notes and comments

[AlphaPapa]

Re: elegy

and what i am saying is that monarchy and fascism make things worse.
at least in a democracy crooks like Tricky xxxx and his henchmen are caught and sometimes jailed-- instead of being promoted.

I question the argument that one is worse or better than the other. Human nature, and the need to appease the masses/asses is the same. In a monarchy, you will see a man who wants to maintain power and thus do what he needs to do (sacrifice business associates, whatever). Fascism is a vague, derogatory noun that no one claims. Was Tito a fascist? Stalin? Mao? Yes, but they did so to make sure their objectives were attained and they wanted to establish a post-dictatorship democracy.

It ties in with many of your commentaries, that we Armenians aren't an ethnic snow-flake, and have the same positive and negative human traits (collectively and as individuals) as everyone else.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, October 18, 2009
************************************
WE NEVER LEARN
************************************************** **
“We may think of Turks as backward Asiatic slobs,” Shahan Shahnour warns us somewhere, “but make no mistake about it: when in some to Armenians, they can be very, very calculating and methodical.”
If the intention of the Protocols was to pit the Diaspora against the Homeland, it was must be declared a brilliant coup -- judging by the Diaspora's ferocious opposition to the regime in Yerevan.
*
The Turks are now imposing punitive taxation on their media barons critical of the regime. It seems they respect a free press as much as we do.
I will never forget the conversation I once had with the publisher of a bilingual (English-Armenian) weekly in Los Angeles. He began by informing me that he had received a call from the secretary of a national benefactor.
“What did he want?” I asked, smelling a rat.
“He demanded why I go on publishing you,” was his reply.
“And you said?”
“I said I edit only the Armenian section, someone else handles the English section.”
“Did he buy that?”
I guess he didn't because shortly thereafter I was fired with no explanation, severance pay, or even a thank you note for my decades -long pro bono weekly contributions of book reviews, commentaries, and translations.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

I question the argument that one is worse or better than the other. Human nature, and the need to appease the masses/asses is the same. In a monarchy, you will see a man who wants to maintain power and thus do what he needs to do (sacrifice business associates, whatever). Fascism is a vague, derogatory noun that no one claims. Was Tito a fascist? Stalin? Mao? Yes, but they did so to make sure their objectives were attained and they wanted to establish a post-dictatorship democracy.

It ties in with many of your commentaries, that we Armenians aren't an ethnic snow-flake, and have the same positive and negative human traits (collectively and as individuals) as everyone else.

no one claims to be a fascist?
wrong.
Mussolini did and compared to the others that you mention, he was no better than a mickey-mouse.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Monday, October 19, 2009
************************************
COMMENTS
************************************************** **
“Deal may end Turkish-Armenian friction,” reads the headline of a commentary on the Protocols by a British pundit. So far however it has succeeded only in increasing Diaspora-Homeland friction.
*
According to a British diplomat, also quoted in today's paper: “Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery.”
My first thought: That makes two of us.
*
If you can't explain the inexplicable, what's the use of writing?
*
Every morning on waking up sometimes I fail to remind myself that the sun does not rise to hear me crowing.
#

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

true.
Dostoevsky's question:
what about innocent children that are raped and murdered?

My suggestions wouldn't boast well with our western liberal judicial system.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Tuesday, 20 October, 2009
***********************************************
MAKING CONNECTIONS
*************************************
“A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.” (William Blake)
*
To understand history means to see the connecting tissue that binds two apparently unrelated occurrences. Naregatsi's lamentations and a thousand years of subservience. Abovian's suicide and the Genocide. Tolstoy's excommunication and the Russian revolution. The persecution of dissenters and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
*
Perhaps one reason we don't behead our “kings” is that they know how to flatter our vanity.
*
We are a young nation and the oldest civilization.
*
If on occasion I insult my fellow Armenians it may be because so far flattery has not worked for us.
*
If they massacred us because they hated us, does that justify our own hatred for them? What if hatred is toxic to our understanding of our enemies, or for that matter of our friends, and ultimately of ourselves?
*
I never say anything about others that I am not prepared to say about myself. It is through my own failings that I recognize them in others.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
****************************************
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
************************************************** ******
Someone voices an opinion, another develops it, a third sees an idea in it, and a fourth formulates a general theory. That's how human thought is advanced. But where there is intolerance, there will be censorship, and where there is censorship, progress will be arrested, creativity aborted, and man moronized.
*
I too am a survivor – not of Turkish atrocities but of moronized fellow countrymen.
*
All men are created equal, but some men are in a better position to say one thing, do the opposite, and get away with murder.
*
Like most men I was educated to be a dupe, but unlike most men I continued to be one even in my advanced years. When an Armenian writer from Beirut once told me he had given up writing because several of his masterpieces had burned during the civil war in Beirut, I believed him. But when I mentioned this to another writer from Beirut, I was told that's a favorite cliché of Beirutsi intellectuals – to blame the non-existence of their works on the war.
*
What we need is an Armenian Human Rights Commission that will expose our dismal human rights record. We are either for human rights or against it. If we are against it, we must be for Levantine charlatanism, Soviet brutality, and Asiatic barbarism.
*
We have a veritable alphabet soup of organizations and bureaucracies run by Levantine wheeler-dealers in the Diaspora and former commissars in the Homeland. What we don't have and need badly is a Human Rights Commission.
Bureaucrats are bureaucrats regardless of nationality. Unchecked by watchdog agencies, they will grab as much power as they can. But what I find even more repellent than power-hungry bureaucrats is the silence of our academics and intellectuals. Mart bidi ch'ellank.
*
I wonder, do Turks have a Human Rights Commission? If they don't, in what way are we different from them? If they do, is it conceivable that they are more civilized than we are? Something to think about.
#

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

If human rights commissions are as useful as the UN then there is no need for the bureaucracy. If it's one thing human rights has achieved it's this - dogs and cats are now treated more humanely than humans.

[Haykakan]

Re: elegy

Ara your the worst selfappointed intellectual i have ever encountered. Looking at things in a unbiased manner is one thing but you are a selfhating armenian. You put your own people down when there is no reason for it. Sure we as armenians have plenty of flaws but its not like the other people dont have them to. You make it sound like we are the lowest scum when that is far from the truth. I am all for the truth and i can hardly be mistaken for a man who only sees thyings through armenian glasses but being unbiased or realistic is far from what your doing. You dont portray the armenian people and issues fairly instead you drag them down far below where they are in reality. If flattery has not worked for us it doesnt mean insulting your own people will either. Your logic is like that used by a 4 yearold child and hardly worth writing or reading about.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

If human rights commissions are as useful as the UN then there is no need for the bureaucracy. If it's one thing human rights has achieved it's this - dogs and cats are now treated more humanely than humans.

if with a human rights commission people are treated like dogs; without human rights commission, they will be treated...like what? bacteria?