notes

[Guest arabaliozian]

Sunday, October 20, 2002*****************************Endless tribal conflicts, deranged fanatics preaching fear and hatred, and ultimately war and massacre, and countless dupes willing to kill and die. No, I am not talking about Armenians and Turks but the human condition. Why do these things happened? We may never know the answer but in our efforts to find it we may expose many lies.*I dream of the day when odars will learn Armenian and Armenians themselves will speak only one language: their own. Dreams are cheap, they say; which is why the poor have as many of them as the rich have privileges and luxuries.*I once knew an old lady in her eighties who bragged about her devotion to honesty and was honest enough to admit that she had no friends but many enemies. Such is life.*Once in a while I am urged to read the Bible. Millions have read it and will continue to read it but can anyone say the world has been or will be a better place as a result?*In his old age, Tolstoy – an intensely religious person – was not averse to uttering profanities in his private conversations with fellow writers like Chekhov and Gorky. I am reminded of the Mekhitarist monk who used four-letter words in his Armenian translations of Greek classics and this long before D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller.Monday, October 21, 2002******************************When dissidents are silenced, the bloodthirsty grow fat on the blood of the innocent.*Both Zohrab and Shahnour asserted that the word prostitution should be used more often in our environment.*A fanatic would rather walk a thousand miles in the opposite direction to misunderstand you than take a single step in your direction to understand you.*For a fool, winning an argument is more important than opening his mind.*I don’t hate Jews, only Zionists. DEATH TO JEWS! I don’t hate Americans only the American government. DEATH TO AMERICA!*Crusade is an anti-Islam word, granted; but what about jihad? What kind of word is that?*God helps those who help themselves even when they go against His will. Example: men or nations bent on suicide.*Some Armenians,  define Armenianism as murderous hatred for anyone who dares to disagree with them. It follows, disagreement and treason might as well be  synonymous, and, as everyone knows,  treason is a crime punishable by death. Other synonyms of Armenianism: Ottomanism, Stalinism, Oxymoronism, moronism.Tuesday, October 22, 2002*****************************When a man utters nonsense, we call him a crackpot and ignore him. But when a hundred million crackpots speak in unison, we call it a religion.*To how many of our superpatriots – whose unspoken slogan is: "My country, right or wrong!" – I could say: Massacres happen because there are people like you on the other side – people who subscribe to the very same values and credo, people with the very same outlook and disposition, brainwashed, self-righteous, dogmatic, narrow, and yes, bloodthirsty.*Apache Indians, Eskimos, Patagonians, Arabs…: they all claim God speaks in their own language, and I say they are all crackpots. It is common knowledge and an established fact that God speaks in Armenian, and I say this not because I am an Armenian but because it is the truth! To say otherwise is to utter nonsense!*In his POINTS FOR A COMPASS ROSE, Evan S. Connell, Jr. writes: "…one thing about the Incas sounds unpleasantly familiar: they thought they were the Sun God’s favorites. It’s been suggested that the Incas might have been descendants of Armenians…." This may come as a surprise to some but, speaking for myself, nothing surprises me any longer.A TOUCH OF EVIL+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Nice guys don’t always finish last. Sometimes they just don’t last. What is human history if not a cemetery of tribes, nations, and empires? If we have come close to extinction it’s because we were massacred mercilessly by our enemies; and if we have barely managed to survive it’s because we did to them before they had a chance to do it to us.During World War I, Tolstoy’s daughter was a nurse in the City of Van. In her memoirs she writes that Armenians massacred Turks with the same savagery that Turks massacred Armenians.According to Azeri historians, our celebrated General Antranik was a master practitioner of ethnic cleansing (a euphemism for massacring innocent civilians, including women and children).Here is another historic incident that may also be dismissed as anecdotal evidence. About a thousand years ago there was a Byzantine emperor by the name of Basil II and a Bulgarian czar by the name of Samuel. They were both warlike rulers with territorial ambitions. Inevitably, there was a war from which Basil II emerged victorious. To render his enemies inoperative and to pacify his western borders, Basil had the entire Bulgarian army blinded. When Czar Samuel saw his blinded army he had an epileptic fit and died.And now the punch line: both Emeperor Basil II Bulgaroktonus (Greek for Bulgar-slayer) and Czar Samuel of Bulgaria were Armenians..Moral I: Real history is much more interesting than the bowdlerized version we are taught at school..Moral II: To have had an Armenian education means to have been systematically moronized..Moral III: To say we are "the good guys" and our enemies "the bad guys" is to confuse military inferiority with moral superiority.