notes and comments

[lampron]

Re: elegy

Soviet union lost 22 million, were they more subservient.
The joos lost 7 million,

.

many of the soviet deaths were civilians as cities/towns in western Russia, Ukraine were fought over, lost, won again etc

J-ews suffered a genocide

Armenia was probably less than 1.5 million. 300,000 (or some say 350,000) dead is a huge loss - that is 40% of the male population

Armenians will be ready to sacrifice themselves when fighting inside a foreign army, as if to prove their loyalty to their masters

probably fewer Armenians died fighting for Armenia during the previous 700 years than during WWII

[londontsi]

Re: elegy

Armenians are extremely subservient to authority - 100 years ago it was Ottoman or Russian authority

more recently, soviet authority

but most don't seem to be aware of it

extreme subservience is why 300,000 died in the "Great Patriotic War"

The only reason those casualty figures are sickening to Armenians is that it was not our war.
We would not gain anything whether there was victory or defeat.

However your statement demonstrates your lack of knowledge of history as well as any understanding of living conditions in a terror dictatorship.

Soviet union lost 22 million, were they more subservient.
The joos lost 7 million,
The Germans lost 7-9 million
and the list goes on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

According to your analysis and extrapolation Armenians should be regarded least subservient because their casualties was much lower than most, both in number as well as percentage.

.

[lampron]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
Loyalty or subservience to authority
is not patriotism but fascism.
*
#

Armenians are extremely subservient to authority - 100 years ago it was Ottoman or Russian authority

more recently, soviet authority

but most don't seem to be aware of it

extreme subservience is why 300,000 died in the "Great Patriotic War"

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
Loyalty or subservience to authority
is not patriotism but fascism.
*
My guess is, we produce
more speechifiers, sermonizers and pundits
per capita than any other nation on earth.
*
Who speaks today in the name of the people,
and when I say people I mean
not the dead but the living.
*
The most important questions in life
are destined to remain unanswered.
Even belief systems that pretend
to have all the answers
are willing to acknowledge this fact.
There is a well-known story about a theologian
who on informing the Pope that he had written
a 1000-page treatise explaining the mystery
of the Holy Trinity was ordered to “burn it!”
#
LIVE AND LEARN
**********************************
Until very recently I wasn’t aware of the fact
that fund-raising is a profitable enterprise
and that some chief executive officers
of charitable organizations
are paid million-dollar salaries.
*
Wee are more civilized.
Our charitable organizations
don’t have chief executive officers;
even more to the point,
they are accountable only to God,
which in practice, means no one.
*
Question: Do CEOs of charitable organizations
contribute to charitable organizations?
#
SCENARIOS
******************************
On the day Azeris open their borders
we will bleed from three open wounds:
East, West, and North.
*
At the present rate of exodus,
they will not have to fight us
to reoccupy their lands,
they will just walk in.
*
I am a comfort to our enemies?
What about our dividers?
What is their message?
Let me guess:
“No need to kill us,
we plan to commit suicide.”
What else?
#

[lampron]

Re: elegy

The best thing Saroyan ever said about the Genocide is that
he felt sorry for the Turks.
*
#

He went to Bitlis in 1964 where he danced with local Turks and Kurds

After that, he met with the President of Turkey

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

ON CRACKPOTS
***********************************
In a recent issue of TIME magazine
there is an interview with Andre Agassi
in which Armenians and massacres are not mentioned.
*
The best thing Saroyan ever said about the Genocide is that
he felt sorry for the Turks.
*
Now you may understand why I refer to
Genocide ghazetajis, Hai Tahd activists and fund-raisers
as Turcocentric crackpots.
*
There is a baloney artist in all politicians
and ours are no exception.
#
THREE MAXIMS
***************************
Thinking against oneself
is one of the cardinal virtues.
*
Politicians and honesty are
mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To believe when you are right
you have God and Truth on your side
is to be a potential assassin and terrorist.
#
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
********************************************
We all have our share of limitations
with one difference: some of us
are infatuated with them.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was right when he said:
“Everyone loves the smell of his own sh*t.”
*
The need to be understood
always exceeds the need to understand.
*
Where lawyers and politicians enter,
injustice and lies are sure to follow.
*
Never contradict a politician or a lawyer:
remember, they are professionals.
*
To my anti-American friends
from the Middle East I say:
“I agree with you provided you also agree with me
when I say the rest of the world is no better.”
*
Nobody ever said to be an honest man among crooks
comes without a price.
*
I don’t always like or agree with what I say
but once I put down 2+2=
I have no choice but to say 4.
#
READERS
*************************
There is a type of reader
(and I have my share of them)
who is programmed to disagree and reject
anything that is not recycled propaganda.
Such a reader doesn’t even bother or begin
to understand what’s being said.
He just hangs a label on you
and forever after identifies you
as the lowest form of animal life –
namely, an Armenian
who doesn’t love all Armenians
and hate all Turks.
Such a reader is convinced
anyone who has more power or money
must know better.
He is Bolshevik in his pragmatism,
capitalist in his value system,
and Catholic in his dogmatism.
#



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ON CRACKPOTS
***********************************
In a recent issue of TIME magazine
there is an interview with Andre Agassi
in which Armenians and massacres are not mentioned.
*
The best thing Saroyan ever said about the Genocide is that
he felt sorry for the Turks.
*
Now you may understand why I refer to
Genocide ghazetajis, Hai Tahd activists and fund-raisers
as Turcocentric crackpots.
*
There is a baloney artist in all politicians
and ours are no exception.
#
THREE MAXIMS
***************************
Thinking against oneself
is one of the cardinal virtues.
*
Politicians and honesty are
mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To believe when you are right
you have God and Truth on your side
is to be a potential assassin and terrorist.
#
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
********************************************
We all have our share of limitations
with one difference: some of us
are infatuated with them.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was right when he said:
“Everyone loves the smell of his own sh*t.”
*
The need to be understood
always exceeds the need to understand.
*
Where lawyers and politicians enter,
injustice and lies are sure to follow.
*
Never contradict a politician or a lawyer:
remember, they are professionals.
*
To my anti-American friends
from the Middle East I say:
“I agree with you provided you also agree with me
when I say the rest of the world is no better.”
*
Nobody ever said to be an honest man among crooks
comes without a price.
*
I don’t always like or agree with what I say
but once I put down 2+2=
I have no choice but to say 4.
#
READERS
*************************
There is a type of reader
(and I have my share of them)
who is programmed to disagree and reject
anything that is not recycled propaganda.
Such a reader doesn’t even bother or begin
to understand what’s being said.
He just hangs a label on you
and forever after identifies you
as the lowest form of animal life –
namely, an Armenian
who doesn’t love all Armenians
and hate all Turks.
Such a reader is convinced
anyone who has more power or money
must know better.
He is Bolshevik in his pragmatism,
capitalist in his value system,
and Catholic in his dogmatism.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

TO KNOW IS TO REMEMBER
******************************************
To write also means to repeat
what has been said and forgotten;
to shout that which is whispered;
and to expose that which is covered up.
As for solutions to our problems:
I can only say and repeat:
solutions, like the Kingdom of God,
are within you.
*
Be honest with yourself and others
even when to be honest means
to be outnumbered a thousand to one.
*
Thou shalt not deceive yourself,
especially when the deception is disguised
as tradition, the laws of the land,
or the word of a king, pope, or
some other phony representative of god on earth:
in short, propaganda.
*
If belief systems don’t tell us
not to be dupes of propaganda
it may be because that would be like
digging their own graves.
But I maintain being a dupe
is one of the most dangerous transgressions.
Wars and massacres are perpetrated
by dupes whose sole justification has been,
“I was following orders,” or
I trusted the word of god as spoken
by a rabbi, imam, or bishop.
#
BIG BROTHERS,
AMONG OTHER THINGS
********************************
The Russians are our Big Brothers
only in the sense that for 600 years
Turks were our Big Brothers.
So was Cain to Abel.
*
When you are young
you pull up your pants
and go wherever you want to go.
But when you are old
someone else pulls up your pants
and takes you where you don’t want to go.
I am now paraphrasing the Bible
which may suggest it is not the Word of God
but of men with a credibility problem.
*
Lies that flatter are infinitely more dangerous
than mad dogs, venomous snakes, and mad elephants.
#
HOLIER-THAN-THOU
**************************************
There is a type of holier-than-thou reader
who likes to point out the fact that
my criticism of Armenians is nothing
but a projection of my own shortcomings.
Such a reader is convinced he knows better
because he is better.
His unspoken aim is not to understand reality
but to explain it in such a way
as to prove his moral and intellectual superiority;
and to prove it to others
in order to convince himself.
#
MEIN KAMPF
*********************************
All my efforts are now concentrated
on being readable. As for saving the nation:
I leave that to our bosses, bishops, benefactors
and dime-a-dozen superpatriots
with messianic ambitions.
*
ON SERMONIZERS AND SPEECHIFIERS
**********************************************
One way to define them is to say
they are men who know what must be said
but consistently and unanimously avoid
doing what must be done.
*
RIGHT AND WRONG
************************************
It is not enough to say we did nothing wrong.
Did we do anything right?
Even more to the point:
Can we even tell right from wrong?
*
OUR SHISH-KEBAB PARTIES
**************************************
Members of the Tea Party in America
are the offspring of individuals
who in the second half of the 19th century
fought a bloody civil war –
some say the bloodiest in history –
in defense of slavery.
They remind me of our
bosses, bishops, and benefactors
who, to save the nation, they divide it.
*
WORDS OF WISDOM
********************************
There is an old Armenian saying:
“He is so smart he even knows
where the devil sleeps.”
The devil, my friends, sleeps where he resides
and he resides in our hearts.
*
TELL ME
************************
Am I saying anything
you don’t already know?
#

[lampron]

Re: elegy

Question: With over a thousand Armenian academics
in America alone, why is it that our collective existence
is in such a mess?

with over one thousand academics and thousands of churchmen and party activists (as well as at least one think tank inside Armenia),

why has this simple question not been analyzed and answered:

how did certain nations with very modest beginnings (Russians, Ottomans, Americans...) end up as powerful states

and Armenians who had a state before the above three even existed, take the road to failure?

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

THE BOTTOM LINE
****************************************
Our problems were thrust on us by others. We reject their solutions on our own.
*
Only the rotten succeed in a corrupt environment.
*
The greater the political control of schools, libraries, newspapers, community centers and churches, the greater the number of yes-men and dupes.
*
The challenge is to speak of serious things without taking oneself seriously; to be critical of others and even more critical of ourselves.
*
In a totalitarian environment to say your ambition is to succeed as a writer is like saying as a virgin it is your ambition to be a bordello madam.
*
When wolves are in charge, sheep will be useful only as lunch.
#
ORWELL SPEAKS
********************************
In one of his essays
George Orwell speaks of
“the corrosive digestive juices
of the British imperial leviathan.”
You may now have a better understanding
of the depths of our own degradation.
*
Elsewhere he speaks of
“the smelly little orthodoxies
contending for our souls.”
#
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
******************************************
There is an old saying:
“When you’re down, the only way is up.”
Like all rules this one too has its exceptions:
Armenians.
*
The Greek jury that condemned Socrates to death;
the men who crucified Christ;
the solitary Hindu who assassinated Gandhi:
they all shared one thing in common:
they were brainwashed to believe
the gods, truth, and historic necessity were on their side.
*
If you brainwash children to believe
in the myth of the Holy Trinity,
they will be inclined to believe in many other trinities
like liberté, fraternité, egalité;
thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis;
Marx, Engels, Lenin…
*
A nation that hates together stays together.
*
Judge a tree by its fruit and a propaganda line
by the number of its victims.
*
I quote to enhance my credibility.
What the hell does an Armenian scribbler know?
An odar author, that’s different.
Prof. Hamalian on Zarian,
after reading my translations:
“He writes like one of my bright students.”
*
Academics: they all proceed from the assumption
that they know better.
Question: With over a thousand Armenian academics
in America alone, why is it that our collective existence
is in such a mess?
#
I COULD BE WRONG
***************************************
Certainties are the source of all evil.
But I could be wrong…
*
Has anyone ever said
I could be wrong
but let’s divide the community anyway?
Or, I could be wrong
but let’s go to war …
*
To some a belief system is nothing
but a source of income and power.
*
Where there are idols
there are idol-makers.
Where there are dupes
there are deceivers.
I think it was Luther who said:
“The God of Christians (meaning Catholics)
is an idol.”
*
What is patriotism?
In theory, love of God and Country.
In practice, to brainwash children
and manipulate adults.
*
We should teach our children to say
“I could be wrong.”
*
Socrates was condemned to death
because he spoke in defense of doubt and uncertainty.
“Of the gods,” said he, “we know nothing!”
#

[bell-the-cat]

Re: elegy

ON ASSAD
**********************
Tina Brown on Bashar-al-Assad:
“A creepy, lisping, giraffe-necked liar.”

And as a response someone tweeted:

"Creepy, lisping, giraffe-necked liar" -- sounds like what Tina Brown's former staffers call her!

Tina Brown on Ara Baliozian:
"Who?"

One of Brown’s most engaging talents is her absolute commitment to that antijournalistic device, the ad hominem attack
http://www.newstatesman.com/media/20...s-battle-beast

She'd do well on Hyeclub! On Hyeclub an ad hominem attack is the standard response to any unassailable argument or uncontestable fact.