notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Saturday, June 26, 2009
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INTELLECTUALS AND ACADEMICS
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An intellectual is someone who dedicates his life to ideas.
An academic is someone who dedicates his life to his career.
Once upon a time we had intellectuals but no academics.
Today we have no intellectuals but over a thousand academics.
Which may explain why in literature even the Turks are ahead of us.
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Likewise we have many nationalist historians but not a single historian.
A nationalism historian is one who places the interests of the nation above the interests of mankind. In other words, he makes of history a branch of political propaganda.
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In the following two quotations, a 19th-century German philosopher and a 20th-century British historian reflect on historians.
Arthur Schopenhauer: “Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street xxxxx with syphilis.”
A.J.P. Taylor: “Human blunders, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness.”
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There is an old saying: “Historia magistra vitae” (The past is our great teacher).
There is another, even older, saying: “Omnis homo mendax” (All men are liars).
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I have two kinds of hostile readers: those who say they don't understand me, and those who understand me too well. As for the brainwashed: they are like parrots, disposed to understand only other parrots.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, June 27, 2009
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BARE-FACED BIG LIES
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“God's chosen people.”
“Superior race.”
“The Cradle of Civilization.”
Do you know who popularized the idea of Armenia being the cradle of civilization? A hard-up odar alcoholic academic who got himself a fat check from an Armenian foundation and hoped to get another.
“God's chosen people”?
Chosen for what, may I ask? To be scattered, insulted, abused, and periodically slaughtered by, among others, the self-assessed “superior race” of Aryans?
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Flattery, especially self-flattery, needs no proof. And if you tell a dumb person he is smart, he will not ask you to prove it.
“It is written”?
All that means is that some megalomaniacal idiot confused his illusions with the voice of God. It happens all the time. The inspired loud-mouth charismatic charlatan is a routine occurrence in history and its latest manifestation is the televangelist in the “Land of Liberty,” where one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of mankind was fought in defense of slavery.
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What I find incomprehensible is not that some readers disagree with what I say but that they don't disagree with the state and direction of our collective existence. They are eager to question the words of a scribbler but not the actions and policies of those who are in charge of our communities and the nation. Figure that one out, if you can.
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[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

Sunday, June 27, 2009
*****************************************
BARE-FACED BIG LIES
************************************************** ****
“God's chosen people.”
“Superior race.”
“The Cradle of Civilization.”
Do you know who popularized the idea of Armenia being the cradle of civilization? A hard-up odar alcoholic academic who got himself a fat check from an Armenian foundation and hoped to get another.
“God's chosen people”?
Chosen for what, may I ask? To be scattered, insulted, abused, and periodically slaughtered by, among others, the self-assessed “superior race” of Aryans?
*
Flattery, especially self-flattery, needs no proof. And if you tell a dumb person he is smart, he will not ask you to prove it.
“It is written”?
All that means is that some megalomaniacal idiot confused his illusions with the voice of God. It happens all the time. The inspired loud-mouth charismatic charlatan is a routine occurrence in history and its latest manifestation is the televangelist in the “Land of Liberty,” where one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of mankind was fought in defense of slavery.
*
What I find incomprehensible is not that some readers disagree with what I say but that they don't disagree with the state and direction of our collective existence. They are eager to question the words of a scribbler but not the actions and policies of those who are in charge of our communities and the nation. Figure that one out, if you can.
#

It's like you put into words what I can't because it wouldn't be politically correct if I did, lol.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Monday, June 29, 2009
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ONE DAMN THING AFTER ANOTHER
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In their efforts to advance a new thesis, some odar academics – those we like to quote – have made such extravagant claims on our behalf that even some Armenian scholars (among them Sirarpie der Nersessian) have rejected them as unjustified, unverified, and erroneous.
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Our bruised egos are so hungry for flattery that sometimes we take a disguised insult as a compliment. Case in point: “It takes seven xxxs to fool an Armenian.” Translated into ordinary parlance, this simply means: “If you think xxxs are bad, I've got some news for you: Armenians are seven times worse!”
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There is a big difference between being God's children and being the dupes of charlatans who speak in the name of God.
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If history is “an unending dialogue between the present and the past” (E.H. Carr, WHAT IS HISTORY?), what has been our contribution to this dialogue beside victims?
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Everything that I say today stands in direct contradiction to an early conviction which was instilled in me by individuals with a narrow and dogmatic agenda that distorted reality and perverted my judgment.
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We like to brag about our genius for survival. The irony here is that those who did the actual surviving did not brag about it. I know because I grew up surrounded by them.
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The sad truth is, those who do more harm on their fellow men are the least aware of it.
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If there is a god, he must be a thirsty one.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

It's like you put into words what I can't because it wouldn't be politically correct if I did, lol.

speak your mind, my friend.
don't be intimidated by politically correct fascists.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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Man is at his most creative in his invention of lies.
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The biggest lies are half-truths.
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If you speak against those who speak in the name of God,
they will accuse you of speaking in the name of the Devil.
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To be brainwashed means not to question the honesty and wisdom of your abusers.
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A nationalist historian writes about his nation and its enemies.
A historian writes about the past and the conflicting interests of nations.
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Nothing offends me more than being insulted by a fool who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart.
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If you don't have an agenda, everyone with an agenda will be against you.
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Self-esteem is not a reliable index of worth, in the same way that dogmatism is not an index of certainty.
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It is a universally shared human weakness to prefer flattery to criticism, but it is a dangerous addiction to prefer lies to truth.
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To those who accuse me of having a very low opinion of my fellow Armenians, I can only say, nobody really gives a damn what I or anyone else thinks. What matters, what really matters, is whether or not I can tell the difference between fact and fiction.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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ARMENIANS SPEAK WITH A FORKED TONGUE
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I don't believe everything I am told.
Neither do I believe everything I read in the papers,
especially if it's favorable to someone;
in which case what I want to know is:
How much is he being paid for saying these things?
People lie.
People lie all the time, not only because they don't know the truth
or if they know it, it happens to be against them,
but because they feel more comfortable when they lie.
*
We all lie when it comes to our problems,
and the greatest liar is he who says,
“We need solutions.”
Because that's the last thing we want.
Have you ever met a bishop willing to resign his position
or vacate his cathedral for the sake of solidarity?
Have you ever met a national benefactor
who is willing to utter a single word
against the worship of money?
Have you ever met a boss
who was not a loud-mouth megalomaniacal narcissist
all sound and fury signifying nothing?
*
I doubt if there is a single Armenian today
who doesn't know what our problems and their solutions are.
Even a child knows where divisions are the problems,
solidarity is the solution.
Where worship of money is the problem,
respect for ideas is the solution.
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Our greatest intellectual of recent times was no doubt Gostan Zarian,
whose life and work prove that we have no use for intellectuals and their ideas. What we need is a messianic figure willing to be crucified.
But even then there is no guarantee that will be the end of our problems. Remember the brief life and career of another messiah who was accused of blasphemy by his own people, and continues to be rejected by them even today, after they have had two thousand years to reconsider their position as God's chosen people.
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http://baliozian.blogspot.com/

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, July 2, 2009
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PLATO, OSHAGAN, AND ZARIAN
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Everything I write is a paraphrase. I am as original as a cook who combines ingredients available in all supermarkets. If the result is edible or if what I say make sense, I am satisfied. I leave originality to my betters.
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Plato was a great philosopher, and according to some, the greatest. A 20th-century English philosopher (may have been Whitehead) once said that all of philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato. Was Plato an original thinker? We know that most of his DIALOGUES are based on the conversations of his teacher, Socrates. As for Socrates, very probably most of his ideas came from predecessors, who, like himself, never wrote a single line. To say otherwise is to imply that for almost a thousand years Greeks did not think, speak, discuss, and contradict one another.
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According to the Oshagans (pere et fils) Zarian was a plagiarist. What was their intention in saying that? To warn the nation not to be taken in by a charlatan or to establish themselves as the alpha males of 20th-century Armenian literature? If Zarian was a charlatan, what about the bosses, bishops, and benefactors whose support they (the Oshagans) enjoyed?
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An academic by the name of Stern (I forget his first name) once wrote a detailed study with copious footnotes and a bibliography, in which (unlike the Oshagans) he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything Sartre wrote can be traced to an illustrious predecessor. Result? Who speaks of Stern today?
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If you want originality, read the Oshagans (whose works are being translated into English, I am told). But if you want to understand what's happening to us today, read Zarian.
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[freakyfreaky]

Re: elegy

Elegy


I am writing now in preconceptions

Those of sex and ropes

Many frantic cruelties occur to the flesh of the

imagination

And the imagination does have flesh to destroy

And the flesh has imagination to sever

The mouth is just a body filled with imagination

Can you imagine its contents

The dripping into a bucket

And its acts

The ellipses and chaining apart

The feather

The observer

The imagination, bare, has nothing to confirm it

There's just the singing of the birds

The sounds of the natural scream

A strange example

The imagination wishes to be embraced by freedom

It is laid bare in order to be desired

But the imagination must keep track of the flesh

responding—its increments of awareness—a

slow progression

It must be beautiful and it can't be free

-for John Zorn, after his "Elegy"

-- Lyn Hejinian

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Friday, July 3, 2009
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ON ARMENIANS
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There is a brown-noser and a bastard in all of us – the brown-noser is reserved for odars, the bastard for our fellow Armenians. Somewhere between the two there is a human being, but he is well-hidden.
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We will think twice before contradicting an odar, but we will contradict, insult, and crap on a fellow Armenian as if it were our patriotic duty.
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An Armenian is never as smart as he thinks he is. But that's not his real problem. His real problem is that he is incapable of imagining how unspeakably stupid he can be.
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Nikol Aghbalian is right, we are a tribal people; or, in the words of Gostan Zarian, our concept of nation begins and ends with our mountain, our valley, our village, our church, and our chickens.
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Dissatisfied with what you have just read? Your refund is in the mail.
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