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**Thai-Samurai** · 01-26-2005, 10:31 AM

So you keep a diary and you post it here?
Let me show you some of the quotes from my journals since this is taking up so much space.

"From now on shall the measuring tape of a nation be wrapped around their music!"
"My Empire sits on my bookshelf."
"One reality stays the same, but you always forget about the other one."
"Comfort is an echo you wish you didn't hear.
Comfort is a whisper repeated in your ear."
"My mind isn't always the same as what I say. Because my mind is always the same."
"I'm only an A+ variable."
"No Reason."
"I hate poetry instead I think of boobs."

**arabaliozian** · 02-02-2005, 10:34 AM

notes / comments

Sunday, January 30, 2005
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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.
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Man cannot understand god if only because man cannot understand man, including himself.
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Between wealth (without wisdom) and wisdom (without wealth) who will choose wisdom?
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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.
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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
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DEMOCRACY
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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.
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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.
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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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
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MY AMBITION IN LIFE
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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.
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REFLECTIONS
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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.
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One of the inflexible rules of life: If you refuse to learn the easy way, you shall have to learn the hard way.
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BLEEDING HEARTS AND PANSIES
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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�
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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
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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.
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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
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A POINT OF ETIQUETTE
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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.
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ON DOGS
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It is written: "If you help a dog, he will express his gratitude by biting your fingers."
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ON THE ADANA MASSACRES
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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.
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**arabaliozian** · 02-05-2005, 10:40 AM

Thursday, February 03, 2005
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ACCORDING TO STONE
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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
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DUPES
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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.
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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
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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."
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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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.
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SKINHEADS
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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.
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THEN AND NOW
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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.
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Saturday, February 05, 2005
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LESSONS I WAS NEVER TAUGHT
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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