notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

role models

ROLE MODELS
***************************
Where would Christians be without Jesus,
or Muslims without Mohammed,
or Communists without Marx,
or Catholics without the popes,
or Protestants without Luther?
The men at the top matter.
A divided leadership will spawn a divided community.
Where the leadership is mediocre,
excellence will be outlawed.
Under a dishonest leadership,
charlatanism will be the common currency.

[arabaliozian]

Re: role models

SEPARATING FACT
FROM FICTION
********************************************
Nationalist historians, religious leaders, and
politically controlled
educational systems conspire
to create not human beings
with the ability to think for themselves,
but dupes who parrot lies
and are willing to kill and die
in the name of God and Country.
And when someone comes along
and exposes this simple fact,
he is labeled an enemy of the people
who fully deserves to be insulted, exiled,
jailed, silenced, or starved.
#

[arabaliozian]

reflections

REFLECTIONS
ON THE STATUS QUO
************************************************
Arrogance of power:
the illusion that God is on your side
and you can do no wrong.
*
Nothing wrong in thinking
you have all the answers
provided you also know
all of them to be not just wrong
but catastrophically wrong.
*
Self-assessed infallibility
is the surest prelude to disaster.
*
It is at the apex of their power
that empires begin their decline a fall.
*
Am I saying anything
you don’t already know?
*
Empires are not killed;
they commit suicide
by self-inflicted ten thousand cuts.
*
Ten thousand is an arbitrary number.
It could be a million-and-half.
*
To some this is as clear as daylight;
to others it is an invitation to cannibalism.
*
On the positive side,
at the bottom the only way is up.
#

[arabaliozian]

monkeys

THREE MONKEYS
**************************
One of the worst things that can happen to a man
is to work for minimum wage and to be in need
of a plumber or lawyer.
*
Who is to blame? -- the fanatic
or the man who brainwashed him
when he was a child?
*
Anyone who believes God to be on his side
can’t be in need of human support.
*
The greatest challenge
an Armenian academic faces today
is to pretend to be deaf, dumb, and stupid.
*
The role models of our intellectual class
are the three proverbial monkeys.
*
What could be more asinine
than to look up to bosses, bishops and benefactors
for political and moral guidance!
*
There isn’t much money in writing,
especially if you decide to think for yourself
and to say what must be said.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: monkeys

NOTES / COMMENTS
*******************************************
According to a Hollywood producer,
Ava Gardner’s greatest asset as an actress
was neither her beauty nor her charm
but her “xxxx power.”
*
About our ruling classes:
“How can they live with themselves?”
Next question: Do they have a choice?
*
If your critics are wrong,
don’t hesitate to make them look like xxxx.
I learned this from Toynbee,
one of the most elegant stylists in world literature.
*
The surest symptom of idiocy:
to recycle the propaganda line of idiots.
*
It can’t be a pleasant experience
to suddenly realize that
far from being Santa Teresa of Avila
you are no better than a bordello madam.
*
I owe my life to the cowardice of my enemies.
*
Only idiots assess themselves as smart.
I speak from experience.
*
On the positive side:
idiocy is not a permanent condition but a transitory stage.
Slave owners knew this:
that’s why they treated reading as a capital offense.
#

[arabaliozian]

evil

NOTHING EVIL EVER DIES
********************************************
Have you ever wondered what happened
to the children of our Stalinists
who engaged in successive waves of purges
and systematically eliminated our ablest men?
Wonder no more.
They are still with us.
Nothing evil ever dies.
*
Purges have now been replaced
with a more efficient operation – exodus:
the ruthless elimination of intellectuals, the poor,
the unemployed, and the young –
all potential trouble-makers
who may be a threat to the status quo.
*
And it goes without saying
our Stalinists no longer identify themselves as Stalinists.
They are now oligarchs or crypto- and neo-commissars
who live in expensive dachas in the shadow of Mt. Ararat,
and they pretend to know all there is to know
about our past, present and future,
and they can recognize a traitor when they see one
and traitors, as everyone knows by now,
must be shot on sight like mad dogs.
*
That’s right. If you think our Stalinists died with Stalin,
think again, for nothing evil ever dies.
It is no different in the Diaspora.
The Sultan may be dead and buried
but we continue to be at the mercy of crypto-Sultans
who speechify and rule our communities
in the name of God and Country.
#

[lampron]

Re: evil

NOTHING EVIL EVER DIES
********************************************

That’s right. If you think our Stalinists died with Stalin,
think again, for nothing evil ever dies.
It is no different in the Diaspora.

#

sad, but true

[Eddo211]

Re: evil

That's why the Good must destroy the Evil......To do nothing as a man you are helping evil.

[arabaliozian]

comments & observations

ON A VARIETY OF THINGS
*****************************************
The unspoken motto of all leadership
regardless of race, color and creed:
“The more they hate the enemy,
the less they will hate us.”
Hence such genocidal slogans as
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian,”
and “The only good Turk, Azeri, Armenian…”
It follows: “The only good dissident
is a silent dissident.”
*
When we assert ourselves as smart,
we assume others to be less smart
even when they are smarter.
*
Confucius: “Only the wisest and the stupidest of men
never change.”
*
Raymond Chandler: “There ain’t no clean way
to make a million bucks.”
*
The greatest Irish writer, James Joyce, on patriotism:
“I loathe Ireland and the Irish.”
*
Gabriel Fauré on the ideal tempo for a song:
“If the singer is bad – very fast.”
*
“Life is a near-death experience.”
#

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

AS I SEE IT
**********************************
It has been said
we can learn more from failure
than from success.
What have we learned from our failures?
I hope you have an answer because I don’t.
*
If I were to reorganized our educational system,
my first step would be to teach our children
the aim of conversation or dialogue is not
the clash of two egos and unsettled scores,
or the assertion of a superior brand of patriotism
but a step in the direction of compromise
and consensus.
*
Political leadership is a gradually acquired skill
like playing a musical instrument,
with one difference: there are no prodigies,
and failure may lead to defeat, massacre,
and subservience to the scum of the earth.
*
If Raffi is to be believed,
our leaders have been less like sheep-dogs
and more like wolves.
#