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  • Re: elegy

    Wednesday, May 02, 2012
    **************************************
    FOSSILS
    *********************
    Where literature is controlled and free speech suppressed
    propaganda becomes the only mode of perceiving reality.
    Where everyone thinks alike (thinks? wrong verb)
    no one thinks.
    To say “yes, sir!” is not to think.
    *
    We have become a nation (wrong noun) of non-thinking simpletons
    who believe they are not just smart
    but seven times smarter than xxxs.
    *
    I repeat myself?
    Where lies are repeated seventy-seven times,
    I see nothing wrong in repeating myself seven times.
    *
    Everything I have been saying has been said before
    by far better men than myself?
    If they behave like Panchoonies,
    why shouldn’t I recycle Odian seven times?
    *
    What do Jesus, Marx, and Freud have in common?
    They were teachers (rabbis) who didn’t believe in rabbis.
    To use Toynbee’s terminology:
    they were teachers who rejected fossils;
    unlike us who are zombies at the mercy of fossils.
    #
    Wednesday, May 02, 2012
    **************************
    SAROYAN AND I
    ********************************
    I envy Saroyan – no, not his fame and fortune –
    but because nobody ever told him to write like Saroyan.
    *
    Saroyan wrote to entertain his American audience.
    I write to torment my Armenian audience –
    assuming of course I have one.
    *
    Saroyan was Armenian.
    So am i.
    beyond that I doubt if we share anything else in common.
    *
    As for Michael Arlen – both Father and Son –
    they might as well be from an alien planet.
    #
    Wednesday, May 02, 2012
    ***************************************
    ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
    ***********************************
    We are not a divided nation;
    we are a broken nation.
    Being divided with us cannot be said to be
    a bad habit or even an incurable addiction
    but a character trait,
    and character is destiny.
    If you think I am being negative, think again.
    If what I say is true,
    truth is bound to set us free –
    free from all the lies that have kept us divided
    and continue to divide us today
    with no end in sight.
    #
    Wednesday, May 02, 2012
    *****************************************
    DARK AGES
    **************************
    Christianity has been described as a religion
    that allows a class of men –
    from popes to televangelists –
    to make a comfortable living
    by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
    Something similar could be said
    of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and scholars
    who write about massacres.
    Some day historians will name our past –
    from the beginning to the present and foreseeable future –
    our Dark Ages.
    #




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    • Re: elegy

      Thursday, May 03, 2012
      ******************************************
      GARBAGE CAN
      ***********************
      The average Catholic trusts the Pope much more
      than his critics, among them Catholic theologians
      who dare to question the dogma of papal infallibility. ,
      The average German trusted Hitler;
      the average Russian trusted Stalin;
      the average Italian trusted Mussolini.
      The average Greek of the 5th century BC
      believed Socrates to be a criminal
      guilty of a capital offense.
      Closer to home, the average Armenian –
      and by average I mean anyone who has not yet mastered
      the art of thinking for himself,
      is convinced it is his patriotic duty to trust the judgment
      of bosses, bishops, and benefactors
      and to question the integrity of dissenters
      who may well be agents of the
      CIA, the KGB, the Grey Wolves, or the Mossad
      (I now speak from personal experience).
      When it comes to ideas,
      the average man – regardless of race, color, and creed –
      is not so much a moron as a garbage can.
      #
      Saturday, May 05, 2012
      *************************************
      A CAPITAL OFFENSE
      *******************************
      We don’t know much about the Greek jury
      that condemned Socrates to death,
      but we do know that they were members
      of a civilized, enlightened, and progressive community
      who believed in false gods,
      which happens to be the charge
      they brought against Socrates.
      *
      Gods have always been and continue to
      be the business – make it, the racket – of the 1%,
      namely popes, imams, rabbis, among others –
      who if they had their way,
      they would gladly condemn one another to death.
      And they would be right to do so.
      *
      Moral: Those who pretend to be our “betters”
      may well be our worst.
      #
      Saturday, May 05, 2012
      *******************************************
      THIS AND THAT
      ***************************
      There is no end to the tricks
      that the 1% plays on the 99%.
      When they say peace
      they mean prepare for war.
      When they say communism
      they mean the capitalism of the state.
      When they speak of brotherhood
      they mean the Cain-and-Abel variant.
      *
      My aim in life:
      to give the bastards insomnia
      even if the insomnia lasts no more
      than a fraction of a second.
      *
      In writing being irresistible is better
      than being reasonable.
      As for being both:
      that would be like issuing invitations
      to your own execution.
      *
      If you don’t know where to begin,
      begin in the middle or even the end.
      If what you say makes sense
      it doesn’t matter where you begin.
      #




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      • Re: elegy

        Sunday, May 06, 2012
        *************************************
        RELIGION & LITERATURE
        *******************************************
        If god is in everything we know and see,
        where is the devil?
        *
        Religion is a business like any other
        and far more profitable than most.
        That's why for every writer we have,
        we have a hundred priests.
        *
        When a religion of love legitimizes
        intolerance, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre,
        it becomes an instrument of the devil.
        *
        The greatest argument against religion
        is other religions.
        *
        Contemporary Armenian literature
        may be summed up in two sentences:
        (one) it says many things except that which must be said, and
        (two) it takes money more seriously than ideas.
        *
        If the kingdom of god is within us,
        is the empire of the devil around us?
        #
        Monday, May 07, 2012
        *****************************************
        LIES
        *******************
        All belief systems are big lies
        because they pretend to provide answers to questions
        that are unanswerable.
        *
        When is a question unanswerable?
        When the answers are contradictions
        that cannot be resolved.
        *
        Once when I quoted Erasmus of Rotterdam
        in one of my commentaries
        I was told I was being “vicious.”
        *
        To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say
        what Tolstoy once said to a fellow passenger on a train:
        “As long as there are people like you
        we will have wars and massacres.”
        *
        What is patriotism if not the propaganda of individuals
        who pretend to be our “betters”
        but who are in fact our worst.
        #
        Tuesday, May 08, 2012
        **********************************
        WE ARE WHAT OUR ENEMIES MADE US
        ************************************************** **
        When Einstein said he did not believe in the god of the xxxs
        he was told to go back where he came from.
        *
        Most Christians are Christian because
        they were brainwashed as children.
        The same could be said
        of Muslims, xxxs, Hindus and Buddhists.
        *
        I was born and raised as a Catholic
        and my greatest enemies were neither xxxs nor Muslims
        but Protestants, in the same way that a Sunni’s greatest enemies
        are Shias and vice versa.
        *
        Popes, imams, and rabbis are not just liars
        but enemies of mankind.
        *
        The astonishing ease with which idiots assume to know better
        or to be better on the grounds that
        their god is the only true god.
        *
        When Socrates said “of the gods we know nothing,”
        he relied on his reason.
        When Hegel, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Shaw, Russell, Sartre,
        and many other celebrated thinkers rejected the Bible
        as the word of god, they did so only after they saw the light
        and were born again as human beings.
        *
        Gandhi: “I am not superstitious. I am a super-atheist.”
        #
        Wednesday, May 09, 2012
        ****************************************
        MORE ON
        RELIGION & LITERATURE
        ***********************************************
        After reading my recent comments on religion and literature,
        a gentle reader informs me:
        “Hegel and Einstein were theists.”
        So was Voltaire who said:
        “Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.”
        *
        I doubt if God recognizes Himself
        in men who speak in His name.
        The Devil, maybe.
        God? Hell no!
        *
        Among “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”
        (TIME, April 30, 2012) there are two Turks
        but not a single Armenian.
        If there is one and I missed him,
        I am prepared to be verbally lynched by our superpatriots
        who are never wrong.
        *
        To be wrong – nothing new in that.
        We all make mistakes.
        But to be catastrophically wrong
        with the certainty that you are absolutely right:
        that’s difficult to admit
        and impossible to come to terms with.
        *
        The greater the gap between what we think of ourselves
        and what others think of us,
        the greater the number of brainwashed dupes.
        *
        Palestinians have three mighty allies:
        fanaticism, money from oil, and universal anti-Semitism.
        Who cares about Armenians?
        Not even Armenians.
        #




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        • Re: elegy

          Thursday, May 10, 2012
          ******************************************
          JUST A THOUGHT
          *******************************
          Men are seduced by lies,
          communities divided, and
          nations torn by war
          because of the arrogance, greed, and stupidity of the 1%.
          Remember that next time you see someone
          speechifying, sermonizing and pretending to know
          something you don’t know,
          all the while doing his utmost to cover up the fact that
          compared to what he doesn’t know,
          what he knows is as nothing.
          #
          Saturday, May 12, 2012
          **********************************
          HOMO SAPIENS
          ***************************
          You will never see an imam
          arguing with a bishop?
          They know better…
          *
          To be brainwashed means to believe
          your convictions are your own not someone else’s.
          *
          To be brainwashed means to believe
          your dogmas are god-given certainties
          and someone else’s dogmas are fabrications of the devil.
          *
          To be brainwashed means to speak in the name of god
          even when you do the devil’s work.
          *
          To be brainwashed means to be absolutely right
          even when you are catastrophically wrong.
          *
          To be brainwashed means to believe
          you sit at the right hand of god
          and those who are against you
          are in cahoots with the devil.
          *
          To be brainwashed means to believe you are blessed,
          unlike the riffraff who bear the mark of Cain.
          *
          Homo sapiens?
          Don’t make me laugh!
          It is the wisest among us that are damn fools.
          #
          Saturday, May 12, 2012
          ****************************************
          WHAT MUST BE DONE
          **********************************
          We don’t mind doing a thousand things
          (sermonizing, speechifying, lamenting, praying, begging, protesting, and so on)
          but we refuse to do the one thing that must be done.
          We are divided and dysfunctional because
          we don’t have a constitution that makes consensus a must.
          America is very probably the most divided nation on earth.
          What makes it a nation,
          as opposed to a collection of unruly tribes,
          is a constitution of which they are rightly proud.
          Instead of a single constitution
          we have several each with its own mafia
          pretending to have truth and god on its side.
          As for our pundits, academics, and ghazetajis
          who ought to know better:
          they prefer to speak of what the Turks did to us
          a hundred years ago
          and to cover up what we have been doing to ourselves
          for two thousand years.
          They behave like running dogs
          who know their master
          but not their master’s master.
          #




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          • Re: elegy

            Sunday, May 13, 2012
            ***************************************
            WISDOM
            *************************
            Since life has an unhappy ending
            (sometimes even an unhappy beginning and middle)
            man has invented religion whose function is to cushion the blow of death
            by making promises it is in no position to keep.
            *
            In metaphysics as in economics
            it is always the 1% that makes a comfortable living
            by exploiting the 99%.
            *
            I was educated by monks,
            and I remember an older friend warning me:
            “The problem with monks is that
            they know little about the real world.”
            And sure enough, these monks lost all their possessions
            to a gang of crooks that promised to double the value of their assets
            by making smart investments in a growing economy.
            *
            What do I know about the real world?
            Very little—so little in fact that it might as well be nothing.
            An angry woman once said to me:
            “Yours is the kind of wisdom
            that’s available to anyone with a library card.”
            She was right.
            Reading books – what could be easier?
            Reading reality – that’s what’s separates the men from the boys,
            and ultimately the deceivers from their dupes.
            #
            Monday, May 14, 2012
            **************************************
            METAPHYSICS
            **********************
            Truth shall set you free.
            By contrast, propaganda shall poison the well,
            shut the doors of perception,
            and paralyze the mind.
            *
            If to recycle propaganda were a capital offense,
            all dupes would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
            *
            Whenever we say yes to lies,
            we raise a wall between us and reality.
            *
            God knows everything, including all the phone numbers
            in all the phone books of the world
            even though he has no use for them.
            *
            A statement is absurd
            when its contradiction makes as much or more sense.
            *
            God is love but prefers not to get involved in human affairs.
            That’s the only way to explain the rape of children
            and the massacre of innocent civilians.
            *
            We are not smart enough to understand God
            but stupid enough to speak in His name.
            #
            Tuesday, May 15, 2012
            **************************************
            CIVICS 101
            *******************************
            ON DEMOCRACY
            ******************************
            Democracy is a work in progress.
            It creates an environment wherein dialogue, evolution, and progress
            become possibilities.
            By contrast, in all other forms of governance,
            decline and degeneration become certainties.
            What we have in Russia and Armenia today
            is pseudo-democracy or a combination of oligarchy and kleptocracy.
            Power is like money:
            those who have it are never satisfied with what they have.
            They want more…with no end in sight.
            *
            ON NATIONALISM
            *******************************
            We are not nationalists, we are tribalists.
            Germans under Hitler were nationalists.
            The first two letters of “Nazi” stand for nation.
            When they sang “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,”
            they meant the nation stands over the provinces.
            When we sing our national anthem we say
            (or used to until very recently):
            “Our homeland, miserable and masterless,”
            meaning without a single master or power structure.
            *
            ON TURKS
            ***************************
            Even if Turks were to agree with all our demands,
            that would not be the end of our problems.
            Turks are not a solution, they are an obstacle
            if only because we put too much faith in what they can do
            and not enough faith in what we can do on our own.
            We call Turks denialists.
            So are we whenever we place all our eggs in a Turkish basket.
            #
            Wednesday, May 16, 2012
            ********************************************
            FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
            *************************************
            To know better does not mean to be less confused.
            *
            There is always a residue of unforgiveness in all forgiveness.
            *
            If an imam or bishop were to say
            the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
            I would do my utmost to prove him wrong.
            *
            At one time or another even the most civilized people on earth
            have behaved like Turks.
            That’s why on the Genocide issue Americans are pro-Turkish.
            *
            A truth cannot be repeated often enough.
            A lie stated once is already too many times.
            *
            At the source of all atrocities there is a belief system
            based on absurdities.
            *
            If I ever write my memoirs
            I will begin with a chapter titled “Childhood and Youth,”
            which will contain only two words:
            “Good riddance.”
            #





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            • Re: elegy

              Saturday, May 19, 2012
              ****************************************
              MORE ON CROOKS
              ***************************
              If our panchoonies had a credo,
              its first line would read:
              “I believe in the power of money
              to solve all our problems,”
              and its last line – you guessed:
              “Mi kich pogh…”
              *
              A headline in my morning paper reads:
              “Porn-importing bishop defrocked by Vatican.”
              *
              Never underestimate the power of crooks.
              They have been in the business since the beginning of time –
              remember the Serpent in the Garden –
              and they are still going strong.
              *
              How many of our kings have been beheaded or assassinated?
              What does that tell you about our character as a nation?
              *
              If you think you know all you need to know,
              it only means you have reached a dead end.
              *
              When it comes to belief systems,
              you will have a better chance to be on the right path
              if you think against the majority.
              #
              Friday, May 18, 2012
              *********************************
              FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
              **************************************
              In a police state the police,
              like the Vatican, is never wrong.
              *
              I committed my worst blunders
              when I thought I could do no wrong.
              *
              If you try to be lovable
              you will end up hating yourself.
              *
              I acquired my worst enemies
              when I tried to be popular.
              *
              Among Armenians a “former friend” means
              a mortal enemy.
              *
              Where would poetry, and the arts in general,
              including philosophy be without women?
              Even Socrates was willing to concede that
              he owed his status as philosopher
              to an incompatible wife.
              #
              Saturday, May 19, 2012
              *****************************************
              ARMENIANS & TURKS
              **********************************
              Nothing can be as ephemeral
              as the distance that separates my faith
              from someone else’s superstition
              and vice versa.
              *
              In politics and history the rule is,
              your truth is my lie
              and vice versa.
              *
              Speaking as an Armenian,
              one of the most incomprehensible things about Turks
              is the fact that they are human beings
              like the rest of us.
              The only thing that separates us
              is our respective educational systems.
              Which amounts to saying,
              as children we were brainwashed by individuals
              whose belief systems are superstitions.
              #




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              • Re: elegy

                Sunday, May 20, 2012
                ******************************************
                P.L.U.
                *******************
                “They are not P.L.U. (people like us).
                They have no respect for the law.
                They have ruined our image as a nation.”
                “They” of course are Armenians from the former Soviet Union.
                *
                Armenian-Americans who speak in those terms
                forget that in 1933 they staged
                one of the most spectacular assassinations in American history
                when a gang of fanatics butchered a bishop on Christmas eve
                in a New York cathedral – an event and the trial that followed
                that made a thousand headlines throughout the continent.
                *
                Most Americans may no longer remember this
                but people who matter, high-placed individuals in Washington,
                policy-makers, have a long memory
                and have very illusions about their fellow men.
                In their eyes, we are not P.L.U either.
                *
                Notwithstanding Saroyan, we are not cute.
                If the Yanks are kindly disposed towards us
                it may be because we speak too much of massacres
                and they consider it their duty
                to be on the side of innocent victims.
                *
                God did not create more Russians and Americans,
                or for that matter Arabs and Turks.
                There is a good reason why we are few:
                cannibalism.
                *
                We either learn from our mistakes
                or we develop a phobia of repeating them,
                and fear is never a good policy.
                #
                Monday, May 21, 2012
                **************************************
                ENGINEERS OF DESTRUCTION
                ********************************************
                Sermonizers remind us we are all sinners.
                Speechifiers tell us we are not
                as patriotic as we should be.
                We are all sinners, granted, with one difference:
                some of us don’t make a comfortable living
                by exploiting someone else’s crucifixion.
                In the eyes of God we are all fools.
                But some of us don’t deliver sermons on wisdom.
                If I knew how to pray I would say:
                “Our Father, who art in heaven,
                deliver us from our deliverers.”
                #
                Wednesday, May 23, 2012
                **********************************
                ON DISAGREEMENTS
                *************************************
                Men disagree because they are dupes
                who believe they are too smart to be brainwashed.
                Nationalists disagree because they believe
                they are morally superior
                even when they behave like the scum of the earth.
                Wise men disagree because they rate self-interest
                above truth which they believe to be
                an invisible and unattainable abstraction.
                In short, men disagree because
                they are stupid, arrogant, and dishonest.
                Which may suggest an “honest disagreement”
                is an oxymoron
                with emphasis on the last two syllables.
                #
                Wednesday, May 23, 2012
                *****************************************
                ON HISTORIANS
                **************************
                To understand history we must begin by understanding historians.
                To what extend tribal loyalty and self-interest
                color their values and worldview?
                Why is it that the overwhelming majority of them
                are subservient to the power structure within which they function?
                If an independent body of experts
                were to rate their integrity or objectivity,
                how many of them would be classified as propagandists?
                Why is it that the average dupe (or 99%)
                treats them the way Italians treated Mussolini
                (“Mussolini ha sempre ragione” = Mussolini is always right),
                or Catholics treat the Pope,
                or generally speaking, sheep treat their shepherd
                whose ultimate aim is to deliver them to butchers?
                The only plausible answer is that given by a lion tamer
                when asked why he takes his lion to church every Sunday morning:
                “He has to eat.”
                #




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                • Re: elegy

                  Thursday, May 24, 2012
                  ***********************************
                  ON THE 1%
                  ***********************************
                  The 1% have been in the business of deceiving the 99%
                  for such a long time that they think
                  it is their human right to do so.
                  *
                  If anyone had suggested to Sultan Abdulhamid II
                  that the Empire could no longer afford 1000 concubines in his harem
                  but only 750 or even 900, my guess is
                  the Sultan would have demanded the man’s head on a platter.
                  This may well be one reason why Kemal is now thought of
                  as a great statesman as opposed to a promiscuous alcoholic.
                  *
                  Some scholars have asserted that Louis XIV
                  never said “L’etat c’est moi.”
                  He didn’t have to.
                  Judging by the way he lived, he had no doubt on that score.
                  *
                  The 1% of small nations can commit big blunders
                  as surely as big nations can commit bigger ones.
                  *
                  The 99% have been duped for such a long time that
                  they consider being duped as an inevitable fact of life,
                  like death and taxes.
                  *
                  An eminent physician once asserted that
                  he had scientific proof of the fact that
                  death is not inevitable
                  and immortality is attainable here on earth.
                  He died a wealthy man.
                  #
                  Friday, May 25, 2012
                  **************************************
                  SUMMING UP (XIV)
                  ********************************
                  What divides us is not truth but propaganda.
                  *
                  If genocide cannot unite us, what can?
                  Surely not a million
                  or, for that matter, a million and a half
                  sermons, speeches, editorials, and lamentations.
                  *
                  Behind every propaganda line there is a big lie,
                  and behind every big lie
                  there is a cunning operator whose ultimate aim
                  is not liberty, equality, and fraternity
                  but cannibalism.
                  *
                  In so far as they divide mankind,
                  rabbis, imams, and bishops preach not the word of God
                  but that of the Devil.
                  *
                  As long as they deny the Genocide
                  and as long as we remain divided
                  we speak not as men but as parrots.
                  *
                  The aim of all propaganda is
                  to paralyze the mind and to abolish thinking.
                  *
                  Think of propaganda as another dirty trick
                  that the 1% plays on the 99%.
                  #
                  Saturday, May 26, 2012
                  *************************************
                  PARAPHRASES & ASSERTIONS
                  **************************************************
                  I write for Armenians,
                  therefore my life has been a waste of time.
                  *
                  When a speechifier speaks of freedom,
                  he means slavery;
                  and when a sermonizer speaks of God,
                  he means the Devil.
                  *
                  I believe in one God
                  who is Unknown and Unknowable.
                  *
                  It is not my ambition to speak the truth,
                  only to advance in its direction.
                  *
                  Where the 1% are divided,
                  so will the 99%.
                  Where there are dividers,
                  there will be dupes.
                  *
                  To sum up the ideas of Baronian, Odian, and Massikian:
                  Ours is a leadership of morons and their brown-nosers.
                  *
                  If you can’t convince a hundred,
                  then sow seeds of doubt in just one.
                  #




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                  • Re: elegy

                    Sunday, May 27, 2012
                    *************************************
                    …AMONG OTHER THINGS
                    ********************************************
                    As a child I believed everyone who was older
                    and pretended to know better.
                    When asked for solutions I am in the habit of saying “Honesty!”
                    Perhaps henceforth I should expand that to “Grow up!”
                    *
                    When dealing with compulsive liars
                    it is always safer to assume the opposite of what they say.
                    *
                    Belief systems in themselves may be harmless.
                    Men who assert monopoly on truth:
                    the hangman’s noose is too good for them.
                    *
                    In his memoirs, Frank Langella quotes Laurence Olivier
                    saying the following about Vivien Leigh:
                    “You know, she was a nymphomaniac!
                    And I’m a premature ejaculator!
                    Not a good matchup!”
                    Elsewhere he quotes an unidentified actress
                    saying the following about Anthony Quinn:
                    “I made a picture with Tony, he was a complete pig.
                    An animal. A rude, dumb peasant.
                    I will never forgive myself for letting him f*ck me.”
                    #
                    Wednesday, May 30, 2012
                    ***********************************
                    THE UNSTATED REASON
                    ************************************************** *
                    For every stated reason there is an unstated one.
                    The stated reason for World War I was
                    “the war to end all wars.”
                    The stated reason of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire,
                    love of freedom.
                    The unstated reason: If the Great Powers of the West are on our side,
                    we can’t lose.
                    The stated reason of Hai Tahd or Genocide Recognition:
                    truth and justice.
                    The unstated reason: history is on our side.
                    But if history teaches us anything it’s that
                    it doesn’t choose sides;
                    and for every one of our historians and diplomats
                    Turks can produce ten or twenty of them
                    who are superior liars because they are the offspring of an empire
                    and they have been in the business of deception and propaganda
                    much longer than we have.
                    We may have the world’s sympathy
                    but not its justice,
                    assuming of course there is justice in this world,
                    which is as good as assuming we will have no more wars,
                    or if the West is on our side we can’t lose,
                    or if our struggle is for freedom and justice
                    sooner or later victory will be ours;
                    and if you believe that,
                    you will believe anything!
                    #
                    Tuesday, May 29, 2012
                    **********************************************
                    OBSERVATIONS
                    ******************************
                    Ignorance is less absence of knowledge
                    and more a conscious and premeditated decision not to know.
                    *
                    The 1% create jobs
                    and the 99% create the 1%.
                    *
                    When a belief system acquires a million followers
                    it ceases to be an abstraction
                    and it acquires the solidity of a stone wall.
                    *
                    You cannot reason with a man
                    who takes money more seriously than ideas.
                    *
                    Kingsley Amis: “If you can't annoy somebody with what you write,
                    I think there is little point in writing.”
                    *
                    There is a type of philistine for whom the word culture
                    is almost synonymous with cuisine.
                    *
                    If shish-kebab-and-pilaf Armenians were to read
                    a single Armenian book every year,
                    Armenian literature would enjoy another renaissance.
                    *
                    Cicero defines freedom as “participation in power.”
                    If we are free, ours is the freedom
                    of ants, birds, and herbivores –
                    free to be stepped on, shot at, and devoured.
                    #
                    Wednesday, May 30, 2012
                    ****************************************
                    THEOLOGY
                    ***************************************
                    Christ was not crucified to save mankind.
                    Look around you.
                    Does anyone look saved?
                    Do you feel saved?
                    Christ was crucified for two very pragmatic reasons:
                    he refused to be
                    (one) a dupe to rabbis and
                    (two)a slave to Romans.
                    The rest is theology.
                    #



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                    • Re: elegy

                      Sunday, June 3, 2012
                      ***************************************
                      IF I AM WRONG…
                      *********************************
                      If I am wrong,
                      why so many are with me?
                      And if I am right,
                      why so many are against me?
                      *
                      The brainwashed will never be with me
                      for the simple reason that they believe – as I did –
                      everything they are told by priests, schoolteachers, and scoutmasters.
                      I remember as a teenager
                      when I first met someone who spoke as I do today
                      I dismissed him as a megalomaniacal eccentric
                      on the verge of insanity.
                      *
                      The politically ambitious will never agree with me either
                      because in an authoritarian environment
                      they know instinctively there is no future in dissent
                      which they equate with treason.
                      They believe to be – or rather, they are brainwashed to believe
                      they stand for God and Country
                      and anyone who is against them
                      must be on the side of the Devil and the enemy.
                      *
                      In politics instinct speaks louder than reason.
                      That’s the only way to explain the success of dictators like Hitler,
                      or for that matter, our own speechifiers and charlatans
                      who pretend to be right
                      even when they are criminally and catastrophically wrong.
                      #Monday, June 04, 2012
                      ***********************************
                      LAMENTATION VII
                      ***********************************
                      “Where many other nations perished, we survived!’ – implying,
                      we must be doing something right.
                      What exactly did we do right?
                      We allowed them to legally rape our daughters and kidnap our sons.
                      We survived, yes, but at what cost?
                      That’s a question we don’t like to ask
                      perhaps because the answer is too depressing.
                      *
                      We survived – if that’s what you want to call it –
                      only to die by the million –
                      and I am not just talking about massacres now.
                      What’s done is done.
                      Let bygones be bygones.
                      The question we must ask at this point is:
                      In what way the conditions of our survival
                      radically altered our character as a nation?
                      What if we survived only to be subservient to alien commissars
                      and our own agha babas?
                      *
                      We praise freedom even as we bury it.
                      We speak of independence even as we go down on our knees
                      in fear of our own executioners.
                      If that’s survival, I want not part of it.
                      *
                      No need to lament our dead
                      when it is the living that are in need of our tears.
                      #
                      Tuesday, June 05, 2012
                      ***************************************
                      ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
                      **************************************
                      The Turks refuse to recognize the Genocide
                      for a number of reasons, beginning with the fact that
                      they are brainwashed to believe
                      they belong to a great and noble race of men
                      known as the Turanic race
                      (known only to them and no one else
                      and invented by Kemal, who like all dictators ,
                      felt fully qualified to rewrite not only history
                      and the laws of the land but also biology).
                      It follows, the descendants of such a noble race
                      are “incapable of committing atrocities” (Erdogan).
                      *
                      Turks know that the dead cannot testify
                      and the survivors are living proof of the fact
                      there was no extermination or a plan to exterminate
                      (which is how genocide is defined).
                      *
                      They also know if they plead guilty as charged
                      they stand to lose not only face
                      but also billions in reparations
                      as well as vast tracts of land.
                      *
                      Last but not least, they know that truth may be on our side
                      but the world is on theirs because all imperial powers
                      as well as nations with imperial ambitions,
                      including the most civilized and progressive,
                      have at one time or another committed
                      unspeakable crimes against defenseless civilians.
                      *
                      All this is known not only to the Turkish leadership
                      but also our own Turcocentric academics and ghazetajis
                      whose central concern is neither justice
                      nor documenting crimes against humanity
                      but covering up the incompetence and blunders
                      of our own leadership.
                      #
                      Wednesday, June 06, 2012
                      ****************************************
                      CONTRADICTIONS
                      *****************************
                      You cannot reason with the brainwashed.
                      Neither can you reason with an imam, rabbi, or bishop.
                      What does that mean in practical terms?
                      Simply this:
                      if you are accused of murder one
                      (cold-blooded and premeditated)
                      and you are innocent,
                      at the end you will be found guilty.
                      *
                      Where others see men of God,
                      I see cold-blooded killers.
                      *
                      Instead of brainwashing children,
                      religious leaders should engage with one another
                      and reach a consensus
                      beginning with the following three assertions:
                      (i) all dogmas are inherently wrong;
                      (ii) the will of God is an unknown quantity; and
                      (iii) to doubt is more human than to be certain.
                      *
                      At the root of all wars and massacres
                      you will find certainties that are not only false
                      but also criminally and catastrophically absurd.
                      *
                      After asserting all men are brothers,
                      they choose to behave like Cain.
                      Contradictions?
                      What contradictions?
                      #




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