barbarians

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

The Albanians have survived
and very probably will continue to survive.
That’s not what matters.
What matters is, who gives a damn
whether they survive or not?
The Albanians maybe, but who else?
Follow me?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Whenever I am told Armenians were the first nation to convert to Christianity, I am reminded of the saying, “A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen” (Emily Lotney).

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Being wrong I understand. What I don’t
understand, and I doubt if I ever will, is being
catastrophically wrong with total unawareness,
like the good citizens of Athens who condemned
Socrates to death with the unshakable conviction
they were discharging their patriotic duty.

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

KAZAN IN ISTANBUL
**********************************
While in Istanbul, Kazan writes in his memoirs (ELIA KAZAN: A LIFE, page 548), “I was heralded as the famous man from Anatolia who denied absolutely that he was Armenian. There was no mention that I was a Greek.”
Speaking of a recent riot, a fellow Greek explains: “They [the authorities] brought several hundred criminals from the interior, gave them plenty raki, the cheap kind, a bottle to each man, put them on the boat to Istanbul, and told them, ‘Go ahead, the city is yours. Take what you want, so long as it’s Greek or Armenian.’” (page 550). Elsewhere (page 558) Kazan quotes an angry Greek woman saying: “They [Turks] are animals, who tasted our blood many times and want more, like animals.”
The scandal is not that criminals behave like criminals, with the blessings of the authorities, but that respectable men say, such things don’t happen in a civilized country like Turkey. And I doubt very much if the orders to riot, or any other relevant documents, are housed in state archives for future scholars who specialize in the study of riots.
Riots happen everywhere, of course, even in the most civilized countries in the world. But I doubt very much if they do so with the encouragement and authorization of the state for the simple reason that as a rule riots in civilized countries are spontaneous eruptions by minorities against the state.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Friday, October 07, 2016
**********************************
ALEPPO
******************************************
Armenia and Aleppo
share one thing in common:
everyone there wants to emigrate.
Emigrate where?
An irrelevant question.
*
The true aim of state-controlled education
is to legitimize war and
to brainwashed children to become killers.
*
Explanations outnumber the truth
a thousand to one.
*
Most Armenians today speak Armenian
with a foreign accent.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

CONFESSIONS
*********************
I point out contradictions in others because I
have observed the same contradiction in myself.
In that sense my criticism is also a confession.
But perhaps all criticism is. I ask our forum
moderators and editors, whose favorite subject is
Turkish barbarism: “What is the difference
between silencing a writer and cutting his tongue
out?”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

As we lecture theworld on our genocide in 1915,
let us not ignore
the two white genocides that are
taking place today, even as I write these lines:
namely, the exodus from the Homeland and
assimilation in the Diaspora.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Saturday, October 29, 2016
********************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
****************************
Trump is not a disease, only a symptom.
*
Memo to women: “Don’t waste your time and money
making yourself more desirable to pigs.”
*
With every war we lost
we acquired a new language.
*
When told I couldn’t make a living as a writer,
I learned several trades and was a failure
in all of them.
*
On divide and rule:
my question is who divided Cain and Abel?
*
As soon as I make an assertion
I begin to see more merit in its contradiction.
*
There is so much we know
but pretend not to know.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Sunday, October 30, 2016
**********************************
I REMEMBER
*********************
I grew up in an Ottoman environment
where too much learning was thought to be
a source of insanity.
*
Like all villages, ours too had its idiot.
It was said of him that he spoke seven languages.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Sunday, November 06, 2016
**************************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
********************************
There are no Turks
and there are no Armenians.
There are only people
who identify themselves as Turks and
Armenians.
*
The 1% may be divided into two:
first-class swine and second-class swine.
But since the line that divides them is fluid,
it is safe to assume it doesn’t exist.
*
If the 1% gets away with murder
it’s because the secret ambition of the 99%
is to join the ranks of the 1%.
#