notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

leaders

ON LEADERSHIP
********************************
Our political leaders survive by assuming
fools and cowards like us don’t deserve any better.
Their self-esteem must be as sold and unshakable
as Mt. Ararat.
*
We will never understand the deep unconscious ties
that exist between the German people and Hitler.
Remember, even Thomas Mann identified him as “a brother.”
*
Jean Guehenno on the German occupation of France:
“How will we climb out of this shame and degradation?”
I can’t think of a single Armenian writer
capable of producing such a sentence.
*
Zarian on his contemporaries like Oshagan:
“When they speak of Homeland,
they mean Istanbul.”
*
Khachatur Abovian on Russians:
“Blessed be the hour they set their blessed foot
on our sacred soil.”
*
Ruben Zarian (no kin of Gostan) on Abovian:
“He assigned a messianic role to the Russians.”
*
In the eyes of the world Putin may be
no better than swine, but I have every reason to suspect
in the eyes of our oligarchs, including the Catholics,
Putin is what the Pope is to Catholics:
not just a statesman of vision
but a savior and the keeper of their power and money,
#

[arabaliozian]

facts

FACTS
********************
Whenever I deal with someone
who speaks in the name of an ideology
or belief system
– the most popular being self-interest –
I immediately assume he is lying.
Call it prejudice.
Call it experience.
I don’t care what you call it.
I am just giving you the facts as I see them.
*
What is said, what is heard, and what is understood
wouldn’t recognize one another if they ever met.
*
I have been wrong so many times
that when accused of a transgression
my first instinct is to plead guilty as charged
even when I am as innocent
as a freshly laid egg.
*
Michelet: “What is difficult is not to rise in the world
but to remain oneself as one rises.”
#

[Haykakan]

Re: facts

Fact: You start way too many threads and fill this forum with mainly junk.

[lampron]

Re: facts

Fact: You start way too many threads and fill this forum with mainly junk.

Ara Baliozian is one of the greatest Armenian writers and thinkers of our age. But he seems more than happy to be challenged on points he raises

[arabaliozian]

god & country

GOD AND COUNTRY
*************************
Until very recently in America
“separate but equal” meant
separate and unequal.
*
With us today patriotism means
love of God and Country
even if the regime
is in the hands of godless traitors.
*
At the turn of the last century
in the Ottoman Empire we were encouraged
to hate the Sultan until it became apparent that
those who overthrew him
replaced oppression with massacre
in the name of “progress.”
*
In politics, language is perverted
to the point that it means the opposite
of what it says.
*
Moral I: After shaking hands with a politician
count your fingers.
*
Moral II: The real function of politics
is to moronize the masses.
*
Moral III: God and Country form a sinister alliance
and those who speak in its favor are godless swine.
#

[Haykakan]

Re: facts

Ara Baliozian is one of the greatest Armenian writers and thinkers of our age. But he seems more than happy to be challenged on points he raises

Wow. Quoting others qualifies one as a great writer/thinker? The bar has dropped through the floor.

[arabaliozian]

q/a

Q/A
***********************
Who took Muslims seriously in the 19th century?
Things began to change when the world realized
where there are Muslims
there is oil.
*
Who takes Armenia
(also known as Karastan) seriously?
Not even Armenians.
#

[arabaliozian]

denis donikian

Translations from
“GOD IS GREAT
(& I AM HIS VOICE)”
By DENIS DONIKIAN
*************************************************
Denis Donikian’s aphorisms have a poetic elusiveness
that is hard to capture in translation.
Keep that in mind, please, when you consider
the translations that follow.
*************************************************
*
“One God kills another
and man kills in the name
of the one that was slain.”
*
“When the son repeats the father,
what happens to the man?”
*
“At the end of life it is sleep that dies.”
*
“Naked we came into this world
and naked we shall leave it.”
*
“Heaven’s silence is its only answer.”
*
“Man is the agony of the world.”
*
“There is one appointment
that we can neither delay nor postpone:
the hour of our death.”
*
“That which is not written it is not lived,
and that which is written
it is not always lived.”
*
“Long-winded writers write too much
because they have nothing to say.”
*
“Intellectuals drown themselves
in a verbal sea.”
#

[Haykakan]

Re: denis donikian

Wow Ara those are great suggestions. The last two very much apply to you.

[arabaliozian]

justice

ON JUSTICE
************************
You are unfairly treated?
You want to sue someone?
You go to a lawyer
and if the lawyer is honest,
he will tell you there is no such thing
as a court of justice,
only courts of law ,
and as everyone knows by now,
where lawyers enter justice exits.
So that it would be more accurate to speak
not of courts of law
but of courts of injustice.
*
Life, real life, life as it is lived,
is full of gray areas.
So much so that
to say “God is great!”
means the Devil is greater.
Because, no matter how hard I try,
I cannot reconcile the idea of a loving God
justifying the slaughter of innocent civilians.
*
The function of a jury, it has been said,
is not to decide which side is right
but which side has a better legal representation.
*
Theory is one thing, practice another,
and more often than not, the twain never meet.
#