politics

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

CONTROVERSIAL REFLECTIONS
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If a big mouth were a sign of intelligence, courage, and initiative, every other Armenians would be another Napoleon, and probably is in his own mind.
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Sometimes I am described as controversial. If I am, it is only with the naïve, the uninformed, the ignorant, and the unaware.
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According to some psychologists, the compulsion to speak the truth is neurotic. By contrast, the compulsion to lie is a survival tactic and as such in no need of psychiatric treatment.
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I realized I was growing old when old men treated me as if I were one of them.
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After I die I will be remembered by those I insulted. This may not be an ideal form of immortality but, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers.
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If you think I repeat myself, you can reduce the repetitions by 50% if you read me every other day, and 100% if you quit reading me.
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Yanks have talking heads. We have snarling snouts, and if some readers are right, I am one of them.
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We tend to forget that our propaganda has as much effect on them as theirs on us.
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Woody Allen: “I can't listen to too much Wagner, ya know? I start to get the urge to conquer Poland.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

There are no mongrels in nationalist environments.
And yet the world is full of them.
Speaking for myself, I will say and repeat:
on a good day I can trace my family tree
all the way back to my father.

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

Tuesday, January 03, 2017
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CRITICS
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We are better at creating problems
than in solving them.
*
In an environment where everyone,
even the dumbest son-of-a-xxxxx
is brainwashed to believe he is
just about the smart bastard in the world,
there is nothing – nothing! –
a minor scribbler can say
that he doesn’t already know.
*
Patriotism is a noble sentiment
but genocide is its other face.
*
Have you ever met a boss, bishops or benefactor
willing to concede he may have done
more harm than good by dividing the community
within which he operated?

I don’t criticize.
I investigate criminal conduct.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

Hell is a creation of men who deserve to go there.

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

MORE ON TRUMP
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Where there is a free press, fascism doesn't stand a chance.
One of the worst things that happened to America in the last century was Senator McCarthy. But McCarthy, unlike Franco, Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, didn't kill anyone. Neither did he last as long for the simple reason that he was exposed as a bully by a free press.

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

EMPEROR JOHN
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Once upon a time, about 2000 years ago (give and take a decade or two) there lived a Roman emperor by the name of Vespasian (no, he was not of Armenian descent). He was a good emperor -- much better than average, according to most historians. But since the Senators didn’t like some of his policies, they demoted him to Supervisor of Public Urinals. Vespasian was not in any way offended or discouraged. He said to his staff, “I intend to discharge my duties as Supervisor of Public Urinals as competently and diligently as I discharged my duties as emperor.”
To this day Italians use his name instead of (john). To say “I am going to pay a visit to Vespasian,” means I am going to the john.
I think of Vespasian often perhaps because what keeps me going is the thought that, if my detractors are right and I am in fact nothing but an extremely minor scribbler, I will at least be an honest one.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

TWO MEN OF INTEGRITY
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Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian writer who hated
his fellow Austrians with a passion. No other
writer has been as relentless as he in his
excoriations of his fellow countrymen. Our Raffi
too was very critical of Armenians but in his
fiction he also created a good number of heroes
and noble specimens of humanity. Baronian, Odian,
and Massikian couched their attacks in humor and
satire. Zarian’s trajectory from great
expectations to despair and disgust was gradual
and he was careful to confide his denunciations
in his correspondence with friends, diaries and
notebooks that were published only posthumously.
Thomas Bernhard’s hatred seems to have been born
in his cradle and continued all the way to his
grave at the age of 58. But since he was widely
translated and admired throughout the world, the
Austrians had little choice but to award him a
prestigious literary prize in the hope of that
flattery may mollify him. It had the opposite
effect. In his acceptance speech Bernhard
delivered such a scathing attack on Austrian
double-talk, mediocrity, intolerance, and fascism
that the Austrian Minister of Culture and half of
the audience walked out on him. I dare you not to
love and admire such a man!
*
When a prominent Soviet official died, a good
number of Soviet personalities in the arts, among
them Shostakovich, were invited to deliver
eulogies. As it was to be expected, all the
brown-nosers emphasized the positive and ignored
the negative in the deceased, all except
Shostakovich who chose to emphasize only the
negative by exposing the man’s dishonesty and
opportunism. Which is why, ever since I read
this, I have had a soft spot for Shostakovich,
whose music I also love not because it is
elegant, refined, deep, intricate, or noble but
because it has a propulsive and sometimes
gut-wrenching forward drive.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

Speaking of his fellow Americans, Thoreau once said: “The greater part of what they call good I believe in my soul to be bad.”

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

Confucius: “Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve men.”

[arabaliozian]

Re: politics

A typical Armenian is an open wound and a closed mind.