notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 17, 2013

**************************************

PHOBIA

**************************

Because I am against divisions and dividers

on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”

I am identified by some readers as an enemy

motivated by “self-hatred.”

The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose

contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say

but to discharge verbal manure –

in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:

“You are full of xxxx, Baliozoglu!”

*

The fact is, our dividers divide us

not because they think divisions are good for us

or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas

but because that’s how they make a living.

Divisions are their bread and butter

in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.

To attack their source of income

or to expose them as charlatans,

as they see me doing

is almost to condemn them to starvation.

*

If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,

fear of starvation must be a phobia

shared by all dividers who must know

they can’t fool all the people all the time

and anyone who can think for himself

will sooner or later identify them

not as the saviors of the nation

but as its gravediggers.

#

Friday, January 18, 2013

****************************************

EXTRAPOLATING

**********************************

Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.

It’s much worse!

If for a hundred years after our genocide

we have failed to develop a consensus,

can we even dare to hope that some day

jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?

*

We live in a world where everyone thinks

everyone else has been brainwashed

and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.

In such an environment World War III,

that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.

This is now as clear to me as daylight.

What is the solution?

There is none!

*

When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed

there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.

And when Armenian meets Armenian –

you may now draw your own conclusions.

The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind

and by the time our superpatriots realize

we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text

it will is too late.

*

In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world

has already committed murder and suicide

in the name of a dehumanized god

that rules over a dehumanized mankind.

*

There is a 1952 French film titled

NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).

If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution

on one level and World War II on another.

I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.

#

Thursday, January 17, 2013

**************************************

PHOBIA

**************************

Because I am against divisions and dividers

on the grounds that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”

I am identified by some readers as an enemy

motivated by “self-hatred.”

The true aim of these “critics” is not to expose

contradictions or inconsistencies in what I say

but to discharge verbal manure –

in the words of one such critic from the Homeland:

“You are full of xxxx, Baliozoglu!”

*

The fact is, our dividers divide us

not because they think divisions are good for us

or because they believe in unassailable or infallible dogmas

but because that’s how they make a living.

Divisions are their bread and butter

in addition to being their sole source of power and prestige.

To attack their source of income

or to expose them as charlatans,

as they see me doing

is almost to condemn them to starvation.

*

If the “starving Armenian” is a cliché,

fear of starvation must be a phobia

shared by all dividers who must know

they can’t fool all the people all the time

and anyone who can think for himself

will sooner or later identify them

not as the saviors of the nation

but as its gravediggers.

#

Friday, January 18, 2013

****************************************

EXTRAPOLATING

**********************************

Our situation is not as bad as I have been describing it.

It’s much worse!

If for a hundred years after our genocide

we have failed to develop a consensus,

can we even dare to hope that some day

jihadists will come to terms with infidel dogs?

*

We live in a world where everyone thinks

everyone else has been brainwashed

and is therefore subhuman and beyond salvation.

In such an environment World War III,

that is to say, universal genocide becomes inevitable.

This is now as clear to me as daylight.

What is the solution?

There is none!

*

When the brainwashed meet the brainwashed

there can be no dialogue, compromise, and consensus.

And when Armenian meets Armenian –

you may now draw your own conclusions.

The verdict “mart bidi ch’ellank” applies to all mankind

and by the time our superpatriots realize

we are only a minor footnote in an unwritten text

it will is too late.

*

In a sense, a man of faith who believes in the next world

has already committed murder and suicide

in the name of a dehumanized god

that rules over a dehumanized mankind.

*

There is a 1952 French film titled

NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES ASSASSINS (We are all assassins).

If I remember correctly it dealt with the French Revolution

on one level and World War II on another.

I know now that it deals with the world in which we live.

#

Saturday, January 19, 2013

*****************************************

NOTES & COMMENTS

*****************************

The shortest list in the world,

that of Armenian statesmen.

*

The least quoted document in the world:

the Armenian Constitution.

Speaking for myself,

I don’t even know if it has a single Amendment.

*

How many Armenians?

Hard to say.

What if most Armenians are ashamed

to identify themselves as Armenian?

*

More often than not Armenian readers disagree

less with my ideas and more with my right to think.

*

Where there is too much propaganda

there will be too little free speech.

*

Silence reason and usher in insanity.

Silence dissent and tyranny is sure to follow.

*

An Armenian is a white Negro to another Armenian.

*

Some of my readers want me to write

about the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat

and nightingales serenading the moon

so that they can safely ignore me.

*

Two recent books of great photographs:

KARSH: BEYOND THE CAMERA,

Selected with an Introduction and Commentary

by David Trevis,

and

KALOUST: RETROSPECTIVE (Toronto Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society).

#

[jgk3]

Re: elegy

This reminded me of you:

The hasty eyed, frantically seeking utility
Make enemies fast
And bear bewildered children

Once we can walk
They teach us to look quickly
Lest too much truth is noticed...

About the world being a foolish place
Its faithful, arrogant
Parroting weak masters that are feared

Angry at those with backbone
We grow undetermined, hating change
This is what progress brings:

Love thy neighbour,
God forbid

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, January 13, 2013
***********************************
ACTION
*********************
We didn’t have to rise against the Sultan
to topple him: the Young Turks were going to do that for us.
As for the Young Turks:
Kemal was going to deal with them
in his own time.
And Kemal had his own nemesis and killer: booze.
*
We were wrong again when more recently
we adopted Palestinians as our role models
and engaged in random acts of assassination.
*
When I say “we” I don’t mean the majority of the people
who after long centuries of subservience under brutal tyrants
learned to wait, but a non-representative group
of self-appointed “freedom fighters”
(in their own version of the story)
and terrorists (as others, not all of them odar, saw them).
*
For once history was on our side
but we were too blind to see it;
and “when the blind lead the blind…”
*
Moral: Sometimes inaction is the best action.
*
Moral II: “Nothing can be as terrible
as ignorance in action.”
#
Monday, January 14, 2013
**************************************
RECAPITULATING
*******************************
In politics and diplomacy
objective judgment is better than emotional involvement.
The Brits are right: there are no friends and enemies in politics;
only interests.
*
Anger is a short madness.
So is hatred and in general all emotions
that cloud and distort one’s judgment.
*
There are two kinds of leaders:
the competent and the incompetent.
Avedik Issahakian is right:
we have been cursed with earthquakes,
a bad neighborhood, and fools as leaders.
*
The astonishing ease with which a fool
will convince himself or
allow himself to be brainwashed to believe
he is smart.
*
Memo to our leaders:
Unless you study history and learn from your blunders,
you will be a curse not a blessing to you nation.
*
Our enemies, our real enemies are
neither Turks nor Russians
but Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians.
*
Q: The brainwashed: are they men or apes?
A: Apes who speak like parrots.
*
In an article dealing with the leadership
of native Indians in Canada I read the following words
in this morning’s paper:
“mismanagement, misappropriation, incompetence
and poor accountability.”
Poor Indians.
Poor Armenians.
#
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
*****************************************
CALLING A SPADE A SPADE
***********************************
All power structures engage in propaganda,
including the Catholic Church.
As a child I once met Cardinal Aghajanian
who handled Vatican’s propaganda department–
identified as “propagation of the faith.”
He was a sweet old man,
all smiles and small talk.
*
The aim of propaganda is to legitimize
political gangsterism
by moronizing the masses.
Like all Armenians I have been exposed
to my share of speechifiers
who engaged in partisan propaganda.
It didn’t even occur to me to question their integrity.
*
Propaganda and commercial advertising
might as well be twins.
The aim of advertising is to sell more products
by emphasizing the positive
and covering up the negative, like cancer in tobacco.
*
The hidden aim of political propaganda
is to raise another generation of killers.
*
Dupes of propaganda come in all sizes and shapes,
including highly intelligent men with impeccable credentials.
Two cases from the Vietnam era that come readily to mind:
George Romney (a governor as well as a presidential candidate,
very much like his son Mitt)
and Robert McNamara,
one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.”
Romney admitted publicly to have been “brainwashed” (his word)
and McNamara acknowledged his blunder in his war memoirs.
*
Remember, no one can claim a monopoly on truth.
If you want to be born again as a human being
as opposed to a moronized dupe,
reassess periodically your fundamental assumptions
and the dogmas of your belief system.
#
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
****************************************
STATUS QUO
*************************
Three generations of our ablest men
have lived and died trying to solve our problems.
Result? We now have a generation of dupes
who believe we never had it so good
because we are in the best of hands
and that our greatest problem
is a handful of malcontents
whose sole aim in life is to promote gloom and doom,
pessimism, negativism, and defeatism.
*
And then there are the brainless who think
(if you will forgive the overstatement)
just because they have a computer
they are also entitled to have an opinion.
Or, in the words of an eminent Canadian poet
(may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul)
“just because they have an xxxxxxx,
they must also have an opinion.”
*
To say we are free to subscribe to a belief system
of our own choice even when it is a false one
is like saying we are free to choose slavery.
Or again, if I believe my lie to be the truth,
no one is in a position to tell me otherwise
because I know what’s best for myself.
*
When this kind of mentality because the dominant mindset,
genocide becomes not a possibility but a certainty.
*
When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned
“This time they will slaughter us indiscriminately,”
they said “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,”
thus implying they knew better.
What has changed?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 10, 2013
****************************************
SURVIVORS
************************
To understand history
you must first understand the history of historians
and their criteria for selecting facts.
*
The Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse:
a regime of degenerate sultans,
ruthless bloodthirsty buggers
clinging to power by massacring innocent civilians
by the thousand.
Can you imagine anything more repulsive? –
except perhaps a regime of former KGB agents.
*
It is to be noted that sultans were both
political as well as religious leaders --
the equivalent of emperors and popes.
My question is:
why would a religious leader need a harem
of a thousand concubines most of them,
like himself, the offspring of “infidel dogs"?
*
The hardest thing in the world:
to be an Armenian without making enemies.
The easiest: to make enemies –
enemies who have no interest in understanding
what you are saying and why you are saying it.
What they hate more than anything else, it seems,
is your right to say what you think.
*
We fool ourselves when we say we are survivors.
The real survivors are the Sultan and Stalin.
#
Friday, January 11, 2013
************************************
NATIONAL HONOR
*******************************
When was the last time any one of our former KGB agents in the Homeland
and merchants in the Diaspora dared to utter the words “national honor”?
*
Thomas Jefferson: “Merchants have no country.
The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.”
*
Now listen to our Raffi
saying the same thing with fewer words:
“Merchants are men without a country.
Profit is their only homeland.”
*
Instead of Goya Aivazovsky;
and instead of Shostakovich, Khachatourian.
*
Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible
than ignorance in action.”
*
If I am a second-rater it may be because
our first-raters have been systematically silenced
by KGB agents and merchants.
Armenian literature has been an endless war on two friends.
*
They don’t like what I say
because I don’t write what they think.
They think?
Strike that.
Make it, “they think they think.”
*
They resent me because I refuse to behave
like their unpaid secretary
taking down their unspoken words.
*
An American on America,
a Russian on Russia,
a German on Germany:
Don’t expect to hear the truth unless of course
they are dissidents:
Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Mann.
#
Saturday, January 12, 2013
************************************
FASCISTS
********************
When Hitler lost World War II
he blamed it on the German people.
That’s the way it is with all fascists –
they never make mistakes.
*
When Romney lost the election
he at no time blamed it on his ineptitude
and verbal blunders.
*
To this day our own revolutionaries expect us to believe
their operation was a success even if the patient died.
*
Turks worship Kemal and they have every right to:
after degenerate sultans any half-assed boozer and fornicator
would be seen as a great statesman worthy of universal adulation.
*
The common language of all political leaders is the same –
propaganda, based on the assumption that
the masses are so dumb that they will believe
anything they are told.
*
To this day xxxs believe they are the Chosen;
Brits believe they were born to civilize the rest of the world;
and Armenians believe they are smart.
*
Speaking for myself:
I believe only idiots fall for a propaganda line
that flatters their vanity.
On the day this is understood,
mankind will be born again.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, January 03, 2013

*****************************************

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

**************************************

Turks read and quote me?

Let them!

I refuse to join a conspiracy of silence

by writing about “nightingales serenading

the moon and the stars” (Leo).

*

If we are the mercy of “Turks who speak Armenian fluently,”

(according to one of our elder statesmen)

who will benefit by my silence?

If we are experiencing another genocide (“sbidak chart”) –

that is to say, exodus from the Homeland

and assimilation in the Diaspora –

will my silence slow down or accelerate the process?

If in the eyes of our “betters”

we are no better than garbage (“aghber”) and “xxxxs,”

I see nothing questionable in pointing out the fact that,

very much like the rest of us,

they could be wrong.

*

If the Turks know us better than we know ourselves –

after all, it was they who initiated and implemented

a policy of “divide and rule” --

what’s new in what I have been saying?

*

I don’t adjust what I think and write

to please this or that imaginary audience.

I deal with facts.

I deal with reality.

I don’t control reality.

I try to understand it.

*

When told to give them hell,

Truman is quoted as having said:

“I don’t do that. I speak the truth

and they think they are in hell.”

If that’s good enough for an American presidential candidate,

it ought to be good enough for a minor Armenian scribbler.

*

Covering up the blunders of our political and religious leaders

has nothing to do with patriotism

and everything to do with subservience and cowardice.

#

Friday, January 04, 2013

**************************************

THROW THE BUMS OUT

*********************************

People don’t divide themselves; leaders do –

political leaders in cahoots with religious leaders;

bosses and bishops.

and what motivates them is not love of God or Truth

but lust for power.

*

They say they divide us in the name of dogmas

that are far more important

than the survival of the nation

and the welfare of the people.

If you believe that

you will believe anything.

*

All politicians are compulsive and habitual liars

who promise heaven and deliver hell.

Only the brainwashed take them seriously

and a brainwashed Armenian is a moronized dupe

who believes he cannot be fooled

because he is smart.

Smart when it comes to selling Oriental rugs, maybe;

but a damn fool when it comes to politics, certainly!

*

To divide and undermine the integrity of the nation

is enemy action, therefore treason.

*

The ideal dupe is a child that cannot yet think for himself.

Hence schools run by political parties

on the theory that once brainwashed always a dupe.

There it is, an outline of our central problem.

The solution is obvious

and if you can’t see it it’s because you have been “educated”

to be blind. And when “the blind lead the blind

both shall fall into the ditch.”

#

Saturday, January 05, 2013

************************************

ON PROPAGANDA

*******************************

Propaganda dehumanizes as well as

moronizes its dupes.

*

The difference between someone

who thinks for himself

and another who recycles propaganda is that

the first is a human being, therefore fallible,

and the second is a parrot

who has no conception of right and wrong

and is therefore infallible.

I speak from experience.

I was brought up as a parrot

and remained one for most of my life.

*

One way to tell the difference

between a parrot and a human being

is by their vocabulary.

Parrots read from the same script,

deliver the same line,

and use similar phrases, expressions and verbal formulas,

one of them being:

“We owe our continued existence

to our heroic freedom fighters;

if it weren’t for them

there would be no Armenia today.”

*

Our Stalinists could say the same thing

with one significant difference.

Whereas we know 350,000 Armenian boys died

during World War II fighting the Germans,

we have no idea how many freedom fighters died

in World War I.

If that is a state secret

there must be a good reason for it.

What is the reason?

I ask because I don’t know.

As always I have more questions than answers.

*

Why is it that we know the number of innocent civilians

that were slaughtered in 1915

but we don’t know the number of our heroes that fell?

*

In the Ottoman Bank caper

about a dozen heroes took part

and about four perished;

we also know that about 4000 (some say 6000)

innocent civilians were slaughtered in retaliation.

The ratio here is 1000 civilians to one freedom fighter.

Next question: does this ratio hold true

for the next chapter of our history?

Again I have more questions than answers

and as always I look forward to being enlightened.

#

[Artashes]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 30, 2012
***************************************
IN BRIEF
******************
A party of truth cannot survive
Without a big lie.
*
If you can�t throw the bums out
you can change nothing.
*
If the Pope is a crook
can his bishops be honest men?
*
As long as we remain divided
the Sultan continues to rule.
*
We agree only on one thing,
to remain divided.
*
Turks conquered Armenia
not after winning a war
but after we lost many small battles.
*
A member of a party is like a dog
who knows his master
but not his master�s master.
*
A religious leader
is a religious leader
regardless of belief system.
A politician is a politician
regardless of nationality.
Believe nothing they say.
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
****************************************
AS I SEE IT
******************************
Never underestimate the cunning of your adversary
especially if you have been moronized into thinking
you are smart.
*
I rate understanding above hating the enemy.
I believe the more we understand
the closer we get to God,
including the God who stood by and did nothing
to stop the massacre of the innocent.
*
We have been shaped by our mountains and valleys,
and where there are no mountains we raise them;
and where there are no valleys, we dig them.
*
Let Americans speak of the American dream;
we can only speak of the nightmares we must avoid.
*
Teach yourself to say and repeat:
God did not make me a dupe;
I chose to be one.
*
In politics a xxxxx has a better chance to succeed than a virgin.
A bordello madam would make an ideal candidate.
#
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
************************************
BON APPETIT
******************************
Let the world celebrate the New Year;
I have more important fish to fry �
and today I propose to fry our revolutionaries.
*
When revolutionaries become politicians
they turn into cannibals.
This is what happened in France;
this is what happened in Russia;
and this is what�s happening with us.
Hence Zarian�s dictum:
�Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.
*
Among Armenians it is impossible to be
a member of a political party
without being a moronized fanatic.
There are so many lies to swallow
and so many blunders to cover up!
*
Consider the Ottoman Bank caper as a case in point.
As a child I was brainwashed to believe
it was a major coup even though our �heroes� survived
and the people paid a heavy price �
as many as 4000 innocent civilians (some say 6000)
were brutally massacred in retaliation.
*
I was led to believe it was a major success
because the whole world learned about our plight.
In other words, it was a success as a publicity stunt.
We raised the consciousness of the world.
And what did the world do
in the catastrophe that followed?
Nothing!
What is the world doing today a hundred years later?
Even President Obama is afraid to use the �G� word.
Some success!
Some publicity stunt!
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
**************************************
�AGHBER�
******************************
�You are a disgrace to the nation.�
�Was your grandmother a Turkish xxxxx?�
�Why are you single? Are you a homosexual?�
�How much are they paying you to write as you do?�
�You are full of xxxx, Baliozoglu!�
�You are a tavajan.�
�Nobody reads you any more. So why don�t you shut up?�
�Nobody gives a damn what you think.�
�You call yourself an Armenian?�
*
No! As a matter of fact I don�t.
I do my utmost to avoid labels.
First and foremost I identify myself
as a human being,
and I consider all other identifications
accidents of history.
Let others use them like flags
with which to cover their nakedness.
#

--------------------- Two Genocides -----------------
First time I recall anybody speak of the 600 yr. genocide. An accurate statement in my opinion.
I hear many refer to this period as if we(Armenians)were getting along famously with the turks(hominoids).
Completely false.
You say --- I identify first and foremost as a human being.
Since I joined this forum, every single turk that purports to being moderate(disgusting laughter ) have all insisted that first and foremost they are human beings. They have --- all been frauds ---.
When one cries out for LIFE but really means only human beings that is vanity.
---------------------- vanity -----------------------
The first sin
Artashes

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 30, 2012
***************************************
IN BRIEF
******************
A party of truth cannot survive
Without a big lie.
*
If you can’t throw the bums out
you can change nothing.
*
If the Pope is a crook
can his bishops be honest men?
*
As long as we remain divided
the Sultan continues to rule.
*
We agree only on one thing,
to remain divided.
*
Turks conquered Armenia
not after winning a war
but after we lost many small battles.
*
A member of a party is like a dog
who knows his master
but not his master’s master.
*
A religious leader
is a religious leader
regardless of belief system.
A politician is a politician
regardless of nationality.
Believe nothing they say.
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
****************************************
AS I SEE IT
******************************
Never underestimate the cunning of your adversary
especially if you have been moronized into thinking
you are smart.
*
I rate understanding above hating the enemy.
I believe the more we understand
the closer we get to God,
including the God who stood by and did nothing
to stop the massacre of the innocent.
*
We have been shaped by our mountains and valleys,
and where there are no mountains we raise them;
and where there are no valleys, we dig them.
*
Let Americans speak of the American dream;
we can only speak of the nightmares we must avoid.
*
Teach yourself to say and repeat:
God did not make me a dupe;
I chose to be one.
*
In politics a xxxxx has a better chance to succeed than a virgin.
A bordello madam would make an ideal candidate.
#
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
************************************
BON APPETIT
******************************
Let the world celebrate the New Year;
I have more important fish to fry –
and today I propose to fry our revolutionaries.
*
When revolutionaries become politicians
they turn into cannibals.
This is what happened in France;
this is what happened in Russia;
and this is what’s happening with us.
Hence Zarian’s dictum:
“Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.
*
Among Armenians it is impossible to be
a member of a political party
without being a moronized fanatic.
There are so many lies to swallow
and so many blunders to cover up!
*
Consider the Ottoman Bank caper as a case in point.
As a child I was brainwashed to believe
it was a major coup even though our “heroes” survived
and the people paid a heavy price –
as many as 4000 innocent civilians (some say 6000)
were brutally massacred in retaliation.
*
I was led to believe it was a major success
because the whole world learned about our plight.
In other words, it was a success as a publicity stunt.
We raised the consciousness of the world.
And what did the world do
in the catastrophe that followed?
Nothing!
What is the world doing today a hundred years later?
Even President Obama is afraid to use the “G” word.
Some success!
Some publicity stunt!
#
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
**************************************
“AGHBER”
******************************
“You are a disgrace to the nation.”
“Was your grandmother a Turkish xxxxx?”
“Why are you single? Are you a homosexual?”
“How much are they paying you to write as you do?”
“You are full of xxxx, Baliozoglu!”
“You are a tavajan.”
“Nobody reads you any more. So why don’t you shut up?”
“Nobody gives a damn what you think.”
“You call yourself an Armenian?”
*
No! As a matter of fact I don’t.
I do my utmost to avoid labels.
First and foremost I identify myself
as a human being,
and I consider all other identifications
accidents of history.
Let others use them like flags
with which to cover their nakedness.
#

[Hyreniq]

Re: elegy

The Turks have programmed us to hate our fellow Armenians.

The massacre continues.

Knowing and realizing this why don't you do something about it and at least start healing yourself.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Friday, December 28, 2012

********************************************

TO MY SWEET FELLOW ARMENIANS

************************************************** ***

To how many of my fellow countrymen I could say:

“You are Armenian.

I am Armenian.

Therefore we have nothing in common.”

*

After Obama won the election

a young woman in the South was so angry that

when she found out her husband had not voted,

she ran him over with her SUV.”

My first thought on reading this story in my morning paper:

“She must have had some Armenian blood in her veins.”

Or, as Turgenev (who despised Dostoevky) would say,

“Straight out of Dostoevsky.”

*

Another story told by a Canadian-Armenian woman:

“I once met two elegantly dressed ladies in a supermarket

speaking Armenian. I approached them and said in Armenian:

‘You are Armenian?’ They immediately took a step backward

as if I were suffering from a contagious disease.”

And I remember to have thought:

They must have been from the Middle East,

who knew instinctively there is no such thing

as a friendly Armenian without ulterior motives.

*

Sometimes I am told I am consistently negative

about my fellow Armenians.

Others tell me I should write more like Saroyan

who despised his wife (whom he married twice)

and both his children.

#

Saturday, December 29, 2012

****************************************

TWO GENOCIDES

******************************

There are two genocides in our past

and the first one lasted 600 years

during which they re-created us in their own image.

I repeat, there are two genocides –

the remembered one and the unremembered or ignored one.

The documented and exposed one,

and the covered up and forgotten.

*

There is an entire library of material on the second genocide;

not even a whisper on the first.

No one can be as blind as the man who refuses to see.

Our blindness is a self-induced condition.

It is a blindness planned, organized, and implemented

by the pornography of our own phony patriotism and propaganda.

*

If we refuse to see the obvious

it’s because we are as guilty as the perpetrators.

We did not shape our history.

History shaped us.

And what shaped us more than any event or factor

is 600 years of subservience.

*

Nothing degrades and corrupts a man more

than subservience to a morally corrupt power.

Such subservience is worse than suicide.

In suicide only the body is killed.

In subservience, the spirit.

*

In the second genocide only our bodies were slaughtered.

In the first, our spirit.

Turks re-created us in their own image as surely

as God is said to have created us in His.

*

The 11th Commandment should read:

“Thou shalt not be subservient to any man.”

The Turks have programmed us to hate our fellow Armenians.

The massacre continues.

#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 23, 2012
*************************************
HISTORY
**************************
What do we really know about our past
and more particularly about the 600 years
in the Ottoman Empire
that preceded the Genocide?
We know that we coexisted with the Turks
very much like our concubines in their harems,
our janissaries in their armies
and our ablest men in their bureaucracy.
Our patriarch in Istanbul was the Sultan’s tax collector.
We know that some Armenians prospered
and others led a subhuman existence
very much like the Untouchables in India,
the Blacks in America,
the serfs in Russia,
and the very poor in England
(as anyone who has read xxxxens knows).
What changed was the fact that
the children of prosperous Armenians
were sent to Europe to complete their education
and discovered a new life there.
They wanted more freedom and power
and were encouraged in their ambition by the West.
Our teenagers confused Europe’s verbal support
with military intervention and that was a fatal error
for which the people paid dearly.
Our revolutionaries were our “best and brightest”
very much like “the best and brightest” who justified
the American involvement in Vietnam.
With one important difference.
Whereas the Yanks are smart enough and secure enough
to admit their blunders (see McNamara’s memoirs on the subject)
we are too self-righteous, stubborn, and dogmatic to do so.
As a result the offspring of our revolutionaries
(or should I say blunderers) continue to portray themselves
as dedicated patriots who can do no wrong –
very much like their counterparts,
the Kemalists, in Turkey.
#
Monday, December 24, 2012
*******************************************
REALITY
******************
Reality is too big and complex a concept
to be grasped by a single mind, or, for that matter,
a single school of thought, ideology, religion,
political party or propaganda line.
*
After thousands of years of philosophical speculation
and scientific research we can’t even answer
the simplest of all questions – such as,
why things exist.
*
When one or both sides assert Truth or God
is on their side, paralysis is sure to follow.
The problem with Armenians and Turks is that
both their educational systems are politically controlled;
and when dupes meet
they can only parrot a propaganda line,
and two divergent propaganda lines can never meet.
#
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
*****************************************
HUMBUG
********************
He who says we need solutions to our problems
is a humbugger engaged in humbuggery.
You want solutions?
Read our writers beginning with Khorenatsi’s LAMENTATION.
You want the kind of leader who will guide us
out of the mess we are in?
Read philosophers from Plato to Sartre.
Even better, read the Scriptures
where you may even find a self-portrait.
*
“Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
*
“Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool that repeats his folly.”
*
“Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
*
“He who despises the word will die.”
*
“A poor man is better than a liar.”
*
“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity
than a man who is perverse in speech and is a fool.”
*
“A fool’s mouth is his ruin,
and his lips are a snare to himself.”
*
“He who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and [cross-] examines him.”
*
“No respect is shown to the elders.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
For this our heart has become sick,
and our eyes have grown dim.”
*
Dim?
Make it blind.
And when the blind lead the blind…”
So much for our bosses, bishops, benefactors
and their dupes
who believe we are in the best of hands.
#
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
******************************************
ON REVOLUTION
********************************
The French Revolution succeeded
because it was an essentially French affair –
French citizens against a French king.
The Russian Revolution succeeded for similar reasons.
The American Revolution succeeded
because it was a WASP uprising
against a distant WASP monarch.
Our revolution failed because we made demands
on an alien despot who was the political
as well as religious head of a disintergating empire.
*
To use the words of one of elder statesmen,
we weren’t just “a frog trying to rape an elephant,”
we were “infidel dogs” trying to f*ck “a wounded tiger.”
To paraphrase Voltaire,
and because it was a religious
as well as apolitical confrontation,
there were very few survivors.
*
This was clearly seen by foreign observers, diplomats,
and missionaries as well as our own bureaucrats
within the Ottoman administration,
but our revolutionaries chose to ignore their warnings.
*
But perhaps the most important difference
between our revolution and the others mentioned above
is the fact that ours was not a popular uprising;
but the uprising of a non-representative minority
within an ethnic minority --
in view of the fact that most Armenians within the Empire
were illiterate and lacked political awareness.
*
For more on this subject see
Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY
IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993),
and my DEFINITIONS: A CRITICAL COMPANION
TO ARMENIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE (Kitchener, 1998).
#
Thursday, December 27, 2012
****************************************
YESTERDAY & TODAY
******************************
In America, yesterday’s hippies have become
today’s bankers and CEOs.
Something similar has happened to our revolutionaries:
yesterday’s idealists have become today’s businessmen.
*
“America’s business is business,”
a famous American once said.
More recently an even more famous American
(President John F. Kennedy) called businessmen sons of xxxxxes.
The full quotation reads:
“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of xxxxxes
but I never believed it till now.”
(See BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS, 2012 edition, page 786.)
*
One of our elder statesmen from the Middle East once told me:
Whenever the old revolutionaries met
with their younger counterparts,
they (the old) were treated liked losers and figures of fun.
*
Until our music and architecture acquire
the purity and universality of their medieval ancestors,
I will continue to think of Armenians
as Levantinized and Sovietized mongrels
or “Oreo” Armenians – that is,
Armenians on the outside,
Arabs, Turks, Russians, and Yanks on the inside.
*
Don’t think of honesty as a finished product
but as a work in progress – as a goal towards which
we either advance or retreat.
And so far I see nothing but retreat.
#