Latest from writer Ara Baliozian

November 24, 2004

Sunday, November 21, 2004

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"He who knows does not speak"?

Some truth in that.

Socrates spoke a great deal but his central message was: "The only thing I know is that I don't know."

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For every slogan there will be a counter-slogan, for the same reasons that the self-interest of one will conflict with the self-interest of another.

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To approach history with a slogan or thesis or agenda and to defend it at all cost is to act like a lawyer who is hired to plead "not guilty" for a client he knows to be a serial killer. (Hence, the popular joke: "Please, don't tell my mother I am a lawyer. She thinks I am a pimp.")

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To say that Turks are bloodthirsty savages is as racist as to imply that Armenians are compassionate because they were the first nation to convert to Christianity.

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Perhaps what I have been trying to do is to expose the charlatanism and lies of elites or men at the top of the food chain (political and religion leaders) who pretend to know better but whose knowledge is disguised self-interest.

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The American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, believed that sin is social, not just individual. The same could be said of prejudices, intolerance, and hatred.

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Religion is one thing, imams and bishops another.

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Monday, November 22, 2004

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Jean Rostand: "Language common to all men: mathematics and erotics."

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Jean Rostand: "My Godlessness is no less mysterious than your God."

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It is said: "Do not judge a man by his own opinion of himself," or a nation's history by its own historians.

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The human brain is the seat of reason as well as unreason, and unreason has played a far more decisive role in human history than reason.

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The reason why we don't understand God is that He does not want us to understand Him.

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Polish proverb: "A guest sees more in an hour that the host in a year."

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Alexander Chase: "Memory is the thing you forget with."

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Latin proverb: "Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold."

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Abbie Hoffman: "The idea that the media is there to educate us, or to inform us, is ridiculous because that's about tenth or eleventh on their list. The first purpose of the media is to sell us shit."

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Shavarsh Missakian: "I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere, but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to principles and ideals."

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Gostan Zarian: "The Armenian nation is like a family whose members devour each other because of conflicting interests."

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Tuesday, November 23, 2004

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Burmese proverb: "Futility: playing a harp before a buffalo."

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William Hazlitt: "Everyone in a crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination."

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Samuel Johnson: "A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still."

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In his book of travel impressions, UN NOTRE PAYS (TROIS VOYAGES EN TROISIEME ARMENIE), Denis Donikian quotes an old lady in Yerevan as saying: "Our political leaders are engaged in a policy of national devastation. Things are happening today that did not happen under the Soviets. Which means we are being slaughtered not with ordinary blades but with dull ones. And we are told to shut up about it."

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Elsewhere: "I give a hundred drams to a panhandler. He says nothing - neither a thank-you nor a blessing. Nothing. Complete silence. 'Tell me, my good man, I just gave you a hundred-dram note and you said nothing, not even a simple thanks. How come?' 'What's the use of saying thank you to hundred drams? I say thank you only to those who give me a thousand or more.'"

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To readers who complain that I repeat myself, I say: "You and I share one thing in common: a dislike of repetition. I too dream to live as an Armenian among Armenians and not to be exposed to the same old clichés ad nauseam. I too would like to read a commentary by one of our dime-a-dozen pundits that does not blame all our misfortunes on others - if not Turks then the corrupt West. I too would like to read a letter from one of our philanthropic organizations that does not end with the Panchoonie punch line: "Mi kich pogh oughargetsek" [send us a little money], with a footnote informing me that my contribution is tax deductible. I too would like to meet an Armenian who does not just brag about Armenians being the first nation to convert to Christianity but whose words and actions are animated by love and compassion as opposed to venom and intolerance. Will I live long enough to see these dreams realized?

Did I say dreams? Make it, daydreams based on illusions, born of wishful thinking and chauvinist propaganda.

Did I say daydreams? Make it, snowballs in hell."

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There is no God.

At last I can prove it:

Bush's reelection.

But the Devil exists.

I can prove that too:

Dick Cheney's reelection.

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Wednesday, November 24, 2004

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Puzant Granian is dead. I wonder how many of my readers will recognize his name. He was a teacher, a poet, and a prolific author of fiction, essays, and criticism; also a community leader and a gifted orator.

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I reread an interview published in 1980, where he speaks of Levon Shant (his teacher), Hamo Ohanjanian ("an undeniable moral force"), Roupen Der Minassian ("a man of immense power, spiritual as well as physical"), Gostan Zarian ("a daring explorer of the Armenian psyche"), and Nikol Aghbalian ("a writer of undeniable genius" with an "intense commitment to ideals"), and what comes to mind is the prince, in Giuseppe di Lampedusa's LEOPARD, who at one point says: "We were the leopards, the lions; those who will take our place will be little jackals, hyenas."

Our situation in a nutshell.

Jackals and hyenas.

Scorpions and frogs.

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Hindu proverb: "When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him."

Exactly! Our frogs have kicked our elephants to death.

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."

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After an exchange of insults, disguised as views, with one of my gentle readers: "Now that you know me and I know you, let us do our utmost to avoid each other."

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Between a philosopher and a slave, the state will invariably choose the slave.

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November 27, 2004

Thursday, November 25, 2004

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André Gluckmann is a contemporary French philosopher and the author of over twenty books, the most recent being A TREATISE ON HATRED. The following three quotations are from an interview dealing with this book.

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"It is said that hatred is born of oppression, destitution, and humiliation, as if everyone living in deplorable conditions were ravaged by hatred. What could be more offensive to the poor and the disadvantaged of this world!"

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"The terrorist is not a robot manipulated by material conditions. The terrorist is an assassin who takes pleasure in indiscriminate killing…."

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"The great writer is a prophet of doom. He exposes that which has gone wrong and that which is evil."

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Portuguese proverb: "Better a red face than a black heart."

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Stephen Leacock: "A half truth in argument, like a half brick, carries better."

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Bulgarian proverb: "Other people's eggs have two yolks."

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Speechifiers and sermonizers are like men who praise vegetarianism while dining on shish kebab.

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When it comes to thinking, real thinking, asking questions and raising doubts are more important than making dogmatic assertions and relying on authority.

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I am an Armenian, which means when I think of my fellow Armenians, I lose both sleep and appetite.

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Friday, November 26, 2004

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Whenever I question Zarian's contemporaries, I notice again and again that they refuse to discuss the work and prefer to gossip about the man, and more specifically the insults he apparently inflicted on them.

A minor novelist: "We organized a picnic in his honor and instead of thanking us he complained about the food."

A third-rate versifier who considers himself a first rate poet: "He was an arrogant name-dropper. Unamuno told me this, Verhaeren told me that, Picasso told me, me, me, me!"

An academic in Yerevan: "He was unbearably self-centered. No one liked him."

An occasional journalist: "Once, when I was a boy, I carried two of his atrociously heavy bags to the top of a mountain in Cyprus and he didn't even thank me."

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Of Zarian we can truly say that he was too good for his people, including our so-called intellectual elite. To those who say, "But there must be some truth in all that anecdotal evidence. The man must have been inconsiderate, perhaps even rude, in his dealings with his fellow Armenians." I say, yes, certainly, I agree. Rudeness is unforgivable in any man, including writers, especially writers. But then, Charents was an attempted murderer: that doesn't seem to stop our academics from studying his works and the public from idolizing him.

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More from André Gluckmann's interview:

"Anti-Semitism antedates any encounter or dealing with a real Jew."

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"Hatred is directed at imaginary objects of a certain type: reflections of oneself that one refuses to recognize."

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Simone Weil: "It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level."

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Writes Olivier Messiaen: "Among birds most fights are settled by tournaments of song."

Imagine, if you can, American marines and Iraqi insurgents today (or, for that matter, Armenians and Turks, or even Armenians and Armenians), settling their differences by bursting into song. And to think that homo sapiens thinks he has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.

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My favorite three funeral marches: the slow movement from Beethoven Eroica Symphony, the first movement of Mahler's 5th Symphony, and Siegfried's orchestral threnody from the final act of Wagner's GOTTERDAMMERUNG (which was also Hitler's favorite).

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Saturday, November 27, 2004

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There are those who think by writing one or more articles in our weeklies they have made a valuable contribution to the solution of our problems. There are even those who think if they succeed in solving all our problems, the nation will be grateful to them. I thought so too when I was young, naïve and inexperienced - in short, a dumb jerk. The truth is (and historic evidence is clear on this point) no power on earth, not even a messiah, can solve the problems of a nation that does not want to solve its problems. And if you are ever successful in solving all our problems, consider yourself lucky if they let you live.

It was Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher, who said that for every wise man you meet, be prepared to deal with ten thousand fools, or words to that effect. He also said: "Astrology is a disease, not a science."

A thousand years of progress and what do we have? For every astronomer today there are probably ten thousand astrologers and a hundred thousand fools who believe in them.

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It is the same in politics. Think of the millions of dupes who were taken in by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini and completely ignored the voices of such dissidents as Thomas Mann, Gramsci, Solzhenitsyn and our own Zarian.

If this be progress then it must be the progress of a disease.

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Denis Donikian: "Being Armenian means to have a license to exploit fellow Armenians in the name of Armenianism."

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Russian proverb: "Dwell on the past and you will lose an eye. Ignore the past and you will lose both of them."

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With enough checks and balances even a mediocrity may behave like a statesman. Without checks and balance even the greatest statesman may behave like a serial killer.

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December 4, 2004

Thursday, December 02, 2004

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AUTHENTIC AND INAUTHENTIC IDEAS

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How to define an authentic idea?

After you eliminate all phony or inauthentic ideas, what remains (if anything) qualifies as authentic.

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How to identify an inauthentic idea?

Easy. Any idea that is based on hearsay, which means words uttered by sermonizers and speechifiers, or anyone in a position of power, be he pope, bishop, imam, king or president, cannot be authentic. That's because the primary concern of all power is to preserve or enhance its authority and prestige and not to advance on the endless road whose destination is truth. In that sense, power and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts.

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An authentic idea is based on insight based on experience, provided one remembers that experiences too are necessarily partial or personal, hence limited and lacking in universal application and acceptance.

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To be authentic an idea cannot be dogmatic or infallible. On the contrary, it must have a margin of error, doubt, and uncertainty. There is nothing new in what I am saying. Philosophers from Socrates and Plato to Hegel, Marx and Sartre believed truth (or understanding reality) is a goal that can be reached only by means of dialectic or dialogue - the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or assertion, contradiction, and compromise/consensus.

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Truth is God's realm not man's, and no one is qualified to speak in His name, because "of the gods we know nothing" (Socrates). Therefore all talk of gods and religion is charlatanism because "only matter exists, consciousness being a manifestation of motion in brain cells" (Marx).

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Friday, December 03, 2004

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GETTING WISDOM

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Ever since I read the words "man's primitive belief in explanations" (Paul Valéry), I find most explanations suspect, especially explanations that are flattering to my ego.

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It is not easy being objective. One way to achieve objectivity is by acquiring the difficult habit of "thinking against oneself" (Sartre), or, in Gandhi's words: "I have always held that it is only when one sees one's own mistakes with a convex lens [or with a magnifying glass], and does just the opposite in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two."

I dare anyone to play the blame game with an easy conscience after reading these lines.

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For a long time I could not understand why our academics insist on producing books on the Genocide and the Middle Ages and totally ignoring our present situation, thus implying we are in good hands, when we are, in fact, at the mercy of charlatans whose number one concern is number one. Then I read Brecht's four-word formula, "grub first, then ethics," and saw the light.

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Whenever I am misunderstood, I console myself by remembering Hegel's famous last words, "No one understood me, except one, and even he did not understand me." I am not implying here that my ideas are as complex as Hegel's, but I am suggesting that only readers, who are clear-cut cases of arrested development, and whose understanding of our past and present never ventures beyond partisan slogans, find my ideas easy to misunderstand.

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Whenever one of my outraged readers engages in verbal massacre in order to assert his superior brand of Armenianism, I am reminded of Zarian's dictum, "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another."

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Whenever one of our partisan editors rejects my commentaries, I remember Zarian's letter written in the 1930s to a fellow writer, in which the following lines occur: "Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech." And if you think, as an anti-establishment writer, Zarian's judgment cannot be trusted, consider the words of a pro-establishment writer, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian), who wrote mostly harmless fiction and was on friendly terms with all our bosses, bishops and benefactors: "Once upon a time, we fought and died for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech."

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The words I have quoted above are to me what booze is to an alcoholic. Reading them for the first time was like acquiring a golden key to a door that until then had remained locked. I know now that understanding reality is an endless process, and one of the worst mistakes one can make is to rely on the words of sermonizers and speechifiers, whose conception of being positive or constructive is based on the false assumption that a friendly lie is better than a hostile truth.

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Saturday, December 04, 2004

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ON GOD

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Sartre was an atheist. And yet, he concludes his memoirs by saying, "I depend only on men who depend on god, and I don't believe in god. Figure that one out, if you can."

Elsewhere he describes himself as an atheist whose aim in life was to find salvation not only for himself but also for his fellow men.

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Gandhi identified himself as a Hindu but he at no time dismissed atheists as infidels or blasphemers. On the contrary. If we define god as truth, he said, even atheists become believers because they believe in the non-existence of god.

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When Jesus said, "The kingdom of god is within you," did he mean "Don't search for anything that is out there somewhere in a physical, abstract or imaginary dimension, because everything begins and ends in the convolutions of your brain"? Tolstoy thought so, and for saying as much, he was excommunicated by Orthodox bureaucrats on grounds of atheism.

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When Toynbee concluded his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY by attempting to reconcile all religions into a single universal belief system, wasn't he, in a way, expressing tacit agreement with Gandhi? Because by reconciling, say, Buddhism (an atheist religion) with Islam or Christianity, also meant reconciling a belief in the existence of god with a belief in his non-existence.

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Like Gandhi, Toynbee clearly saw that when religion legitimizes intolerance, hatred, and violence, it becomes the instrument (and thus asserts the existence) not of god but of the devil.

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When kings and sultans claimed to represent god on earth, did they believe it? When bishops and imams speak in the name of god, do they mean it? Italians are fond of saying that even the pope doubts his faith seven times every day. As for bureaucrats (be they secular or religious): they will say anything to maintain and enhance their powers, privileges, and prestige.

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Does god exist? We don't know. No one does. And it makes no difference whether he exists or not as long as we live as though he did, provided we don't pretend to speak in his name, because to do so is to lie.

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December 8, 2004

Sunday, December 05, 2004

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After Bach, the Beatles; after Socrates, Stalin; after Elgar, Elvis; after Sibelius, Sinatra; after Hegel, Hitler; after Vermeer, Warhol; after Gostan Zarian, Nairi Zarian…I could go on. The human race does not seem to be open to reason or esthetic and moral values.

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No matter what your field, you will have competitors who will be more successful by prostituting its integrity.

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After Jesus Christ, televangelists, who amass vast fortunes by perverting his message of love and compassion to greed, intolerance, and hatred.

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Speaking of man's primitive faith in explanations: we are fond of saying that what made of us perennial losers is our geography, thus implying that we have been enslaved by our mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys; or we have allowed our longitudes and latitudes to be masters of our destiny. If true, emigration would mean liberation. But consider our academics in America, our crème de la crème, who are in no position to plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance or unawareness: not only are they subservient to our mini-sultans and pseudo-imams but also to their flunkies.

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To assert their independence of mind, courage, and daring, some readers insult a defenseless and harmless scribbler anonymously and from a safe distance, all in the name of patriotism, of course, which means allegiance to the Homeland, namely Mount Ararat, Mount Aragats, Lake Sevan, Dilijan and Hraztan.

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Monday, December 06, 2004

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When Schopenhauer called Hegel an "arch-charlatan," his unspoken intent was to replace Hegel's philosophical system with his own; or, to propound an antithesis to Hegel's thesis. Which means, in his rejection of Hegel, he was being a Hegelian.

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When your average layman calls an intellectual giant like Marx, Freud, or Sartre a charlatan without having read their works, he only succeeds in exposing his prejudice and arrogance.

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I define an intellectual giant as one who unveils something that has been hidden from view, and having done so, he changes our understanding of reality. He may be proven wrong and corrected by future thinkers, but only in the sense that Einstein corrected Newton.

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Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) publicly condemned communism. But when he declared in one of his encyclicals, "Dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, whereas man are corrupted and degraded," he might as well have been speaking as a Marxist. And this indeed is an unmistakable mark of an intellectual giant: it becomes impossible to speak about anything that matters without in some way quoting or paraphrasing him.

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Sartre put it best when he said: "An anti-Marxist argument is only the apparent rejuvenation of a pre-Marxist idea." Which also means, you cannot contradict a new thesis with an obsolete anti-thesis; or again, any effort to arrest the advance of human thought is destined to fail.

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Tuesday, December 07, 2004

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ON INTERMARRIAGE

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In the Armenian ghetto where I was born, raised, and brainwashed, I was led to believe intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy. I know better now because I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages, namely, racial and religious tolerance. And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals, from Abovian to Zarian, and from Arlen to Saroyan, married odars.

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How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? -- (about 80% in the U.S., I am told). A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the two meet, everything else - moral and esthetic values, political orientation, financial status, religious and ethnic affiliation - fly out the window. What remain are a man, a woman and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.

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ON BEST-SELLERS

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In the U.S. best-selling books are as a rule either ignored or torn to shreds by critics. What makes them best sellers are average readers and word of mouth. We Armenians don't have best-selling books because we don't have average readers. Every Armenian who knows how to read considers himself not only a distinguished literary critic with impeccable esthetic criteria but also an expert on any given subject.

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ON GENTLE READERS

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Whenever I am described by some of these distinguished scholars and gentlemen as a purveyor of b.s. I am reminded of a popular saying in Hollywood, which brought a smile, when I first read it: "It may be shit, but it has integrity."

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I once called one of my abusive readers an "inbred moron," and ever since then he has done his utmost to prove me right.

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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

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ON FUNDAMENTALISTS

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A fundamentalist is one who uses (make it, abuses) the scriptures to camouflage his carnivorous instincts and cannibalistic disposition.

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"A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of national origin," Lenin said. So is a fundamentalist -- regardless of belief system.

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Lawyers, theologians, politicians, sophists and charlatans in general have at one time or another proved that a man may behave like swine and portray himself as a noble specimen of humanity. History is very clear on this point.

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A fundamentalist believes being virtuous, superior, or one of the "chosen," consists in basing one's conduct on the scriptures, and by cunningly isolating certain lines and completely ignoring the spirit of many other lines, he can prove to be (to his own satisfaction, at any rate) a man of compassion even as he engages in the massacre of innocent civilians.

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Those who commit massacres don't like that word. They prefer the word war, and in war sometimes "bad things happen."

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Fundamentalism in both the West and the Middle East might as well be reflections of one another. One reason Kerry lost is that as a moderate he could not see this, he thus underestimated the evil in both camps.

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How can any reasonable man change a message of love and compassion to one of hatred and murder? Easy. Listen to Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him."

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December 11, 2004

Thursday, December 09, 2004

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A DISGRACE TO THE NATION

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Because I speak of tolerance and the brotherhood of all men, some of my readers accuse me of all kinds of nefarious and un-Armenian sentiments, as if tolerance and brotherhood were incompatible with Armenianism.

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"You are a disgrace to the Armenian nation," a gentle reader writes, as if our nation had been a role model among nations.

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"Unlike you," writes another, "some of us refuse to forget 3000 years of history." What's 3000 years of history to millions of years of evolution? And what if our history has been a catalogue of dynastic rivalries, tribal divisions, internecine feuds, defeats, subservience to foreign tyrants, collaboration with enemies, treason, betrayal, and the persecution of our ablest men?

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What about the voice of the people? Why is it that it has been an absent factor in our history? Why is it that the only time we hear about them is when they are victimized by the thousand and the million?

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Who speaks for the alienated, the unemployed and the hungry who prefer to emigrate to Turkey and to engage in prostitution in foreign lands in order to make ends meet?

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These questions must be raised because fear of confronting reality and fear of free speech are the worst kind of cowardice.

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What about our masters of the blame game who assert all our problems must be ascribed to the bloodthirsty disposition of Asiatic barbarians, the double-talk of the so-called civilized West, our geography, and to the obvious fact that we are a peace-loving people? May I remind these holier-than-thou charlatans that during the 20th century alone we fought both for Stalin and Hitler, and some of the most warlike emperors and generals of the Byzantine Empire were Armenian.

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Speaking of forked tongues: what if the version of history we are taught in our schools is not history but propaganda whose aim is to soothe bruised egos?

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Where are our intellectuals? Do we have them? Are they too busy writing books about the Middle Ages and the massacres to have any time left to raise their voices against the kleptocracy in the Homeland and the tyranny of mini-sultans and pseudo-imams in the Diaspora? What happened to their kind after they were systematically exterminated by Talaat and Stalin? Did they stay exterminated or were they followed by successive generations of brown-nosers, sleazy liars, and a proliferation of phony pundits and commissars of culture?

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Friday, December 10, 2004

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IN TODAY'S PAPER

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According to an international watchdog group, political parties and the media are two of the most corrupt institutions in the world. To put it more bluntly: our "betters" are the worst scum on earth and anyone who defends them is either a brown-nosing dupe or a brainwashed pervert.

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ON GOD

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At age 81, a British philosopher and confirmed atheist by the name of Antony Flew, has seen the light and he now believes in the existence of god. But his god, he tells us, has nothing to do with the god of bishops, televangelists, and imams, who depict him as an "omnipotent Oriental despot," or a "cosmic Saddam Hussein." His proof of god's existence? The complexities of the DNA (the material in the nucleus of a living cell that determines heredity) which must be the creation of a highly developed intelligence. Flew may now believe in god, we are further informed, but "he does not believe in an afterlife."

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ON THE DEADLY SERIOUS BUSINESS OF ARMENIAN HUMOR

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Some of my readers have a sense of humor so delicately tuned and balanced, it seems, that whenever I fail to amuse them they call me a sick racist and a disgrace to the nation.

In a movie today I heard Woody Allen deliver the following line: "My grandmother left me nothing: she was too busy being raped by Cossacks."

If an Armenian comedian were to say as much (changing Cossacks to Turks or Kurds) I suspect, he would be lynched by his audience. I have myself received death threats for far lesser transgressions.

No wonder Armenian comedians, like Armenian writers, are on the list of endangered (perhaps even extinct) species.

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UNDERSTANDING REALITY

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Reality is not pretty; neither is it fair. Reality supports the mighty and allows the massacre of the weak. I don't support reality; but I want to understand its secret intentions. I want to know its schedule and where it will strike next. Organized religions and closed systems of thought are popular because they promise a better reality, sometimes even a utopian heaven on earth, thus legitimizing our wishful thinking. The weak shall inherit the earth, they tell us, the oppressed shall be liberated, and the lamb shall lie down with the lion. Maybe so. But for the time being, I have no desire to make friends with carnivorous beasts, unless their teeth and claws are pulled out or they are converted to vegetarianism. And if I cannot be a dragon in a world of lions, then I want to know all I can about his territory, feeding habits so that I may avoid being his lunch.

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Saturday, December 11, 2004

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BLIND SPOTS

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We all have them, and they are called blind because we can't see them. The blind spot of a self-assessed genius: his mediocrity.

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MY POLLYANNA LIST

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Captains go down with the ship,

kings and presidents are assassinated,

femmes fatales and sexy stars grow old,

New Yorkers and cab drivers are mugged,

businessmen go bankrupts,

chief executive officers go to jail,

televangelists are exposed as fornicators

and clergymen as pedophiles,

and writers are insulted by hoodlums

parading as self-assessed role models.

It all comes with the territory.

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AS I SEE IT

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There are intelligent and semi-intelligent readers, but they are in the minority. There are also self-assessed geniuses and role models. After reading one of my critical comments dealing with the Homeland, one such specimen writes: "Anyone who does not love his country does not deserve to live," or words to that effect.

My questions to him: "Do you also love the charlatans, bloodsuckers and gravediggers in your country? What about the pimps and the assassins? Is it conceivable for anyone who is neither a pimp nor an assassin to be on their side?"

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The problem with assessing oneself is that one is bound to stress the ass in assessing.

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Traitors have also assessed themselves as patriots.

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JULES RENARD TO ONE OF HIS CRITICS

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"Yes, yes, you may be right, but it seems to me, you are tougher on me than on yourself."

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December 15, 2004

Sunday, December 12, 2004

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QUOTATIONS FROM RAFFI (1835-1888)

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"Self-satisfied people are, as a rule, unaware of their failings. Progressive and enlightened people are far more critical of themselves. As for us: we live in a world of lies and illusions."

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"Our values are rotten and our traditions have been obliterated. From the West we have appropriated not the best but the worst. Our literature is less than mediocre and our people intellectually starved. We want them to read but we don't give them books. Our schools have become toys in the hands of mediocrities and pedants. Our churches have lost their ancestral integrity and have degenerated into commercial enterprises of unbelief. Its hierarchy is dominated by venal speculators. The deserving are shunned and the undeserving promoted."

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TRANSLATIONS FROM JULES RENARD (1887-1910)

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"There are friends; there are no true friends."

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"To be clear is a writer's way of being polite."

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"As a man, Christ is admirable. But as God, one can't help thinking that he could have done much better!"

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"The sleep of the just? But who says the just can sleep?"

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THREE PROVERBS

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Arab proverb: "There are no faults in a thing we want badly."

Estonian proverb: "What you are afraid of overtakes you."

German proverb: "Luck sometimes visits a fool, but never sits down with him."

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December 13, 2004

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ABOUT SOLUTIONS

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One of the worst obstacles in finding a solution to our problems are people who think there exists somewhere between heaven and earth a realm that contains solutions and all we have to do is pluck the right one for us. These individuals refuse to accept the fact that you cannot change bad men to good men by means of a verbal formula.

Socrates tried to reason with them and was arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death.

Jesus tried to preach to them and he was crucified.

More recently Gandhi tried it and he was assassinated.

Closer to home, Khachatur Abovian did his utmost to enlighten them and he disappeared without a trace.

More recently, Gostan Zarian, a truly messianic figure, was silenced, ignored, and buried alive.

*

If far better men than myself have failed, what are my own chances of success?

None!

Why do I go on?

Or rather, what are my options?

To fall silent and accept defeat?

To entertain the bourgeoisie by writing fiction about "the mutual torments of love" (Sartre)?

*

Perhaps I go on writing not to change things but to make friends.

What if in the process I make enemies?

One can always hope that they will see the light on the grounds that "no man is beyond redemption" (Gandhi).

*

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

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In his Dec. 13 Insight article, "Europe divided over letting Turkey into club," H.D.S. Greenway fails to mention that one of the major obstacles for membership is Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians before, during and after World War I (1894-1922). Eminent historians and scholars like Arnold J. Toynbee and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Prize winner, have asserted the reality of the Genocide with no uncertain terms, but Turkish politicians continue to maintain it was not genocide but war and in war "bad things happen." Which is an absurd claim in view of the fact that (one) Armenians were a minority within Turkey, (two) they were not allowed to bear arms and (three) the majority of the two million victims were women, children, and old men.

#

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

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TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI

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"Vartan didn't know how to lie. He spoke the truth to everyone. He was even incapable of covering up his own blunders. Generally speaking, this type of individual is thought of as eccentric by ordinary folk, who are used to dealing with people who say one thing and mean another, and they hate anyone who insists on speaking the truth."

*

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE

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It is against the law for individuals to steal and kill. But throughout history states have behaved as though they had a license to plunder and massacre with impunity.

*

I MAY HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE

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I have never been as wrong as when the possibility of being wrong did not even enter my head, or when I trusted the judgment of others only because they were older or in a position of power.

*

Holier-than-thou is a mindset suitable only for those who have taken permanent residence in the gutter.

*

ARMENIAN HAIKU

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

Sacred cows

make delicious

shish kebab.

*

MY FAVORITE HOJA STORY

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

It was common knowledge that in his youth Nasreddin Hoja made a comfortable living as a smuggler. So that whenever he crossed the border with his donkey (and he did so frequently) he was searched thoroughly by border guards, who found nothing. Years later, when one of these guards met the Hoja, he wanted to know what was it that he was smuggling. "Donkeys," replied the Hoja.

*

A LOSE/LOSE SITUATION

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

Edward Dahlberg: "It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others - it is vile not to endeavor to do it."

#

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

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UNSEEN PHOTOS AND UNWRITTEN BOOKS

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When asked in his old age whether he had stopped taking pictures, the celebrated French photographer, Cartier Bresson, is said to have replied: "Oh no, I'm still taking them, I just don't need a camera any more."

I wouldn't be surprised if some writers do their best "writing" after they stop publishing.

*

SUBLIMATION

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

Revenge is the only thing that will settle the score between Armenians and Turks, a reader writes. Apologies, reparations and territorial concessions will not do it. Only an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And as he waits for the showdown, this Armenian takes it out on his fellow Armenians by engaging in verbal massacre.

*

PERSEVERANCE

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

I would have given up writing long ago were it not for the fact that those of my readers who despise me are also my most faithful readers, which may suggest that I must have something going for me. What is even more curious is that even readers who complain that I bore the hell out of them keep on reading everything I write - judging by the frequency of their insults. As for those who would like to see me silenced: it is they who eventually give up and fall silent.

*

FREUD, SPENGLER, TOYNBEE

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

All major thinkers have had their share of critics who have called them irrelevant pedants or even frauds and charlatans. And then there are lazy laymen who think they are justified in accepting the judgment of these critics as irrevocable verdicts. Speaking for myself and as a layman, may I confess that I have found in the works of all major thinkers many pearls of wisdom and unforgettable lines that are totally absent from the writings of their critics. Consider the following quotations as cases in point:

*

Freud: "Repression proceeds from the ego; we might say with greater precision: from the self-respect of the ego."

*

Spengler: "All genuine historical work is philosophy, unless it is mere ant-industry."

*

Toynbee: "The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis…all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves."

#

Ani · December 16, 2004

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :blink: ay tnashen inchel haves uni eskan gri gri gri.... meka qo karciqe voch hashvi aran hayeri masin kam hayastani ,,vochel sirecin,,menakk qnnadatecin,,u chisht arecin,, es kaskacumem vor inq@ haya,,i vapshe GROX mard@ miqich shnorq kunena,, vonc te" HAYASTANI HAYER@ etkan chkan??"

isk inq@ vro gruma ARA azganunnel haykakan... u HAYA....shat amotaaaaaaa....menak nra haamr vor shat shater@ nuyn@ es..kaskacumen ira hay linelu vra,,, el inch hay vor eskan mardu KASKACANQI TAK QCI . vor inqe haya te che??? :hm:

vapshe ta inqe etkan chka vor eskan stic,sut...antexi baner ... HAYERIN dem gri......................... :no:

inch amota vor senc "SUTI HAYER(ete iharke hay e)

" kan es ashxarhum :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :ermm: :bye:

December 18, 2004

Thursday, December 16, 2004

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TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI

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"Subservience has become second nature with us. We are brought up to believe it is useless to resist tyranny and it is God's will that we accept our fate as an inevitable and unalterable fact of life. As for our priests: they were successful in convincing us that life is ephemeral and that the more we suffer in this world, the greater the rewards in the next one."

*

ON BEING UNDERSTOOD

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How difficult it is to be understood by people you don't understand! It's like trying to communicate in Latin (which you don't speak) with someone who speaks only Chinese (which you don't understand).

*

A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM

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We are told, when dogs bite, it's their trainers who should be penalized. Others maintain, dogs will be dogs and as dogs they will bite. This may well be one of those chicken-and-egg problems that cannot be resolved. But if eggs were to start biting, we would use them only to breed roosters.

*

HOW TO RECOGNIZE A FOOL

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Man is a bundle of contradictions. Only fools are consistent and predictable.

*

ON EMPIRES

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

All empires are warlike. There has never been a pacifist empire. A pacifist empire might as well be a contradiction in terms. A pacifist empire would cease being an empire before you can say Jack S. Avanakian. That's because an empire is like an attractive wench: everyone wants a piece of the action, and if she doesn't resist, she becomes a woman with a past and no future, and in today's parlance, history.

*

WHY I WRITE

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

"You are a fool to write for Armenians," I am told once in a while by friends. I don't write for Armenians. I settle scores with those who brainwashed me and I expose those who are now busy brainwashing you, your children and your grandchildren - regardless of nationality. What could be more universal?

#

Friday, December 17, 2004

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ARMENIAN HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL

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Arpiar Arpiarian (1851-1908): Prominent Armenian writer, editor, translator and literary critic. He was active in Istanbul, Cairo, London, Paris, and Venice (where he was also educated). Because he wrote against oppression, he was persecuted by both Turks and Armenians. Imprisoned by the Sultan, he was assassinated by a member of an Armenian political party -- identified as "a terrorist" by a number of Armenian reference works.

*

ORIGINAL SIN

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

My definition - in the sense of its being at the origin of most crimes and transgressions: allowing religious leaders to define good and evil, or political leaders to define right and wrong.

*

We expect the world to agree with us even as we engage in verbal massacre.

*

A favorite Armenian school of criticism: not deconstruction but demolition - Ottoman style.

*

VERSIONS OF THE PAST

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When it comes to different versions of the past, the trick is not convincing ourselves (which amounts to preaching to the choir) but others, and more particularly, the opposition.

*

COMMISSARS

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

To those who would like to see me silenced, may I remind them not everyone disagrees with me, or agrees with them, which also means that to ignore me is to ignore a fraction of reality. You may fool most people most of the time, you may even fool all the people all the time, but you cannot fool reality. Turn your back on reality and reality is sure to bite your ass.

*

Confronting reality is like confronting an adversary, and to underestimate an adversary's strength is to lose.

#

Saturday, December 18, 2004

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TRANSLATION FROM ARPIAR ARPIARIAN

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"Criticism paralyzes the weak and stimulates the strong."

*

ARMENIAN PROVERB

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

"Don't try to hurl a stone you cannot lift."

*

TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI

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"Humility and patience cease to be virtues in a world that subscribes to the law that says 'an eye for an eye'…"

*

EITHER/OR

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

Readers with an either/or mindset think, just because I am tough on Armenians, I will be soft on Turks. As a matter of fact, I am neither. Rather, I am against all propagandists and their dupes; that is to say, individuals who cannot speak for themselves because they cannot think for themselves and must therefore parrot the nonsense put out by a group with a specific agenda and vested interests.

*

DO I REPEAT MYSELF?

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

If you think I do, why waste your valuable time reading me when, for the same money, you can read writers who don't repeat themselves?

*

QUOTATIONS FROM SARTRE

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

"The introduction of terror is the necessary price for cohesion of the group, but it is the individual who pays that price, since if the group is essential, he becomes unessential."

*

"In a society which reserves its women for the old and rich, [sex] is the first pain of a poor young man with a premonition of his future enemies."

*

CHARLATANS AND THEIR DUPES

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

They have always been in the majority. That's the only way to explain the power and popularity of Talaat, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Idi Amin Dada, Paul Pot, Saddam…to mention only a handful of sadists and serial killers parading as charismatic statesmen. And here, I shall refrain from making a much longer list of their victims….

#

FRIENDS, THERE ARE NO FRIENDS

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There are those who plan, execute, and terminate friendships as if they were military operations. I remember, after I published my first book reviews and translations I was bombarded with gifts, invitations, offers of friendship and promises of honors, titles, and even banquets by bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted flunkies. Being naïve and uninitiated, it never even occurred to me to question their motives. But now that I know better, I am left alone. Months go by without a single letter or phone call. To which I can only say: "Peace, is wonderful!"

#

Lazar · December 18, 2004

Im mot na hetevyal tpavorutyun e toxel: na parsapez sirum e kritikaner stanal, inchpes mazoxistnere cav....

Ani · December 19, 2004

Im mot na hetevyal tpavorutyun e toxel: na parsapez sirum e kritikaner stanal, inchpes mazoxistnere cav....

←

:yes:

December 22, 2004

Sunday, December 19, 2004

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TRANSLATION FROM ARPIAR ARPIARIAN

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"We sent our representatives all the way to Berlin to liberate us from the yoke of Kurdish and Turkish bloodsuckers, as if our own bloodsuckers were not worse than any Kurd or Turk."

*

There are two things on which our turn-of-the century writers agree: the detestable nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul and the suffocating influence of the clergy in the provinces. To which I can only add: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

*

FOR OR AGAINST

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

Others may speak of their silent majority; we can speak only of an indifferent one.

*

Agreement and disagreement in our context might as well be meaningless. For everyone who agrees with you, there may be 2 or even 22 who may disagree, and 222 who will not give a damn one way or the other.

*

But when two schmucks agree, they assume they have achieved national consensus.

*

IMAGINARY INTERVIEW

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

-Your greatest mistake?

-Being born an Armenian.

-Your second greatest mistake?

-Writing for Armenians.

-Why is that a mistake?

-It's like writing for an army of Napoleons?

-Why Napoleons?

-Make it, lunatics who think they are Napoleons.

#

Monday, December 20, 2004

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The central concern of all intellectual labor is human nature. "Scientific experience," writes Spengler, "is spiritual self-knowledge."

*

By devising extensions of the human body, technology reveals the secret direction of our desires.

*

To say that psychology, historiography, mythology, philosophy, sociology and the writing of fiction share in common an interest in human nature is to say the obvious.

*

Consider the following thought by Freud as a case in point: "It is not our hatred of our enemies that harms us: it is our hatred for the people we really love that destroys us." What better key to our own history or status as perennial losers and victims!

*

The following passage by a historian (Toynbee), that explains many aspects of universal history, including - and especially - our own, could have been written by Jung or Freud: "The egocentric illusion…this most fantastic of all freaks of Maya… has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself."

*

When our own turn-of-the-century novelists like Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Nar-Dos, and Zohrab wrote about the repulsive nature of our bourgeoisie in Istanbul, they might as well have been echoing Spengler's sentiments in the following passage from THE DECLINE OF THE WEST: "The parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman…."

*

And speaking of religion:

All social movements are conceived by underdogs and confiscated by top dogs. Which amounts to saying, eventually, Marx will be followed by Stalin, and Christ by anti-Christ (Renaissance popes and American televangelists).

#

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

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A history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Armenian literature reads today like a work of science fiction of another nation, from a different planet, in a distant galaxy.

*

Whenever I read biographies of Abovian, Raffi, Baronian, Arpiarian, Gamsaragan, Voskanian, and many, many others, I marvel at their fearless dedication and stubborn refusal to compromise or to cushion their blows. And the question I keep asking myself is: What the hell happened to our literature? The only answer I can come up with is also the most obvious: our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their parasitical panchoonies finished the job begun by Talaat and Stalin.

*

Unlike Odian's Panchoonie, today's Panchoonie is as smooth, well fed, and soft-spoken as any American Chief Executive Officer. He sports a blue suit, red tie, a laptop and a salary of over a hundred thousand dollars (according to an insider in New York, whose word I have no reason to doubt).

*

If a writer like Baronian or Odian were to appear among us today, he would be silenced and starved before anyone can say Jack S. Avanakian.

*

I don't write to change things - my megalomania has its limits. I write to remind our midgets and their dupes that once upon a time, giants walked among us - giants whose shadow would be enough to pulverize their bones.

*

What will a history of 21st Century Armenian literature written a hundred years hence read like? Imagine, if you can, the description by a blind man of a non-existent black hat in a dark room.

#

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

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IMAGINARY INTERVIEW (II)

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

-What's your racket?

-I am in the business of being misunderstood.

-Any money in that?

-Only insults.

-What kind of insults?

-Being called all kinds of names.

-Such as?

-Son of a ######, disgrace to the nation.

-What nation?

-Armenian.

-Romanian?

-No, Armenian.

-Aramaean?

-No, no. Armenian.

-What's the difference?

-Aramaeans are extinct.

-And Armenians aren't?

-Only the real ones.

-You mean, the phonies aren't?

-Right.

-So, why write for them?

-To defend the honor of the real ones who can no longer defend themselves.

-But since they are dead and buried, they are in no position to express their appreciation: am I summing up the situation correctly?

-I couldn't have said it better myself.

-In that case, your situation is shituation.

-You took the words right out of my mouth.

-As a matter of fact I did: I read some of your things on the Internet.

-So, tell me. What do you think?

-About what?

-My things.

-You really want to know?

-I do.

-You are wasting your time.

-I agree.

-So, why go on?

-I was hoping you would tell me.

-Sorry, friend. I can't help you there. Unless, of course, you believe in an afterlife.

-I don't.

-Then I ask you again: if the living insult you and the dead will not thank you, why go on?

-How about, to balance the score.

-But who will know - if the living don't give a damn and the dead can't speak?

-I will…and now, you will too.

-Is that enough?

-No, but it may be a step in the right direction.

#

December 29, 2004

Thursday, December 23, 2004

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ON DOGMA

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

Where there is a dogma there is sure to be another that will contradict it.

*

Where there are conflicting dogmas, intolerance will be legitimized.

*

Legitimizing intolerance is the first step on a road that leads to violations of human rights and, ultimately, to torture, murder, war and massacre.

*

Insecure people need dogmas the way cripples need crutches.

*

A dogma allows men to dehumanize their fellow men without any sense of responsibility and guilt.

*

QUOTATION FROM ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE

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"Every human being now alive has links, however tenuous, not only with every one of his contemporaries, but also with every other human being that has ever lived. In this sense, human history is one single seamless web, and any dissection of it is an arbitrary misrepresentation of Reality."

*

MASSALS

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

Ours is a story of such labyrinthine complexities, with so many unexpected twists and turns, dark corners and underground passages, dead ends and blunders - yes, above all blunders and miscalculations, not to say treason and betrayal - that to reduce it to a narrative of 20 or 200 or even 2000 pages (less than a page for every 365 days) amounts to engaging in magic realism in the manner of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. Which is exactly where our history texts stand today. I know what I am talking about having concocted such a massal myself: my only best seller (over 10,000 copies sold so far). And now you may draw your own conclusion…

Three apples fell from heaven and all three were rotten!

#

Friday, December 24, 2004

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THREE KINDS OF WRITERS

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Some writers write to achieve fame and fortune; others write to achieve personal immortality; still others write to preserve the immortality of ideals and principles without which a lawless rabble cannot rise to the status of civilized society.

*

Whenever we forget or ignore the achievements of our writers who dedicated their lives to maintaining these principles and ideals, we, in a way, collaborate with the likes of Talaat and Stalin in killing and burying them for the second time; and of the two deaths, that which is inflicted by us is the more deserving of universal contempt and condemnation.

*

A nation that forgets the memory of its greatest minds might as well be brain dead.

*

TRANSLATION FROM RAFFI

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

"I am against elitism. Even so, I can't help wishing that we had an elite. That's because the masses lack political awareness and they need an elite to express their discontent, especially if members of the elite are themselves oppressed and thus share their suffering."

*

TOYNBEE ON NATIONALISM

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"To believe that one's own tribe is God's Chosen People is the error of nationalism."

*

"Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as self-adjudicated reward for success, but as self-exculpating compensation for failure."

*

QUOTATION FROM HEGEL

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"Man can never overestimate the greatness and power of his spirit."

*

SUFFERING AND WISDOM

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According to Aeschylus: "The gods have so ordained it that man gains wisdom only by suffering." I see the suffering in our past, but I see very little wisdom in our conduct and character as a nation. We have historians who specialize in documenting our suffering but I see no one actively engaged in preserving the wisdom gained by our ablest thinkers, perhaps because this wisdom would expose the charlatanism of our pseudo-elite or crème de la scum.

#

Saturday, December 25, 2004

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When you try to do something that has not been done before, everyone will tell you it can't be done, until you do it, and afterwards they will pretend you have not done it.

*

The Nazis legitimized barbarism in the name of civilization and progress - their conception of civilization of progress. Likewise, organized religions legitimize intolerance in the name of a merciful God - their conception of mercy and God.

*

Ottoman anti-Armenianism, Nazi anti-Semitism, Muslim anti-Americanism: subtle minds may see differences in kind and degree here, but I don't.

*

Foreign scholars have praised our art, architecture, and music, even our mountains, rivers, and valleys. But, as far as I know, none of them has ever said anything remotely kind about our statesmanship. When Avedik Issahakian said: "We have been cursed with natural disasters, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders," he was saying something very similar.

*

I see my countrymen as a tiny fraction of mankind, and I am on the side of the exploited and oppressed. Between a hungry man and a fat-bellied slob, my sympathies will always be with the hungry even if he happens to be a Turk and the fat one an Armenian bishop. When General Antranik declared: "I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed," he meant something very similar too.

#

Sunday, December 26, 2004

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THE ARMENIAN COMPLEX

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

To overestimate friends and underestimate enemies: I call this the Armenian complex. It is indicative of weakness and wishful thinking. I speak from personal experience.

*

At the turn of the last century our revolutionaries overestimated the verbal commitment of the Great Powers and underestimated Turkish savagery, and for that innocent miscalculation the people paid a disproportionately heavy price. That's what they mean when they speak of life being unfair.

*

Some get away with murder, others get killed for deviating a fraction of an inch on the highway. Moral: Always behave as though somebody up there did not much care about you.

*

To put the same thought more succinctly: There is a difference between smart and smart-ass, and smart-ass is closer to ass than to smart.

*

A self-assessed smart Armenian is sure to be a smart-ass.

*

Having said this I am reminded of Talleyrand's celebrated dictum: "It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder."

*

If we had had a Talleyrand among our revolutionaries, the following would have been his comment on the verbal commitment of the Great Powers: "Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts."

*

Talleyrand on non-intervention: "Mot metaphyisque et politique qui signifie a peu pres la meme chose qu'intervention." In other words, when politicians speak of non-intervention they mean intervention and vice versa.

*

20/20 vision or diplomatic experience (which we did not have)?

*

Another question: What if our political parties brainwash us to believe we are smart because they want to cover up their own stupidity?

*

And if you were to ask: "Why such depressing thoughts on this joyful season?" I say, what could be more thrilling than self-knowledge or (which is the same thing) understanding something about reality that you did not understand before? And what could be more depressing (with tragic consequences) than failing to learn from past experience?

#

Monday, December 27, 2004

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ON CULTURE SHOCK

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

A culture shock can be painful as well as degrading, and I have experienced four of them: first time when I ventured outside the Armenian ghetto in Greece; second time when I went to Italy for my secondary education; third time when we moved to Canada; and fourth time when I started writing for Armenians. I have since discovered that an Armenian from Syria and an Armenian from Italy can be as different as an Arab and an Italian.

*

In today's paper I read the following: "Motorists leaving Istanbul's Ataturk Airport encounter a billboard that says, in Turkish, 'Control the Traffic Monster Inside You.'" And I say to my Armenian readers, in English, "Control the Turkish gypsy inside you."

*

Why is it that I don't experience culture shock when I read Chekhov, Sartre, Kazantzakis, Thomas Mann, Pavese or Toynbee, and many other writers from all four corners of the world? On the contrary, what I experience is a sense of kinship and liberation. I conclude, therefore, what's shocking about the encounter of cultures has nothing to do with values and everything to do with intolerance. And sure enough, all the writers I mentioned above were torn to shreds by critics and sometimes even imprisoned, exiled and excommunicated by their own compatriots. Which may suggest that labels may change but man is the same everywhere, and it is up to each individual to choose between being on the side of the victimizer or the victim. All the rest is academic nonsense and propaganda.

#

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

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MISLEADING LABELS, BAD SEMANTICS

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

To be beyond criticism is an ambition we all share and a status we can never attain because everything that is human is also imperfect and a product of contradictions.

*

If you are an underdog you have no choice but to say "Yes, sir!" even when they kick you in the ass. But if you are a top dog you can always label the criticism as unfair, negative or destructive, and to silence the critic (if he is an underdog).

*

A negative critic is one who dares to question the qualifications or competence of those in power. A positive critic is one who says the fault lies not with the men at the top (who are beyond criticism) but some of their underlings - the lower the underlings, the more positive the criticism.

*

To identify people by their religion is at the root of all religious intolerance. The faith or religion of the overwhelming majority of people is a result not of choice but of accident - the accident of birth. In that sense, Napoleon was right when he remarked: "Geography is destiny." Most Christians are Christian because they were born in a Christian country. For such a Christian to label Muslims infidels and vice versa - for Muslims born and raised in a predominantly Muslim environment to call Christians giaours or infidels - is to legitimize intolerance and ultimately hatred, war, and the murder of the innocent.

*

A Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist share one thing in common which is much more important than their religion, namely, their claim to be God's Chosen or Favorite People. This claim of privileged status has nothing to do with compassion and mercy (the central tenets of both Islam and Christianity) but with arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity.

*

When I say God is perfect and infallible, I also imply that by believing in Him I share some of his perfection and infallibility. So that even when I victimize the innocent I do so as an instrument of God's Will. If this is not the most dangerous form of insanity, I should like to know what is.

#

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

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LIARS AND THEIR ACCOMPLICES

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

Our editors operate on the assumption that, so long as they adopt an anti-Turkish editorial policy, they are on safe ground.

One reason they are unanimous in their refusal to publish me is that, before they print anything, they ask themselves: "Will this displease in any way any one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors?"

*

In order to survive, our press has no choice but to recycle the propaganda line of our establishment and to silence our critics. To those who ask, "Do we have them?" - meaning critics, I say: Judging by our turn-of-the-century literature in Istanbul and later in Soviet Armenia, all our writers were also anti-establishment critics. If they had not been, neither Talaat nor Stalin would have adopted a policy of systematic extermination. And when I say, our writers were also critics, I don't just mean critics of Ottoman and Soviet oppression, but also and above, critics of Armenian greed and corruption in high places.

*

The Ottoman and Soviet tyrants have been swept into the dustbin of history, but Armenian greed and corruption continue to be covered up on the grounds that it is bad policy to expose our dirty linen in public.

*

But once in a while, this corruption stings a member of our establishment. Immediately lawyers are hired, appeals are sent to congressmen and ambassadors, letters to the editor, commentaries and editorials are published in our weeklies, and a great deal of dirty linen is exposed.

*

My question to our editors and self-righteous ladies and gentlemen who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers and endless litigation on several fronts is: "Is this the only time you have become aware of corruption in high places? If you were aware of what goes on but preferred to adopt no-skin-of-my-nose stance, in what way are you not as guilty as those you now accuse of deception and fraud?"

*

"The man who does not bawl out the truth when he knows the truth," writes Péguy, "becomes the accomplice of liars."

#

January 5, 2005

Thursday, December 30, 2004

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POLITICALLY INCORRECT ASSESSMENTS

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

If intellectuals are the brains of the nation, we fully qualify as an intellectually challenged people.

*

If the function of intellectuals is to expose the lies of propaganda, we might as well be a bunch of dupes and retards.

*

The stealthy but systematic extermination of our intellectuals by our own leadership is a scandal that is bound to have far more tragic consequences than the previous exterminations undertaken by Talaat and Stalin. But the even greater scandal is that so far this campaign of extermination has not yet registered on our collective consciousness, as if it were fire on the other side of a distant and foreign river.

*

In his STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee tells us civilizations grow by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities, and declines when the leaders fail to react creatively. You may now draw your own conclusions.

*

Elsewhere on the same subject: "A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, religious, artistic, etc.] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these same elements have fallen into discord."

#

Friday, December 31, 2004

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Call the dumbest Armenian smart and he will believe you. He may question and contradict everything else you say, except that.

*

An Armenian will spend the first half of his life supporting an organization, and the second half supporting a rival organization.

*

Armenians love to argue, gossip, and dismiss writers with the comment, "Words are cheap."

*

In today's paper I read the following comment on the horrors of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean: "Human suffering is not something to blame on God." But if we blame it on the Devil, we must ask the following questions: "Is the devil as Almighty as the Good Lord? And if he is not, why does not God defeat him once and for all?"

*

I am not saying God does not exist, only that we don't understand Him, and he who speaks, as though he did, cannot be trusted.

*

ARMENIAN SAYINGS

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"Give without fear, take without shame."

*

"Sorrow is easier to bear than hunger."

*

"An old friend can't be an enemy."

#

Saturday, January 01, 2005

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Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme shit! That's all I have to say about the New Year.

*

The only thing that will change is that I will grow older and probably more foolish, in the sense that I will go on writing, hoping against all hope, that a writer's role in a civilized society is as important as that of a policeman, a bus driver, a plumber, and a garbage collector.

*

Those in a position to silence me, will do so; and those who cannot silence me, will try to do so by insulting me, my mother, and Gostan Zarian, all in the name of Armenianism, of course, as if there were anything remotely Armenian or, for that matter, human, in calling a woman they have never met a ######, or dismissing a writer they have not read a derivative mediocrity.

*

It is absurd to speak of Armenianism or Armenian identity without taking into account six centuries of subservience to Ottoman rule.

*

If I were to isolate the DNA of Armenian identity today, I would say it consists in an inability to separate the Armenian from the Ottoman within our psyche.

*

As for our genocide: the truth is, no one gives a damn about it; or, to put it differently, others care about our genocide as much as we care about the genocide of others. But it is also true that, if others can use our genocide to their own advantage, they will do so driven not by their sense of morality, justice, and fair play but by self-interest - that is to say, the very same reason that drove the Turks at the turn of the last century to solve their Armenian problem by getting rid of Armenians.

#

Sunday, January 02, 2005

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As human beings, we are all entitled to make our share of mistakes. What we are not entitled to do is to assert infallibility.

*

To say, my god, or my ideology, or my belief system does not make mistakes, is to say what the Pope says: "As long as I speak in the name of faith (or god) I am infallible." Or, what I think, say or do may be wrong, but what I believe never is.

This conviction has been and continues to be the source of some of the most colossal crimes in the history of mankind.

*

A German is credited with the words, "When I hear the word culture I release the safety catch of my revolver." He should have said, "When I hear the word faith…."

*

When I speak in the name of faith, means, when God speaks through me, or, the voice may be mine, but the words are god's.

There is no end to human megalomania.

*

On his own, man may not kill, but in the name of god he will gladly become a serial killer. There is no end to human perversity.

*

Primitive man was ahead of us when he believed god and the devil, or the unknown and the unnamable, are one and the same.

*

As for the scriptures: since some of the greatest theologians and thinkers don't agree on their interpretation (hence the countless orthodoxies, heresies, controversies, divisions, civil wars and massacres), the average layman has no choice but to rely on the interpretation of mullahs, televangelists, and parish priests. Never say therefore, "I speak in the name of the scriptures, or god," but "I speak in the name of my mullah, televangelist or parish priest."

*

To say my favorite theologian, televangelist, mullah or priest (who may well be a child molester, a fornicator, a fanatic, an embezzler, or a fraud), is unlike all the others, an honest man whom I can trust, is to speak like a certified dupe.

*

Next question: If I can't trust anyone's judgment, how can I trust mine? The answer is: I don't. I have more questions than answers, more doubts than certainties, more anxiety than serenity.

*

The first and last question we should ask every day is:

"Whose dupe am I?"

*

When you think of the ten thousand gods that man has created, not to say the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, one will have to admit that throughout history dupes have always outnumbered those able to think for themselves.

#

Monday, January 03, 2005

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

RECAPITULATION

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

Armenians are brought up to believe

(one) they are smart, (two) Turks are bloodthirsty savages, and

(three) the so-called civilized West speaks with a forked tongue.

*

If we are smart, why did we allow ourselves to be ruled by barbarians and hoodwinked by baloney artists? What if even morons can be successfully brainwashed to believe they are smart?

What if given the right (or wrong) circumstances, all men, regardless of nationality, are capable of behaving like savages?

What if all diplomats and politicians, including our own, speak with a forked tongue?

*

To introduce doubts where there are nothing but certainties is the function of philosophy, according to Bertrand Russell in his WISDOM OF THE WEST, perhaps because certainties legitimize intolerance and arrogance as surely as doubts open the gate of tolerance, an enhanced understanding of the human condition, and progress.

*

Speaking of tolerance versus intolerance: why is it that we were successful in being tolerant of Turkish barbarism for six centuries but consistently intolerant of our own writers, most of whom were either ignored, silenced, starved or betrayed to the enemy? And what was their crime? What else but trying to share their understanding of human nature and history.

*

As I see it, the function of Armenian literature today is to convince us that (one) we have been perennial victims and dupes because we were dumb; (two) there can be nothing more moronic than to allow our own leadership to divide and subdivide us in a world of monolithic giants and to be taken in by our masters of the blame game parading as pundits; and (three) it is morally indefensible, not to say suicidal, to silence and starve anyone who fails to flatter our collective vanity.

#

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

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THE OTTOMAN ETHOS

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

The Ottoman Empire was tolerant of all races, colors, and creeds, historians tell us. What they fail to mention is that the Empire was tolerant only of subservient second-class citizens who allowed their daughters to be concubines in harems and their sons to convert to Islam and to die fighting in its imperialist wars. Whenever an ethnic group objected, it was marked for slaughter. Leave it to academics to pervert the meaning of words in the name of objective scholarship.

*

The very same readers who accuse me of negative criticism call my mother a ######, in the name of patriotism, of course. Others take pleasure in calling me a fool, thus implying they are wise. But who has ever heard of a wise man wasting his time reading a fool? And what could be more perverse than to blur the line between wise and smart-ass, and between smart-ass and ass?

*

God is merciful. God is compassionate. He allows even bloodsuckers and hoodlums to be fruitful, to multiply and sometimes even to prosper.

#

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

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

GOOD AND EVIL

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

Ever since the tsunami disaster our local paper has been publishing commentaries by pastors and pundits about God's responsibility in the matter. Every one of these gentlemen comes up with an answer blissfully unaware of the fact that since time immemorial man has pondered this problem without solving it. Instead of accepting the fact that God is beyond human understanding, these self-appointed charlatans come up with answers like the following: "If God would have miraculously prevented the recent tsunami, we would not have to work at developing a tsunami warning system."

Such a pity that the victims were in no position to face their deaths without the consolation of this thought. And why is it that the scientific or, rather, the political failure of some (since the technology for such a warning system already exists) should be the capital offense of others?

*

CLOSER TO HOME

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

To those who demand instant solutions to all our problems, may I remind them that there are two kinds of problems: those created by reasonable men may be solved by reason. The others may take longer…

*

Let me put it differently: There are two kinds of contradiction or anti-thesis: the Hegelian and the Armenian. The Hegelian leads to a synthesis; the Armenian to a dead end.

*

ALSO WORTH REMEMBERING

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

Problems created by intolerance can be solved only by tolerance. Problems created by lack of solidarity can be solved only by solidarity. And problems created by charlatans can be solved only by honest men.

*

Solving problems is easy. What's difficult is for our bosses, bishops and benefactors to admit they have been on the wrong path.

#

January 8, 2005

Thursday, January 06, 2005

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HEAVEN AND HELL

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

To understand reality means to read the mind of God. But reality remains elusive, God incomprehensible, and the future beyond our powers of prediction.

*

If virtue is rewarded and evil punished, how to explain the fact that Stalin died in bed and Gandhi was assassinated?

*

Mullahs and televangelists tell us, reality, or the world in which we live, is transitory and ephemeral, and what matters is the reality that comes after we die. Theologians reject this as simplistic. Heaven and hell, they tell us, must be seen as states of mind that we experience here and now on planet earth. Writes Karl Barth, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century: "Resurrection means not the continuation of life but life's completion. The Christian hope is the conquest of death, not flight into the Beyond."

*

This raises another question: Did Stalin spend the last years of his life in his own private hell? Did Gandhi die blissfully in the certainty that he had done the right thing?

*

Eventually we must move into a metaphysical, unscientific, or purely imaginary realm that can be neither proved nor disproved, and that is the realm in which charlatans prosper.

#

Friday, January 07, 2005

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IDEAS AND POWER

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

Do people with power and money respect ideas and intellectuals? Only those that legitimize their power and prestige, that is to say, only propagandists and brown-nosers.

*

MILLIONAIRES AND POETS

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

A benefactor is quoted as having said to one of our intellectuals: "I hire and fire people like you every day." And to a poet: "Desert-dwelling Arabs may need poetry. We don't!" I agree. We don't need the kind of versifier who sings of nightingales serenading the moon. But what we need even less are millionaires parading as commissars of culture and setting literary policy.

*

BENEFACTORS AND INTELLECTUALS

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

Once, when I wrote that millionaires are in the habit of supporting only mediocrities, never major writers, "Wrong!" I was told by an angry reader, who went on to explain that he knew for a fact that Shahan Shahnour had enjoyed the financial support of a benefactor. "True or false?" I asked a biographer of Shahnour, and was told: "I doubt if any one of our benefactors even knew who Shahnour was… On second thought," he went on, "Shahnour did receive a monthly check from a benefactor but the amount was so insignificant that after a while he didn't bother cashing them."

*

TALAAT AND STALIN

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

Did Talaat and Stalin respect ideas and feared intellectuals? I have every reason to suspect they didn't even care to know the names of those they butchered.

#

Saturday, January 08, 2005

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READERS

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

Turks make fun of me and Armenians insult me.

I must be on the right path.

*

ON THE ORIGINS OF TRAGEDY

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

Oedipus didn't know he was killing his father and marrying his mother. Ignorance born of arrogance may be said to be the source of all tragedy.

*

Where there is an oversized ego there will also be an undersized brain.

*

WARNING

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

Nothing can be as dangerous as assessing oneself as smart, perhaps because such an assessment is invariably used as a license to behave like a certified moron.

*

ON OBJECTIVITY

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

The only way to be objective is to discard all convictions with a single trace of wishful thinking in them.

*

CRITICS

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

Since in almost everything I write I speak against intolerance and charlatanism, some of my critics accuse me of both transgressions hoping thus to persuade me to hate myself. This maneuver is so transparent that only a self-assessed smart-ass could employ it.

*

THE LEAN AND THE FAT

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

The poor pray for their daily bread, but the rich know man does not live by bread alone.

*

ON GOD

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

I understand those who speak in the name of God. I too speak in the name of God, with one difference. My God doesn't exist. He is more like a point of reference, an abstraction, a concept like zero and infinity. And since my God doesn't exist, He is honest enough to promise me nothing.

#

January 12, 2005

Sunday, January 09, 2005

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LITERATURE

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

Literature as high-class entertainment? Nonsense.

Literature as biopsy. That's more like it.

*

JOURNALISM

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

In Armenian journalism we have no one remotely comparable to Ben Bagdikian, whose central concern as an investigative reporter has been to expose American incompetence and corruption. And what has been the central concern of our own pundits and journalists? To reform the rest of the world by exposing its shortcomings, blunders, and crimes. In other words, they have become past masters of the blame game. In their eyes, there is nothing wrong with our own leadership and our problems must be ascribed to outsiders. Which means, their main function is to enlighten and educate the world. If that's not megalomania run amok, I should like to know what is.

*

THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE

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

We emphasize the positive in order to cover up the negative. We brag about our adaptability and cover up our high assimilation rate. In the ghetto near Athens, where I grew up, we (the white trash) spoke Greek with an Armenian accent, but professional Armenians (lawyers, businessmen, doctors) who lived in classier suburbs, spoke Armenian with a Greek accent. It is an undeniable historic fact that the assimilation rate among able and successful Armenians has been much higher than among lower-class Armenians. From Byzantine emperors of Armenian descent to Loris-Melikov, Mikoyan, and Deukmejian, the standard of our leadership among odars has been incomparably higher than among us. It is no exaggeration to say that, when it comes to political leadership and elites in general, ours within our own communities fully qualifies as white trash.

*

INTELLECTUALS

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

A final word on our intellectuals: I have every reason to suspect that a bishop today makes more money in a single year than all our intellectuals put together throughout their lives. There you have the reason why we have dozens of well-nourished bishops and not even a single lean intellectual. I have heard of many writers who were employed by bosses, bishops, and benefactors, but I have never heard of a single boss, bishop or benefactor working for an intellectual.

#

Monday, January 10, 2005

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MURDER OR SUICIDE?

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

In his book, COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED," Jared Diamond echoes Toynbee when he maintains, "societies aren't murdered, they commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death." He could have added: "…and whenever someone comes along and describes what's happening, they call him a pessimist, an alarmist, and their first instinct is to silence and ignore him."

*

READERS

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

Last week alone one reader identified me as a capitalist and another as a communist. Which may suggest that, what defines the meaning of a text is not what is stated there in black and white by the writer, but the phobias, complexes, blind spots, and limitations a reader project on what he reads.

*

REALITY AND THE MIND OF GOD

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The greatest thinkers in the world contradict one another not because some are right and others wrong but because reality is an equation with an infinite number of unknown quantities or irrational numbers, and to understand it amounts to reading the mind of god.

#

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

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RECAPITULATION / PART 2

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

People are more or less the same everywhere. Left to their own devices they are more than willing to live in peace with one another, as they have been doing in the United States, Canada, and Australia. It is the men at the top who transform average, law-abiding citizens into killers in the name of a phony abstraction.

*

When it comes to criminal conduct, the French are fond of saying "Cherchez la femme." But when it comes to mass hysteria, war and massacre, it is "Cherchez le leadership." The people are guilty only in so far as they allow themselves to be brainwashed by a charlatan in whose eyes they are only a means to an end, the end being his power and prestige.

*

In ancient times emperors declared themselves to be gods. More recently, kings and sultans ruled with the authority invested on them by Almighty God Himself. In our own days dictators ruled as if they were gods. This may suggest that leadership and megalomania might as well be twins. And if you think we are immune to this aberration, may I remind you that we too have been at the mercy of individuals who speak in the name of god, capital, or ideology.

*

"What we need is not criticism but solutions," I am told again and again by dupes who think our writers have been no better than nightingales serenading the moon or daydreamers contemplating the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. And this misconception is widespread because our literature, as subsidized by our bosses, bishops, and benefactors, has been distorted, misrepresented, and perverted beyond recognition.

*

Anyone who has read our writers from Khorenatsi in the 5th century to our own days (Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian) knows that their central concern has been our problems and their solutions. My guess is, we have more solutions than problems, but these solutions have been buried and forgotten as effectively as our writers, most of whom were either butchered by our enemies or silenced by our own commissars of culture.

*

Censorship has been and continues to be a constant in our literature and press. We have an entire army of speechifiers and sermonizers who speak in the name of god, capital, and ideology, but we have no one who speaks in defense of human rights and free speech, because human rights and free speech are incompatible with authoritarian, that is to say, anti-democratic power structures.

#

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

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RANDOM THOUGHTS

ON NATIONALISM, RELIGION,

AND RELATED ATROCITIES

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"LET SUDAN KNOW THAT GENOCIDE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED," reads a headline in our paper today. This means that so far genocide has been tolerated; which also means that we live in a world where pickpockets are arrested but serial killers are allowed to roam free, to rape, plunder and slaughter with the blessings of church and state.

*

No one is in a better position to appreciate the value of moderation, tolerance and doubt than one who has suffered in the hands of a fanatic.

*

One way to explain an Armenian fanatic is to say that he is what he is because he has adopted the Turk as his role model.

*

An Armenian fanatic is like a sheep that has suddenly acquired the teeth and appetite of a wolf.

*

Why is it that I feel closer to humanity when I am alone?

*

At the beginning was the word. Which means, we become what we say.

*

Have you ever tried to shake hands with someone who is kicking your ass?

*

Every ideology has its commissars and every religion its inquisitors.

*

Nice guys can be nasty, but good men, never!

*

Our religion tells us to love our enemies, and our patriotism teaches us to hate the Turk. It follows; a patriotic Armenian cannot be a good Christian and vice versa.

*

The defeated Azeri is my brother, the victorious Turks is the enemy of mankind.

*

Plato: "Only the dead have seen an end to war."

*

St. Augustine: "Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself."

*

Pablo Casals: "Love of country is a wonderful thing, but why should love stop at the border?"

#

January 15, 2005

Thursday, January 13, 2005

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I have said this before but it bears repeating if only to remind myself that, since beggars can't be choosers, I cherish the very few readers that I have, including those who become unhinged when they read me. If I knew how to pray I would ask the Good Lord that some day in the near or distant future these readers will acquire that minimum degree of inner balance and common sense without which understanding oneself, let alone others, becomes an impossibly complex and an almost insurmountable challenge.

*

JEWISH SAYINGS

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

"If you can't bite, don't show your teeth."

*

"You can't fill a sack that's full of holes."

*

"Don't offer pearls to men who deal in onions."

*

"Once upon a time angels walked the earth; today, they are not found even in heaven."

*

"Anger is a fool."

*

"Whoever is consumed by rage hears no thunder and sees no lightning."

*

"He who seeks the truth must listen to his opponent."

*

"A brother turned enemy is an enemy for life."

*

ON JEWS

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

So much wisdom, and so much suffering in the hands of barbarians and fanatics!

*

ABOUT MYSELF

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

I will never be a popular writer because I write about our present mores and morons to an audience that prefers recycled crapola.

#

Friday, January 14, 2005

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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

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

To insult someone anonymously is to add cowardice to bad manners.

*

If you are afraid of writers, don't read; if you are afraid of losing an argument, don't contradict.

*

The wife of a wealthy fool will be prettier than the wife of a poor philosopher.

*

Every dupe operates on the assumption that he cannot be duped.

*

Don't assume, but if you must, assume against yourself - you will be on safer ground that way.

*

When it comes to the failings of other nations, we have 20/20 vision, but when it comes to our own, we are blind, deaf, and dumb.

*

When two fools agree, they think they have achieved wisdom.

*

If you criticize or insult someone without understanding or reading him, you expose your own shortcomings more than his.

*

Dialogue has very few friends but many enemies, among them: ignorance, prejudice, power, dogma, arrogance, ego, barbarism, and in general, anything that is connected with ideology and religion.

*

On the subject of horizons, dwarfs will never agree with giants.

*

All fools can plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance.

*

JEWISH WISDOM

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

"When a crook kisses you, count your teeth."

*

"A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing."

*

"Some academics are no better than jackasses because all they carry is a lot of books."

*

"A deaf man heard a mute tell him how a blind man saw a cripple run - on water."

#

Saturday, January 15, 2005

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LET US NOW PRAISE HONEST MEN

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

Some day I will fall silent -- no doubt about that. But that should not be cause for celebration to anyone, because if what I have been saying contains even a single particle of truth, it will not be forgotten or ignored. In saying this, I don't think I am being sentimental about truth. I happen to know that there are a thousand lies for every truth and they too will be repeated and recycled to the end of time. Even so, truth will continue to be a source of dread to all tyrants and their henchmen, who operate on the assumption that if they silence or starve one, or even a thousand honest men, that will be the end of honesty.

*

Have I said this before? I may have. I don't remember. But if you do, allow me to thank you. All writers cherish faithful readers with good memories, because they are the ones who elevate the status of what they have written to "It is written."

*

ON GOD

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

To believe in God is the greatest of luxuries because it means to have at your disposal an inexhaustible source of forgiveness.

*

MORE JEWISH SAYINGS

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

"Two dogs can kill a lion."

*

"Henchmen are worse than their masters."

*

"When men quarrel, even God's anger does not frighten them."

*

"Bad men do well in this world, saints in the next."

*

"The one-eyed need sleep, too."

*

"We anger God with our sins, and men with our virtues."

*

"Where love is, no room is too small."

*

"It is easier to know ten countries than one man."

*

"The heaviest weight in the world is an empty pocket."

#

January 19, 2005

Sunday, January 16, 2005

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

NOTES / COMMENTS

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

If fools outnumber the wise, they will choose a fool as a leader.

*

Some of my critics pretend to know better, but instead of sharing their wisdom, they prefer to share their venom.

*

Because three readers disagreed with me, a fourth reader writes: "If one man calls you a fool, you may not have a problem. If two men call you a fool, you may have a problem. If three men call you a fool, you might as well resign yourself to the fact that you are a damn fool."

*

Maybe so, but it is also written: "Not everyone who identifies himself as a man is one."

*

It is also written: "You cannot contradict the braying of an ass. Neither can you contradict the braying of three, or, for that matter, four asses."

*

Let it be said, if this is not written, it shall be.

*

I knew we were in deep trouble on the day one of our elder statesmen wrote me a letter saying he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was spelling my name wrong.

*

"May you go to hell!" might as well be synonymous with "May you spend the rest of your life working for an Armenian." I know what I am saying; I have been in both places.

*

A tolerant atheist is closer to god than an intolerant Christian.

*

I wish someone had warned me that in the first thousand days of every important undertaking, you will make a thousand mistakes; and the worst mistake you can make is to assume that in the second thousand years, you will make only 999 mistakes.

#

Monday, January 17, 2005

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

In the December 16, 2004 issue of LE POINT, a Paris-based French-language illustrated weekly, there are a number of articles, commentaries and a long interview about Turkey in which Armenians are inevitably mentioned and discussed.

*

"There is a Christian - a Bulgarian or an Armenian - in the family tree of every Turk [alive today]," states Levent Yilmaz, identified as a young Turkish intellectual.

*

To the question, "Why is it that there is a law that prohibits all mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916?" Yilmaz replies: "No, that is not true. The law does not mention this or any other event specifically. It speaks only of blasphemy against the integrity and unity of the Republic - a judge is free to interpret the law in many ways."

*

To the question whether or not Turkey is in denial of the Armenian genocide, Yilmas is willing to admit that the Armenian genocide is the last great national taboo, and it must be openly discussed, which is being done by a number of Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Tayyip Erdogan. He goes on to say that Vahakn Dadrian's book was published recently without cuts. The debate, he adds, is whether or not the word genocide, "which was coined in 1948 in reference to the Jewish genocide," can be applied to the Armenian experience.

*

In the concluding remarks of the editorial on page 3 by Claude Imbert, we read: "Turkey's ambition is to be part of the West, but its interests lie in the East with the Turkish-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and by the Caspian Sea. Turkey also comes with a heavy freight of controversies (Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdistan)…."

*

A subtitle in an essay titled "Europe: The Battle of Turkey," reads: "The Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Is It an Obstacle to

Its Membership?" It goes on to say that it will be a point of contention during the next ten years of negotiations.

*

Far from being "forgotten," it looks like our genocide is very much alive and kicking.

*

Elsewhere, in the same issue, and on the occasion of the sale of one of his paintings at Christie's in London, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) is identified as a Russian. It seems, an anonymous buyer paid 2.1 million euros for it - "a record so far for a 19th-century Russian painting."

#

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

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

The internet is a useful medium in so far as it allows hoodlums and cowards to expose themselves.

*

There should be an unspoken law that says, if you are going to attack or insult someone on the internet, you should identify yourself, because to do so anonymously is a sure symptom of cowardice.

*

We are insensitive to human rights issues. We don't even like to mention free speech. After all, who among us can plead not guilty to the charge of not having violated the free speech of a fellow Armenian by means of insults masquerading as criticism?

*

And since literature is inconceivable without free speech, it follows, we are all guilty of implementing a policy of systematic extermination of our intellectual class. But perhaps what I am talking about here is not free speech but civilized conduct.

*

When was the last time any one of our academics spoke up in defense of free speech? As for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (our axis of evil): what can I say about them that has not already been said by Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Massikian, and Zarian, among many others?

#

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

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

When I first met an assimilated Armenian in Italy, I remember, he looked down at me as an odd curiosity, and I looked at him as a brazen renegade. I was wrong and he may have been right. Because, as a teenager, I might as well have been a walking encyclopedia of chauvinist clichés and a dupe who believed my elders knew better and they had done whatever was humanly possible to save and preserve the nation. I know better today.

*

In a commentary, I read the following: "The inhabitants in many of the hardest hit areas [by the tsunami] are amongst the poorest in the world. One reason they live in squalor is that the governments in their countries rule by force, keeping everything for the ruling class. Long before the tsunami hit, peasant populations had been excluded from aid programs intended to benefit them."

My first thought: our homeland too has been hit by an invisible and slow-motion tsunami of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence. We, in the Diaspora, may be better off financially, but are we really better of morally?

*

A headline in our paper reads: "Pope wants more dialogue between Jews and Catholics." I can't help wondering what were they doing during the last 2000 years? - except perhaps calling one another blasphemers. And what will they call one another after 2000 years of dialogue? Brothers? Maybe. But perhaps the real question should be: Will they ever stop thinking of one another as blasphemers? Can they, without sacrificing a central tenet of their faith?

#

January 22, 2005

Thursday, January 20, 2005

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

LABELS

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

When I write about Armenians, I don't think of them as Armenians but as human beings. The same applies to Turks. I am not implying Turks are not guilty of genocide. What I am saying is that many other nations, among them Greeks, Germans, Americans, and Russians, would have behaved the same way only because they too have been guilty in the past of many unspeakable crimes against humanity. And given the same conditions, and if the roles had been reversed, who is to say we wouldn't have done to the Turks what they did to us?

*

Speaking of conditions: the Turks were confronting external enemies (Russians, Greeks, the Great Powers, including Australians) as well as internal insurgents (Greeks, Kurds, Armenians). Their very survival as a nation was at stake.

*

My question is, who is threatening our present leadership today? How to explain their mistreatment of their fellow Armenians -- a mistreatment that forces them to be homeless, to emigrate, or to engage in prostitution in order to survive? How to explain their total indifference for the future of the nation?

*

Indifference, it has been said, is worse than hatred, because in hatred we involved the other in our feelings; that is to say, we do not cease to think of him as fellow human beings. Whereas in indifference, we reduce him to an object whose extinction would not even register on our consciousness.

#

Friday, January 21, 2005

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

THE HUMAN CONDITION

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

The world is a mess because leaders play chess with the masses who can play only checkers. As for reality: it plays a game whose rules are known only to god, and so far he has refused to share them with mortals.

*

Religious leaders contradict one another because they speak in the name of a being that they don't understand.

*

The problem with liars is that they can't believe in the existence of the truth.

*

As for history: if it's not the propaganda of the victor, it's the consolation of the loser.

*

Two of the greatest historians of the 20th century (Spengler and Toynbee) disagree with each other, and their fellow historians have dismissed both as charlatans.

*

Where fools are in charge, the wise are sure to be persecuted.

*

We are like blind men advancing towards the precipice with the certainty that, since we cannot see it, it is not there.

*

It was Graham Greene, I think, who once said something to the effect that a writer is a capitalist among communists, and a communist among capitalists, because his main function is to challenge, disturb, and provoke.

*

Let us worship god, if we must, but let us not pretend to understand him.

*

It is written: "When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are conversing."

#

Saturday, January 22, 2005

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

NATIONAL TABOOS

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

In Turkey, it's the Armenian Genocide; among us, it's all mention of Turkish humanity. But if we refuse to think of Turks as human beings worthy of our understanding, we shall have to think of them as bloodthirsty savages worse than vermin - which is the mistake they made when they tried to exterminate us. Even assuming Turks are no better than Asiatic barbarians: it would be poor diplomacy to address them as such, if only because barbarians are not in the habit of compromising or making concession or engaging in dialogue.

*

THEM AND US

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

A headline in our paper this morning reads: "We're OK, It's Everyone Else Who Needs to Change." Perhaps the function of a writer is to point out the fact that this happens to be a universal illusion and none of us is in a position to plead immunity.

*

THE BRAIN AND THE GUT

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

This much said, I am willing to concede that my thoughts run much faster than my gut feelings, and very probably I will continue to think of Turks as bloodthirsty savages and Asiatic barbarians until the day I die.

*

OUR AXIS OF EVIL

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

Our bishops are accountable only to god; our benefactors are accountable only to capital; and our political bosses continue to think of themselves as the brains of the people, thus feeling no need to be accountable to the brainless. The massacre continues…

#

January 26, 2005

Sunday, January 23, 2005

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

FROM THE DIARY OF A FOOL

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

Once upon a time I was a fool. Since I think I am no longer a fool, I must be a worse fool.

*

It is written: "At the beginning was the word."

It is also written: "You cannot cook pilaf with words."

*

Writing consists in fighting a forest fire on a windy day with only a thimbleful of water.

*

A successful politician must pretend at all times and everywhere to know better even after reality has proven his knowledge to be worse than ignorance.

*

Which is where God comes in. If you believe in God, you can always identify yourself as an instrument of His will. For faith has the magic power of allowing you to serve the devil with the certainty that God is your only master.

*

According to a Muslim pundit in our paper this morning, polygamy is better than divorce. This pundit should be punished by marrying a wife with more than one husband, be suspected of infidelity and stoned to death by a mob of angry women.

#

Monday, January 24, 2005

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

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

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

We live in a world where fools are more assertive in sharing their ignorance than the wise in sharing their knowledge.

*

An inability to entertain new thoughts and an unwillingness to share power: the two factors that go into the making of a fascist personality.

*

If Moses were to testify in a court of law today, his decalogue would be inadmissible because based on hearsay.

*

Trying to be popular: I can't imagine anything more repellent.

*

He who has not yet achieved mediocrity should not aim at excellence.

*

Not to have rejected everything you were taught as a child means to continue to think not with your own but with someone else's thoughts.

*

Imagine two worms in the middle of nowhere killing each other to save the honor of a man they have not seen: religious wars.

#

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

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

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

Only after you agree to disagree you may engage in dialogue; and only after you engage in dialogue you may compromise and reach a consensus, which does not mean agreement but consent to work together. Why is it that after 2000 years of countless conflicts, internecine feuds, defeats, and disasters, we have not yet learned this fundamental principle and simple rule of civilized conduct?

*

The irony here is that, the more patriotic the Armenian, the more intransigent and uncompromising (that is to say, Ottoman) his stance.

*

I read the following headline in our paper this morning: "Activists Call Ban on Pit Bulls 'Canine Genocide'." And to think that Turks plead not guilty to the crime of genocide because we abuse the word.

*

How to explain the fact that our literature so far has had no discernible effect on our political leadership? Is it because "To educate fools is folly?" If you have a better theory, please let me know.

*

A pervert is also someone who perverts the meaning of what he reads.

*

It's easy to have all the answers if you have not yet begun asking the right questions.

#

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

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

NOTES / COMMENTS

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

There are those who think being a good Armenian consists in exposing Turkish crimes and covering up our own blunders. But to refuse to acknowledge any degree of responsibility in our destiny as a nation is to imply we are no better than herbivores seeking justice in a jungle ruled by carnivores - a dead end situation, if there ever was one.

*

My twin ambitions as an Armenian writer: to avoid starvation in life and hell in death. As for Siberian exile: compared to where I live, Siberia would probably be an improvement.

*

Because I write what I think, I am insulted by readers who think (if you will forgive the overstatement) recycling chauvinist crapola qualifies as thinking.

*

Words are cheap, I am reminded once in a while, and that if I want to be of any use to anyone I should go to Armenia and fight for the underdog. But I have every reason to suspect if I ever go to Armenia, all I will accomplish is add another underdog to the already existing number of underdogs there.

#

Gorn · January 26, 2005

Ay eghpayr, ays inch es grum qez u qez, groghn el es du, kardatsoghn el. Hla mi erku togh el hayeren gri mi ban el es haskanam.

January 29, 2005

Thursday, January 27, 2005

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

The aim of politics is power, not truth. Where there are political parties there will be propaganda. And where there is propaganda, education will be subservient to it. Which means, between the whole truth and a fraction of it (which is how propaganda is defined: a fraction of the truth), propaganda will be given priority. It is this and nothing else that allows the armies of two nations to go to war and kill with the conviction that they are performing their sacred patriotic duty and they deserve universal admiration for their sacrifice.

*

Wars are not encounters between a truth and a lie, but between two lies.

*

Some day if mankind enters a Golden Age of Universal Enlightenment, there will be only one history text book taught in the schools of all nations and tribes. That's because the past of mankind is one and the moment you start slicing it, it ceases being history and it becomes propaganda, that is to say, baloney. It follows, so-called nationalist historians are not historians but baloney artists.

*

Today, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our local paper has published a series of illustrated articles, commentaries and reminiscences by survivors. In none of them is the Armenian genocide mentioned, though several other more recent genocides are. Ours, I suppose, might as well be ancient history.

*

Our genocide may be "ancient history," but World War I is not. In Canada, where I live, World War I is remembered every year on November 11 - veterans march, bands play, speeches are delivered, government employees are given the day off, and at 11:00 AM a moment of silence is observed.

*

What about us? How many of us have been taught to remember the anniversary of any other genocide? I have even met Armenians who deny the reality of the Holocaust. After all is said and done, who among us is in a position to plead not guilty to the charge of having been at one time or another the dupe of a baloney artist?

#

Friday, January 28, 2005

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

IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM

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

If you are for honesty, the dishonest will gang up against you, but they will never say, "We are against honesty because we have been dishonest all our lives and we have no intention of changing." What they will do instead is invent other reasons, and needless to add, these reasons will be dishonest ones.

*

The greatest temptation is not sex but wishful thinking, and wishful thinking has a way of insinuating itself in our most cherished convictions.

*

Once, after verbally abusing me almost daily for a number of years, one of my gentle readers telephoned to apologize, and he apologized so profusely that I believed him. Shortly thereafter he went back to abusing me again, all in the name of patriotism, of course.

*

It is written: "If you hear a mountain has moved, believe it. But if you hear a man has changed, believe it not."

*

One could also say that 600 years of Ottoman oppression on their part, and Ottoman brown-nosing on ours, cannot be obliterated from our collective subconscious by an act of will.

*

During the Soviet era, whenever I published a critical commentary about the regime, I would get abusive calls and letters from our fellow travellers. Nothing evil ever dies. Some of my readers today engage in verbal hooliganism in defense of patriotism, and it doesn't even occur to them that massacres too have been committed and covered up in the name of patriotism.

*

Some of our phony superpatriots operate on the assumption that patriotism and civilized conduct are mutually exclusive concepts.

*

It is written: "Patriotism is a very convenient refuge of rascals, ruffians, and riffraff." And so it is.

#

Saturday, January 29, 2005

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

The function of an Armenian writer today is similar to that of a composer of music for the movies - to provide background noise, and at best, to emphasize the action on the screen: in our case, the clichés of our speechifiers and sermonizers.

*

They warned me about the starving part, but nobody ever said, "You will be writing for an audience with a marked preference for recycled chauvinist crapola."

*

If a writer does not go beyond the known and the familiar, he might as well go into the recycling business too.

*

The more ignorant the man, the more satisfied with his ignorance.

*

Shame on female interrogators at the Guantanamo Detention Center who used sex and such shocking devices as menstrual blood (red ink, actually) to break down the resistance of Muslim prisoners. It would have been much more humane and compatible with their religious beliefs and practices if the poor bastards had been beheaded. Beheaded, they would now be in paradise making whoopee in their private harem of 73 virgins.

#

February 2, 2005

Sunday, January 30, 2005

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

History treats nations the way they treat their superior intellects. Consider what happened to the Athenian Empire after they condemned Socrates to death, to the Russians and their Empire after they exiled Dostoevsky and excommunicated Tolstoy, to the Soviets and their Empire after what they did to Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. Finally, consider what happened to us after we betrayed Baronian to the Turkish authorities.

*

Man cannot understand god if only because man cannot understand man, including himself.

*

Between wealth (without wisdom) and wisdom (without wealth) who will choose wisdom?

*

Our writers have been critical of our people and the people have retaliated by ignoring, starving and silencing them. Who has won, except perhaps our enemies? Try to put a positive spin on that, if you can.

*

It was Orwell, I think, who made the observation that all memoirs misrepresent reality because 70% of life consists of humiliations, and no one likes to speak about them. Nations are very much like individuals, who even when haunted by blunders, defeats, and humiliations, prefer to speak of their moral superiority.

#

Monday, January 31, 2005

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

DEMOCRACY

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

On the radio this morning, an Iraqi man: "Our history goes back 7000 years, but this is the first time the people have been given a chance to vote in a free and democratic election."

The older the culture, the more fascist its political profile.

*

What about us? How democratic is our system? - provided we define democracy not simply as free elections but as the three freedoms: freedom of thought, freedom of movement, and freedom from want. In the Diaspora, we have freedom from want and freedom of movement, but freedom of thought? In the Homeland, we may have freedom of movement and thought, but not freedom from want.

*

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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

Louis de Bernieres's last novel is titled BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS and it tells the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. A Turkish character in it, named Iskander, muses: "Life was merrier when the Christians were still among us, not least because almost every one of their days was the feast of some saint."

*

Further down: "Since they took their icon of Mary Mother of Jesus with them, there are some who think that we have had less good luck than we did before."

*

The same character, after a short reference to the "times of whirlwind," observes: "The world has learned over and over again that the wounds of the ancestors make the children bleed. I do not know if anyone will ever be forgiven, or if the harm that was done will ever be undone." Which may suggest that all nations speak with a forked tongue and more often than not, what the people think and feel may be in direct contradiction with what the politicians say.

*

To a question about the end of the world, Nasreddin Hodja is said to have replied: "The world will end twice: once when my wife dies, and once when I die myself." Again, I am quoting from BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS. More quotations will follow. So far I have read only the first 57 of its 908 pages.

#

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

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

MY AMBITION IN LIFE

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

To reason with my fellow Armenians, which may suggest that I am neither Don Quixote nor Sancho Panza; neither am I Rossinante; but I may perhaps qualify as Panza's jackass.

*

REFLECTIONS

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

It is impossible to convince someone who thinks he is very smart that he may in fact be a damned fool; or even if he is smart in one field, he may well be a certified moron in many others.

*

One of the inflexible rules of life: If you refuse to learn the easy way, you shall have to learn the hard way.

*

BLEEDING HEARTS AND PANSIES

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

When, in 1971, the Muslims of West Pakistan were slaughtering the Hindus of East Pakistan by the million, the American ambassador in Dhaka sent an urgent message to Washington that said in part: "We are mute witnesses to a reign of terror…We should be expressing our shock…"

After calling him a "bleeding-heart liberal" and a "pansy," both Nixon and Kissinger (himself a survivor of the Holocaust) agreed that the ambassador should be removed and given a transfer to some other country. "Kick him the hell out of there!" Nixon is quoted as having said, to which Kissinger expresses total agreement.

Moral: People, including survivors, may care about their own genocide but they couldn't care less about anyone else's.

Are we different? I wonder…

*

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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

A Turkish boy says to his Greek friend: "You Christians are always richer than us, and my father says it's all because of reading and writing and adding up and taking away, and that's why you're so good at deceiving us, and he says that we Muslims only learn what we need to get us into paradise, which is all that matters in the end, but you Christians get all the advantages on earth because you learn about all the other things as well."

This may suggest that Turks saw us in the same light that our anti-Semites see Jews.

*

Speaking of deception, elsewhere in the novel, we read about a Turkish rogue by the name of Selim who sells his own bottled urine as "Selim's elixir…compounded by the renowned apothecary, Gevork the Armenian of Ararat."

#

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

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

A POINT OF ETIQUETTE

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

Disagreement expressed in a civilized manner can be much more effective than disagreement expressed by means of verbal abuse. Try to explain this to our skinheads.

*

ON DOGS

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

It is written: "If you help a dog, he will express his gratitude by biting your fingers."

*

ON THE ADANA MASSACRES

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

Here is a version of the 1909 Adana massacres in BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres that's news to me and very probably to most of my readers: "In Adana, the hot-headed and nominally Christian Archbishop Moushegh encourages his fellow Armenians to acquire arms and kill Muslims, causing a backlash that leads to the burning of the town and the massacre of 20,000 Armenians and 2000 Muslims. Jemal Pasha arrives and quells the disturbances, executing 47 guilty Muslims and one Armenian."

This passage occurs in a chapter subtitled "Mustafa Kemal, His Own Policeman." In the acknowledgments we are informed that the "Mustafa Kemal" sections are based on the biographies of Ataturk by Lord Kinross and Andrew Mango. It is to be noted that both Kinross and Mango are notorious Turcophiles.

#

February 5, 2005

Thursday, February 03, 2005

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

ACCORDING TO STONE

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

In a recent issue of the SPECTATOR (London, December 2004) Norman Stone has published an essay on Turkey where the following passage occurs: "The Armenian diaspora can be especially tiresome, trying to make us believe that they had their own Holocaust. In 1914 their leader, Boghos Noubar Pash, was offered a place in the Turkish cabinet. Can you imagine Hitler making Chaim Weizmann the same offer?"

*

Obviously, Norman Stone is totally unaware of the fact that Krikor Zohrab, who was as important a personage in Turkey as Boghos Noubar Pasha was in Egypt, in addition to being a close friend and associate of Talaat, was brutally assassinated by orders of Talaat in 1915, simply because he had dared to question the legitimacy of the Genocide.

*

Also to be noted: at a time when Talaat was a wanted man by the Sultan, it was Zohrab who risked his own life by hiding him in his own residence.

*

History is made by hoodlums and written by dupes perhaps because being subservient to authority and being deceived (or consenting to recycle propaganda) comes naturally to most men.

#

Friday, February 04, 2005

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

DUPES

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

If a Turk were to say, only Turkish historians are honest and all others are liars, he would enjoy some degree of affection and support in Turkish circles but anywhere else he would be dismissed as a dupe of nationalist propaganda. Something very similar could be said of all nations and tribes. I wish I were in a position to say Armenians are an exception to this rule.

*

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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

In a chapter subtitled "The Removal," meaning the deportation of Armenians from Anatolia, Louis de Bernieres writes: "It is not possible to calculate how many Armenians died on the forced marches. In 1915 the number was thought to be 300,000, a figure which has been progressively increased ever since, thanks to the efforts of angry propagandists. To argue about whether it was 300,000 or 2,000,000 is in a sense irrelevant and distasteful, however, since both numbers are great enough to be equally distressing, and the suffering of individual victims in their trajectory towards death is in both cases immeasurable."

*

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

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

To assume you know everything you need to know means to cling to the old brain and reject everything that does not fit in it. To assume the opposite, means to be more open to new perceptions and ideas. To put it more bluntly: arrogance is punished with ignorance, which is said to be the source of all evil, and humility is rewarded with wisdom.

*

SKINHEADS

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

At one time or another I have been accused of every aberration known to men and some known only to my critics. As recently as yesterday a reader accused of "demonizing" the nation by suggesting that there are Armenian skinheads. If this reader is not careful, he may provoke me into asserting that not only we have our share of skinheads but that we, the entire nation, happens to be at their mercy. Why else would Raffi say, "Treason and betrayal are in our blood," and Zarian would reflect in his posthumously published diary, "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another"? Unless of course they were themselves skinheads out to demonize the nation.

*

THEN AND NOW

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

Once upon a time it was my ambition to be all things to all men. I have since gradually lowered my sights. My efforts are now concentrated on avoiding being nothing to nobody.

#

Saturday, February 05, 2005

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

LESSONS I WAS NEVER TAUGHT

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

Why is it that the most important lessons in life are not taught in schools? I was taught algebra, which has been of no use to me, but nobody ever told me that most of life consists of blunders and humiliations because we assume our privileges to be permanent conditions.

*

Only after achieving indifference to the opinion of others we may aim at excellence. Until then our efforts are focused on conforming to the demands of others, which we can do only at the expense of our authentic self.

*

By blaming others for all our misfortunes, we reinforce our profile as passive victims; but by accepting some degree of responsibility we may acquire the freedom to forge our destiny.

*

Readers whose initial reaction is violent disagreement: they are my main targets. As for readers who agree with me: what can I say to them that they don't already know?

#

February 9, 2005

Sunday, February 06, 2005

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

If you are an honest man, you will make many enemies but very few friends.

*

My patriotism is as necessary to me as air and water. My enemy's patriotism might as well be carbon monoxide and arsenic.

*

In my salad days I wrote a number of dishonest books. When I wrote them I did not think of myself as being dishonest but as being patriotic. And I was outraged when a Canadian critic accused me of racism for my uncompromising pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish stance. It took me twenty years to realize that he was right and I was wrong. It may take me another twenty years to realize that when I write an honest line today I should not expect to have the agreement and support of our chauvinist charlatans.

*

Patriotism, we are taught to believe, is a far more important attribute than honesty. Unfortunately for us and for mankind in general, our enemies are similarly brainwashed. Result? Millions of innocent victims. It may take not twenty but two thousand more years for humanity to realize the obvious fact that patriotism is not a virtue but an integral part of our killer instinct.

*

History is clear on this point: territoriality and terrorism might as well be synonymous.

*

Pablo Neruda: "I only know the skin of the earth, / And that it has no name."

#

Monday, February 07, 2005

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

ON MORAL SUPERIORITY

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

I was brought up to believe in the moral superiority of Armenians. Since then I have been disappointed so many times that I no longer believe in the moral superiority of any race, nation or tribe; neither do I believe in their moral inferiority. We all swim in the same soup. Germans as well as Russians, Americans as well as Africans - they have all produced their share of swine, and Armenians as well as Turks are no exception to this rule.

*

It is not the best among us who assert moral superiority, but the worst. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a good look at himself in the mirror and question his readiness to accept racist propaganda as the final arbiter of morality.

#

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

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

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS

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

In the second half of this wonderful historical novel by Louis de Bernieres, we read the following:

"The Armenians and the Kurds have loathed each other for centuries, and, owing to the fact that there are many Armenian units and commanders in the Russian army, the same banal atrocities have been committed against the Kurds that the latter have always enjoyed committing against Armenians."

*

Further down there is a similar passage dealing with Adana.

*

May I confess that I read similar passages in foreign books with a sense of relief and malicious pleasure. I for one am tired of seeing Armenians portrayed as perennial victims of bloodthirsty savages.

*

Perhaps we owe our survival not to our religious faith or superior intelligence or degree of civilization (probably all myths created by our propagandists), but to the fact that, in human affairs, past conduct is not always an infallible index of future conduct and appearances can be misleading. So much so that, only the naïve and the ignorant are perplexed when sheep behave like wolves.

#

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

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

OUR GREATEST ENEMY

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

Gostan Zarian (20th-century author): "Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech."

*

Avedik Issahakian (20th-century poet): "Our three curses: earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, brainless leaders."

*

Yeghishe (5th-century historian): "If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subject will perish."

*

To those who say, "Yeghishe was wrong because after 1500 years of his prediction we are still around," I say: "We may be around, yes, but one could also say that we have been perishing the death of a thousand cuts."

*

Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran Contra, Clinton and Monica: politicians never admit errors of judgment until caught in the mesh of an inflexible justice system. If it were up to our Ramgavars, all Tashnak leaders would be forced to resign on grounds of criminal misconduct, and vice versa - all Ramgavar leaders would hang from the nearest tree for their support of a criminal regime in the Homeland.

*

That's one reason why these two entities cannot engage in dialogue. There is no honor among charlatans.

*

As an anti-partisan, I would like to see leaders of both parties cross-examined by an unbiased panel. Will that ever happen? One can only hope and pray. But I have every reason to suspect that both parties would rather disband than admit any errors of judgment. Their only defense so far: "We are not perfect, no one is." Ask them to expand and they will say "No comment," or words to that effect. They admit their imperfection only to appear more human - that is to say, more perfect in their humanity.

*

I began by quoting a medieval historian and two contemporary writers. Let me conclude by quoting three more intellectual leaders:

*

Raffi (1835-1888): "Those who are responsible for our safety are themselves a gang of criminals…We are like sheep without a shepherd."

*

Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973): "Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naiveté

mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sharagans."

*

Shavarsh Missakian (1884-1957): "I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to ideals and principles."

*

It is to be noted that Shavarsh Missakian was himself an intellectual as well as a Tashnak political leader.

#

February 12, 2005

Thursday, February 10, 2005

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

ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS

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

A capitalist version of American history is to be trusted as much as a communist version of Russian history. Likewise, since nationalism is also an ideology, a Turkish version of Turkish history is as trustworthy as a Greek version of Greek history, or a Jewish version of Jewish history, or a Palestinian…and so on and so forth.

*

There are those who maintain the Armenian version of Armenian history is an exception to this rule. I am not one of them.

*

But to speak of an Armenian version of history is a misnomer because we don't have one but several - provided we define history not just as what happened by why.

*

In one version of our history, General Antranik is represented as a great military leader and a hero. In another, he is described as a war criminal. And in the General's own version, Armenian political leaders are the real war criminals who should be crucified because they must be held partly responsible for the massacres.

*

Why does the average Turk trust Turkish historians more than any other? For the same reason that the average Greek, Jew, Russian, American, and Armenian trusts his own historians.

*

Historians are motivated not by love of truth, but, at best, by love of God and Country; and it is a universally acknowledged fact that, in a world where gods and geographic boundaries are in conflict, my god and my geography will be closer to the truth than my enemy's.

*

As he is drowning while Smyrna is in flames, a Greek character in BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres, is quoted as saying to an imaginary audience: "Don't misunderstand me, it isn't that I think Greeks are worse than Turks, what irritates me is that they think they're so much better when really they're exactly the same."

Such admissions are made only in works of fiction written by foreign writers. I was born and raised in Greece and I now live in a Canadian city with a substantial Greek community, and I have never heard a Greek expressing sentiments remotely similar to these and I doubt if I will live long enough to hear an Armenian admit that Turks too are human beings who deserve to live.

*

Whenever a Jewish writer says anything critical of Jews, he is told: "If Hitler were alive today, he would enjoy reading you." And whenever I try to humanize Turks, I am accused of covering up the Genocide. It comes with the territory, I guess -- the territory being an attempt to view the past without bias.

#

Friday, February 11, 2005

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

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

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

To qualify for membership in the EU and under mostly French pressure, Turkey is now willing to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Henceforth, we are told, the Armenian Genocide will no longer be "a national taboo" subject in Turkey, and all mention of it will not be viewed as a crime punishable by law.

*

Before we celebrate our "paper" victory, however, let me warn the reader that this sudden change of heart comes with strings attached. Our genocide will be discussed in Turkish textbooks, yes, but it will be placed in its proper context, and the word context, as everyone ought to know by now, has the authority of making what is true, false, and vice versa.

*

Our genocide in context means equal space will be given to the suffering of the Turks. According to BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres, unspeakable atrocities were committed on all sides, including Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians, Kurds, and Armenians. At least a million Turks were deported from Greece and the Balkans under conditions similar to our own deportations. It is this fact that converted Toynbee from an uncompromising Armenophile to a modified Turcophile.

*

It will be remembered that Toynbee began his brilliant career as historian by publishing several books on the tyranny of the Turks and the massacre of the Armenians. But shortly after the war he stated that in these books he had told only a fraction of the story and when he wrote them he was not an independent agent but a member of the British civil service. He further explained that when he investigated the Turkish side of the story after acquiring Turkish friends and learning the Turkish language, he realized that Armenian demands had been unreasonable and Turkish actions if not justifiable than explainable. Even so, he at no time denied the reality of the Genocide.

*

After researching the subject for ten years, Louis de Bernieres reached the same conclusion.

*

Tolstoy's own daughter, who was a nurse in Van during the Russo-Turkish war, writes in her memoirs that it was impossible to tell Armenian from Turk, or victim from victimizer, because both behaved in an indistinguishable manner.

*

My guess is the Turkish textbooks will reduce the events to a controversy of abstract numbers. If we claim our victims number two million, they will say theirs number more than that, and Armenophiles as well as Turcophiles will continue to believe what they like to believe, because no one is in a position to assert "I was there, I counted them, and these are the exact number of Turkish and Armenian victims."

*

This much said, let me add that if we ever reach a consensus (which means working together rather than agreement) we may have to consider the Turkish side of the story. As for reparations: the Turks would have to borrow the money from the EU for 99 years with no interest.

#

Saturday, February 12, 2005

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

BLACK AND WHITE

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

The more I read about the past, the more I treat the Hollywood version of it with suspicion. In real life the good guys don't always come in white and the bad guys in black. I am not implying our enemies may not be as bad as we think they are. I am willing to concede that they may even be infinitely worse than any of us can imagine. I for one have no sympathy for serial killers and I believe lethal injection is too good for them. What I am saying is that we may not be as good as we assess ourselves to be.

*

GRAY AND BLACK

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

Engaging in verbal massacre and adopting the fascist method of treating dissent may even change the color of our wardrobe from white to gray, and the distance from gray to black is shorter than we think, or short enough for those who believe in human rights to feel ill at ease in the company of self-righteous charlatans who pretend to have all the answers. And they pretend to have all the answers because the answers happen to endow them with a sense of moral superiority. They forget that some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind - among them our genocide - were committed in the name of God and patriotism.

*

ON GOD

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

There are two schools of thought: the first says God created man in His own image; the second says it is the other way around: it is man who created God in his own image. I disagree with both schools. I suspect man created the devil in his own image and called him god.

*

BRAIN-DEAD THINKERS

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

Readers who demand that I write what they think operate on the assumption that their thinking days are over and henceforth they will rely on the old brain and reject anything that may be alien to it.

*

ON PATRIOTISM

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

No amount of patriotism can justify hooliganism and fascism. Patriotism justifies nothing, not even patriotism.

*

TWO QUESTIONS

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

Why is it that in our environment it is dangerous to have an opinion, unless it is someone else's opinion and preferably that of a boss, bishop, or benefactor.

*

Why is it that common sense is so uncommon?

*

OVERHEARD

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

"It is better to be hated by a democracy than to be loved by a dictatorship."

#

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