notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, October 28, 2010
**********************************************
UNDIPLOMATIC OBSERVATIONS
************************************************
It is written: “He who has the gold, defines the golden rule.”
*
It is also written: “Revolutions may change the men at the top, they don't change human nature.”
*
The economic crisis engineered under Bush and embraced by Obama proves one thing: Sooner or later both capitalism and communism degenerate into gangsterism.
*
Obama's mistake was to seek the advice of men from Wall Street to fix Wall Street on the grounds that it takes a thief to catch a thief. But in this case the thieves didn't get caught; they got away with more loot, that is, taxpayers' money.
Obama behaved like Shaw's “gentleman” who steals from the poor to help the rich.
*
I have myself been called all kinds of nasty names by our bloodsuckers and brown-nosers because I refuse to play the game by their rules – that is to say, to be one of them.
*
A disgruntled insider once told me, shortly after the Earthquake in Armenia, one of our fund-raisers in New York demanded and got $100,000 salary plus expenses; and I assume he transferred the collected funds to his counterpart in Yerevan, who distributed them to his own counterparts in the affected areas, and so on.
This may explain why, disgusted by this kind of “trickle-down” charity, 1.5 million Armenians decided to emigrate to America and Turkey, among other countries, in order to find employment and support their families back home.
*
To those who tell me I should be more diplomatic in what I write, I say: Diplomats are highly trained and skilled gentlemen who get paid good money for their work. Nobody is paying me to be diplomatic.
#
Friday, October 29, 2010
**********************************************
ON SURVIVAL
************************************************
Notwithstanding its countless blunders, dogmatism, intolerance and crimes against humanity, the Catholic Church has survived for two millennia. One reason why I don't rate our own survival as a worthy achievement worth mentioning or discussing. After all, the Ottoman Empire lasted longer than most empires.
*
Sometimes to survive means to be as bad or even worse than the competition. Cobras and scorpions owe their survival to their venom and not to their sweet disposition, altruism, and love of truth. To say therefore that we owe our survival (if that's what you want to call it) to our civic virtues, tolerance, and love of democracy, is to lie.
*
One reason I write short sentences and paragraphs is that I am afraid by the time I finish writing longer ones I may no longer have an audience. I am not implying I have one today – three or four readers an audience to not make – but they are better than no audience. Call it the consolation of a loser.
*
If an explanation is endorsed by a political party, it can't be right. Truth and politics are as mutually exclusive concepts as fire and water.
*
If I knew how to pray, I would say: “Please God, teach me how to forgive my own transgressions. Because then and only then I may learn to forgive those who transgress against me.”
#
Saturday, October 30, 2010
**********************************************
REFLECTIONS
************************************************
If it is the dury of every true patriot to sacrifice himself in defense of his fellow countrymen, how many of our revolutionaries qualify?
I am not casting aspersions (as they say in westerns), just asking an innocent question.
*
When a member of the Party criticizes me, he does so with the certainty and daring of a prophet with 20/20 vision. But when it comes to critizing his own Party, he becomes deaf, dumb, stupid, and brain-dead.
*
The offspring of the same revolutionaries who challenged a mighty empire a hundred years ago are now afraid to challenge the shadows of their own faceless and anonymous bosses.
What a great subject for a comedy!
*
If “War is hell,” and “Hell is other people” (Sartre), it follows, peace is hell too.
*
The only way to explain and reconcile the idea of an all-loving God and the murder of an innocent child, or for that matter, the senseless death of two or seven million innocent civilians, is to think of time (be it the lifetime of a human being or that of the universe itself) in relation to cosmic time or eternity, as only a fraction of a second.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, October 31, 2010
**********************************************
LESSONS
************************************************
The lesson to be learned from our genocide is not that Turks are bloodthirsty savages (under certain conditions even the most civilized people on earth will behave like a primitive savage tribe) but that
(one) those in power are not always morally superior or infallible;
(two) when exposed they are not always willing to admit their blunders or the magnitude of their crimes;
(three) they can always rely on a majority of dupes to believe them; and
(four) in such a climate dissenters will be identified as traitors and enemies.
*
To those who say the difference between Turks (Asiatic barbarians) and Germans (civilized) is that Germans, unlike Turks, admitted their guilt, I say:
Germans admitted their guilt because they lost the war.
Turks refuse to admit their guilt because they won, and because history is written by the victor.
Had the Germans won, the chances are I would now be writing these lines in German and I woud be parroting the official German denialist line; and what's even worse, you would believe everything I say the way a devout Catholic today believes in the encyclicals of the Pope on the grounds that the Pope is infallible and he speaks in the name of God.
*
It is not my intention here to suggest that we have no choice but to behave like dupes. If anything, I am saying the exact opposite, namely: there is a tendency in all of us to embrace a big lie as if it were a self-evident truth.
*
At all times and everywhere, truth is well hidden from us.
What is trumpeted is only a fraction of reality that might as well be a perversion of the truth, that is to say, it is a bare-faced lie delivered by crooks whose number one concern is number one, and whose number two concern is to cover up this obvious fact. The men at the top – be they popes, imams, kings, or statesmen, are liars and he who believes them is a damn fool who deserves to be taken to the cleaners, as we have been.
#
Monday, November 1, 2010
**********************************************
UNFORGETTABLE LINES
************************************************
There are some lines that once heard or read are never forgotten.
Some random samples follow:
*
Anonymous (French): “He who can kiss can bite.”
*
Anonymous (Chinese): “He who loses temper has wrong on his side.”
*
Socrates: “My poverty is proof of my honesty.”
*
Anonymous (xxxish): “Sleep fast, we need the pillows.”
*
Anonymous (Turkish): “When the house is finished, death enters.”
*
Anonymous (Turkish): "Among ten men nine are sure to be women.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian): “Cat play is mouse death.”
'
Dostoevsky: “Do you realize how powerful one man can be?”
*
Anonymous (xxxish): “A girl in good shape is often the reason why a man is in bad shape.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian): “To the poor everyone is generous with advice.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian): “Pigs never see the stars.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian):
“One Armenian eats one chicken;
two Armenians eat two chickens;
three Armenians eat each other.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian): “A dead jackass is not afraid of wolves.”
*
Anonymous (Armenian): “Soft words can break bones.”
*
If you have unforgettable lines of your own, let's have them.
I for one look forward to hearing from you.
#
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
**********************************************
A TRUE STORY
************************************************
Once, many years ago, when a friend took me to a community center, the two things that I noticed and remember to this day are,
(one) the famous Soviet-Armenian writer who was scheduled to deliver a lecture, stank like a skunk – no doubt having taken his regular yearly bath eleven months ago; and
(two) immediately after the question period, the national benefactor who was in the audience was surrounded by a phalanx of brown-nosers – to protect him (I heard later) from direct assaults by riffraff.
Whenever the benefactor made a public appearance (my friend explained later) people would go up to him and apply personally for a grant, that is, demand cash; to which the benefactor would invariably say, “Talk to my secretary.”
*
Because I spent most of my time in solitary confinement reading, I was told again and again that one may learn a great deal from books, but one may also learn different things not available in books by meeting people – most of which, I now think, not worth knowing.
*
There is a P.S. to this story:
Shortly after independence, the famous writer was murdered by the hit men of a mafia don in retaliation of the murder of his own son by the writer's son, who after the deed went underground and, as far as I know, has not surfaced since.
*
P.P.S.
The lecture at the community center was financed by the benefactor, which may suggest, some Armenians have so much money that they don't mind investing it on crooks parading as intellectuals and role models to future generations. Either that or they (benefactors) rely too much on the advice of secretaries who can't tell the difference between an honest man and a KGB agent.
#
BOOK REVIEW
****************************
1001 DAYS THAT SHAPED THE WORLD.
Edited by Peter Furtado.
960 pages. New York, 2008.
************************************************
Three randomly selected days discussed in this wrist-wrenching and lavishly illustrated tome are:
“May 1, 1274 – Beatrice Glimpsed (Beatrice Portinari inspires Dante's greatest work).”
“June 4, 1913 – Suffragette xxxxxled to Death.”
“January 2, 1973 – Abortion Legalized.”
*
Armenians are not mentioned.
Turks and Kurds, yes.
Armenians. no.
So much for first nation this and first nation that. Which may suggest that our propaganda is designed to deceive us and no one else.
But that's the way it is with all propaganda regardless of race, color, and creed.
No one but xxxs believe they are the Chosen People.
No one but some Aryans believed they belonged to a Superior Race.
And until very recently, no one but Southern bigots believed in the superiority of “Anglo-Saxon democracy” and in the inferiority of xxxs, Blacks, and Catholics – that is to say, the rest of the world.
Charity, it is said, begins at home.
So does deception, alas!
*
Closer to home:
Why is it that when people identify themselves as smart they behave like idiots?
Why is it that the lowest scum on earth identify themselves as “superior”?
If in a crime it's “cherchez la femme,” in propaganda it must be cherchez the self-evident truth that it tries to cover up.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, November 4, 2010
****************************
FACING FACTS
************************************************
When academics discuss the great achievements of Greece,
they mean of course ancient Greece.
They know, and they assume their readers also know,
that the only two thing modern Greeks
share with their ancient counterparts
is the territory and the language.
Nothing else!
During the last twenty-two centuries
Greeks have had so many conquerors –
from Macedonians and Romans
to Turks and Germans – that they have been
thoroughly bastardized.
*
Please note that I am not advocating racial purity.
What degrades and degenerates nations
is not mixed marriages
but subservience to the foreign conqueror,
which gradually evolves to
subservience to domestic wheeler-dealers
who speechify in the name of patriotism,
subservience to empty suits with fat bank accounts,
and subservience to fornicators who sermonize against sin.
*
Why do I say these things?
Simply to assert the fact that
not all Armenians are dupes
or cowards afraid to face reality.
There is hope in confronting challenges no matter how severe.
There is no hope in lies, illusions, flattery, and wishful thinking.
#
Friday, November 5, 2010
****************************
THREE STORIES / FIVE MORALS
************************************************
Because 2500 years ago the Greeks condemned a thinker to death,
he became the most celebrated philosopher of all time.
*
Because 2000 years ago they crucified an obscure preacher
-- so obscure in fact that most of his contemporaries were not even aware of his existence –
he acquired billions of followers from one and of the world to the other.
*
Because the Kremlin at the apex of its power tried to silence an unknown, unarmed and peace-loving dissident by exiling him to Siberia, he was awarded the Nobel Prize and is now generally recognized as the greatest Russian writer of the Soviet era.
*
Moral I: If you want to sell toothpaste, you spend millions advertising it in the media. But if you want to promote the ideas of a thinker, reformer, or dissident, you silence him.
*
Moral II: Fascists dig their own graves because they refuse to learn from history.
*
Moral III: The easy, convenient, or obvious solution may not always be the best solution.
*
Moral IV: If you think the right thoughts in the solitary confinement of your room, you will be overheard ten thousand miles away (according to an old Chinese proverb).
*
Moral V: Actions have unforeseen consequences not always to the advantage of the actors.
#
Saturday, November 6, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
Because I rated what I read above reality,
I fell into the same trap as Don Quixote and Madame Bovary.
That's my way of pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
*
Leader: I can't think of another word with more sinister historic connotations.
Why say “leader” when we can say “public servant”?
*
The first known case of compounding a felony:
After planting that damn tree in the Garden,
He introduced the Serpent.
*
Recent economic and political developments in the United States have made it abundantly clear that capitalism means free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.
*
Did you know that most of our kings were odars?
Our sons of xxxxxes were not even ours!
*
Armenia the cradle of civilization?
There is something incongruous in grave-diggers speaking of cradles.
*
He thought diarrhea was a compulsive need to keep a diary.
*
All fascists operate on the assumption that if you deliver a lie in a loud voice and repeat it often enough, you may have a better chance to fool most of the people most of the time.
*
Something to look forward to:
a new book by Eric-Emmanuel titled
TO THINK THAT BEETHOVEN IS DEAD WHEN SO MANY MORONS LIVE.
*
To the question, “What is the difference between the rich and the poor?”
Hemingway is said to have replied "The rich have more money.”
What is the difference between winners and losers?
Winners know something losers don't, namely how to win.
We may enjoy more international support on the day we de-victimize ourselves.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, November 7, 2010
****************************
ON LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP
************************************************
There is a sheep and a goat in all of us.
We may believe what we are told
by those who know better
(or pretend to know better)
but we also entertain doubts.
*
We have more questions than answers
and no one has the final answers.
Leadership consists in dividing and deceiving.
*
Armenians and Turks share one important thing in common:
they are both dupes of their own leadership.
*
There are no good leaders;
only good public servants.
In an ideal world anyone with leadership qualities
(and I can't imagine a more repellent quality)
would be treated as a potential criminal in need of a shrink.
*
If as a community we are a disaster area today
it is because of the phenomenon known as
too-many-chiefs-and-no-Indians.
*
If there are two sides to every story,
there will also be leaders willing
to exploit the dupes of one side against the other.
Everything that is bad in life we owe to leaders;
and everything that is good to public servants.
*
As long as there are imams and popes
there will also be infidels.
What could be more oxymoronic as well as moronic
than to think the only way to assert one's own humanity
is by dehumanizing others?
*
Where am I going with this?
My aim is to understand that which is incomprehensible.
My ambition in life is to take a single step in the right direction
in a field without signs and without a center.
*
Mankind will always be at the mercy of leaders
willing to divide by stressing the interests of one side against the other.
If we could only teach ourselves
to think against ourselves.
*
To the self-righteous I say:
Get used to the idea that you may not be
as right as you think you are.
No one is – especially those who have no doubts.
In life, the questions will always outnumber the answers,
and the doubts will always outnumber the certainties.
To think otherwise is the source of all evil.
*
Who is a dupe?
If you think your leaders care more about you
than about their own powers and privileges, you qualify!
And may the Good Lord
(if He exists)
have mercy on your soul
(if you have one).
#
Monday, November 8, 2010
****************************
REFLECTIONS
************************************************
While reading an article on Istanbul written by two Canadian tourists, I was wondering if Armenians would be mentioned; and sure enough they were, but not by the tourists but by an Oriental carpet dealer trying to sell them a kilim. “Why,” he demands to know at one point, “don't more Americans visit? Is it because of the Armenians who died after the First World War?” -- implying, we all die sooner or later; no one lives forever; what's so special about these damn Armenians who are out to starve me?
*
Turks say we massacred them.
Why did we do that?
The obvious answer must be: Because after six hundred years of subservience we had had it up to here! And if that's not a good enough reason, I like to know what is.
*
We say they massacred us.
Why did they do that?
Again, the obvious and common-sense answer must be: They thought if we win, they will have to be subservient to us.
Subservience may be good enough for inferior races like the Armenians, but unthinkable for those born to rule.
Which may suggest that, no matter how you slice it, they were racists and what they did qualifies as a crime against humanity.
*
What if we too are racists?
If we are, it may be because we earned the right – when we let them rape our daughters and use our sons to satisfy their imperial greed by forcing them to kill and die in their own wars.
*
The difference between Turkish and Armenian racism is similar to that which exists between murder one and self-defense. The sentence for the first is life imprisonment, and for the second, not guilty (which of course is not the same as innocent).
*
Anyone who says or implies you don't have to think for yourself because I will tell you what to think on the grounds that I know better (and this is as true of our former rulers as it is today of our Ottomanized elites), uses persuasion as surely as a castrator uses a knife, and the organ he itches to delete is much more valuable than the other one.
*
Readers who would gladly see me destroyed urge me to be more constructive.
*
Armenians are not smart.
It is my ambition to repeat that as often as our propagandists say Armenians are smart.
There is no such thing as a smart dupe.
All dupes are dumb.
*
Wake up Armenians! You have nothing to lose but your nightmares.
#
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
****************************
THEORY AND PRACTICE
************************************************
If I keep things short it's because I am myself so easily bored by what I read that I have developed an acute phobia of boring my readers.
*
When fornicators preach chastity, they say: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Why should anyone be allowed to make a comfortable living by doing the opposite of what he says?
Imagine a cop who delivers lectures on law and order during the day and turns into a serial killer at night.
Imagine a political leader who promises peace and prosperity for a thousand years and delivers war and pestilence.
On second thought, no need to imagine anything, just read a history of the 20th Century.
Imagine a lawyer – strike that! Bad example.
*
No one likes to be called a crook, especially crooks.
Likewise, no one likes to be called dumb, especially the dumb.
Everyone prefers to be called smart, including the dumb – especially the dumb.
Which may explain why we call ourselves smart.
Self-flattery is as Armenian as pilaf and shish-kebab.
*
A few years ago, one of my books, titled FRAGMENTED DREAMS (out of print now), was withdrawn from classrooms because some parents thought it may lower the self-esteem of their children.
Because I judge a nation by its history as opposed to its propaganda, I have acquired enemies among Turks as well as Armenians.
Some people (present company suspected) are so abysmally insecure that they think truth, instead of setting them free (as the Scriptures tell us) will shatter their image in their own eyes.
*
As for our academics who, even as I write, are busy shaping the character and worldview of the next generation: I am acquainted with several of them and they strike me as individuals who will say and do anything in exchange of a regular salary.
*
The problem with speechifiers is that after they deliver the same speech three or four times, they start believing in their own nonsense.
No one who submits his intelligence to individuals who don't have much of it themselves (namely, bosses, bishops, and benefactors) can claim to know better.
#
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
A reader once called me “a self-appointed critic,” as if popes and imams, or for that matter, commissars and our own Jack S. Avanakians are in the habit of appointing their own critics, and unless you have a license to practice, what you say ain't worth a sh*t.
*
Speaking of his fellow countrymen, Ben Hecht once said: “The American does not aspire to overthrow the thieves and oppressors half as much as he does to become one of them.”
If you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that we are morally superior, I would like to see it.
*
Do you remember the very first question you were asked as a child? I do! “Whom do you love more, your father or your mother?” That's when I began to suspect adults are nuts.
*
Sheep go where their shepherds take them; but there is a wolf in every man, as there is a Spartacus in every slave. This is a rule with only one exception: Armenians. The average Armenian dupe is a sheep in sheep's clothing.
*
Writing for Armenians means making yourself vulnerable to the insults of readers who are equipped to understand only recycled crapola. Deviate an inch and run the risk of being called an idiot by idiots.
*
If I continue to function today it's because I work for nothing and I can't be fired.
*
Like all -isms Armenianism too has its deceivers and dupes. With one difference: our dupes don't consider themselves dupes because they think they are too smart to be dupes.
Well, I've got news for them!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, November 11, 2010
****************************
BOOMERANG
************************************************
In my morning paper today, under a headline that reads, “Ambassador blasts Austria over treatment of Turks,” I read: “The Turkish ambassador accused Austria of treating his compatriots like a virus.” Further down he is quoted as having said to the Austrians: “You must learn to live together with other people. What's Austria's problem?”
Hear. hear!
*
Everything that you do unto others, shall be done unto you.
In life nobody gets away with nothing!
*
Are you easily offended by double-negatives.
I am not.
Greeks have been using double-negatives for millennia with no discernible ill effects.
For example: instead of saying “I have nothing,” (“Exo tipota”), they say “I don't have nothing” ("Then exo tipota").
Speaking for myself:
I prefer the Greek way. It may not make sense, but then in life, what does?
*
Today is Remembrance Day – a day we remember the end of World War I and our heroes who died in defense of our country and freedom.
Today is also a day in which we are encouraged to forget that our heroes also did some serial killing of their own.
#
Friday, November 12, 2010
****************************
SITUATION / xxxxUATION
************************************************
The shortest poem in the world?
“Adam
Had 'em.”
(Meaning, microbes.)
*
The shortest proverb in the world?
“Kirk, krik.”
(Turkish for “Forty, broken” -- in reference to the fact that most health problems begin at forty, that is, at the threshold of old age.)
*
One of my mother's favorite sayings was:
“Kimini chok chok,
Kimini hich yok.”
(Turkish for “Some folks have too much, other folks have nothing.”)
Karl Marx in a nutshell.
*
Turks knew their onions, alright!
They conquered and ruled over many lands, and came into contact with many people and as many cultures; and because they were in a position to choose, they chose the very best – the most beautiful girls for their harems, the strongest boys as Janissaries, the most competent and gifted architects, artists, and musicians.
How much of Turkish culture is Turkish?
My guess is, no more than 1%.
*
How much of Armenian culture is Armenian?
When I compare our contemporary music, architecture, and literature to that of our Golden Age (5th Century AD) and Silver Age (late 19th Century), my guess is less than 1%.
No one wants to admit it but the evidence is irrefutable on this point: we are a nation of rejects and mediocrities -- fornicators who sermonize on chastity, enemy agents who speechify on patriotism, and bloodsuckers who raise funds for the needy.
*
It is not only Turks who are to blame, however. Before them the Byzantine Greeks did the same; and more recently the Soviets. Some of the greatest military and political leaders of the Byzantine Empire were not Greek but Armenian. Very much like Turks and Byzantine Greeks, the Soviets kept the best for themselves (Anastas Mikoyan and his brother Artem of MiG fame, Aram Khachaturian, among many others) and in successive purges systematically eliminated anyone and everyone who dared to be more Armenian and less Soviet.
*
I say these things not because I am a cynic out to promote defeatism and despair but to point out the fact that our genocide in an ongoing process that began long before we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Turks. Unless we understand this very obvious fact and we segregate the goats from the sheep, we are doomed.
#
Saturday, November 13, 2010
****************************
DEPROGRAMMING
************************************************
One of the hardest things in life
is convincing a dupe that he is a fool.
*
If you don't understand yourself,
the chances are you will misunderstand everyone else.
*
If a truth contradicts another truth,
both must be lies.
*
A French thinker (may have been Voltaire) once said,
if it weren't for the miracles in the Bible,
there would be many more Christians.
Religion and magic are incompatible concepts.
*
When two belief systems clash,
their adherents would be justified in saying:
“I believe, therefore I am wrong.”
*
To those of my readers who are willing to share their wisdom with me,
may I be so bold as to suggest that
I am old enough to learn from my own mistakes,
thank you very much.
*
I should like to see academic fields
on “Armenian anti-Armenianism” and
“the flora and fauna of the Armenian psyche.”
*
If I were to write a history of our literature,
I would have to conclude it with the words:
“After surviving bloodthirsty sultans and murderous commissars,
Armenian literature expired under our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, November 14, 2010
****************************
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
************************************************
In a dishonest environment nothing is as severely punished as honesty.
Socrates, Christ, Luther, Gandhi, Martin Luther King:
what was their offense?
By being honest they exposed the dishonesty of those in power.
*
What is criminal in dissent?
What else but the daring to suggest that
when the mighty of this world speak in the name of truth or God
(whom they neither know nor understand) they lie.
They say all men are brothers
but they divide mankind into those who are for them
and those who are against them.
They say God is love
but they behave as thought He hated infidels unto death.
They speak of eternal life
but what they say has the stench of death
(if not of the body than of the spirit).
*
Only damn fools persecute and kill in the name of love.
Only charlatans invent dogmas that legitimize intolerance.
If I could, I would replace the word “God”
with “the Powers that be,”
and if I knew how to pray,
I would introduce my prayers with the words:
“To whom it may or may not concern.”
#
Monday, November 15, 2010
****************************
SUMMING UP
************************************************
We disagree for two important reasons:
(one) we use only an extremely small fraction of our brain; and
(two) we perceive only an extremely small fraction of reality.
Science tells us the eye is like a camera, it takes in an infinite number of details (countless droplets of water, for instance), but the brain is satisfied to see only a single occurrence (rain).
*
Disagreements will always outnumber agreements; and the agreements will likely be of the a priori kind – that is, judgments rendered before the evidence is in, or decisions based on predisposition and prejudice.
We will be predisposed to agree with friends and disagree with enemies even when friends are wrong and enemies are right.
We will be predisposed to say “Yes, sir!" to those we view as our betters, and to say “No way!” to those we believe to be against us.
Catholics will trust the judgment of the Pope as surely as Muslims will chant “Allawa akhbar! with their imams.
As a result, our judgments will be based more on hearsay and less on admissible evidence.
*
It is the absence of admissible evidence that makes wars and massacres possible. We may have the semblance of law, order, and peace where we live (only a small fraction of the world) but anarchy, insurrection, and war in the world.
The men at the top may be fully aware of what I am saying here but in politics and diplomacy self-interest and power will invariably trump reason and common sense.
*
On the day mankind is civilized, all men that place self-interest or their own powers and privileges above reason and the common good will be perceived and treated as enemies of mankind.
But as long as we place our trust more on charlatans and crooks and less on that most valuable of all possessions that God or nature has bestowed on us (our brain) we will have wars and massacres, and the first victims of our lies and misconceptions will be peacemakers and dissidents – Socrates, Christ, Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn.
*
THE MOUSE IN THE ROOM
************************************
A cartoon: two elephants having a drink as one says to the other: “Notice how everyone is avoiding the mouse in the room.”
*
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
**********************************************
Gore Vidal in a recent interview:
“What I like about Montaigne is that he devoted one of his greatest essays on lying, which is the American malady. If we go down crashing one day, it's because everybody lies about everything.” (NEW STATESMAN, October 11, 2010, page 27.)
#
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
****************************
POLITICALLY INCORRECT OPINIONS
************************************************
Those who are against abortion are as a rule for war
on the grounds that to kill the unborn is murder
but to kill the born is one's patriotic duty.
*
To speak of organized religions objectively
is to be politically incorrect
and nothing gives me more pleasure
than to infuriate fascists – both political and religious.
*
Most believers (regardless of their belief system)
are convinced that anyone who is not a member of their club
must be either a heretic or an infidel.
*
It is a serious error in judgment
to dismiss idiots as irrelevant.
I take idiots seriously
because I take the study of history seriously.
*
If you have power and God on your side,
reason and tolerance become subversive commodities.
*
A history of human rights in a religious context
would be an endless catalogs of crimes against humanity.
One is therefore justified in suspecting that
to subscribe to a belief system
is to be a dupe and an idiot,
and a dangerous idiot at that – judging
by the number of victims
that religions have generated.
#
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
All propaganda is open to criticism
except our propaganda.
*
God created man in His own image --
except Hitler, Stalin, Talaat, serial killers, rapists,
child molesters, racists, liars, dupes...
Is that 99% or 98% of mankind?
*
I take myself seriously only when others do.
Deep inside somewhere I am flattered
when I am silenced by our bosses, bishops, benefactors,
and their hirelings.
*
As an underdog I hate no one but top dogs;
and I feel sorry for dupes who, like dogs,
will be grateful to anyone who feeds them,
thus allowing their brains
to become an extension of their intestines.
*
Nobody but Armenians believe
in the Armenian version of history.
The same applies to Turks, Americans, Zulus,
Patagonians, Bolsheviks, capitalists...
*
History may be defined as a big lie told by top dogs
and believed by dupes with single-digit IQs.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, November 18, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
When I hear a lie I instinctively guess the truth that contradicts it.
The more outrageous the lie, the more obvious the truth.
One reason I never run out of things to say
is the fact that we swim in an ocean of lies.
*
Asked to define art and its function in society,
a Brazilian painter is quoted as having said:
“I don't know. All I know is this:
art is art, or it's sh*t.”
*
One of our elder statesmen
once mentioned a distant cousin of his in Paris
who had slept with Brigitte Bardot,
implying we Armenians have another thing to brag about.
*
What if the universe, as we know it,
is only a short footnote on the main text of existence?
*
I don't believe in prophetic dreams.
But I do believe that on some subconscious level
we may grasp the meaning of our past and where it's taking us.
*
By dying we return to our pre-born state.
We continue to exist as atoms but not as consciousness.
*
Wealth enslaves man as surely as poverty.
*
One nation's dream may be another's nightmare.
*
Some of the most offensive e-mails I have received
are from academics – men with degrees in degradation.
*
It takes less than 25 years (or a single generation)
to Americanize an Armenian.
Now imagine what 600 years (or 24 generations)
in the Ottoman Empire may have done to us!
What if the Genocide is only a small fraction of the total damage?
#
Friday, November 19, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
When asked why he robs banks,
a gangster is quoted as having said:
“Because that's where the money is.”
If you were to ask one of our fund-raisers
or Turcocnetric ghazetajis
why he speaks of reparations,
my guess is, he will give you the same answer.
*
When a reader insults me anonymously
I know I have hit paydirt and I dig deeper.
Intolerance is my favorite muse.
*
We are told our problems are not ours but the world's.
It is our duty therefore to educate and reform the rest of mankind,
beginning with Turks.
To which I can only repeat the words of the Duke of Wellington:
“If you believe that, you will be anything!”
*
You don't agree with me?
Our bosses, bishops, and benefactors
don't always agree with one another either.
Why should we?
*
If as an Armenian writer you can go on speaking
after you have been silenced
and surviving after you have been starved,
you have earned the right to repeat
Jimmy Cagney's famous last words in WHITE HEAT:
“Top of the world, ma!”
*
I like to quote famous men,
including gangsters and imperialist warmongers,
to underline the fact that not everything I say
springs from my own narrow and biased view of reality.
#
Saturday, November 20, 2010
****************************
SUMMING UP (II)
************************************************
What I really write about when I write about Armenians is the human condition.
Why do men behave as they do?
Why do they believe and think as they do?
What are the hidden forces that shape their character and motivate their actions?
*
Nazis in Germany, Bolsheviks in the USSR, Fascists in Italy and Spain, proud Yanks in America who believe America to be “the land of the brave and the free”:
I maintain they are all dupes of state propaganda.
In “Rule Brittania” Brits sing “An Englishman cannot be a slave.”
And Armenians, who have been slaves for most of their historic existence, think by replacing the words “teshvar, ander”* in their national anthem with “azad, angakh”** they cease to be slaves.
*
I believe the function of propaganda is to enslave men, and the function of literature is to liberate them by exposing lies and illusions.
Everything I write has a single unspoken message: “If you want to be free, become aware of your present dehumanized condition of subservience.”
If you allow others to shape your thoughts, you cease to be who you really are and become a parrot; and parrots can say and repeat only two words, “Yes, master!”
God (if He exists) does not enslave men, men do, especially men who speak in the name of God – make it, especially men who lie in the name of God.
*
Once upon a time our betters were sultans and commissars, which amounts to saying, our betters were the worst scum on earth. And if you believe this is no longer the case, you will believe anything!
=======================================
(*) “Miserable, without a master.”
(**) “Free, independent.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, November 21, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
“You don't know how to develop ideas,” writes a reader. “You should take a course in writing.”
I have more critics than a dog has fleas.
You want developed ideas?
Read our Turcocentric ghazetajis and listen to our speechifiers: they have been developing their idea(s) since the turn of the last century.
*
“After they walk past an elementary school (or is it a kindergarten?) they brag about their degrees from prestigious universities,” one of our elder statesmen (may he rest in peace) once told me.
If our elder statesmen spoke publicly as they speak privately, I would have fewer fleas.
That's politics for you: it makes liars out of honest men.
*
“Why do you persevere if you know you can't win?”
Because I am an Armenian.
*
We were subservient to our Turkish masters for six hundred years. Is that reason enough for us to be subservient to our own masters for six thousand years?
*
I have been a dupe and I have engaged in charlatanism. That's why I have nothing but contempt for both charlatans and dupes.
*
How many times were you wrong when you thought you were right?
Never? Brother, you are in deep sh*t!
*
If you think oppression, injustice, and lies are alien concepts that apply only to others, i suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror.
*
What we don't know far exceeds what we know. On the day we see the light we may also see that what we called knowledge was another word for darkness.
*
Because I am Armenian, my former friends outnumber my present friends a hundred to one.
*
The dupe who recycles crapola and the smart operator who deals in the same commodity because that's how he makes a comfortable living: the world is full of them.
*
I have yet to meet a self-assessed “better” or “more patriotic” Armenian who was not certifiable.
*
With age comes wisdom. But not in politics.
#
Monday, November 22, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
If most Turks and Armenians think alike it's because they trust their “betters.”
Moral I: Trust no one's judgment but your own.
Moral II: Only the worst pretend to be better.
*
If we judge men not by their words (speeches, sermons, dogmas) but by the number of their victims, we shall have no choice but to conclude that popes and imams are worse than serial killers.
*
Popes pretend to be better than imams and vice versa, and they are believed by their followers and dupes. As for their Armenian counterparts: the less said about them the better.
*
Speaking of George W. Bush's memoirs, a pundit in today's Op-Ed page writes: “Many presidents go a little loco.” So do many popes, imams, kings, emperors, czars, and chiefs.
*
“What would you have done in their place?”
How should I know? I don't even know what my own place is. I am in a search mode. And I am so busy trying to be honest in a dishonest world that I have no interest in imagining myself as a crook.
#
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
The difference between them and us is that they have several dissidents, among them an internationally known Nobel Prize winner...
Among us, dissidents are as popular as Talaat, Kemal, and the Sultan combined.
*
They have one set of leaders.
With us it's more chiefs than Indians.
Some things are worth repeating – in case I have said this before.
*
If you have nothing to lose, you speak the truth.
The greater the possession at risk, the bigger the lies.
*
Whenever I am attacked or insulted anonymously
I add cowardice to our long list of failings.
*
“Your call is important to us.”
Translation: “Why don't you shut the f*ck up!”
*
The language of the poor is down to earth, simple, limited in vocabulary. Its sole aim is survival.
The language of the rich is subtle, rich, versatile. Its aim is deception.
*
Seek for the hidden contradiction and you will find it.
*
We either admit our failings or we cling to them by covering them up.
*
Our heads may disagree but our feet take us to the same destination. No exceptions to this rule.
*
We don't have a word for “gentleman” probably because we have so few of them.
What about "a man of honor"?
That's what mafiosi call their godfathers.
*
In an environment where the official line is being positive, being negative becomes as irresistible as the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
*
In defense of his self-interest, a smart Armenian will go as far as pretending to be deaf, dumb, and stupid.
Americans have given freedom a bad name. Armenians have done the same to self-interest.
*
Louis XIV once said: “I almost had to wait.”
#
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
****************************
LAW AND DISORDER
************************************************
In the same way that some chief executive officers on Wall Street make more money than the President of the United States, some Indian chiefs and councilors (82 of them to be exact) make more money than the Prime Minister's annual salary of $317,574, according to a published report today.
When asked by reporters how come, a spokesman for the chiefs is quoted as having said, “We don't discuss such matters with the media.”
I have had less diplomatic reactions by some of our own chiefs.
*
There is a hyena in all top dogs.
*
Abuse of power comes naturally to top dogs; and assuming a passive stances means allowing them to reinsert the knife and give it another twist.
*
Dissent is a necessary ingredient if only because it introduces a touch of objectivity and balance. Suppression or absence of dissent is invariably followed by disaster.
Because the Catholic Church failed to assess its performance objectively it spawned Martin Luther and a succession of wars and massacres; and because the Reformation failed to do the same, it spawned televangelism.
Closer to home: ...but I will let you draw your own conclusions.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, November 25, 2010
****************************
DIARY
************************************************
After a silence of more than half-a-century, a call from an old friend (now in his 80s) .
It soon becomes apparent that he has been too busy in community affairs – church, politics, sports, fund-raising – to have read a single line I have written.
I doubt if I will hear from him again.
Why did he call?
He didn't say and I didn't ask.
Whatever the reason, it couldn't have been nostalgia.
*
Monster snowflakes.
Winter is here.
We may now look forward to Spring.
*
Reading three books:
a biography of Lesley Blanch – the author of one of the most fascinating books of all time: THE SABRES OF PARADISE, about the Caucasus, which I have read three time and I look forward to reading again if and when our library replaces its lost or discarded copy;
Antonia Fraser's MUST YOU GO? -- MY LIFE WITH HAROLD PINTER (I have read several of his plays but none of her books);
and the memoirs of Christopher's Hitchens.
In all three books there is talk of encounters with many celebrities, including kings and queens, even emperors and empresses.
*
How many celebrities have I known? None. Only a letter from Saroyan and another from Lawrence Durrell (Zarian's name is mentioned in both).
Saroyan knew Zarian but “couldn't figure him out.”
By contrast Durrell understood Zarian and wrote about him more insightfully than any Armenian I have ever read.
*
Because we rate money above ideas, we treat our benefactors as kings and we starve our writers. If I am slightly overweight it's because I have enjoyed the financial support of the Canadian government – and not because I am an agent of the CIA, Mossad, Grey Wolves, or the KGB -- as my critics have alleged at one time or another.
I remember once when Zarian's name came up, one of our elder statesmen who paraded as an eminent teacher, poet, and critic, accused Zarian of being a KGB agent – and this in his efforts to convince me that translating Zarian was a waste of time; I should translate him instead.
#
Friday, November 26, 2010
****************************
DIARY
************************************************
“Did you ever write about what that priest did to us?” my sister wanted to know last night.
“I didn't.”
“Why not?”
I had no answer.
Because I wanted to forget about it.
But how can I?
*
It happened almost a year ago.
In accordance with her wishes, Mother was cremated.
When asked to bless her grave, the Armenian priest refused.
“It's against our rules,” he explained. “We don't believe in cremation.”
My guess is, his refusal had another reason.
He knew as an Armenian writer I work for nothing and I would probably pay him less than minimum wage. I suspect that because immediately after he added, “I cannot do it unless I ask permission from the bishop,” thus implying exceptions are made, especially if the ashes belong to an Oriental carpet dealer – there are several of them in the neighborhood.
It would have taken him less than a minute to call the bishop, but I guess neither Mother nor my sister (both, unlike me, devout church-goers) deserved the courtesy of a phone call.
#
Saturday, November 27, 2010
****************************
REVIEWING THE SITUATION
************************************************
Privately they brag: “We taught Armenians a lesson they will never forget.”
Publicly they assert: “It was Armenians who slaughtered Turks.”
You want to unmask compulsive liars?
Nothing easier.
Think the opposite of what they say.
*
When we speak, we confess.
With every word we utter we say “Guilty as charged, your Honor.”
*
“Among ten men nine are sure to be women,” Turks confess.
Hence the slaughter of unarmed women and children.
*
What matters is not that I have only two readers three of whom would like to see me silenced.
What matters, what really matters, is that I am no longer dependent on benefactors (“the charity of swine”) and editors, about whom one could say: “Among ten Armenian editors, nine are sure to have been Ottomanized or Sovietized.”
*
What really matters is that even if I have only one reader today and if – repeat if! -- what I say is worth reading, I may have two tomorrow; and if I have two, I may have more-- if not the day after than next month or year. Not because time is on my side, but because time is on no one's side.
*
I don't paint a pretty picture, granted.
If pretty is what you want listen to our speechifiers and read our Turcocentric ghazetajis, all of whom make a comfortable living – thank you very much – by dishing out what you want to hear and read.
*
What matters is not that I don't have a high opinion of these gentlemen.
What really matters is that neither do they. Hence their subservience and cowardice.
Hence their habit of saying one thing publicly and the exact opposite privately.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, November 28, 2010
****************************
DIARY
************************************************
Antonia Fraser in her Pinter diary: “I need a $60,000 loan."
Even the wealthy have financial problems.
Ask a chief executive officer on Wall Street why the fat bonuses and he will probably make a list of all those things he can't afford.
*
To tell right from wrong is easy. What's hard is why under certain conditions right becomes wrong and vice versa.
*
On my way to the library yesterday, a black fellow walking in the same direction but on the opposite sidewalk wanted to know if had “any food.” “Sorry,” I said, “just books.”
*
Very early this morning (5:07 to be exact) a Buddhist monk on the radio: “Salvation means avoiding the hell that we have made for ourselves.”
Makes perfect sense.
Hell is not an alien place. Hell is within us. Hell is a house that we have built for ourselves. We are its architect, contractor, digger of its foundations, bricklayer, painter, carpenter, plumber, electrician, carpet-layer, and decorator.
*
If for an Armenian, hell is another Armenian, it may be because some Armenians, like some Turks, have made it a lifetime project never to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror.

Where does Ottomanism end and Armenianism begin? When it comes to them and us, I have more questions than answers.
*
Be kind to your enemies, they will hate even more.
#
Monday, November 29, 2010
****************************
DIARY
************************************************
According to an article in our paper on the Hitchens/Blair televised debate, Christopher (GOD IS NOT GREAT) Hitchens believes organized religions have been a force for evil; and Tony Blair (a recent convert to Catholicism) believes atheists like Hitler and Stalin have done more harm than the Papacy, and that faith can be a force for good if it emphasizes not dogma but tolerance and understanding – thus implying so far it has failed to do so. Blair's view on faith reminds me of Dr. Johnson's remark on second marriages: “The triumph of hope over experience.”
*
Have you heard this one? An Irish Catholic priest asks a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A prostitute,” she replies.
“Say that again?”
“A prostitute.”
“Thank God, I thought you said a Protestant.”
*
My question to popes, imams, and rabbis: “Why is it that you can convince millions but not one another? If you cannot reach a consensus, you are as bad as Armenians. With one difference: Armenians harm only themselves. You harm all of mankind when you legitimize intolerance, wars, and massacres.”
*
If not tomorrow or in ten years, and if not ten years, than a hundred years from now, a suicidal fanatic will detonate a nuclear device in a major city in the West. I say this to suggest that if World War III starts, it will be in the name of God.
*
And speaking of Armenians: I wonder if they are mentioned in the recent batch of documents released by WikiLeaks. It would be interesting to know what politicians think of us when they don't need our votes.
*
Turkish proverb as quoted by Hitchens in his memoirs: “When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said: 'At least the handle is one of us.'”
If this is an apology for treason, it must be a translation from the Armenian.
*
I write as I do because I have read Zarian's posthumously published diaries, notebooks, and correspondence and I am not afraid to say publicly things that he dared to say only privately because he had a family to support.
#
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
****************************
DIARY
************************************************
The occupation by Israel of Arab lands has become an endless source of controversy in the international media and on discussion forums on the Internet, including our own. By contrast, only Armenians speak of the occupation of Armenian lands by Romans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Russians, among others. Why this imbalance in media attention? My only explanation: Hatred of xxxs runs deeper than affection for Armenians.
*
Affection for Armenians? Why should the world have more of something which Armenians themselves have so very little of it?
Hatred of xxxs? Bad choice of words. The politically “correct” word is anti-Zionism.
*
Everything that is evil in us I ascribe to Turks. It's only fair. We were their scapegoats a hundred years ago. They will be ours now for a thousand years.
*
How many absurd dogmas – like say, Papal infallibility – survive for the sake of consistency (which has been described as “the hobgoblin of small minds).
*
Speaking of hobgoblins: Are there any references to condoms in the Scriptures? Once upon a time Christians challenged the Might of the Roman Empire. They are now gibbering about condoms.
*
When the phone rings these days it's more likely to be a telemarketer. Gone are the good old days when senile vodanavorjis wanted me to translate their verse, or chic Bolsheviks tried to convince me that Russians were our big brothers.
#
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
****************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************
In capitalist countries there are many government programs, organizations, and groups who look after the hungry, the homeless, and the unemployed. Lenin was against all of them because he explained charity does nothing but postpone the revolution.
One can say so much in a single line!
*
Our propaganda tells us we are better than Turks. But I am of the opinion that we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including Turks.
To those who say we can't be as bad as them because we have at no time committed the unspeakable crime of genocide, I say: “Let us not confuse military inferiority with moral superiority.”
*
God is our Father, we are His children, and all men are brothers. Unlike French grammarians, when God makes a rule, He makes them without exceptions.
All men are brothers is a knife that cuts both ways.
To my Turkish brothers who assert the Genocide is a big lie, I say our function is not to recycle state propaganda but to expose the lies of politicians, and to say or suggest that all politicians lie except Turkish politicians is to expose oneself as a dupe whose thinking has not yet emerged from its infantile stage. I am familiar with the type because the world is full of them and because I too believed everything I was told as a child.
#