notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

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I have not learned how to properly format text according to the usage of the forum, therefore I have caused some confusion about who is doing the talking. I suggested earlier, in connection with the charge that AB was belittling the leadership, that quite possibly AB was antagonistic to the leadership not because he would have advocated disarming the people but because he wanted them to remain armed despite the leadership. I realize that in saying so I risk
reading more into his stance than there is. But I think it helps to turn things around and around and examine them closely before we all write each off. Can we admit to each other that we're all sorely troubled by the Armenian Genocide, and that that is the root of our distemper with each other?

there is a great deal of confusion about our leadership and the causes of our genocide. a recent book in which things are explained objectively is Michael Bobelian's CHILDREN OF ARMENIA. i urge everyone to read it.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 6, 2009
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SAFE ASSUMPTIONS
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The chances are everything you were taught as a child when you couldn't yet think for yourself is a lie.
*
Any idea that divides our fellow men into them and us is based on a fallacy.
*
They did to us what we would have done to them. Our so-called moral superiority is nothing but an extension of military inferiority.
*
If reason is against us we drown it in an avalanche of empty verbiage.
Where there are too many long-winded speechifiers there are as many lies.
*
Where speechifiers are a dominant minority, dialogue will be seen as suspect.
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The bigger the mouth, the smaller the brain.
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Freedom of thought begins on the day we teach ourselves to say “No, sir!” to those who expect us to say “Yes, sir!”
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Anything that justifies wars and massacres is wrong and anyone who justifies them is a liar.
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I may know something you don't know, but that doesn't make me better or wiser.
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The worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by fools who thought they knew better or they had God on their side.
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Wisdom is a painful burden if only because it makes you think of how easy it is for a total ignoramus to assume he is wise.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Monday, December 7, 2009
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THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
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In a message to the Venetians, Pius II wrote in 1458:
“How much of your ancient character have you lost
as a result of too much intercourse with the Turks!”
Makes you think, doesn't it?
*
“La donna e mobile” says a famous Verdi aria.
So are (alas!) Armenian friends.
I have made and lost friends on the flimsiest of reasons.
I have made friends because I was Armenian,
and I have lost friends because
I did not share their anti-Semitism.
*
“An Armenian loves to eat
and he eats to hate,”
says an Armenian song.
And speaking of eating and hating:
“One Armenian eats one chicken,
two Armenians eat two chickens,
three Armenians eat each other.”
I assume if four or more Armenians get together
the result may well be a massacre.
*
In a letter from a friend:
"If, as you say, Armenian literature is a dead end,
why not give it up?"
I write for two totally non-literary reasons:
to fight boredom and
to acquire friends;
and with every book I have published,
I have acquired a new friend;
also made not two but twenty-two enemies?
*
Raffi: "Even those among us
who have taken it upon themselves
to educate the people
are nothing but uneducated ignoramuses."
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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DECEPTION
************************************************** ****
If no one deceives us,
we deceive ourselves into thinking
we are the center of the universe
and what we think and say matters.
*
Deception works because we like to be deceived.
We like to be deceived so much that
we are more than willing to compensate our deceivers.
Some of the most highly paid men today
are professional, full-time deceivers.
They call themselves consultants,
public relations men, spin doctors,
advertisers, diplomats, lawyers, historians,
social engineers, chief executive officers, pundits,
senators and heads of state.
In the Vatican they are identified as
“propagators of the faith.”
Their counterparts in America
call themselves televangelists.
In Nazi Germany they worked for Dr Goebbels
and it's amazing the kind of people
that were taken in by their lies.
*
Do deceivers believe in their own lies?
If they do, they are dupes.
If they don't, they are crooks with a forked tongue.
In either case they deserve our contempt and ridicule.
*
Anyone who pretends to know and understand
more than he does is a deceivers.
And anyone who says “yes, sir!”
to someone he views as infallible is a dupe.
*
Chekhov was right when he said:
“If I cannot answer the most important questions,
am I not deceiving my readers?”
*
Today's quotations in my morning paper
is by Elbert Hubbard and it reads:
“Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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SHUT UP AND TALK!
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“Those who know don't talk;
those who talk don't know.”
I don't know and if I talk
it's only against those who know even less.
*
According to Garcia Marquez
everyone has three lives:
“a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”
The same applies to nations.
But in our case even our public life is secret.
*
One good thing about my choice of occupation is that
the alternative is working for money
and I can't imagine anything more repellent.
*
To be politically correct, they call it Islamophobia,
but I don't think that's what it is --
if we judge Islam by its history and number of victims
as opposed to the propaganda of its imams.
*
Everyone speaks of solutions,
no one even mentions implementation
and, in our case, that's where the devil resides.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 10, 2009
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REFLECTIONS
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An intelligent man does not overestimate his IQ.
Only idiots do that.
*
Forgive my careless choice of words.
Far better men than myself
have chosen their words far more carefully
without any results.
Ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice
are not open to diplomatic suggestions,
polite circumlocutions, and courteous petitions.
*
Not all nationalist historians are patriots
in the same way that not all garbage collectors love garbage.
*
As a physician deals with disease
a reasonable man deals with unreason –
with one difference:
the unreasonable will insult you.
*
In America, when they say god,
they mean Gold;
and when fanatics in the Middle East say God,
they mean the Devil.
“Allawa akhbar” in Arabic means
“The Devil is great!”
*
It makes little sense to support one side against the other
when both sides belong to the dustbin of history.
*
When the old fight,
it is the young who die.
When the rich fight,
it is the poor who die.
If it were up to the old and the rich
to do the dying,
we would have no more wars.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Friday, December 11, 2009
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USES AND ABUSES OF PATRIOTISM
************************************************** ****
Patriotism does not mean loyalty to the leadership, especially a leadership that has not been democratically elected and is therefore self-appointed and non-representative, as our leadership has been throughout our millennial existence. Loyalty to such a leadership is not patriotism but subservience to despotism.
*
The mightier the country the more arrogant its citizens. This rule has one exception: Armenia.
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The lower the self-esteem, the higher the need to emphasize the positive.
*
To justify his hatred for his fellow countrymen, an Armenian will identify them as Turks in disguise. I will never forget the elder statesman who once said to me: “We have men within our organizations who are Turkish agents. They speak Armenian fluently, they know our history and all there is to know about us, but don't make them fool you: they are Turks as surely as two plus two makes four.”
*
What is the difference between an Armenian who uses his tongue like a yataghan and an executioner? The executioner thinks of himself as a law-and-order man. The Armenian believes his superior brand of patriotism allows him to engage in verbal massacre – the real thing being against the law...
*
Freedom and patriotism are weasel words: they can be defined in a number of contradictory ways. Freedom could also mean the freedom to deceive, exploit, and enslave. And what could be more absurd than to say my patriotism is good but my enemy’s patriotism is bad?
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Saturday, December 12, 2009
**********************************
HAVE A NICE DAY!
************************************************** ****
No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. Only a self-satisfied ignoramus will think otherwise.
*
We may use the same words but we don't mean the same thing. To the poor the word “bread” in “Give us this day our daily bread,” means bread; to the rich it means enough money to buy several bakeries.
*
The rich know how to manipulate and exploit; and the poor know how to pretend to be grateful to bloodsucking buggers.
*
Their divide-and-rule tactics have been so successful that we remain divided even after they have ceased to rule.
*
They tell me I write as I do because I am failure. What a nightmare it must be to them to think that some day I may achieve success.
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More often than not a majority is nothing but a conspiracy of idiots.
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I no longer read our pundits or listen to our speechifiers because I ascribe all our misfortunes to their empty verbiage.
*
A true story: In search of his roots, an Armenian-American returned from the Homeland a thoroughly disappointed man because they didn't serve his favorite brand of cereal for breakfast.
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MEMO TO A YOUNG WRITER
**************************************
When brainwashed idiots enjoy reading you, you can be sure of one thing: You are in deep sh*t.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, December 13, 2009
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THE “S” WORD
************************************************** ****
All this nonsense about needing solutions is a lot of b.s.
Everyone knows that men of God and capital (make it Capital and god) know better. If they didn't, they wouldn't be where they are. Solutions doesn't even make it the last item on their wish list. What they want and what they get from their brown-nosers and dupes is gratitude and subservience.
*
If a liar believes in his own lies, he will also assume he is a lover of truth.
*
In all of us ignorance exceeds knowledge, and most of what we know is based either on hearsay or is an extension of a belief system, that is to say, propaganda.
*
Whenever they can't blame it on the Turks and the West, they blame it on the opposition. They sure know how to cover their ass.
*
You cannot reason with the brainwashed. You can only try to deprogram them, which can be as difficult as changing a wolf to a lamb, and in our case, vice versa.
*
Benefactors like to parade as supporters of literature, but since their favorite reading matter is financial statements, they delegate the job to their brown-nosers. Which may explain the unbearable stench of mediocrity emanating from our contemporary literature.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Monday, December 14, 2009
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O CANADA
************************************************** ****
During a recent visit to an Armenian community center in Toronto, the Minister of Immigration delivered a speech in which he reminded his audience that the Canadian government had recognized the reality of the Armenian genocide, but that it also expected all Armenian-Canadians to be nice to Turks because Canada is a multicultural country, which means everyone must live in friendship and peace with everyone else. The audience responded with blank expressions. And I thought:
How can we be nice to Turks if we cannot even be nice to our fellow Armenians?
*
In a recent issue of the NEW YORKER, Newt Gingrich was identified as “the Republican Party's putative sage.” Gingrich, it will be remembered, once named Kemal Atatürk as his role model. I have every reason to suspect that if he runs for president in 2012 and promises to recognize the Armenian genocide, Armenians will vote for him not because they believe in his promise but because they care much more about lower taxes than Genocide recognition. Never underestimate the cunning of greedy fools.
*
As a child whenever I did something wrong I was punished. And now that I am old I am silenced by the old and insulted by the young for exposing misconduct. Perhaps one reason I understand my fellow countrymen so well is that I am, very much like them, a perennial loser, with one noteworthy difference: I see no reason why I should fool myself and others into thinking otherwise. It is easy for a fool to fool himself, but more difficult to fool those who may well be smarter than he.
*
Today's quote in my morning paper is by Adlai Stevenson and it reads: “My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
I am safe today, it is true. It is also true that I owe my safety not to my fellow Armenians but to my country of adoption.
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