notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Tuesday, December 29, 2009
**********************************
MY QUARREL
************************************************** *
It is not safe to stand between a hungry lion and his kill.
Likewise, between a crowd and its cherished illusions.
*
I write what I think because deep down I know no matter what I say, I will be ignored. That's the way it has been in the past, and I see no evidence to suggest that things may not continue on the same path in the future.
*
My quarrel, my real quarrel, is not with my fellow men. My quarrel is with myself for allowing deceivers to brainwashed me in the name of a false deity or big lies.
*
They emphasize the importance of love because they are hateful and they know it. Was it love that drove Jesus to use the whip against the money-changers in the temple?
Was it love that drove the Orthodox Church in Russia to excommunicate Tolstoy, or the Catholic Church to torture and massacre heretics?
To those who say that was then and this is now: may I remind them that the Russian Church, like our own Etchmiadzin, went on to legitimize Stalin's regime, and the Catholic clergy engaged in serial child molestation.
*
Dupes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but leaders with the more quotient of swine.
*
I call an enemy a friend if what he says enhances my understanding of my fellow men and myself.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

corrected version
==================================
Thursday, December 24, 2009
**********************************
WE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD
************************************************** *
We are few.
We are weak.
We are vulnerable,
Therefore, we are divided.
Which is like saying:
“I think.
Therefore I am not.”
*
In our environment,
the devils come disguised as angels.
I once heard a bishop say:
“We are for unity.
It's the opposition that is against it.”
Did he believe what he said?
I am not sure.
But his audience did,
on the grounds that God does not lie.
Neither does a man of God.
*
Hitler knew what he was talking about when he said,
“The bigger the lie, the more believable it will be.”
*
We are divided.
So what if we cease to exist?
*
Cease to exist? No way!
We have existed for thousands of years.
We must be doing something right.
You call a thousand years of subservience to scum existence?
You call a series of massacres and a genocide existence?
I call it worse than death.
*
Liars are not born but made
and they are made by dupes.
Who is guiltier, a liar or his audience of dupes?
*
You can rate the IQ of a nation
by the lies of its sermonizers and speechifiers.
*
We have two kinds of mortal enemies:
those who want to kill us
and those who want us to commit suicide.
We never had it so good.
#
Friday, December 25, 2009
**********************************
RAFFI'S WARNING AND
CHARENTS'S MESSAGE
************************************************** *
To prove to a visiting Venetian painter what the neck of a beheaded man really looks like, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, also known as the Lawgiver, had a prisoner brought before him and beheaded.
It is said that the Venetian painter was so shocked by the bloody spectacle that he left that same night under cover of darkness.
That is the difference between that Venetian painter and us.
The Venetian left.
We stayed
We stayed even after Raffi warned us the Ottoman Empire was no place for us because Turks had no respect for human life.
We ignored Raffi's warning in the 19th century as we ignore today Charents's final message concerning our “salvation.” By “we” I mean less the people and more the leaders who speechify during the day about survival and turn into gravediggers under cover of darkness at night.
*
In my next commentary I will explain why “treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi).
#
Saturday, December 26, 2009
**********************************
TREASON & HEROISM
************************************************** *
A nation or a community run by traitors will constantly emphasize the importance of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism. In such an environment, heroes will invariably outnumber traitors.
*
Traitors don't think of themselves as traitors. They think of themselves as patriots who are doing what must be done to safeguard the survival of the nation. But since in politics, as in war, there are either winners or losers, losers will be classified as traitors by their political adversaries.
Case in point: After the liberation of France, both Petain (a hero of World War I) and Laval were condemned to death by a French tribunal on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Nazis and they were therefore traitors.
*
Were Krikor Zohrab and Anastas Mikoyan traitors or heroes?
If we judge them by their actions alone (as the French tribunal chose to do) they do not qualify as heroes. Zohrab saved Talaat's life from the Sultan's secret police; and Mikoyan carried out the Stalinist purges in Armenia so thoroughly that to this day only unprincipled mediocrities survive. In other words, their actions resulted in defeat and tragedy.
*
Are our dividers in the Diaspora today heroes or traitors? If we judge them by the Biblical dictum “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” and by Charents's final “message,” they cannot be said to be heroic figures.
*
One could of course explain and justify the actions of traitors by pleading extenuating circumstances, which might as well be inadmissible in our context.
The fact remains that both Zohrab and Mikoyan were not just wrong, they were catastrophically wrong, and both paid a heavy price for their blunder. Zohrab was murdered by order of the same man whose life he saved by risking his own, and Mikoyan spent the final years of his life in constant fear to such a degree that he slept with a revolver under his pillow with the intention of killing himself if they ever came to arrest him in the middle of the night.
As for the nation: I will let you decide whether their actions contributed to our collective profile as winners or losers.
#
Sunday, December 27, 2009
**********************************
AN INVITATION TO THE BEHEADING
************************************************** *
The French have a saying: “This little beast is nasty; when attacked, it defends itself.” Except that in our case, the little beast was a wounded tiger with nine lives, and we were no better than a toothless lapdog.
We were slaughtered because we have been thrice cursed with “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders” (Avedik Issahakian); and ever since these brainless leaders have been trying to convince us there is nothing wrong with them; it's the rest of the world that's rotten; and what is even more unbelievable is that we believe them.
We lost because we believed the Christian West would not allow the massacre of brothers by bloodthirsty infidels – notwithstanding the fact that the West had already allowed a series of massacres to take place without lifting a finger (see VISIONS OF ARARAT: WRITINGS ON ARMENIA by Christopher Walker [New York, 1997]).
We were slaughtered because our Christian brothers in the West were at war and too busy slaughtering one another to give a damn about an obscure tribe of Christians being slaughtered by infidels on another continent (see the Preface of G.B. Shaw's ANDROCLES AND THE LION).
We lost because “we were tiny islands in a Turkish sea” (Hagop Oshagan).
We lost because our revolutionaries were long on enthusiasm and short on experience. One contemporary scholar refers to them as “twenty somethings” (see Michael Bobelian, CHILDREN OF ARMENIA [New York, 2009]).
We lost because we underestimated the strength and determination of the Turks to defend their 600-year old homeland.
We lost because we believed in the professed brotherly love of serial killers. (Consider the case of Zohrab saving Talaat's life by risking his own.)
We lost because we were divided. (See the correspondence between our revolutionaries and Artin Dadian in Pars Tuglaci, THE ROLE OF THE DADIAN FAMILY IN OTTOMAN, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE (Istanbul, 1993).
We were slaughtered because we have been fed “a steady and monotonous diet of shameless flattery and transparent lies” (Stepan Voskanian).
We were slaughtered because our conception of history has been shaped by “deceivers... the smoke of incense, and the sound of sharagans” (Nigoghos Sarafian).
Far from being an unexpected and unforeseeable Tragedy that “fell on us like a thief in the night,” our genocide might as well have been “an invitation to the beheading) (Nabokov).
#
Monday, December 28, 2009
**********************************
THIS AND THAT
************************************************** *
Patriotism is an irrefutable argument only to patriots.
So is fascism to fascists.
*
If faith and truth were one, we would have only one religion and no jihads.
Faith guarantees nothing.
To say that faith is beyond criticism is to justify a big lie with a bigger lie.
*
Deceivers exist because deception works.
It is astonishing the number of great men who were taken in by Hitler and Stalin, both of whom made a mafia godfather look like a benevolent uncle.
*
To an overly sensitive person, a wrong word can be as catastrophic as a volcanic eruption or an earthquake.
*
Turning points in one's life may happen not in noteworthy events but in insignificant occurrences that may at first escape notice.
*
To most Armenians the Genocide is only a page in our history – the darkest page, granted, but still only a page.
Books, including history books, are one thing, life another.
The average Armenian is much more seriously wounded by an insult than by any single page in history.
*
To ignore or cover up our problems is also to reject in advance all possible solutions.
*
We will mature as a nation only when we take ideas as seriously as money.
#
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
**********************************
MY QUARREL
************************************************** *
It is not safe to stand between a hungry lion and his kill.
Likewise, between a crowd and its cherished illusions.
*
I write what I think because deep down I know no matter what I say, I will be ignored. That's the way it has been in the past, and I see no evidence to suggest that things may not continue on the same path in the future.
*
My quarrel, my real quarrel, is not with my fellow men. My quarrel is with myself for allowing deceivers to brainwashed me in the name of a false deity or big lies.
*
They emphasize the importance of love because they are hateful and they know it. Was it love that drove Jesus to use the whip against the money-changers in the temple?
Was it love that drove the Orthodox Church in Russia to excommunicate Tolstoy, or the Catholic Church to torture and massacre heretics?
To those who say that was then and this is now: may I remind them that the Russian Church, like our own Etchmiadzin, went on to legitimize Stalin's regime, and the Catholic clergy engaged in serial child molestation.
*
Dupes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but leaders with the moral quotient of swine.
*
I call an enemy a friend if what he says enhances my understanding of my fellow men and myself.
#
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
**********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** *
The original aim of nationalism was to liberate the nation from the tyranny of imperial powers. In theory. In practice, however, it simply replaced one tyranny with another. That's the way it is with organized religions, ideologies, and mass movements: they begin as liberation and end as oppression.
*
Analysis and flattery (or propaganda) are mutually exclusive concepts. You can have either one or the other. You cannot have both.
*
On more than one occasion I have heard it said, “If you criticize benefactors, they will stop giving.” I have never heard anyone say, “If we starve writers, they will stop writing.” Which may suggest, money is everything, ideas nothing. Which may also explain why as a nation we are so brain-dead that even the Turks are ahead of us. This assertion may outrage some, but not as much as it outraged me when I first heard it about forty years ago.
*
Our editors and activists have been dishing out anti-Turkish venom for such a long time that it has acquired the authority of a Decalogue.
*
There is a kind of vulgar bluntness that is the soul of elegance.
*
Speaking of his fellow Americans, Thoreau once said: “The greater part of what they call good I believe in my soul to be bad.”
*
Anonymous: “A live dog is better than a dead lion.”
#

[ArmSurvival]

Re: elegy

It's an absurdity to talk about the Armenians rebelling in conjunction with the Slavs.
They had no ability to rise "en masse". They were dispersed subjects of a mighty empire living in little mountain valleys far from each other and with very limited
ability to communicate with each other. They were a tiny minority in a hostile sea.
This cannot be said of the Slavs and Greeks. The historic, cultural, economic, political and geographic conditions prevailing in the two different regions were entirely different. The Armenian revolutionary movement wouldn't have existed without the implicit support of a much wider segment of the population than you're willing to acknowledge, and you show very little awareness of or regard for the historic substance of that struggle. Too much 'big picture', not enough detail.

You are right that I am focusing on the big picture and thus I skipped some important details. You are also right in that there are intricate differences between Balkan and Armenian liberation movements, and that Armenians were for the most part stifled and “kept down” in the Ottoman system, even more so than the Balkan peoples due to our bad geographical position (being more east and being directly adjacent to the Turkish heartland, making us much more vulnerable to attack). This is part of the reason why the revolutionary groups had minimum manpower in their times of struggle. It was only in 1908 that Armenians were allowed to train as soldiers (although the same applies to Balkan Christians but they still won their independence by military means). Also the Balkans was somewhat of a stomping ground for western intelligentsia who helped the Balkan nations in their struggle, and interestingly enough, even Armenian bomb-makers and other underground resistance fighters greatly aided Macedonians and other Slavs in their guerilla activities. Remember even Andranik was a commander of Armenian volunteers in the Bulgarian army during their independence war.

I think two factors above all broke the back of our resistance once the genocide started: All fighting-age men being drafted into the Ottoman army and subsequently killed, and the Bolshevik revolution. If one of these events did not take place, we would probably be sitting on western Armenia right now.

Anyways, my point here was not to argue about the details of the Armenian resistance, but simply to prove that there was a J ewish/Zionist hand in the Armenian Genocide.

Saying "There is an eye-witness account that explicitly states that Carasso was anxiously waiting for the beginning of the next Balkan war. That next Balkan war is what exploded into WWI" falls pathetically short of providing proof for your blunt and unqualified assertion, "the entrance by the Ottoman Empire into WWI. . . . was encouraged and advocated by these same J ewish figures within the Young Turk party."
Just because that assertion is what your grand theory calls for does not make it so.

If virtually all sources that had any personal contact with the Young Turks are telling us that they were mainly financed and controlled by J ews and Donmehs, then its safe to say that the Young Turks were war-like by design, not by accident. A group which invests that much money and resources in an organization is not going to let the organization just do whatever it wants (like entering wars without the consent of the main investors and chiefs).

Having said that, advocating Pan-Turkism in a so-called multicultural empire is on par with announcing perpetual war and is a recipe for armed conflict. And rest assured, the party would not be die-hard Pan-Turkists unless the financiers of the party gave it the green light to do so. And as one of the chief financiers and sponsors of the Young Turks, Carasso is documented as anxiously awaiting the next Balkan war, and also anxiously awaiting endless revolution in Turkey. He is quoted as saying so. You can choose to ignore the eye-witness accounts, but I'm not sure thats such a wise thing to do.


Another piece of information that I forgot to share with you is the connection of the Young Turk party to one of the most prominent Zionists. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the most devoted Zionists, was chief editor of Jeunes Turc (Young Turk) newspaper, which was based in Constantinople and was one of the most popular daily newspapers in the empire. That newspaper could have been headed by millions of other people in the empire, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, you name it. However, it just happened to be "by coincidence" that the chief editor was a Zionist J ew from Europe, and one of the most prominent ones at that. Its also worthy to note that during WWI, Jabotinsky helped form the J ewish legion within the British army in order to fight against the Ottomans in Palestine.

[Diranakir]

Re: elegy

[QUOTE=ArmSurvival;288142]You are right that I am focusing on the big picture and thus I skipped some important details. You are also right in that there are intricate differences between Balkan and Armenian liberation movements, and that Armenians were for the most part stifled and “kept down” in the Ottoman system, even more so than the Balkan peoples due to our bad geographical position (being more east and being directly adjacent to the Turkish heartland, making us much more vulnerable to attack). This is part of the reason why the revolutionary groups had minimum manpower in their times of struggle. It was only in 1908 that Armenians were allowed to train as soldiers (although the same applies to Balkan Christians but they still won their independence by military means). Also the Balkans was somewhat of a stomping ground for western intelligentsia who helped the Balkan nations in their struggle, and interestingly enough, even Armenian bomb-makers and other underground resistance fighters greatly aided Macedonians and other Slavs in their guerilla activities. Remember even Andranik was a commander of Armenian volunteers in the Bulgarian army during their independence war.

I think two factors above all broke the back of our resistance once the genocide started: All fighting-age men being drafted into the Ottoman army and subsequently killed, and the Bolshevik revolution. If one of these events did not take place, we would probably be sitting on western Armenia right now.

ArmSurv: I think we are close on this question: two completely different situations, so that 'rising en masse' was not a luxury Armenians could afford.

[Diranakir]

Re: elegy

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diranakir
Saying "There is an eye-witness account that explicitly states that Carasso was anxiously waiting for the beginning of the next Balkan war. That next Balkan war is what exploded into WWI" falls pathetically short of providing proof for your blunt and unqualified assertion, "the entrance by the Ottoman Empire into WWI. . . . was encouraged and advocated by these same J ewish figures within the Young Turk party."
Just because that assertion is what your grand theory calls for does not make it so.

ArmSurvival's Reply:
If virtually all sources that had any personal contact with the Young Turks are telling us that they were mainly financed and controlled by J ews and Donmehs, then its safe to say that the Young Turks were war-like by design, not by accident. A group which invests that much money and resources in an organization is not going to let the organization just do whatever it wants (like entering wars without the consent of the main investors and chiefs).

Diranakir's Counter Reply:

You are sliding away from the issue once more. This is called "begging the question", and you are doing it big-time. "Begging the question" means giving an answer which simply restates the question, but in a slightly different form. First let's be reminded that we were discussing how Turkey got into the FIRST WORLD WAR, not the Balkan wars. (If you want to conflate them, that shows a real problem in your method.) I asked you to show evidence for your direct statement that the Hebraic members of the CUP railroaded Turkey into the First World War. You have not given it, despite all the familiar talk about Carasso, with Jabotinsky thrown in. That is my main point.

But just one secondary observation:Your first sentence above is a non-sequitur: "If virtually all sources that had any personal contact with the Young Turks are telling us that they were mainly financed and controlled by J ews and Donmehs, then its safe to say that the Young Turks were war-like by design, not by accident." The second clause, after 'then', simply does not flow from the first one.

Furthermore, saying "the Young Turks were war-like by design, not by accident" is an absurdity, especially the "accident" part. Of course, I understand your point is to prove the Zionist plot behind the whole thing, etc., etc. Setting that aside, a truer statement would have been: The Young Turks were violent BY NATURE. This is shown by their early military revolts and assassinations. But it is important to bear in mind, if you can
set Zionism aside for a couple of moments, that they were revolting because the Sultan and the existing form of government were sending Turkey down the tubes, not because they were duped into revolting, against their better judgment, by "a bunch of J ews", to use your terminology.

One more thing before you repeat the whole enchilada about how the doenme wanted to bring about Turkey's downfall for the sake of establishing a Zionist state (with Talat thrown into the mix as an ethnic hebraic), take the following into account:

from "The J ews of the Ottoman Empire", pp. 527-536, Avigdor Levy (ed).

"....it became clear that on the eve of the World War and during its initial stages, Zionist groups viewed the continued existence of the Ottoman state as most desirable for their future plans in Palestine."

That makes a lot more sense than your fantastic inversions of reality that ascribe supernatural design to hebraic actors. Through you I have learned that there were far more Hebraics with a hand in the Armenian Genocide than I ever would have believed or wished. A profound disillusionment. But I see them as only part of the mix, not puppeteers. They were part of the mix because of their brutal experiences with Christian powers. This is not to forgive them for their part in the Armenian Genocide, but to say that they were mortals like other mortals. They definitely made important contributions to the death machine that eventually devoured the Armenians, and, as is quite clear with Vambery, were opportunists often acting at the behest of British puppeteers. Let's not ignore that fact and let the British Machiavellians off the hook.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Thursday, December 31, 2009
**********************************
PATRIOTISM AND DISSENT
************************************************** *
When love of the homeland is not counterbalanced by hatred of the regime, it ceases to be patriotism and becomes chauvinism, which is an aberration.
*
Our homeland is not just a nice place to visit. It is first and foremost a country like any other, with its own problems. To ignore or cover up these problems amounts to legitimizing criminal conduct.
*
A good Armenian is not necessarily one who echoes my sentiments and thoughts. I am more than willing to learn from those who disagree with me. Provided of course they are not dupes and do not engage in recycling a propaganda line I was myself its dupe when I was a child.
*
Dissent is as old as creation. There is no power structure on earth without dissent. We are told even the Almighty had His share of dissidents. To think of oneself or one's party or one's country as beyond criticism is to place oneself above God.
#

[Diranakir]

Re: elegy

For ArmSurviva, a few more thoughts:

The term 'eye=witness account" means someone personally observing an event and describing it, not someone meeting someone and hearing something. Meeting someone does not make you an "eye-witness" of the policies or goals of that person. That's like McCain taking a trip to Baghdad and coming back to tell us, 'he's been there so he knows what's going on.' No, he didn't know before he went and he didn't know when he came back.

Did you ever stop to ask yourself how Carasso, the wily old dönme, would allow himself to blabber about his intentions in the presence of, in effect, a British agent? And if he did do so, what language did he speak that would be so easily understood by Mr. Henry Wickham Steed? Turkish? I doubt Steed's Turkish was that good. French? Maybe. But would he be speaking that openly with a relative in front of a stranger? I have a lot of doubts about the authenticity of that quote, as you can see.

I have just got a good taste of Steed's thinking about the Hrias, I should rather say his OBSESSION with the Hrias, by reading his chapter on the Hrias of Austria in his book on the Hapsburgs. What a mish mash papered over with impeccable English! He can't make up his mind if Hrias are essentially Capitalist or Communist, tribal or individualistic, city dwellers
(lovers of ghettoes) or nomads. Give me a break! He should have laid down his pen, dismissed his servants, gone out for a sniff of fresh air and gone fox hunting rather than write such nonsense. He probably would have if his aim with a rifle was any better than his aim with a pen.

Then there is the impressive quote from Seton-Watson to the effect: it's common knowledge that the Hrias are the brains and bankrollers of the CUP
and get their money from here and there and probably from elsewhere as well, etc. He says this without citing one bit of proof but hearsay and common knowledge. These are the two quotes you are getting all the mileage out of you can. But of course you know that these two men were close friends. And it's obvious they shared the same attitudes toward Hrias.
Therefore the two quotes lose a great deal of value, at least the way I see it.

[axel]

Re: elegy

They were part of the mix because of their brutal experiences with Christian powers

One should not simply equate donmeh with Jew (or zionist for that matter) but, instead, investigate as a starting point the (quite strange) spirituality, ideas and personalities that define the sabbatean movement (within judaism itself)

The works by Gerschom Scholem are authorative on that matter.

http://www.amazon.com/Sabbatai-Sevi-Gershom-Gerhard-Scholem/dp/069101809X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1262343183&sr=1-3-spell

For a detailed overview, see:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071228011136/http://www.radicaltorahthought.com/Bio+Zvi_Frank.htm

[Diranakir]

Re: elegy

Thanks very much Axel. A real contribution to the discussion.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

01/01/10
**********************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** *
In Herman Melville I come across a new word:
“sultanism,” meaning the exercise of authority with a touch of sadistic pleasure.
*
A mediocrity will be subservient to any regime or power structure that gives him a regular salary, or a title, or a uniform, or the license to persecute better men than himself: there you have it, the root of our sultanism.
*
When one of Moliere’s characters first delivered the line
“A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignoramus!”
he no doubt alienated several members of the audience.
That’s the problem with good lines:
they tend to alienate self-satisfied jackasses.
*
There are many kinds of dupes, but the worst are those
who are easily seduced by the irresistible charm of their own arguments.
*
Great nations need big lies;
small nations need bigger lies.
*
After reading one of my things,
an old friend writes: “I am glad you continue to be a patriotic Armenian.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that I loathe patriotism.
I love honest men and loathe charlatans regardless of nationality;
and some of the worst charlatans I have met are Armenian patriots.
*
My father was a law-abiding citizen.
He never said a word against anyone.
No, not even Turks.
He kept to himself.
He kept his distance.
He didn’t see anything wrong in that.
Neither did I.
Subservience comes naturally to all Armenians.
But they don’t call it subservience.
They call it good citizenship.
They call it respect for authority.
#