notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

July 25, 2010
**********************
RANDOM THOUGHTS
************************************************** **
An Armenian will disagree with you even when he agrees. His aim is not dialogue but monologue; not being smart but to appear to be smarter than you; not consensus but oneupmanship.
*
It is not that the world is moving at a faster rate than we are, the situation is much worse. We are moving backwards. Compare the first half of the last century with the present. In the first half we had Oshagan, Zarian, General Antranik, Karekin Nejdeh, Roupen Der Minassian, Nikol Aghbalian, and many others. Today we have nothing but Turcocentric ghazetajis and brainless, faceless empty suit.
*
To those who say our problems are the world's problems, I say: Name a single nation that has been at the mercy of brutal foreign oppressors for as long as we have been.
*
If at times I am merciless in my criticism, it’s because life has been even more merciless to us collectively. Compared to how tough life has been, I don’t even qualify as a marshmallow.
#
July 26, 2010
**********************
MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS
************************************************** **
They recycle propaganda and call it free speech.
*
No dupe can ever be free.
*
The greatest enemy of liars is not the truth but reality.
*
Instead of speaking about Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, and Turks, we should teach ourselves to speak of human beings. That way we may learn to emphasize that which we share.
*
Shakespeare (THE WINTER’S TALE): “I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty; for there is nothing the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting, drinking.”
*
On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for “I have been verbally abused”) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.
*
Giambattista Vico:
“Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”
*
If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.
*
An Armenian who is about to lose an argument turns into a Turk.
#
July 27, 2010
**********************
IT TAKES ALL KINDS
************************************************** **
In his youth Koestler was taken in by Soviet propaganda and became a member of the Communist Party. But after Stalin's show trials and purges of the 1930s he published DARKNESS AT NOON, one of the most anti-Soviet books in world literature.
Stalin's countless crimes have had no effect on our chic Bolsheviks however. To them Stalin is no more than McCarthy's counterpart.
*
Nabokov, the offspring of multimillionaire Russian aristocrats, hated the Communists to such a degree that he even supported the war in Vietnam.
*
As a petit-bourgeois, Sartre hated the French bourgeoisie, including De Gaulle, so much that he sided with Stalin, Mao, and Castro.
*
Thomas Mann wanted to save Germany from the Nazis but he succeeded only in making enemies of his fellow Germans who looked up to Hitler for guidance and accused him (Mann) of treason.
*
Hitler and Mussolini counted among their early admirers many great men in politics and literature, among them Shaw, Churchill, Knut Hamsun, and Heidegger.
*
Even men with 20/20 vision have their blind spots; and sometimes to know more is to understand less.
*
In an environment where Abovian was driven to suicide and Zarian was silenced,
what chance does a minor scribbler have?
Why do I go on?
Call it art for art's sake,
A waste of time.
#
July 28, 2010
**********************
THE SOUIND AND THE FURY
************************************************** **
Instead of writing MADAME BOVARY
he should have written MONSIEUR FLAUBERT.
The result would have been
a much more authentic and believable work.
He knew everything there is to know about Flaubert,
little or nothing about the Bovarys
and what he knew about them
was based on hearsay, projection, research, and imagination
and as such, inadmissible evidence.
This is a mistake we all make:
we prefer to speak about things
we know little or nothing about,
and more often than we rely on hearsay.
Consider ideologies, religions, gods, and prophets.
What are holy scriptures if not hearsay?
What is the infallibility of prophets, popes, imams, and rabbis
if not pure fiction and collective illusion?
What are wars and massacres
if not hysterical or psychotic outbursts?
Leave it to historians to see meaning in them,
with the result that one man's meaning or truth
is another's nonsense and lie,
not to say the seed of another war and massacre,
followed by more sound and fury signifying nothing.
#

[levon]

Re: elegy

What's the proper thing to do when you like one's style of writing but not the content?
Should one break up the content into small pieces, pick and choose parts that stand out, and call the rest trash? Would that be considered rude?
Alternatively, should one just call everything trash because the content should be looked at as a whole, and there are just too many pieces that ignite one's foul senses?

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

July 29, 2010
**********************
MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
************************************************** **
You say it was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.
How so, if
(one) we were tiny islands in a vast Turkish sea;
(two) we were not allowed to bear arms; and
(three) we now live on foreign soil and you live in your homeland which was ours long before it was yours.
*
Armenians are guilty of slaughtering Turks?
There are literally thousands of articles published in the international press that speak of Armenian massacres and deportations in Turkey during World War I some of which have been compiled and published as books. Now then, show me a single article published outside Turkey in which it is stated that it was Armenians who massacred and deported Turks.
*
I understand and even sympathize with your loyalty to your tribe, but I suggest a man is judged more by his loyalty to principles of justice and fair play and less by his loyalty to a regime.
*
Speaking of man and criteria of judgment, I am reminded of the old Turkish saying: “Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”
And speaking of loyalty: I would add that loyalty to a regime is at the root of all fascism.
*
And now let us consider the following scenario: A united Armenia (miracles happen) declares war against a divided, weakened, and demoralized Turkey (after all, even mighty empires fall and vanish from the annals of history) and commits crimes against humanity by slaughtering and deporting innocent Turkish civilians. I assure you there will be honest Armenians (and I like to believe I would be among them) who will denounce the perpetrators in the same way that there are today many honest Turks who have raised their voices against Turkish denialists: you see, we are more alike than you think, with one difference: there are many more of you, which also means more criminals, more fanatics, more liars, and more dupes of propaganda.
*
On a number of occasions I have been asked by Turkish friends: “If we tried to exterminate Armenians, how come there are so many of you around the world?”
To which I can only say: millions of xxxs are alive today all over the world as well as in Israel. Does that mean the Holocaust is a lie?
*
Another question: Suppose the Ottoman Empire were an Armenian Empire and suppose Turks were a minority in it. And suppose after six long centuries of Armenian oppression some Turks decided to rise against their oppressors: Would you call them freedom fighters, heroic revolutionaries, or terrorists?
You say the Ottoman Empire did not oppress its minorities. Then explain why even the Turks rose against the Sultan? And if you say Talaat was not a fascist guilty of genocide, then explain why he ran away to Berlin?
*
A final note on truth and propaganda:
Where there are conflicting interests, truth may be difficult to establish, unlike propaganda which is easily identified and defined because it supports one set of interests against another – in addition to flattering the collective ego.
Who needs flattery?
My answer: Maybe the “nine women” mentioned in the Turkish saying quoted above, but surely not the “tenth man.”
#
July 30, 2010
**********************
#2 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
************************************************** **
You say, “For 600 years Armenians and Turks lived in peace. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, and a time when Turkey was fighting for its own very survival, you decided to side with our enemies and engaged in acts of terrorism within Turkey, thus giving Turks no choice but to take decisive action against you, which is what any state would have done.”
*
What you say contains a number of misconceptions, distortions, and fallacies.
Our revolutionaries were a handful of young idealists.
They did not represent the people.
None of them was democratically elected.
The deportations and atrocities undertaken by the Turkish state
did not target them but innocent law-abiding civilians.
As for Armenian soldiers who fought with the Russians:
again, they did so with no support whatever
from the Armenian people within Turkey.
Besides, no one is accusing the Turks
of killing Armenian soldiers on the battlefield.
*
Now, about the myth (a euphemism for the Big Lie)
of Armeno-Turkish coexistence:
throughout history all oppressors invariably adopt
a paternalist stance towards the oppressed.
They see themselves not as oppressors or masters
but as benefactors and protectors of their subjects;
and they are outraged at any show of discontent or dissent
which they view as ingratitude.
They are convinced the order established by them
has been ordained by the Almighty
and anyone who refuses to accept that self-evident truth
deserves to die.
To tyrants, exploiters, and imperialists,
all revolt is incomprehensible and unjustified.
*
However, the real issue here is not the psychology of oppressors
but why did the Turks target defenseless and law-abiding Armenians?
The obvious answer is,
they adopted a racist stance towards them.
When the American ambassador pointed out to Talaat
that he was targeting friendly Armenians,
Talaat said: “After what we have done to them,
all Armenians will be our enemies.”
Talaat understood and admitted
what you refuse to understand and admit,
perhaps because you continue to think and feel as oppressors.
You think the order established by your military victory
should be seen as a final verdict without appeal
because ordained by Allah.
You are completely blind to the fact that
your military victory was also a moral catastrophe.
*
And if you say, atrocities and deportations
are inevitable consequences of war,
yes, I agree. No one denies that either.
If Armenians see you as Asiatic barbarians
it is less for what you have done to them
and more for denying its reality.
#
July 31, 2010
**********************
#3 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
************************************************** **
You say,
“In our place you would have done the same thing.”
To which I can only say, and in our place
you would be reacting the same way.
Which means, we may be members of different tribes
but the same race – namely, the human race.
It also means we share more things in common
than we like to think. And yet,
we pretend otherwise
and we expect others to believe us
perhaps because we don't have as high an opinion of them
as we have of ourselves.
This pretense is baseless
because we might as well be transparent.
We both have a highly developed critical sense
when we deal with others, especially those we label as enemies,
and lack objectivity when it comes to ourselves.
You think the world needs you
more than it needs us, and we think
in the long run justice and truth are bound to prevail.
You cannot fool all the people all the time.
We both believe God or truth to be on our side,
thus reducing the mystery of existence to a game.
But life is not a game.
Not only today's victor may be tomorrow's loser
but also because victory on one level
may be defeat on another.
A criminal who believes he is innocent
because he is a law-abiding citizen
will commit the same crime again and again
until he is caught, arrested, tried, and found guilty.
*
A state that thinks only in terms of power and influence over others
is a dehumanized state. That is to say,
a state that has committed moral suicide.
Such a state doesn't have to be killed in order to die
because it is already dead.
I say this with grief in my heart
because it applies to the rest of the world as well,
including ourselves.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

August 1, 2010
**********************
#4 MEMO TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS:
ON NATIONALISM
************************************************** **
What nationalism does is to create an a priori positive image of one's nation (“my country, right or wrong”) and to automatically reject anything that may be remotely negative.
Nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology – a pathology if only in the sense that it divides mankind into us and them, Abels and Cains, friends and enemies -- the kind of enemies that, if you don't kill them first, they will kill you. As a result, murder one is classified as self-defense or at worst justified manslaughter.
*
My nationalist Turkish friends expect me to believe their version of the past as gospel truth and to reject the version of my own nationalist brothers as a pack of distortions and lies. And because I have been critical of our nationalists too, they think I am on their side and I qualify as an honorary Turk.
I am told some of them even quote me in their writings, websites, and speeches to buttress their denialist position. Which may suggest that they are so hungry for evidence that they are even willing to fabricate it.
*
What they miss is that my anti-nationalism targets not just Armenian nationalists but all nationalists, including theirs.
Their bias is such that it makes them blind to the reality of their position.
In their view it was not Turks but Armenians who committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The bones in the desert are not Armenian but Turkish bones. Talaat is not a criminal but a statesman of vision who did not deserve to be gunned down like a dog in the street by a deranged Armenian assassin.
*
A final comment on the myth of Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire.
Gandhi once called the British Empire “satanic.” As far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever described the Ottoman Empire as more civilized and humane than the British Empire. And if some day an ultra-nationalist Turkish historian somewhere calls the regime of the sultans “angelic,” that should be seen as irrefutable evidence of the fact that nationalism is less an ideology and more a pathology, and as such in need of medical treatment rather than philosophical refutation.
#
August 2, 2010
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GROUPS
************************************************** **
“On your own you can do nothing. You must join a group,” I am told again and again.
Join a group? How can I if my aim in life is to expose the moral bankruptcy of all groups?
*
What Shaw said of professions (that they are “conspiracies against the laity”) applies to groups regardless of credo, ideology, or political orientation.
*
Speaking of Zarian, a Tashnak editor once wrote to a fellow Tashnak:
“If we publish him he may come to our side.
When he didn't, not only was he silenced but also rumored to be unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and mad.
Later when the Soviets promised to publish him, he believed them and by the time he realized he had been taken in, it was too late. He spent his final years as an outcast in his own homeland and died with the conviction that he had been killed.
*
In their efforts to assert their own intellectual superiority and moral integrity, our mediocrities now spread the rumor that Zarian was an agent of both the CIA and the KGB.
I too have been accused to being an agent of, among others, the Mossad and the Grey Wolves. To which I can only repeat the words of Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”
*
Sooner or later all groups become criminal conspiracies.
*
The longevity of a group or belief system guarantees nothing. Astrology has been with us longer than any organized religion.
*
Where there is a belief system that asserts monopoly on truth, there will also be deceivers and dupes.
*
Where faith enters, lies and prejudices are sure to follow.
*
What needs to be glorified is not faith but doubt.
*
The destiny of blind men is to be at the mercy of other blind men who will invariably lead them into the ditch.
*
A member of a party is like a dog who knows his master but not his master's master.
#

August 3, 2010
**********************
#5 MEMO
TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
************************************************** **
You dare to speak of six centuries of peaceful Armeno-Turkish coexistence in the Ottoman Empire. You forget that during this so-called brotherly co-existence you raped our daughters and forced them into concubinage; and you abducted our sons and forced them to kill and die in your imperialist wars of conquest. You did these things legally of course because your legal system was rotten.
*
Times change and laws change but you continue to think with the old Ottomanized brain, hence the absurd notion that, like the Sultan before them, both Talaat and Kemal represented the Almighty on earth and as such they could do no wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of treason and deserves to die.
*
A man can get used to anything. You got used to your own vileness and we got used to our own cowardly subservience. In that sense, the Ottoman Empire was not the blessing you like to believe it was, but a curse to both of us.
And if we massacred you whenever we had the upper hand it may be because as your subjects, we adopted and put into practice the values and methods of our masters. Before you blame us, blame yourself.
*
In one of his Anatolian travelogues Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and the future author of a mammoth biography of Kemal, quotes an old Turkish peasant as having said: “We taught the Armenians a lesson the will never forget.” This illiterate peasant understood what educated, modernized, denialist scholars pretend not to understand today, namely that, what you did to us can neither be forgotten nor forgiven or, for that matter, covered up.
#

August 4, 2010
**********************
DIARY
************************************************** **
Reading the TALMUD. Some good lines in it. “Love work, hate lordship, and seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”
*
A hundred years ago our writers knew how to deal with our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. We appear to have lost the art and with it our cojones. The offspring of our revolutionaries now refer to one another as “boys” and to our benefactors as “baron.” The only lesson they appear to have learned from their experience in the Ottoman Empire is respect for authority and everyone in its neighborhood even if they are no better than yes-men, brown-nosers, and the scum of the earth. Hence the saying, “Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.” And this in the land of the brave and the free.
*
Because I am critical of Armenians, my Turkish friends think I must be blind to their shortcomings. I will not apologize for disappointing them.
*
Yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.
*
If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.
*
In the late 1860s Dostoevsky wrote: “Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”
There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all times confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.
*
In a dictionary, I read the following definition:
“Party politics: Politics conducted only through the machinery of the party and against people’s interests generally.”
#

[cannonfodder]

Re: elegy

So many things in the world these days make me so sad

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, August 8, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
The thought that writing for Armenians is a waste of time never leaves me.
*
I am all for tolerance, but I am myself tolerant only when drunk. Koestler may be right. What the world needs is a tolerance pill, if only to numb the crocodilian brain in us.
*
If in the next life (assuming there is one) the riddle of life and death is solved, will we say, “But of course, I should have guessed!” or will we say, “I should never have guessed this!”
*
When after World War II the victorious Allies decided to reduce Germany to a shadow of itself, they divided it into two. We don't need anyone to divide us into two; we can divide ourselves into twenty-two on our own.
*
When asked why he had hardly moved from his house for twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz is quoted as having said: “You don't like my house?” And when asked why he plays Clementi Sonatas, he replies: “You don't like Clementi?”
The other day a reader wanted to know if I was priest. I should have pulled a Horowitz on him and said, “You don't like priests?”
*
And speaking of rabbis, in the TALMUD I read: “He that does not increase shall cease, he that does not learn deserves to die, and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.”
Tough buggers, those old rabbis.
*
Anonymous: “The drowning man has no fear of rain.”
*
Avedik Issahakian: “The rich reap the fruit, the poor pluck the thorn.”
#
Monday, August 9, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Everyone in Washington is on the take.
So what else is new?
The American Congress is the best Congress money can buy.
Why don't you tell me something I don't know?
What about us? Do you think we are morally superior? What about our bosses, bishops, and benefactors? Are they all gentlemen?
What kind of people assert moral superiority?
Only the scum of the earth.
*
When we brag about survival, let us not forget that treason and betrayal also qualify as survival tactics.
*
What if life after death is as different as being is from nothingness?
*
Every time a man speaks the truth he makes a thousand enemies; that’s because for every bitter truth there are a thousand sweet lies and as many dupes who hate to give up their illusions.
*
Men of reason may compromise and reach a consensus. Reason has at no time played a central role in Armenian affairs. The gut, yes. The brain, no!
*
The secret ambition of every windbag is to be a fire-breathing dragon.
*
Propaganda is a tree that needs the manure of rhetoric. Truth can stand on its own even in the middle of a desert.
#
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
************************************
GOOD MEN
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends accuses me of anti-Turkish bias. I try to explain to him that my “bias” is not against people in general regardless of race, color, and creed, but against regimes, and more specifically, against individuals who formulate criminal policies and their underlings who implement them because not implementing them would mean loss of power, prestige, title, and income.
*
There are good men everywhere, granted. But good men cease to be good when they become dupes of leaders who abuse their power.
*
Speaking of good men: I owe my very existence to a kind Turkish cop who warned my father's family of the coming catastrophe, even when this warning, if exposed, would have cost him his job or even his life.
#
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
************************************
READING
*************************************
What makes Andre Agassi's AUTOBIOGRAPHY compulsively readable is its colloquial style and searing honesty. At one point he identifies his father as an Armenian from Iran who curses in Assyrian (probably because Assyrian sounds more menacing). Speaking of an opponent he writes: “His serve is uncannily accurate. If he misses, it's only by a bee's xxxx.”
Agassi writes like someone who has been in hell and back. The moral of his story seems to me, never do what someone else wants you to do even if by following his instructions may take you to the top of the world and into the bed of the likes of Brooke Shields and Barbra Streisand (which at the time was rumored to be less a May-December than an AD and BC affair).
*
Some of my readers inform me that I am a pessimist, probably because I have a grim view of our present reality. Others tell me I am an optimist, probably because they think I write hoping I can make a difference or change things. These contradictory reactions confirm my own view of myself as someone who thinks as a pessimist but works as an optimist. As for changing things: to entertain such an illusion would be less optimism and more megalomania bordering on insanity. The only thing I want to accomplish is to give insomnia to our charlatans and bloodsuckers, and I shall consider my mission accomplished even if the insomnia lasts no more than a fraction of a second.
*
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 giovanni (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.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

So many things in the world these days make me so sad

makes 2 of us.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 12, 2010
************************************
REBUTTAL
*************************************
After reading my memos, one of my Turkish friends, himself the author of a fat denialist tome, has written a detailed rebuttal which I stop reading when I run into the kind of fallacy that is bound to undermine the validity of everything that follows in addition to demolishing his much vaunted objectivity.
*
My good friend seems to be saying that truth is on the side of big battalions. If revolutionaries win, he explains, they are heroes. But if they lose, they are criminals guilty of a capital offense and as such they deserve to die, and not just they but also their women, children, parents, and everyone else that shares their ethnic origin. That's because in time of war it is not always easy to separate the sheep from the goats even when the sheep may outnumber the goats.
*
Another implication that comes across loud and clear is that, if the overwhelming majority of Western historians assert the reality of the Genocide, it may be because (one) they, unlike my good friend, haven't done their homework, and (two) like most of their Armenian counterparts, they have an anti-Turkish bias. It follows, only historians who deny the reality of the Genocide are true historians. The rest are dupes of Armenian propaganda.
*
Another curious point that I noted about my good friend is that he doesn't like proverbial sayings and he dismisses their wisdom as old wives' tales. I disagree. I love words of wisdom, especially when they challenge my fundamental assumptions and expose my prejudices and bias. I believe a single proverb is worth more than a thousand documents whose relevance and authenticity may well be bogus. Which is why I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from the TALMUD that I read early this morning:
“Let the honor of thy fellow be as dear to thee as thine own. Be not easily angered. Repent one day before thy death. And keep warm at the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coal lest thou be scorched: for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss the hiss of a serpent – moreover all their words are like coals of fire.”
#
Friday, August 13, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
*************************************
Let's get one thing straight: I am not anti-social. Rather, it is society that is anti-individual. And if I am not active in the community it may be because the community has no use for the likes of me and it prefers to deal, support, and compensate bearded hoodlums armed to the teeth with guitars and braying like jackasses, or idiots who hit a ball with a stick. I don't see why I should moronize myself to please my moronized fellow men.
*
Throughout history man has hated in the name of love, committed injustice in the name of justice, and professed dedication to truth in the name of a Big Lie. Which is why after centuries and millennia xxxs and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, supporters and opponents of capital punishment, abortion, and war, have failed to resolve their differences.
*
An Armenian has two sets of enemies, Turks and Armenians, and of the two, he hates Armenians more.
*
Eventually all thinking Armenians will have to ask themselves the question: What if it is not God at whose right hand we sit but the Devil?
*
I am willing to concede that all my observations on Armenians are also confessions.
*
“Where there is a trough, there will be swine.”
Likewise, where there is a benefactor, there will be brown-nosers.
And where there is propaganda, there will bedupes and one or more dissidents.
*
No matter how good the theory, there will be another that will contradict it.
*
The American illusion: “We may not be very smart but with the dollar we can hire the best brains.”
*
What if in the next life – if there is one -- the final questions will remain unanswered?
#
Saturday, August 14, 2010
************************************
TH RELIGION OF DENIAL
*************************************
Assertions are not made in a vacuum but within a context of unspoken assumptions whose absurdity may be hidden to insiders but as clearly visible to outsiders as a city set on a hill. In what follows I will list a handful of these assumptions made by our denialist friends.
*
Our books are based on authentic evidence. By contrast, books of the opposition are based on hearsay, old wives' tales, and forgeries.
*
Some of our key documents are of Armenian origin, and when an Armenian is on our side, he is an honest man; but when he is against us, he is a charlatan, a crook, and a liar whose testimony should be dismissed as inadmissible.
*
The authority of the state is sacrosanct. To challenge it is to incur its wrath.
*
If the authority of the state is sacrosanct, its assertions cannot be questioned. If the present regime says there was no genocide, there was no genocide. End of story.
*
When Talaat and Co. challenged the divine authority of the Sultan, they were right to do so. When Kemal did the same to Talaat and Co., he too was right. But when Armenians did the same, they were guilty of a capital offense and what followed was justified retaliation with some inevitable peripheral casualties.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, August 15, 2010
************************************
EXPLAINING AND UNDERSTANDING
THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
*************************************
We all swim in the same soup.
There is a Cain in all of us, including Abel.
Am I saying anything you don't already know?
*
Armenians and Turks will begin to understand one another only when they say, “In their place, we would have done the same thing.”
*
Armenians have no choice but to accept their degrading history of subservience to the same degree that Turks have no choice but to accept their role as oppressors; and of the two I find it difficult to decide which is more morally reprehensible.
*
Do you really want to know what I think of imperialism? True, I don't have first-hand knowledge of what it means to be the subject of an empire; but I have dealt with Ottomanized and Stalinized Armenians, and the best thing I can say about them is that, if they class themselves up two or three notches, they may qualify as the scum of the earth. That's the best thing I can say about oppression and subservience.
Let others believe the Ottoman Empire was a progressive and civilizing force. As they say, there is no accounting for tastes, it takes all kinds, and against stupidity even the Gods compete in vain.
*
What could be more preposterous than to suggest all the nations that rose against the regime of the sultans (and I am not excluding Turks themselves) during the last decades of the Empire's existence were wrong and the Sultan right?
*
Under pressure or when provoked, all people, even the most civilized, are capable of committing crimes against humanity. Now then, go ahead and say six hundred years of oppression does not qualify as provocation.
#
Monday, August 16, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Historian Nial Ferguson to the question, “Are we all doomed?”
“Definitely. The question is, will it be a bus this afternoon, or will I wheeze my last in some old folks' home, aged 90?” (London: NEW STATESMAN. July 26, 2010.)
*
Jean Rostand: “The world belongs to the superior second-raters.” And “Let a dictator perform an act of good sense, and people immediately hail him as a genius.”
Now you know all you need to know about Kemal's popularity. I speak as a “Christian Turk,” and I suspect the only people who will agree with me are “Mountain Turks.”
*
Turks are brought up to believe they are brave warriors – warriors who are now afraid of words – and the words that scares them the most are “Armenians” and “Kurds.” Compliments of Kemal.
*
La Rochefoucauld: “A man is never more easily deceived than when he believes he is deceiving others.”
*
Some day someone may write a history of Ottoman philosophy, but until then I will continue to think of Ottomanism and philosophy as mutually exclusive concepts.
*
La Rochefoucauld again: “It is only those who are despicable who fear being despised.”
*
The victor and the vanquished, the capitalist and the worker, the master and the slave, the boss and the hireling, the rich and the poor: relax the rule of law and they will tear one another to shreds.
*
If there are alienated Armenians today it's because they have had it up to here with Armenian nonsense. You may now guess why the best brains that Turkey has produced in recent times live in exile.
#
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
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FROM EMPIRE TO NATION
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Because I am critical of my fellow Armenians, I am thought of as pro-Turkish by readers to whom labels are more important than human beings. Hence the fallacy: You are either with us or against us, and if you are against us the hangman's noose is too good for you.
*
The Ottoman Empire of the sultans was an octopus.
Kemal's Turkey is a monopus – all trunk, no limbs, forever at the mercy of tides. Rejected by Israel, it embraces Iran. It moves backwards thinking it has taken a step in the right direction.
*
The central and unspoken tenet of Kemalism is the refusal to come to terms with the fact that the nation was born from the rotten corpse of the Empire. It is a zombie not a phoenix. On the map, it looks like a castrated member – a xxxx whose cojones have been surgically removed. A Viagra induced erection that does not flag, neither can it connect, let alone penetrate, the object of its perennial desire – the West.
*
To be at the mercy of imperialists: what could be worse? -- except perhaps to be at the mercy of nationalists.
#
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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TURKS (II)
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The laws of the land are designed to legitimize the power structure and to support the ruling class even when the rulers happen to be cold-blooded sadistic serial killers.
*
The slave is brought up to feel guilty even when innocent. It's the other way with the master – his conscience has been atrophied, his sense of justice perverted; so much so that he can slay the innocent with the conviction that he is discharging his duty in the eyes of the Lord. There you have it: the roots of denialism.
*
I believe Turks when they plead not guilty to the charge of genocide. I also believe these Turks think and feel with the old Ottomanized brain. Deep in their hearts (if you will forgive the overstatement) they have the unshakable conviction that the sultans were always right (remember the Italian slogan, “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right) and their(sultans') function in life was to carry out the will of the Almighty. The difference between the East and the West is that Mussolini was shot and hanged on a public square.
*
To speak of genocide in an Ottomanized context amounts to accusing the Lord of murder – an unthinkable blasphemy that in another time and place would have been seen as a capital offense. If the sultans came back to life today, they would issue a fatwa against all Armenians who utter the word genocide.
Let us therefore count our blessings!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, August 19, 2010
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KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES
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The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.
Imagine the following scenario if you can:
A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”
*
The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.
The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.
*
Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.
Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!
But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?
*
Genocide? What genocide?
It was a military victory.
Deportations and atrocities?
Collateral damage. All wars have them.
*
Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.
Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.
Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.
But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.
No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.
None of them rewrote history.
None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.
None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.
None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”
None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.
#
Friday, August 20, 2010
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ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA
***********************************************
Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.
*
The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.
In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.
The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.
*
Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.
Prejudices are all guts and no brain.
*
Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.
*
If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.
*
Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.
#
Saturday, August 21, 2010
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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When I was young I thought I had all the answers.
I know now that I don't even have the questions.
*
Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger
than understand the message.
*
To divide is bad enough,
but to divide in the name of a religion
that asserts “all men are brothers”
is the height of perversion.
*
It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,
I question the sanity of those who do.
*
Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while
that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To speak the truth means to contradict
one Big Lie,
a hundred small lies,
and a thousand liars.
*
What is censorship
if not fear of being exposed
as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?
#