Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules (Everyone Must Read!!!)

1] What you CAN NOT post.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is:
- abusive
- vulgar
- hateful
- harassing
- personal attacks
- obscene

You also may not:
- post images that are too large (max is 500*500px)
- post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or cited properly.
- post in UPPER CASE, which is considered yelling
- post messages which insult the Armenians, Armenian culture, traditions, etc
- post racist or other intentionally insensitive material that insults or attacks another culture (including Turks)

The Ankap thread is excluded from the strict rules because that place is more relaxed and you can vent and engage in light insults and humor. Notice it's not a blank ticket, but just a place to vent. If you go into the Ankap thread, you enter at your own risk of being clowned on.
What you PROBABLY SHOULD NOT post...
Do not post information that you will regret putting out in public. This site comes up on Google, is cached, and all of that, so be aware of that as you post. Do not ask the staff to go through and delete things that you regret making available on the web for all to see because we will not do it. Think before you post!


2] Use descriptive subject lines & research your post. This means use the SEARCH.

This reduces the chances of double-posting and it also makes it easier for people to see what they do/don't want to read. Using the search function will identify existing threads on the topic so we do not have multiple threads on the same topic.

3] Keep the focus.

Each forum has a focus on a certain topic. Questions outside the scope of a certain forum will either be moved to the appropriate forum, closed, or simply be deleted. Please post your topic in the most appropriate forum. Users that keep doing this will be warned, then banned.

4] Behave as you would in a public location.

This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being (i.e. be respectful). If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

5] Respect the authority of moderators/admins.

Public discussions of moderator/admin actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, and signatures. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private.

6] Promotion of sites or products is not permitted.

Advertisements are not allowed in this venue. No blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited.
This includes, but not limited to, personal resumes and links to products or
services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged
for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited.

7] We retain the right to remove any posts and/or Members for any reason, without prior notice.


- PLEASE READ -

Members are welcome to read posts and though we encourage your active participation in the forum, it is not required. If you do participate by posting, however, we expect that on the whole you contribute something to the forum. This means that the bulk of your posts should not be in "fun" threads (e.g. Ankap, Keep & Kill, This or That, etc.). Further, while occasionally it is appropriate to simply voice your agreement or approval, not all of your posts should be of this variety: "LOL Member213!" "I agree."
If it is evident that a member is simply posting for the sake of posting, they will be removed.


8] These Rules & Guidelines may be amended at any time. (last update September 17, 2009)

If you believe an individual is repeatedly breaking the rules, please report to admin/moderator.
See more
See less

notes and comments

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Re: elegy

    June 24, 2010
    ************************************************** *
    MORAL OF THE STORY
    *********************************************
    To be brainwashed means to be blind to reality.
    I speak from experience.
    *
    If God is love,
    why is it that there is so little of it in the jungles
    (both natural and man-made or asphalt)
    or anywhere else for that matter?
    Are we to assume gardens are planted by God
    and jungles by the Devil?
    Who in his right mind
    would introduce an evil serpent in a beautiful garden
    knowing full well what will happen next?
    If we are dealing with symbols
    whose intent is to understand and explain reality,
    then I suggest the explanation is not a very convicning one.
    Which is why it is rejected by the majority of mankind.
    God's ways are not our ways?
    If so, let us agree once and for all
    that He is incomprehensible and unknowable
    and theologians who try to explain His actions
    are no better than charlatans and blasphemers.
    *
    Moral of the story:
    Don't be a dupe!
    #

    Comment


    • Re: elegy

      June 25, 2010
      ************************************************** *
      REFLECTIONS
      ON OUR PRESENT SITUATION
      *********************************************
      Nothing can be more misleading than to think the men at the top know better.
      *
      History is made not by people who know better but by charlatans who have mastered the skill of organizing dupes.
      *
      When a member of the Party writes, it is not his brain that speaks but his loyalty. No one can be as brainless as a partisan.
      *
      The moment you surrender your freedom of thought to a closed system, you cease to think for yourself.
      *
      History is the propaganda of the victor, we are told. What we are not told is that losers too have their propaganda line whose intent is to make them look blameless and morally superior.
      *
      To think of oneself as morally superior is the surest symptom of moral bankruptcy.
      *
      If there are those who prefer the victor's propaganda to the loser's boast, it may be because they think winners may know something losers don't.
      *
      The only endeavor in which our Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded so far is grooming another generation of haters and braggarts.
      *
      Where the profit motive is supreme, there will be first-class merchants and an abundance of dead poets.
      *
      We have been brainwashed to believe politics is a filthy business, except of course our politics.
      *
      We don't choose our belief system, it is thrust on us.
      *
      It is a well-know fact that you can teach children to believe anything.
      *
      Prejudices are as carefully taught as the multiplication table.
      *
      That which is good for the few is bound to be bad for the many.
      *
      Anyone whose powers and privileges depend on the support of the people, will never say anything remotely critical against a system that allows the brainwashing of children.
      *
      At the root of all crimes against humanity, there will be a generation of brainwashed children.
      *
      As long as we think criticism and dissent are un-Armenian, we will never acquire the status of human beings – or “mart bidi ch'ellank.”
      #

      Comment


      • Re: elegy

        June 26, 2010
        ************************************************** *
        PARALLELS
        *********************************************
        The Palestinians have been so consistently wrong in overestimating their military might and in believing they can defeat the Israelis that nothing they say can be trusted. I am not talking about right and wrong here, or about principles and moral values. I am dealing with facts. Morally superior losers are a dime a dozen. Neither am I talking about the Palestinian people in general, most of whom are no doubt very much like most other people, including ourselves, dupes of their incompetent and megalomaniacal leadership, and as such guilty only of poor judgment.
        *
        When the popes sanctioned the persecution and torture of heretics, what were they defending? God or their own power?
        When heretics were willing to die for what they believed in, what were they defending -- beside their freedom of thought?
        *
        To say that those in power are more interested in the truth than philosophers is to ignore such facts as countless wars and massacres.
        *
        A charlatan is one who not only claims to have the final answers but also to know better than you what you should think, feel, and believe.
        *
        Minor errors of judgment are covered up and ignored; but catastrophic blunders are explained, justified, and believed. I suggest truth is not what deceivers and their dupes conspire to believe in.
        *
        When it comes to reading, we tend to reject ideas, feelings, and values that do not spring from our own experience. It is almost as if the purpose of reading were to reinforce and legitimize our limitations, prejudices, and fallacies. Knowing this, propagandists and charlatans (but I repeat myself) are more than willing to adjust their message to the lies that are most in demand.
        #

        Comment


        • Re: elegy

          June 27, 2010
          ************************************************** *
          SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO
          *********************************************
          When men in a position of power and responsibility
          promise one thing and deliver the opposite,
          I call that much worse than incompetence,
          I call it criminal conduct.
          When our revolutionaries promised
          freedom, independence and our historic lands
          and they delivered
          massacres, starvation, pestilence, and dispersion,
          and having done so they now say
          none of it was their fault
          and they are believed by dupes,
          I call that much worse than
          b.s., lies, and charlatanism;
          I call it evil.
          *
          I love books that expose b.s.
          One such book that I enjoyed recently is
          Laura Penny's
          YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US:
          THE TRUTH ABOUT BULLxxxx.
          In this morning's paper
          I read that Laura Penny has published another book titled
          MORE MONEY THAN BRAINS:
          WHY SCHOOL SUCKS,
          COLLEGE IS CRAP
          AND IDIOTS THINK THEY'RE RIGHT.
          I have something to look forward to.
          #

          Comment


          • Re: elegy

            June 28, 2010
            ************************************************** *
            THE KING IS DEAD,
            LONG LIVE THE KING!
            *********************************************
            Prophets and reformers may change the world
            but they cannot change human nature.
            What have the major religions really changed?
            The 20th century has seen more revolutions, wars, and massacres
            than at any other time in history.
            That's because human nature tends to adapt,
            that is to say, to lower
            the noblest ideas and ideals
            to its own level, namely the gutter.
            *
            I suspect the honesty and integrity of men
            who subscribe to a belief system
            simply because as children
            they were educated (that is, brainwashed)
            to trust and respect their elders
            I am not saying
            all Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Marxists are dupes.
            I am saying most of them are.
            Exceptions exist.
            But I don't speak of exceptions.
            I speak of rules.
            *
            Reformers may change the power structure
            but not human nature.
            And changing the power structure means
            replacing one set of rascals with another.
            You gain nothing by replacing one sultan
            with many mini-sultans,
            or one czar with many commissars,
            and many commissars and with many more
            crypto- or neo-commissars.
            #

            Comment


            • Re: elegy

              June 29, 2010
              ************************************************** *
              SELF-ANALYSIS
              *********************************************
              Confucius: “If you see a good man, emulate him.
              If you see a bad man, examine your own heart.”
              *
              If you want to know what's wrong with us,
              Naregatsi tells us, examine your conscience.
              Exposing and naming your own sins
              is more important than
              xxxxxing endlessly about your enemies.
              In that sense, Naregatsi, like so many of our writers
              from Khorenatsi to Zarian,
              may be said to have been a dissident.
              *
              You want to know why I write the way I write?
              To keep alive the voice of dissent in our literature.
              *
              If revolution is organized and armed dissent,
              I may be said to be an unarmed and solitary revolutionary.
              Which is why I feel justified in maintaining
              I am not silenced by the offspring of revolutionaries
              who dared to challenge the might of an empire,
              but by empty suits whose greatest enemy
              is neither the Turk nor the Russian,
              but their own fear of being exposed as cowards.
              #

              Comment


              • Re: elegy

                June 30, 2010
                ************************************************** *
                ON OUR MEDIA
                *********************************************
                Freedom of the press will not turn bad writers into good ones.
                Granted. It may, however, de-emphasize Turcocentrism,
                which shamelessly exploits our emotions
                and distracts us from focusing on our present problems
                of which we have many.
                *
                SCUMBAGS (I)
                ***********************
                A capitalist makes money at other people's expense
                and to combat his guilt, he builds churches
                and by doing so he compounds his felony
                by making the blasphemous assumption that
                God can be bribed by scumbags.
                *
                A MATTER OF CHOICE
                *********************************
                The world or reality provides evidence
                for contradictory belief systems.
                As a result, both a believer and non-believer
                will find all the evidence they need
                to justify their choice of credo
                and to accuse the other of siding with the devil.
                Our convictions are not based in reality
                but on our perception of it
                and our choice of evidence.
                *
                SCUMBAGS (II)
                *****************************
                There is a type of scumbag
                who thinks the only way to prove he is right
                and the other wrong
                is by going down into the gutter
                on the assumption that a decent man
                will refuse to follow him there.
                But then he runs the risk
                of running into a scumbag like me
                who can take it as well as dish it out.
                #

                Comment


                • Re: elegy

                  July 1, 2010
                  ************************************************** *
                  ON BEING RIGHT
                  *********************************************
                  Being right has nothing to do with logic, common sense, and evidence. Being right is a state of mind which can be controlled by auto-suggestion. If you want to assert superior knowledge, assume you are right, raise your voice, or pull rank. Once when I disagreed with a bishop, he said: “I have a degree in theology from a university in Rome.” Which is why whenever a coward insults me anonymously and from a safe distance, I think: “He must be a bishop or the son of one.”
                  *
                  OUR BETTERS
                  *******************************
                  Heine's definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.”
                  We don't have aristocrats. What we have are empty suits with money; and in our environment money doesn't just talk, it sings like Pavarotti even when it brays like an ass.
                  *
                  ON SOLUTIONS
                  ******************************
                  To readers who demand solutions from me, I ask: “How many problems have our Turcocentric ghazetajis solved?” And now consider the number of real problems we could have solved with the money, energy, and manpower wasted on Hai Tahd.
                  Organized hatred is the glue of nations.
                  #

                  Comment


                  • Re: elegy

                    July 2, 2010
                    ************************************************** *
                    THAT WHICH WE SHARE
                    *********************************************
                    Every Armenian is different, granted.
                    But all Armenians share in common the same history,
                    the most salient feature of which is
                    a thousand years of subservience to ruthless and alien tyrants.
                    In “Rule Britannia” the Brits may sing the words
                    “An Englishman cannot be a slave,”
                    but we are in no position to make the same claim.
                    Subservience – a euphemism for slavery –
                    comes so naturally to us that
                    it has become an integral part
                    of our psyche, character, and worldview.
                    Our nationalist historians may rewrite history,
                    but so far none of them has gone as far as suggesting
                    that we are all reincarnations of David of Sassoun.
                    *
                    It is true that at the turn of the last century
                    we finally did produce a generation of revolutionaries
                    who dared to challenge the might of the Ottoman Goliath.
                    But unlike the American, French, and Russian revolutions
                    ours wasn't exactly a popular uprising
                    and worse, our revolutionaries relied less on themselves
                    to carry out their mission
                    and more on the Great Powers of the West.
                    As a result, in addition to being an abortion,
                    our revolution may be said to have been
                    one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind.
                    *
                    If we were to rely less on our propaganda
                    and more on historic realty,
                    we shall have to conclude that
                    our past is a litany of internecine conflicts,
                    defeats, blunders, and lies.
                    *
                    Am I saying anything that hasn't been said before?
                    Listen to Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973):
                    “Our history is a litany of lamentation,
                    anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception
                    and abysmal naiveté mixed with the smoke of incense
                    and the sound of sacred chants.”
                    *
                    Raffi (Hagop Melik-Hagopian: 1835-1888):
                    “We are like sheep without a shepherd.”
                    *
                    Baruir Massikian (1912-1990):
                    “Instead of books, they [Armenians] want basterma.”
                    By “books” Massikian means here writers
                    who assume the role of honest witnesses.
                    *
                    As a nation we have no use for honest witnesses.
                    We prefer vodanavorjis who, in the words of
                    Leo (Arakel Babakhanian: 1858-1925):
                    “...like birds perched on a branch
                    and at a safe distance from reality,
                    they have entertained the moon and the stars
                    by singing songs about roses and virgins.”
                    *
                    I am all for emphasizing the positive,
                    but I am against bare-faced lies,
                    and I am deeply offended whenever I am treated
                    like a cowardly dupe whose favorite words are “Yes, sir!”
                    *
                    Allow me to conclude with a remark
                    by President Harry S. Truman:
                    “There is nothing new in the world
                    except the history you don't know.”
                    #

                    Comment


                    • Re: elegy

                      July 3, 2010
                      ************************************************** *
                      THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE
                      *********************************************
                      Because I refuse to recycle propaganda,
                      I am told I am consistently negative.
                      Charents said our salvation is in our solidarity;
                      and all I have been saying is,
                      solidarity, very much like the Kingdom of God,
                      is within us.
                      It is an act of will within everyone's reach.
                      *
                      If so far we have failed to achieve solidarity
                      it may be because we have trusted our fate
                      into the hands of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
                      To those who say our leaders are essentially good men
                      who are doing their best
                      under unfavorable conditions, I ask:
                      How so? By ignoring the word of the very same God
                      they profess to believe in, and Who tells us
                      “a house divided against itself cannot stand”?
                      Who is being consistently negative here?
                      Those who promote solidarity
                      or those who divide the nation?
                      And why do they divide us?
                      Does anyone know?
                      Can anyone enlighten me on that score?
                      *
                      Our divisions are buried in our past?
                      What past? If you rewrite history
                      you can justify anything;
                      and if you don't want to learn from history
                      you rewrite it.
                      It's a vicious circle.
                      *
                      Dealing in abstractions is easy.
                      The question is: What do we do in concrete terms?
                      I suggest the following:
                      If you are a Protestant, Catholic, or Anteliassagan,
                      visit the opposition.
                      If you are a Tashnak, apply for membership
                      in the Ramgavar Party and vice versa.
                      You may discover that all Armenians
                      regardless of their loyalty to a party or church
                      are human beings like you
                      – that is to say, dupes of propaganda.
                      *
                      Sooner or later we all have to discover that
                      not only all Armenians are brothers,
                      but also all men, including Turks.
                      #

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X