Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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STRAIGHT TALK
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If you think my approach to Armenian issues is blunt and undiplomatic – too much vinegar and not enough honey – it may be because my target is not the general reader but myself. Once upon a time, when I was young, I too thought like a dupe, spoke like a moron, and behaved like a prick. I know now that you cannot expose double-talk with a forked tongue. Diplomacy doesn’t work with white men with black hearts.
And speaking of straight talk: I just read a brief memoir of an Armenian writer by her son who says his mother contracted cancer and died because her readers made her life a misery. Nothing further, your Honor.

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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HOMELAND & DIASPORA
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According to foreign observers, there is freedom of the press in Armenia. If true, that means our brothers in the Homeland have been more successful in de-Stalinized themselves than we in the Diaspora have been in de-Ottomanizing ourselves.
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Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, be on the side of a victim whose secret ambition is to be a victimizer?
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An important part of life consists in being assessed by individuals who have assessed themselves as competent judges.
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One good thing about alienation is that it allows one to be more objective.
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Education allows the educated classes to acquire more ways to mislead and deceive the uneducated.
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To be a nationalist in the Diaspora amounts to living where the money is and saying your heart is on Mt. Ararat. The true definition of homeland is not where your ancestors were born but where you are allowed to work and provide for your family.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Monday, February 18, 2008
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HONESTY
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Most of my readers are smarter than I am. If they were as honest, they would be far ahead of me.
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Events in history are like the final paragraphs in mystery novels, or like plants with very deep roots. We planted the seed of our genocide on the day we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan.
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I once heard David Suzuki, a well-known Canadian dissident, identify himself as a “xxxx-disturber.” Writes Carlos Fuentes, a prolific Mexican writer and diplomat: “You can only live by sticking your neck out, dirtying your fingers, exposing yourself.” I prefer the Canadian’s version of the story.
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When it comes to belief systems, objectivity may be difficult, even impossible to achieve. But honesty is not. An honest Christian or Muslim will have to concede that his religion has been a mixed blessing and, for countless innocent victims, an unmitigated curse.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Sunday, February 17, 2008
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MEMO:
TO OUR TURCOCENTRIC PUNDITS
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If you treat them as enemies, you should not be surprised if they behave as enemies. One way to define diplomacy is to say that it consists in treating an adversary as if he were a future ally. History provides us with many instances of past enemies who are now the best of friends. Another point worth emphasizing: it is a tragedy not an unsettled score. To treat it as if it were an unsettled score is to make of it a political football game. But perhaps before we teach ourselves to treat them as potential friends, we should learn to treat one another, if not as brothers, than at least, as human beings, who like all human beings may not always see eye to eye with us. Am I making too many unreasonable demands on you? If so, then please accept my heartfelt apologies.
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FURTHER READING
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The literature on the subject is vast to the point of being limitless. If you are interested, I suggest you begin with the Gospels. I am not suggesting taking the Gospels literally and loving them. What I am suggesting is that we treat them less as once bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians always bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians, but as fallible human beings with their own share of blind spots, prejudices, and failings, always keeping in mind that very probably half of them may well be half-Armenian.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Saturday, February 16, 2008
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THE WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE
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Jon Wynne Tyson: “The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.”
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Nothing can be more naïve than to say, since someone’s words, ideas, or actions are motivated by patriotism, they must be good; and nothing can be more infantile to the point of being idiotic than to confuse dissent with treason. Against how many innocent men has the charge of treason been leveled by the likes of Hitler and Stalin?
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Because I try to be objective, they tell me I am motivated by self-loathing. It is true, I am not particularly fond of myself. To those of the opposite disposition, I say: No honeymoon under heaven is endless. Let’s talk when your honeymoon with yourself is over.
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I am reminded of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire and their ideals and dreams. Their infatuation with themselves and the righteousness of their cause was such that they had a Plan B only for themselves. They made the same mistake Hitler did, with one difference. At the end of the story, Hitler committed suicide.
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Charlatans come in groups because there are so many of them.
#

"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Friday, February 15, 2008
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THE REAL STORY
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We speak about our genocide in order to avoid speaking about a greater tragedy: our leadership.
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When it comes to writing and reading, I prefer the stench of reality to the perfume of imagination.
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Even the smartest man on earth is no match for “the cunning of Reality” (Hegel) with an infinite number of tricks and traps up its sleeve.
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Changing water into wine – that’s nothing. The fact that water exists is the real miracle.
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After saying something, have you ever wondered why you said it? What that means is that our words spring from a source that is beyond our understanding.
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The beauty of free speech is that it allows a fool to make a bigger fool of himself.
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They tell me I am consistently negative. What nonsense! To write is to hope. I will stop writing only on the day I give up all hope.
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To those who demand solutions, I say: History provides us with an infinite number of precedents and solutions; and by history I don’t mean the history of nationalist historians. Nationalist historians are to real historians what Inspector Clouseau is to Sherlock Holmes.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

a quotation from Google
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50th Anniversary Booklet - St. Joseph Parish Kitchener
St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church - Kitchener Ontario Canada ... Ara Baliozian, a skilled organist, came to St. Joseph's over a decade ago, and ...
home.golden.net/~sjk/anniversary.html - 17k - Cached

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

Thursday, February 14, 2008
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CLICHÉS
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The starving Armenian writer is as much a cliché among us as “the starving Armenian” was to the world during World War I. On more than one occasion my anonymous detractors, whom I suspect to be either bishops or sons of bishops, have accused me of living on welfare. It is an undeniable fact that in a barbarian environment writers either starve or have no choice but to depend on the charity of swine. But in a civilized society writers enjoy the support of the state by means of literary prizes, grants, royalties, public lending rights, and copyright laws, which means, whenever a book is borrowed from a public library or even a single page is xeroxed, a writer gets his cut. To my detractors I therefore say: I may write for barbarians like you but I live in Canada, which happens to be a civilized country. I say this for another reason, namely, to let boys and girls with literary ambitions know that there is life before death even for Armenian writers, provided of course they avoid living and working among philistines with a forked tongue who praise writers only after they are safely dead and buried.
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Once, when I addressed one of my persistent and anonymous critics as “Your Eminence,” he was never heard from again.
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Even when not bishops, my detractors share with them two important features: dogmatism and infallibility.
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A definition of dogmatism: “50% wishful thinking and 50% dishonesty.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

SOME THOUGHTS ON OUR IDENTITY
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There are Armenians who are Armenians and there are
Armenians who impersonate being one. But since the
authentic Armenians are too busy being what they are
and have no time for clear definitions of what it
means being Armenian, the impersonators make a better
job of it: all they have to do is select and adopt a
few obvious symbols and cliches (Mt. Ararat, the
massacres, Gomidas, Saroyan). Likewise we have two
kinds of patriots: the ones who never lose a chance to
identify themselves as such, and the ones who say
nothing but allow their deeds to speak for themselves;
and of the two, the first outnumber the second by a
thousand to one.
As for our superpatriots who profess to love Armenia
and their fellow Armenians but who prefer to live
among odars in the Diaspora: they remind me of the man
who sent daily declarations of love to his beloved but
refused to see her even when she said she was more
than willing to go all the way with him.

Please note that I don’t criticize anyone as an
Armenian, but as a human being. There are so many
definitions of Armenianism and so many rascals who
have abused that term that I no longer know what it
really means and what it stands for. But I know
something about human beings because I have been one
all my life.
Which is why, whenever a fellow Armenian starts
waving the flag at me, I immediately conclude that
what he really intends to do is cover his nakedness

[arabaliozian]

Re: Happy Birthday Ara Baliozian!

A SERMON ON TOLERANCE
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I don’t expect agreement from our self-appointed
commissars of culture, only tolerance: the kind of
tolerance that is accorded to all citizens in a
civilized society. As for those who accuse me of
corrupting the young and misleading the uninformed: if
our bosses and bishops have been successful in
silencing some of our ablest intellectuals (from
Abovian to Zarian), they can have minor scribblers
like me for breakfast any time they feel like it; and
if so far they have failed to silence me, it may be
because they have not yet discovered a way to control
the internet. In the meantime, they can always rely on
their hirelings and dupes to tear everything I write
to shreds and to question my patriotism and sanity.