notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 15, 2010
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DEAD END
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When one side says one thing and the other the exact opposite for one hundred years, we have no choice but to conclude either one side or both are obstinate, dogmatic, self-righteous, and intolerant of dissent.
Has anyone ever said we are open-minded, tolerant, willing to engage in dialogue, and eager to develop a consensus by means of compromise?
Has anyone ever said diplomacy is our strong suit?
If Armenian cannot agree with Armenian, can he ever agree with the Turk?
I am not casting aspersions, just asking questions.
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ARMENIAN ETIQUETTE
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When you don't understand what you read, call the writer an idiot.
When you disagree with what he writes, call him a traitor.
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KHRUSHCHEV ON DE GAULLE
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“Was he smart or stupid? For a while he was considered an idiot and a fascist. But in fact he was a very smart fellow.”
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KHRUSHCHEV ON MALRAUX
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“De Gaulle's Minister of Culture was a well-known writer. I think he had the same last name as that other famous French writer, Moliere.”
Which reminds me of the story that when Malraux was named the winner of the Nobel Prize, Mailer received several congratulatory calls from American friends.
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REFLECTIONS
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Some day even the most absurd occurrence may make perfect sense, but by then the perceiver and the occurrence may well be one and the same.
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About Armenians and Turks: There is probably something true in the saying that if you hate somebody too much it may be because you see yourself in him.
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When I was young I was unteachable. Hence my intolerance of phony pundits.
There is an old Spanish saying: “Women and horses: let someone else tame them.”
And I say: “Horse’s asses: let a shrew tame them.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 16, 2010
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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“The true source of wisdom,” Socrates tells us,
“is not knowledge but moderation.”
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I don’t look for enemies;
they find me.
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Just because a man is not bought and sold
it doesn’t follow he is not a slave.
Likewise, just because we silence critics
it doesn’t follow we are not open to criticism.
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It was Kant who said that very often
ignorance is nothing but cowardice in the face of knowledge.
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Self-criticism is not treason.
Silencing criticism is.
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An insult is as difficult to refute as a massacre,
perhaps because it is verbal massacre.
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According to Buddha:
“That which is spoken, heard, and understood
are three different things.”
What scathing book reviews Buddha would have written
of the Bible and the Koran!
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Our history is an apt illustration of Murphy's Law:
“If things can go wrong
they will go wrong at the worst possible time.”
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The aim of philosophy is to open the mind.
The aim of a belief system is to close it.
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When I hear the word Islam,
the first four words that come to mind are:
giaour, imam, fatwa, and jihad;
and I loathe these words as much I loathe the words
boss, bishop, benefactor, and commissar.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 17, 2010
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A SUGGESTION
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Juvenal: “No one ever reached the depths of wickedness all at once.”
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Since so far divisions have been of no discernible use to us, why not give solidarity a chance to fail on its own demerits?
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Divisions begin as aberrations by overambitious leaders who care more about their own powers and privileges than the welfare of the people. It's never too late to see this and begin a movement in the opposite direction.
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Divisions are expensive luxuries. By contrast, solidarity is much cheaper. One school, one community center, and one place of worship for every large community, would save enough money to feed and house thousands of families living below the poverty line in the Homeland.
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It should be mandatory to include the initial “S” (for Solidarity) in the acronyms of all our organizations.
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WANTED
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Speechifiers who will unleash a verbal torrent thick with insults to dead ancestors; and comedians who will make merciless fun of our dividers.
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READING
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I have been reading two books on the ephemeral nature of power and wealth, especially when they are illegally, not to say criminally, obtained:
THE MADOFF CHRONICLES by Brian Ross (New York, 2009), and
KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS: THE LAST TESTAMENT, Translated and edited by Edward Cranshaw (Boston, 1974).
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Brian Ross on Bernard and Ruth Madoff's lifestyle: “They sought the 'old money' look, even though their money was freshly stolen.”
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Khrushchev hated Stalin but loved using the power amassed and concentrated by him.
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ONE-LINERS
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Among Armenians, yesterday’s friend may be (and often is) today’s enemy, but today’s enemy will never be tomorrow’s friend.
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I repeat myself because I am told again and again that the earth is flat.
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The credo of all ideologues and partisans should begin with the words: “I believe in a false god….”
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If you are wrong, they may forgive you. But if you are right, they will silence you.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 18, 2010
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FROM ZERO TO INFINITY
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Not all stories in one's life have a clear or even a discernible beginning and end. “At the beginning was the word” is a sentence conceived and written by men, not by God or Reality. It is more likely that both beginnings and ends in one's life take place when we are asleep, sometimes even long before we were born.
Our genocide began 600 years ago when we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan, and even long before that, when we welcomed our enemies by failing to present a united front to them.
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READING KHRUSHCHEV
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In his memoirs Khrushchev speaks of “loafers, charlatans and toadies who overcrowd our institutes, bloating the staffs and gobbling up state funds without giving anything in return.” And I think of our own institutes – schools, churches, centers, political and cultural organizations – and above all newspapers (with their respective publishers, editors, assistant editors, and correspondents) of which we have a good number when one or two will do just as well – assuming their function is to publish news (as opposed to pushing their respective propaganda line) and not to provide employment to loafers, charlatans, and brown-nosers.
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“SMALL PEOPLE,” AND “LIFE BACK”
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It is in thoughtless moments that we reveal our real thoughts – as BP executives may have realized by now.
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DOSTOEVSKY SPEAKS
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“Russian thought is preparing a grandiose renovation for the entire world…and this will occur in about a century – that’s my passionate belief.”
There you have it: one of the greatest writers of all time confusing wishful thinking with prophecy -- all in the name of faith and patriotism, of course.
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AN ARMENIAN PERVERSION
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Instead of studying our present complexes and contradictions, our academics prefer to study our graves.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 19, 2010
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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In Saramago's obituary I read this morning: “A militant atheist who maintained that human history would have been a lot more peaceful if it weren't for religion, his novels are preoccupied with the question of God.” Which reminds me of the words of a theologian (Karl Barth?) who said: “You may let go of God but God will never let you go.”
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First you are taught to respect your elders, then you are lied to.
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Better a useful idiot than a useless genius.
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If I disappoint some readers it may be because I dare to think for myself as opposed to delivering the same speeches and sermons they were exposed to as children.
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To those who accuse me of pessimism, I say: To write is to hope, and to hope is a symptom of optimism.
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Capitalism is morally superior to communism if only because greed for money is better than greed for power.
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More often than not bias is expressed in the selection of facts rather than in their misinterpretation.
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Jean Rostand: “There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.”
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Anonymous: “Skinheads have more hair than brains.”
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Anonymous: “A friend in need is history.”
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Once in a while I am tempted to remind my fellow Armenians that there is more, much more, to being Armenian than Turks and massacres.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 20, 2010
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SKINHEADS ARE NOTBORN BUT MADE
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QUESTION: Who is a skinhead? Can you define him?

ANSWER: If you insult those who disagree with you, you qualify. It goes without saying that where there are skinheads, there will also be architects of a context within which skinheads thrive. Likewise, where there is racism, there will also be academics, historians, political and religious leaders and pundits who will equate
patriotism with fascism.

Q: Do we have such a thing as a dominant idea today, and if we do, how would you define it?

A: Turcocentrism is our dominant ideas and I would define it as the misconception that Turks are the source of all our misfortunes. It goes without saying that Turks deserve all the epithets we heap on them. It is equally true that we could heap the same number of epithets and then some on ourselves and our own leadership.

Q: Such as?

A: Incompetence, lack of self-reliance, ignorance of history, divisiveness, tribalism, intolerance, myopia bordering on blindness, inability to discriminate fact from propaganda, too much dependence on benefactors and charity and hardly any discernible effort on exposing and eliminating corruption.

Q: How do we combat these aberrations?

A: We begin by not silencing or insulting those who disagree with us.

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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 21, 2010
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READING GANDHI
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“We hold that the civilization that you support
to be the reverse of civilization.”
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“I am fighting against three opponents:
the British, the Indians, myself.”
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“Violence is a result of fear.
Dishonesty is fear.
Fearlessness is the key to Truth.”
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“God is neither in heaven, nor down below,
but in everyone.”
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This last quotation might as well be a paraphrase of
“The Kingdom of God is within you.”
But if the Kingdom of God is within us,
so is the Empire of the Devil.
How else to explain wars, massacres, and man's inhumanity to man?
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And speaking of fear: I think of readers
who insult me anonymously
and from a safe distance.
What are they afraid of?
What else but being exposed for what they really are –
skinheads who have been brainwashed by liars.
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More often than not men look up to liars for moral guidance
and are more than willing to kill and die in the name of a lie.
How else to explain organized religions
and religious wars, persecutions, and intolerance?
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Primitive man was wiser and more civilized
when he believed in an unknown and unknowable Power
which was the source of all good as well as evil.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 22, 2010
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KIND WORDS
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“What have you really done for your country and fellow countrymen?” I am asked once in a while by readers who, as dupes of “men of action,” have been brought up to believe contemplation is a waste of time and those who engage in it no better than mental masturbators.
To them I say: Sometimes what we don't do can be as important as what we do.
Allow me therefore to tell you what I have not done:
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I have never said, as God's favorite people, we can do no wrong.
I have never spoken in the name of God (whom I believe to be incomprehensible) or Truth (which I believer to be unknowable).
I have at no time tried to legitimize our failings by saying we have none.
Neither have I covered up our contradictions of which we have many.
I have not treated my readers as dupes who will believe anything they are told.
I have never written a Panchoonie letter that ends with the line: “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (Send us a little money).
I have not violated anyone's human rights by silencing him.
I have never said “Yes, sir!” to leaders whose number one concern is number one.
I have consistently refused to join the chorus of our Turcocentric ghazetajis and speechifiers in ascribing all our defeats and catastrophes to our enemies and phony friends.
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Have I accomplished anything?
I don't know.
What are my chances that some day I may succeed where far better men than myself have failed?
Probably next to none.
Why do I go on writing?
That is a question I ask myself every day and so far I have failed to come up with a remotely satisfactory answer.
Am I a useless member of the community?
If I am, I do not consider that to be entirely my own fault, but the fault of readers who believe action (even the wrong action) to be superior to contemplation.
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In a commentary in today's paper I read the following quotation by Al Capone: “You get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”
If so far I have failed, it may be because I have used only kind words.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 23, 2010
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DANGEROUS WORDS
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If I were to name the two most dangerous words, they would have to be “I believe.”
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The wold is too ready to criticize and condemn xxxs for the suffering they have inflicted on Palestinians during the last decades but less willing to criticize the world for the suffering that has inflicted on xxxs during the last centuries, not to say millennia. I call this disparity a symptom not of anti-Zionism but of anti-Semitism – an 'ism” or a belief system as dangerous as any organized religion that has declared and fought wars, committed massacres, and murdered innocent civilians in the name of God or Truth.
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Speaking of religions with their holy books and monopolistic claims: I suggest they should be judged not by their intentions or principles but by their history. Theory is one thing, practice another. Ideologies like nationalism and communism may have good, even noble intentions, but their abuses have been such that even some of their most dedicated adherents had no choice but to reject them.
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As for capitalism: recent economic and political developments in America have made it abundantly clear that in practice, it means free enterprise for the poor and the unemployed, and socialism for the rich and chief executive officers.
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Organized religions like Christianity and Islam have not only behaved as though they had a license to kill not only the foreign infidel but also the domestic heretic. Consider the case of Catholics versus Protestants, or Shiites versus Sunnis...
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A belief system acts on the human brain like a potent drug or alcohol.
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And speaking of drugs and chief executive officers: Early this morning I heard on the radio that the tobacco industry has given up the claim that smoking is not addictive or that it does not cause cancer. We may now look forward to the day when the Pope of Rome will also give up his absurd claim of infallibility. But I for one am not holding my breath.
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[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

June 23, 2010
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DANGEROUS WORDS
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If I were to name the two most dangerous words, they would have to be “I believe.”
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The wold is too ready to criticize and condemn xxxs for the suffering they have inflicted on Palestinians during the last decades but less willing to criticize the world for the suffering that has inflicted on xxxs during the last centuries, not to say millennia. I call this disparity a symptom not of anti-Zionism but of anti-Semitism – an 'ism” or a belief system as dangerous as any organized religion that has declared and fought wars, committed massacres, and murdered innocent civilians in the name of God or Truth.

The two most dangerous words is "I trust."

Zionism is a racist ideology which supports apartheid (we are better than you, therefore you have no right to live).

And for the last time Arabic is a SEMETIC LANGUAGE just like HEBREW!!!