself in the same room with one. What could he tell me that I don’t already know? And what could I tell him? Where would I begin? I am misunderstood and spat upon by hoodlums? Who hasn’t been? Homer, it is said, was kicked out of seven villages, all of which, after he died, claimed to be his birthplace. To this day no one knows where he was born or, for that matter, buried. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted September 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2011 Sunday, September 25, 2011 ***************************************** CONTRADICTIONS ******************************************** They fascinate me and I see them everywhere. AVANIM (Stones) an Israeli film whose unstated but clearly implied moral is: Rabbis may be as much of a threat to the survival of Israel as Palestinians. * Search for the enemy within and you will find him. * They may talk of God but the means they employ belong to the Devil. This is as true of rabbis as it is of imams and popes. * They may praise rebirth and resurrection but what they promote is death of the spirit. * DECEPTION ************************** What could be easier than deceiving children? And are not adults children is disguise? Do we ever give up – are we capable of giving up -- childhood illusions? Are we not our own most gullible dupes? * A GOOD ANSWER ************************** When asked if Cary Grant was homosexual or bisexual, one of his wives (he had five of them) is reported to have replied: “I was too busy f***ing him to ask.” There should be a Nobel Prize for the best remark of the year. # Monday, September 26, 2011 ***************************************** REFLECTIONS ******************************************** Most of my life I kept my thoughts to myself out of fear of offending men in positions of power. I was a coward but refused to admit it. I behaved like a fool and thought I was wise. Nothing comes more easily than to preach heroism and to promote cowardice in the name of tradition, law and order, respect for authority, and countless other fictional considerations. * If you are a fool do not attempt to share your wisdom with better men than yourself. * Are you wise or brave enough to admit you are a fool? * To the rich, money is the quintessence of all wisdom. * Between the virtues of the rich and the vices of the poor, which would you choose? * The criticism of idiots is more of a testimonial than an indictment. * More important than education itself is who does the educating. # Tuesday, September 27, 2011 ***************************************** NOTES & COMMENTS ******************************************** To know perfection we must first experience the degradation of life on earth. Heaven will not be heaven for me if I can’t play the Beethoven Sonatas like Schnabel and Bach like Glen Gould. * Anonymity will make a hero out of a zero. * Promises are one thing, delivery another. The two might as well be strangers to one another. * Whenever I see an odar joining one of our discussion forums on the internet I would like to post the following message: "Welcome to this forum, dear friend. Please remember to ignore the hooligans among us. They represent no one but themselves." * It must be obvious by now that one doesn’t have to be a Turk in order to behave like one. Nothing comes easier to an Ottomanized Armenian than to behave like a Turk with the certainty that he is discharging his duty as a patriotic Armenian. The same applies to Sovietized Armenians. # Wednesday, September 28, 2011 ***************************************** TWO PHILOSOPHERS ******************************************** Once, when after a loud argument, Socrates’ wife poured a pail of dirty water on his head, he said: “It generally rains after thunder.” More recently, while massaging his wife’s neck, Louis Althusser (1918-1990) strangled her, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. * Women disappoint men because they find men disappointing. * The difference between dialogue and Armenian arguments is that the aim of the first is synthesis or consensus, the aim of the second is verbal assassination. * Gide: “Le plus grand bonheur, aprиs que d’aimer, c’est de confesser son amour.” * Valery: “Combien de gens meurent dans les accidents, pour ne pas lacher leur parapluis!” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2011 Thursday, September 29, 2011 ***************************************** A TOUMANIAN FABLE ABRIDGED ************************************* Early one morning when the fox hears a rooster crowing, he thinks: "Breakfast!" When he is told by the rooster in the tree that he is not alone but with a friend, he thinks: "Lunch too!" But when he finds out the friend is not another rooster but a dog, the words breakfast and lunch are replaced with "Feet, do your stuff!" * BLESSINGS ************************* An Arab blessing (as quoted by Flaubert in a letter from Cairo): "I wish you all kinds of prosperity, especially a long prick!" What’s next in line? "May you deflower a hundred virgins"? * While in Cairo, Flaubert is said to have explored the Armenian community. I wonder if he discovered anything of interest. * PROVERBS ************************** I love exotic proverbs especially when they are phony. Example: A Burmese saying (which I just made up): “You cannot feed a hungry tiger with the bones of a hummingbird.” * CELEBRITIES ************************** There is a type of minor celebrity who behaves like a major celebrity in the hope of being confused with one. There is also a type of nonentity who wants you to believe he is a future celebrity. * GIDE ON WAGNER ******************************* “L’Allemagne n’a peut-etre jamais rien produit a la fois d’aussi grand ni aussi barbare.” * ONE-LINERS *********************** Balzac: “Les moeurs sont l’hypocrisie d’une nation.” * Baudelaire: “Life is a disease. Everyone knows that.” * Because reality is against us, we say God is with us. # Friday, September 30, 2011 ***************************************** ABOUT HEGEL ************************************* Hegel is not an easy philosopher. As a matter of fact I have never heard anyone say “I enjoy reading Hegel.” Even Hegelians don’t always agree on what he said or meant. With one exception: the Francophone-Russian Kojeve. Kojeve’s interpretations of Hegel are readable, accessible, insightful, and eminently unHegelian. Some samples follow: * “Man, to be really, truly ‘man’ and to know that he is such, must impose the idea that he has of himself on beings other than himself.” * “Christianity is born from the Slave’s terror in the face of Nothingness, his nothingness.” * “The Christian frees himself from the human Master only to be enslaved by the divine Master.” * “He does this for the same reason that he accepted the human Master: through fear of death.” * “For Hegel, as for Marx, the central phenomenon of the bourgeois world is not the enslavement of the working man, of the poor bourgeois by the rich bourgeois, but the enslavement of both by Capital.” # Saturday, October 01, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ************************************* If I were to say to my shrink: "Most of my problems stem from the fact that I was born an Armenian," he would reply: "I was born a Jew. Only Turks are after your ass. The whole world is after ours." * Those who violate my human right of free speech do so because they are convinced they are better men than myself; and they are better if only because they are closer to God and Country. Some of them may even deliver lectures to me on good Armenianism. They seem to be totally unaware of the fact that only certified morons assume that God, Country, and good Armenianism have only one definition: their own. * It is a scientifically established fact that prejudice makes people stupid. * Hell is more accessible than heaven. * Lovers are mutual parasites. * Love and hatred are chains. So is indifference. * Very often all great reformers do is replace big lies with bigger ones. * There is more authority in silence than in speech. One reason why the dead enjoy more respect than the living. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Christopher Posted October 1, 2011 Report Share Posted October 1, 2011 * There is a misprint in "In God We Trust." The letter "l" in "God" has been inadvertently deleted. :lol3: Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 5, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2011 Sunday, October 02, 2011 ***************************************** IN LOVE ************************************* When in his eighties Pablo Casals fell in love with one of his students and wanted to marry her, his doctor was against it saying it could be dangerous; to which Casals replied: “If she dies, she dies.” * READERS ********************** Some readers resent the fact that I refuse to reproduce their sentiments and thoughts. They believe a writer should be like a secretary – take dictation. I see that as another symptom of our sultanism. * Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821): “I don’t know what the life of a rogue can be like since I have never been one; but the life of an honest man is abominable.” * Anything that is not worth rereading can’t be worth writing. # Monday, October 03, 2011 ***************************************** DENIALISTS ************************************* Denialists have a powerful argument in their favor: Everybody lies. * My aim in life: to humanize the dehumanized. Call me a megalomaniac. * The arrogance of the half-learned: I know all about that. I was there once. * Life’s favorite trajectory: from arrested development to advanced degeneration. * We have been ruled by barbarians for such a long time that we don’t mind our own. Either that or we see them as the lesser of two evils. # Tuesday, October 04, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ************************************* Until very recently, we, Armenians of the diaspora, were not allowed to know the identity of our political leaders; and now that we know them, we understand why they preferred to remain anonymous. * One of the best things about life is that it’s short. * Actions have consequences, consequences have repercussions, repercussions have echoes and so on ad infinitum. * Memo to our editors: silencing writers, burning books, burning men, concentration camps, gulags: they all begin with censorship. * It is impossible to struggle against the certainties of ignorance with the doubts of knowledge. # Wednesday, October 05, 2011 ***************************************** ON A VARIETY OF THINGS ************************************* Some of my Turkish readers are outraged when I criticize Turks. Like all dictators, Kemal knew that the only way to be popular is to flatter the collective ego of the nation. Which is why most Turks are convinced they are beyond criticism. * I don’t always write what I think and feel because I don’t really know what I think and feel. All my thoughts and feelings contain their own deviations as well as contradictions. * I resent it when someone steals my stolen lines. I work hard to find lines that are worth stealing. Let him do the same. * Here are some aphorisms by Antonio Porchia (1886-1968), an Argentine writer of Italian descent who appears to know all about us: * "Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides." * "A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors." * "You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide." * "Some things become so completely our own that we forget them." * "They will say that you are on the wrong road, if it is your own." # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 8, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2011 Thursday, October 06, 2011 ***************************************** COMMENTS ************************************* With every book I publish, I acquire a new friend and lose two old ones. Any day now the number of my friends will bear a negative sign. * I feel most alone when in the company of my fellow Armenians. * William James: "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." * The absence of God plays a more important role in the life of atheists than the existence of God in the life of most believers-- judging by the way they live. * Is it humanly possible to ignore or forget the truth after hearing it? # Friday, October 07, 2011 ***************************************** COMMENTS (II) ************************************* As soon as you settle on the answer of an important question, you begin to suspect there may be more merit in its contradiction; in the same way that after you take a woman in marriage, all other women appear more desirable. This may suggest that the world was created not by God but by the Devil; and if I am not mistaken there is an Armenian medieval Christian heresy that says as much. * Andre Malraux: “I am an agnostic. But you know better than I that no one can escape God.” He should have added, “and the Devil.” # Saturday, October 08, 2011 ***************************************** DIARY ************************************* Very early this morning, on the radio, a demonstrator in Athens: “What’s happening today is not about saving Greece; it’s about saving the banking system.” * Obama’s greatest blunder: to ask men from Wall Street to fix Wall Street. Imagine asking predators to reform the law of the jungle. * In a televised press conference the other day when asked why he did not prosecture the men responsible for the economic collapse, Obama replied: “What they did was immoral; it was not illegal.” When the same question was asked to an economist: “Their actions were criminal and they should have been indicted.” * Who would have thought the Arab spring would influence and shape the Occupy Wall Street movement in America today? Yanks being taught democracy by Africans! What a strange place the world we live in is! How gloriously unpredictable human beings are! * In an Op-Ed commentary this morning, I read: “Russians say they are often more afraid of the police than of criminals.” Elsewhere Putinism is seen as an effort to revive Stalinism. What else would you expect from a former KGB agent? * Anonymous: “The rotten apple is the first to fall, and it never falls far from the tree.” * A line from a western with Errol Flynn: “There I was, no ma, no pa, brung up by Comanche Indians.” * I am reminded of a line by Updike to the effect that as a boy he was more influenced by Errol Flynn than Jesus Christ. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Kars Posted October 8, 2011 Report Share Posted October 8, 2011 Thursday, October 06, 2011 ***************************************** * I feel most alone when in the company of my fellow Armenians. Thus spoke Ara Baliozian, the Canadian version of Vahe Avetian – “a Swedish political analyst of Armenian descent”. But, please, continue. Your contribution to Spyurkahay literature will remain in the annals of our history. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2011 Sunday, October 09, 2011 ***************************************** OBSERVATIONS ************************************* In evil men we see ourselves exposed. * To see meaning in the meaningless: that’s the truest mark of creativity. * Forgiving others is easy. What’s hard, perhaps even impossible, is forgiving oneself. * Never take a whole paragraph to say what can be said in a single line. Never take a whole line when a single word will do just as well. And never underestimate the power of silence which can be more eloquent than the most eloquent speech. * Instead of eighty and ninety, the French say four-twenties and four-twenties-and-ten. This may suggest that human intelligence or inventiveness is limited and after a certain point it becomes inoperative. * If in a democracy the majority can be systemativally moronized, in what way democracy may be said to be different from tyranny? # Monday, October 10, 2011 ***************************************** A JOKE ************************************* “One Jew tells another that, that very morning, he asked a passerby what he’d think, if the next day, as was rumored, they’d kill all the Jews and all the haidressers. And the passerby answered, ‘Why the hairdressers?’” * After reading this joke very early this morning I wept and laughed uncontrollably for almost an hour. # Tuesday, October 11, 2011 ***************************************** FROM THE MEMOIRS OF AN UNEMPLOYABLE MISFIT ************************************* For ten long years I worked for a living in factories, department stores, and offices. The work itself i didn’t mind. What I despised were the men I had to work for and the subservience of my coworkers. And because I have always had trouble disguising my feelings, I was fired shortly after I was hired. I don’t know of anyone in my circles of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors who has been fired as often as I have. Don’t get me wrong. I am not complaining. They were right to fire; so was I in finding all forms of modern employment repellent. * If I am ever hired as a teacher, one of the very first things I will say to the class will be: all ideologies and religions have their own propaganda line that contradicts the competition. There may be some truth in all of them but in so far as they divide mankind, they are big lies. You may now guess how long my career as a teacher would last. # Wednesday, October 12, 2011 ***************************************** DIARY ********************************** Watched Chaplin’s GREAT DICTATOR. His imitation of Hitler speechifying was wildly hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing. To all our speechifiers I say: “Let that be a lesson to you.” * STRANGERS ********************** You may say whatever you wish about me or anyone else for that matter and you will be partly right. That’s because we are not one but many and some of them are strangers we may never meet. * JUSTICE ********************* Madame Justice is not blind. She has 20/20 vision – but only for her friends. During our Ottoman and Soviet periods, and today, under our own semi-sultans and neo-commissars, she has consistently ignored us. * FRIENDS? ****************** You don’t have to go out of your way to make a mortal enemy out of an Armenian friend. He will see something invisible, hear something in audible, and react as if you were plotting his murder. * ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES ***************************************** So do words. What if what I write may result in the destruction of the nation? I am responsible only for what I say. I cannot be held responsible for what others do. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 Thursday, October 13, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************** Two favorite aphorisms on love and marriage: Balzac: “The fate of the house hangs on the wedding night.” Chinese proverb: “The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it.” * In Roger Ebert’s LIFE – ITSELF: A MEMOIR (New York, 2011, page 226) Lee Marvin is quoted as having said: “'You ever hear me sing an Armenian song?’ Marvin sang an Armenian song.” * A question without an answer: What prompted God to introduce imperfection in a perfect world by creating man? * A glance is enough to change two destinies. # Friday, October 14, 2011 ***************************************** AS I SEE IT ********************************** Whenever I reply to a critic, I make an enemy; and whenever I am not diplomatic enough in my replies – diplomacy not being my field – I make a mortal enemy. * Once when I asked the nationality of a dazzling beauty – a teenage waitress in the cafeteria of a department store where I was employed as a stockboy – she said: "Canadian." When I asked for more details, she replied: "Let’s see now, Irish, Polish, German, Cherokee, French, Italian and Ukrainian.” * "We are a wounded nation," I am reminded once in a while by our propagandists, "and you don’t kick someone who is down," – thus equating truth with a kick in the groin. But truth is a kick only to those who prefer to live in a world of lies. # Saturday, October 15, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ********************************** On the Tea Party: The forces of evil know how to get organized. On the Occupy Wall Street movement: It never pays to give up one’s faith in mankind. * For twenty days – or is it forty? – they were ignored. Now, everyone is talking about nothing else. * Solidarity can move mountains. Without solidarity, all solutions will be dismissed as unrealistic and utopian by the very same people who consider it their patriotic duty to divide the nation in the name of this or that orthodoxy or ideology, thus giving patriotism a bad name. * Where there is solidarity even bad solutions may improve matters. Where there is no solidarity even the best solution will be ignored. * I have met good, patriotic Armenians who give up on Armenianism after the first insult. * After being insulted ten thousand times, sometimes I reply with an insult on the grounds that I have earned the right. If you disagree with my MO, you can go to hell! * “Help those who need the help,” reads a headline in the Op-Ed page this morning. The implied subtext: “Prevent future revolutions.” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2011 Sunday, October 16, 2011 ***************************************** OCCUPY WALL STREET ********************************** A single anonymous slogan strikes me as more eloquent than a hundred academic analyses by learned economists. * “Wanted: corporate accountability.” * “Where is the penalty for financial incompetence?” * “I can’t afford my own politician.” * And the one that must strike fear in all presidential candidates: “We are the 99%.” * By the time this thing is over, there may be enough slogans to fill a volume. I for one am looking forward to it. * As for the Republicans who dismiss the movement as leaderless (as if that were a liability) or class warfare: all I can say is that no matter how rotten the status quo, it will have its supporters and defenders. From Nero and Caligula to Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, and Saddam: they all had their supporters and beneficiaries. # Monday, October 17, 2011 ***************************************** FROGS AND ELEPHANTS ********************************** Anyone who decides to depend on the kindness of strangers must sooner or later come to terms with the fact that most strangers are not kind. * We cannot speak of the moral failings of a volcanic eruption or the questionable logic of an earthquake. Neither can we speak of justice for victims of massacres. As far as they are concerned, what’s done is done and cannot be undone. As for those who editorialize and speechify endlessly about genocide recognition: they remind me of a certain American presidential candidate who promised “Yes, we can!” and delivered, “No, I can’t!” * What a book one could write on the promises of politicians! “When I hear 9-9-9 I want to dial 9-1-1.” To which I can only say, “It takes one to know one.” The good news is, so far no one has dared to say “It ain’t 99%. It’s only 98.5%.” * They call it class warfare and hope to win with their 1%? That’s not optimism. That’s megalomania run amok. Reminds me of our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century: “A frog trying to rape an elephant,” to quote one of our elder statesmen. # Tuesday, October 18, 2011 ***************************************** WALL STREET ********************************** Leaderless? With leaders like them, who needs one? * “Incoherent, confused, and self-contradictory?” What about “LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE?” * A commentary Headline in the Op-Ed page: “Ballot is still the best way to bring change.” Not if the choice is between bad and worse, or between the gutless and the greedy. * “National Media, Corporate PR.” * "Against Politics, Bankers, Gangsters.” * “Eat the Rich.” * “Greed is the opium of the Rich.” * “99% of the world unite – you have nothing to lose but your bloodsuckers.” # Wednesday, October 19, 2011 ***************************************** COMMENTS ********************************** We are told “Thou shalt not kill!” but we are also coerced into killing in the name of God and Country. Power structures and organized religions are full of #$@% -- if you will forgive my French. * You are free as long as you do what you are told? Try to make sense of that! * Can you really know someone who doesn’t himself? What about an institution that contradicts itself? * Wars become inevitable only when we do nothing to prevent them. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2011 Thursday, October 20, 2011 ***************************************** COMMENTS ********************************** Don’t judge a man by his opinion of himself or a political party by its propaganda. * You may hope to be forgiven by a Turkish enemy but by an Armenian friend, never! I speak from experience. * Whenever I disagree with an Armenian, every Armenian who agrees with him becomes my enemy. * African proverb: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.” # Friday, October 21, 2011 ***************************************** GUESSING GAMES ********************************** An unforgettable line from a forgotten American movie: A lecherous hombre with a foreign accent to a scantily clead sexy teenager: “I want to balanga you with my bonnie johnnie.” My guess is, as children that’s how we learn languages: we may not understand the words but we can guess their meaning. As when in winter a man shivers and says, “I am cold,” for instance; or when he says “I am thirsty” and is given a glass of water. But as we grow older, we seem to lose that particular faculty. * One of my favorite Jewish jokes goes something like this: Two old friends meet on a road somewhere in Russia and after a brief exchange one of them says to the other: “You tell me you are going to Minsk because you want me to believe you are going to Pinsk, but I happen to know you are going to Minsk: Why must you always lie to me?” # Saturday, October 22, 2011 ***************************************** ON THE ETIOLOGY OF GENOCIDE ********************************** “There is nothing more valuable than our honor!” declared a Muslim in Montreal after murdering his three teenage daughters because they had boyfriends. (It is to be noted that he called it “treachery”). There it is: the perfect justification for killing defenseless civilians. * After dismissing me as anti-Armenian, less than mediocre and totally unprintable, they demand solutions from me. They must be in deep %#$& and they expect us to believe we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands. * Fear of free speech might as well be synonymous with running away from the truth. * Mel Brooks: “Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole. Tragedy is when I cut my finger.” This may explain why sadists outnumber masochists. * Chinese saying: “The great man is a public misfortune.” * Japanese proverb: “A wise falcon hides its talons.” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 Sunday, October 23, 2011 ***************************************** POLITICS ********************************** The secret aim of all propaganda is not to spread lies – be they small, middling, or big – but to convince you to believe your brain is a useless organ; and it becomes useful only when authorized by the state or a central authority. This may explain why fools have as many certainties as the wise have doubts. Speaking for myself: my only certainty is that when fools are in charge, war and massacre are sure to follow. * What a book one could write on politics as the art of deception. * Kemalism in four words: “Fez, no. Yataghan, yes.” * No one will ever accuse me of taking myself seriously. On more than one occasion I have identified my role in our collective existence as that of a @#$%-disturber. * A statesman is a politician who has done one right thing. # Monday, October 24, 2011 ***************************************** EARTHQUAKE ********************************** It must be obvious by now that the regime in Ankara has invested more money and manpower in rewriting history and in persecuting Kurds than in providing safe housing for its citizens. * THE RICH AND THE POOR ************************************ The rich like to believe the poor are lazy and the poor like to believe the rich are greedy. Who is right? As far as I know no pundit has so far dared to suggest that we owe the present global economic crisis to the laziness of the poor. * A ROLE MODEL **************************** Crime doesn’t pay? But it paid and paid handsomely to Gadhafy for almost half a century. I wouldn’t be surprised if future dictators adopt him as a role model. # Tuesday, October 25, 2011 ***************************************** GREAT EXPECTATIONS ********************************** We are expected to believe that our revolution at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire was a success even if the patient died. * Propaganda is designed to flatter the vanity of a few even if it means insulting the intelligence of the many. * What Talaat and chief executive officers on Wall Street have in common is the certainty that if the law is on their side they can get away with murder. * Richelieu: “If the poor are too well off they will be disorderly.” It follows, the poor must remain poor for their own good and in the name of law and order. * Pushkin: “Where there is a trough, there will be swine.” The only reason textbook on political science don’t begin with that line is that all educational systems are controlled by politicians. * Proust: “The pleasure an artist gives is to make us know an additional universe.” # Wednesday, October 26, 2011 ***************************************** SUMMING UP ********************************** After six centuries of servile subservience a sudden eruption of violent uprisings. I dare anyone to suggest that our collective destiny has not been shaped by cowards and fools. Treating them as heroes with good intentions is to forget that hell is paved with them. * Bullies at the mercy of bigger bullies: that just about sums up our present leadership. Dzour nesdink, shidag khossink! # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted October 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 29, 2011 Thursday, October 27, 2011 ***************************************** REFLECTIONS ********************************** There is a dupe, a coward, and a bully in all of us. That’s the only way to explain world history. * Q: If you were an animal, what animal would you be? A: A vegetarian tiger. I hate predators. They are the commissars of the animal kingdom. * Good writing consists in deleting. Silence can be more eloquent than a torrent of rhetorical verbiage. A history of silence will have no quotations. * If there are homophobes it may be because they were traumatized by serial pedophiles, among them such authority figures as priests. * After every line I write I ask myself: Why should anyone be interested in this? What if he already knows or understands what I am saying? What if he is ahead of me when it comes to certain ideas and experiences? # Friday, October 28, 2011 ***************************************** SOCRATES ******************************** When asked where he came from, Socrates is said to have replied: "Not from Athens but from the world." And yet, when he was condemned to death by the Athenians and was given an opportunity to escape, he said he’d rather die in Athens than live anywhere else. * BEETHOVEN’S SHADOW ******************************** When Vahe Berberian once suggested that Beethoven’s somewhat overblown shadow unfairly eclipsed the reputation and worth of many other equally great composers, among them Boccherini, Paul Jungmann, the quintessential German – blond, blue-eyed, intense, unsmiling – said, one should not speak such nonsense in the presence of children. Forever after music was never discussed in his presence. * PROPAGANDA AND LITERATURE ******************************************** All our problems must be ascribed to our enemies, our propaganda tells us. The enemy is us, literature reminds us. And propaganda is more popular than literature because no one likes to be told he is a fool or a pervert bent on self-destruction. # Saturday, October 29, 2011 ***************************************** ON LOVE AND DEATH ******************************** Love is an arrow, marriage a boomerang. * Where there is love there will be a pierced, broken, shattered, or shish-kebabed heart. * There is a Greek myth whose intent is to emphasize the fact that the woman you love and the woman you marry are seldom one and the same. The critical passage in it reads: “No lovely naked bride awaited him on the marriage bed, but a tangled knot of hissing serpents.” * Your children will break your heart as surely as your parents (when they die). * I first fell in love at age eight with my schoolteacher. She married another, had a nervous collapse, attempted suicide, and became physically unrecognizable, by which time I was nine and in love with another – this time a coeval. * My dictionary defines “passion” as “suffering.” * The woman you love and the woman you cease to love – what a difference! Not just black and white but everything and nothing. * According to a Frenchman, “the heaviest body in the world is the woman you have ceased to love.” * After mentioning a dead person it is customary to say, “may s/he rest in peace,” when it is not the dead that are in need of peace but the living. * Stendhal, the author of ON LOVE, one of the best books on the subject: “All my life I have always seen what I imagined rather than reality.” * And Tolstoy: “In the presence of others, women – especially when they are young – pretend so skillfully that no one can see them as they are.” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted November 2, 2011 Author Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 Sunday, October 30, 2011 ***************************************** BROTHERS ******************************** The West has its share of dupes, fools, fanatics, racists, skinheads, serial killers, child molesters, and chief executive officers – in short, hoodlums and hooligans – as Turkey has its share of denialists. It’s beyond me why anyone in his right mind would expect them to be morally superior. # Monday, October 31, 2011 ***************************************** OVERPOPULATION ******************************** In my lifetime alone world population has increased from three to seven billion. Scientists tell us the planet cannot sustain this rate of growth. Contraception is the only solution. So far politicians have done nothing in that direction because they don’t want to offend the Catholics. But I believe the Pope is as much to blame as film producers who glamorize sex and treat pregnancy (if at all) as if it were an alien, disconnected, and rare condition. # Tuesday, November 01, 2011 ***************************************** REREADING TOYNBEE ******************************** After Shakespeare, he is for me the most quotable English writer. But whereas Shakespeare is universally admired, Toynbee continues to have more enemies than friends, especially among his fellow English historians, probably because he exposed their mediocrity. In that sense, he reminds me of our own Zarian. I love Toynbee’s ideas; but what I love even more is his Mandarin prose. * ON GOD ***************** “I believe that Man has been given the capacity to see God, and I believe that this is the summum bonum towards which all creation groans and travails.” * THE CHOSEN ************************ “The Jews, the Japanese, the British ‘sahib’, the Nazis…all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.” * ON HIS CRITICS ************************ “Their pummelings have given me a mental massage that has loosened the joints and muscles of my mind and has set it moving on a new course.” * A GOOD QUESTION ********************************* “If the Turkish atrocities could be explained as anachronistic outcrops of a residual savagery in the hearts of recent proselytes to a Western way of life, how was a Western historian to explain the apostasy of Germans who were native-born children of the Western household?” * ON PATIENCE ************************ “A capacity to suffer fools gladly and to do this with gusto, not as a martyrdom, but as a fine art which the practitioner can practise with zest.” # Wednesday, November 02, 2011 ***************************************** IN THE NEWS ******************************** Until very recently Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmadinejad were as close as “kolo kai vraki” (bum and pants). Today “one of Ahmadinejad’s advisers stands accused of raping 340 virgins during the last year.” Not even a writer with the fertile imagination of Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have written such a sentence. For more, much more, on the subject, see Abbas Milani, “Desperate Dictatorship,” (THE NEW REPUBLIC, Oct. 6, 2011, page 30). * Peace is wonderful. Friendship is great. Love is best. But one must be a pervert of the worst kind to love creeps like Khamenei and Ahmedinejad who, after conspiring to commit countless crimes against humanity, end up hating each other. * Where there is too much talk of God, can the Devil be far off? # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted November 5, 2011 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2011 Thursday, November 03, 2011 ***************************************** SWAN SONG ******************************** If you have any hopes, prepare yourself to see them shattered. * The source of all my problems? I value honesty above everything else. So much so that I’d much rather listen to the braying of an honest jackass than to the seductive song of a phony nightingale. * When it comes to painful experiences I have the memory of an elephant. As for happy ones: I can’t think of a single one that did not end badly. * The first thing I did when I came to Canada from war-torn Greece was to buy a loaf of bread and a cup of coffee. The bread tasted like @#$% and the coffee was so hot that it burned my tongue. After that everything went downhill. * The only thing that cheers me up these days is the prospect of death. # Friday, November 04, 2011 ***************************************** PARALLELS ******************************** In an interview published in TIME (Oct. 10, 2011, page 64), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has this to say on the Israelis: “As long as they refuse to apologize for the nine people of Turkish descent who lost their lives on the flotilla, as long as they refuse to pay compensation to the families and as long as the embargo on Gaza has not been lifted, the relations between the two countries will never be normalized.” * On President Bashar Assad of Syria: “It is impossible to preserve my friendship with people who are allegedly leaders when they are attacking their own people, shooting at them, using tanks.” * It can truly be said of Erdogan and Turks that they are a clear-cut case of the blind leading the blind. To my Turkish friends and readers I therefore say: “See you in the ditch.” # Saturday, November 05, 2011 ***************************************** ON INSANITY ******************************** In his biography of Alexander the Great, Plutarch writes: “One of the largest and most handsome lions, which was kept in Babylon was attacked and kicked to death by an ass.” * Shaw may be right: the insane should be punished more severely than the sane if only because they are more unpredictable and dangerous. * And speaking of insanity: if you are in love, you should remind yourself at least once a day that your beloved is less a real person and more a product of your imagination. * I don’t agree with a reality that makes crooks wealthy and honest men poor, and because I speak of this reality, some of my readers hate me as if I were responsible for everything that has gone wrong in their lives. * Subtract imagination from love and the result may be closer to contempt than affection. # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
arabaliozian Posted November 9, 2011 Author Report Share Posted November 9, 2011 Sunday, November 06, 2011 ***************************************** METAPHYSICAL REFLECTIONS ***************************************************** If God knows neither fear nor doubt, can He really understand man? * When we speak of God it is useful to remember that we speak of Him not as He is but as we conceive Him to be; and it is a serious blunder to conceive of God in our own image. * We may have the answers to the most important questions only after we die. In that sense, death may be not an end but a beginning. * To God past and future are one and both might as well be a fraction of a second. * What if the Big Bang as we know it is only the last bang in an infinite series of bangs? * Everything we say about God is based on hearsay evidence and therefore inadmissible. * God and men are more fiction than reality. * Reality (or God or Truth) is so different from what we imagine it to be that if the two ever met they would not recognize each other. # Monday, November 07, 2011 ***************************************** FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ***************************************************** To go down into the gutter with your adversary is almost to agree with him -- if not with his words than with his way of life. * No Armenian writer loved his fellow Armenians as much as Khachatur Apovian – and he committed suicide. * I don’t criticize ideas; I criticize their absence, * In a controversy to be silent is to support the status quo. # Tuesday, November 08, 2011 ***************************************** HOW MANY ARMENIANS? ***************************************************** We have more questions than answers. Who qualifies as an Armenian? What if half of Turkey is half Armenian? Because an Armenian girl was legally raped as a teenager, does it follow that her offspring acquired the national identity of her rapist who may have been himself half Armenian? An Armenian who is against us, is he not more Turkish than Armenian? A Turk who is with us is he not more Armenian than Turkish? If to divide-and-rule is enemy action, do our dividers qualify as Armenian? How many of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (who support only one faction) qualify as Armenian? If we say only Armenians who are for solidarity qualify as Armenian, who will dare to say he is against solidarity? If we preach solidarity and practise divisions do we not speak with a forked tongue? Can an Armenian who speaks with a forked tongue qualify as a human being? Confused? You should be. i am. Who said reality is easy to figure out? # Wednesday, November 09, 2011 ***************************************** OBSERVATIONS ***************************************************** After a disaster, those who are partly or wholly responsible for it, will come up with a thousand reasons why the disaster was inevitable. Don’t believe a word they say. Their priority is not to understand and explain but to mislead and deceive. Their aim is not to learn from history in order not to repeat it, but to salvage their powers and privileges. * To say where there is power there will be abuse of power is like saying where there are people there will also be the law of gravity. * Haves and have nots? It would be more accurate to speak of bloodsuckers and their victims. * Deceivers and dupes? Even better: predators and herbivores. * Class warfare? I suggest telling bloodsuckers to minimize their intake of blood does not qualify. * There are many things that can be seen even by a legally blind man, but most of us are so carefully and consistently indoctrinated that we are willing to testify under oath we saw nothing. * Sh*t happens because most men are sh*ts. And more often than not a deceiver is as much of a sh*t as a dupe. * Voltaire on the origin of religion: “From the meeting of the earliest scoundrel with the very first fool.” # Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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