notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

this and that

Thursday, January 13, 2005
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I have said this before but it bears repeating if only to remind myself that, since beggars can't be choosers, I cherish the very few readers that I have, including those who become unhinged when they read me. If I knew how to pray I would ask the Good Lord that some day in the near or distant future these readers will acquire that minimum degree of inner balance and common sense without which understanding oneself, let alone others, becomes an impossibly complex and an almost insurmountable challenge.
*
JEWISH SAYINGS
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"If you can't bite, don't show your teeth."
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"You can't fill a sack that's full of holes."
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"Don't offer pearls to men who deal in onions."
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"Once upon a time angels walked the earth; today, they are not found even in heaven."
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"Anger is a fool."
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"Whoever is consumed by rage hears no thunder and sees no lightning."
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"He who seeks the truth must listen to his opponent."
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"A brother turned enemy is an enemy for life."
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ON JEWS
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So much wisdom, and so much suffering in the hands of barbarians and fanatics!
*
ABOUT MYSELF
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I will never be a popular writer because I write about our present mores and morons to an audience that prefers recycled crapola.
#
Friday, January 14, 2005
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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS
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To insult someone anonymously is to add cowardice to bad manners.
*
If you are afraid of writers, don't read; if you are afraid of losing an argument, don't contradict.
*
The wife of a wealthy fool will be prettier than the wife of a poor philosopher.
*
Every dupe operates on the assumption that he cannot be duped.
*
Don't assume, but if you must, assume against yourself - you will be on safer ground that way.
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When it comes to the failings of other nations, we have 20/20 vision, but when it comes to our own, we are blind, deaf, and dumb.
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When two fools agree, they think they have achieved wisdom.
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If you criticize or insult someone without understanding or reading him, you expose your own shortcomings more than his.
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Dialogue has very few friends but many enemies, among them: ignorance, prejudice, power, dogma, arrogance, ego, barbarism, and in general, anything that is connected with ideology and religion.
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On the subject of horizons, dwarfs will never agree with giants.
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All fools can plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance.
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JEWISH WISDOM
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"When a crook kisses you, count your teeth."
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"A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing."
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"Some academics are no better than jackasses because all they carry is a lot of books."
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"A deaf man heard a mute tell him how a blind man saw a cripple run - on water."
#
Saturday, January 15, 2005
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LET US NOW PRAISE HONEST MEN
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Some day I will fall silent -- no doubt about that. But that should not be cause for celebration to anyone, because if what I have been saying contains even a single particle of truth, it will not be forgotten or ignored. In saying this, I don't think I am being sentimental about truth. I happen to know that there are a thousand lies for every truth and they too will be repeated and recycled to the end of time. Even so, truth will continue to be a source of dread to all tyrants and their henchmen, who operate on the assumption that if they silence or starve one, or even a thousand honest men, that will be the end of honesty.
*
Have I said this before? I may have. I don't remember. But if you do, allow me to thank you. All writers cherish faithful readers with good memories, because they are the ones who elevate the status of what they have written to "It is written."
*
ON GOD
**************
To believe in God is the greatest of luxuries because it means to have at your disposal an inexhaustible source of forgiveness.
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MORE JEWISH SAYINGS
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"Two dogs can kill a lion."
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"Henchmen are worse than their masters."
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"When men quarrel, even God's anger does not frighten them."
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"Bad men do well in this world, saints in the next."
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"The one-eyed need sleep, too."
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"We anger God with our sins, and men with our virtues."
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"Where love is, no room is too small."
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"It is easier to know ten countries than one man."
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"The heaviest weight in the world is an empty pocket."
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, January 16, 2005
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NOTES / COMMENTS
***************************
If fools outnumber the wise, they will choose a fool as a leader.
*
Some of my critics pretend to know better, but instead of sharing their wisdom, they prefer to share their venom.
*
Because three readers disagreed with me, a fourth reader writes: "If one man calls you a fool, you may not have a problem. If two men call you a fool, you may have a problem. If three men call you a fool, you might as well resign yourself to the fact that you are a damn fool."
*
Maybe so, but it is also written: "Not everyone who identifies himself as a man is one."
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It is also written: "You cannot contradict the braying of an ass. Neither can you contradict the braying of three, or, for that matter, four asses."
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Let it be said, if this is not written, it shall be.
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I knew we were in deep trouble on the day one of our elder statesmen wrote me a letter saying he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was spelling my name wrong.
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"May you go to hell!" might as well be synonymous with "May you spend the rest of your life working for an Armenian." I know what I am saying; I have been in both places.
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A tolerant atheist is closer to god than an intolerant Christian.
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I wish someone had warned me that in the first thousand days of every important undertaking, you will make a thousand mistakes; and the worst mistake you can make is to assume that in the second thousand years, you will make only 999 mistakes.
#
Monday, January 17, 2005
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In the December 16, 2004 issue of LE POINT, a Paris-based French-language illustrated weekly, there are a number of articles, commentaries and a long interview about Turkey in which Armenians are inevitably mentioned and discussed.
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"There is a Christian - a Bulgarian or an Armenian - in the family tree of every Turk [alive today]," states Levent Yilmaz, identified as a young Turkish intellectual.
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To the question, "Why is it that there is a law that prohibits all mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916?" Yilmaz replies: "No, that is not true. The law does not mention this or any other event specifically. It speaks only of blasphemy against the integrity and unity of the Republic - a judge is free to interpret the law in many ways."
*
To the question whether or not Turkey is in denial of the Armenian genocide, Yilmas is willing to admit that the Armenian genocide is the last great national taboo, and it must be openly discussed, which is being done by a number of Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Tayyip Erdogan. He goes on to say that Vahakn Dadrian's book was published recently without cuts. The debate, he adds, is whether or not the word genocide, "which was coined in 1948 in reference to the Jewish genocide," can be applied to the Armenian experience.
*
In the concluding remarks of the editorial on page 3 by Claude Imbert, we read: "Turkey's ambition is to be part of the West, but its interests lie in the East with the Turkish-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and by the Caspian Sea. Turkey also comes with a heavy freight of controversies (Cyprus, Armenia, Kurdistan)…."
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A subtitle in an essay titled "Europe: The Battle of Turkey," reads: "The Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Is It an Obstacle to
Its Membership?" It goes on to say that it will be a point of contention during the next ten years of negotiations.
*
Far from being "forgotten," it looks like our genocide is very much alive and kicking.
*
Elsewhere, in the same issue, and on the occasion of the sale of one of his paintings at Christie's in London, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) is identified as a Russian. It seems, an anonymous buyer paid 2.1 million euros for it - "a record so far for a 19th-century Russian painting."
#
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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The internet is a useful medium in so far as it allows hoodlums and cowards to expose themselves.
*
There should be an unspoken law that says, if you are going to attack or insult someone on the internet, you should identify yourself, because to do so anonymously is a sure symptom of cowardice.
*
We are insensitive to human rights issues. We don't even like to mention free speech. After all, who among us can plead not guilty to the charge of not having violated the free speech of a fellow Armenian by means of insults masquerading as criticism?
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And since literature is inconceivable without free speech, it follows, we are all guilty of implementing a policy of systematic extermination of our intellectual class. But perhaps what I am talking about here is not free speech but civilized conduct.
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When was the last time any one of our academics spoke up in defense of free speech? As for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (our axis of evil): what can I say about them that has not already been said by Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Voskanian, Shahnour, Massikian, and Zarian, among many others?
#
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
**************************************
When I first met an assimilated Armenian in Italy, I remember, he looked down at me as an odd curiosity, and I looked at him as a brazen renegade. I was wrong and he may have been right. Because, as a teenager, I might as well have been a walking encyclopedia of chauvinist clichés and a dupe who believed my elders knew better and they had done whatever was humanly possible to save and preserve the nation. I know better today.
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In a commentary, I read the following: "The inhabitants in many of the hardest hit areas [by the tsunami] are amongst the poorest in the world. One reason they live in squalor is that the governments in their countries rule by force, keeping everything for the ruling class. Long before the tsunami hit, peasant populations had been excluded from aid programs intended to benefit them."
My first thought: our homeland too has been hit by an invisible and slow-motion tsunami of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence. We, in the Diaspora, may be better off financially, but are we really better of morally?
*
A headline in our paper reads: "Pope wants more dialogue between Jews and Catholics." I can't help wondering what were they doing during the last 2000 years? - except perhaps calling one another blasphemers. And what will they call one another after 2000 years of dialogue? Brothers? Maybe. But perhaps the real question should be: Will they ever stop thinking of one another as blasphemers? Can they, without sacrificing a central tenet of their faith?
#

[arabaliozian]

more...

Thursday, January 20, 2005
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LABELS
***************
When I write about Armenians, I don't think of them as Armenians but as human beings. The same applies to Turks. I am not implying Turks are not guilty of genocide. What I am saying is that many other nations, among them Greeks, Germans, Americans, and Russians, would have behaved the same way only because they too have been guilty in the past of many unspeakable crimes against humanity. And given the same conditions, and if the roles had been reversed, who is to say we wouldn't have done to the Turks what they did to us?
*
Speaking of conditions: the Turks were confronting external enemies (Russians, Greeks, the Great Powers, including Australians) as well as internal insurgents (Greeks, Kurds, Armenians). Their very survival as a nation was at stake.
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My question is, who is threatening our present leadership today? How to explain their mistreatment of their fellow Armenians -- a mistreatment that forces them to be homeless, to emigrate, or to engage in prostitution in order to survive? How to explain their total indifference for the future of the nation?
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Indifference, it has been said, is worse than hatred, because in hatred we involved the other in our feelings; that is to say, we do not cease to think of him as fellow human beings. Whereas in indifference, we reduce him to an object whose extinction would not even register on our consciousness.
#
Friday, January 21, 2005
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THE HUMAN CONDITION
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The world is a mess because leaders play chess with the masses who can play only checkers. As for reality: it plays a game whose rules are known only to god, and so far he has refused to share them with mortals.
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Religious leaders contradict one another because they speak in the name of a being that they don't understand.
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The problem with liars is that they can't believe in the existence of the truth.
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As for history: if it's not the propaganda of the victor, it's the consolation of the loser.
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Two of the greatest historians of the 20th century (Spengler and Toynbee) disagree with each other, and their fellow historians have dismissed both as charlatans.
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Where fools are in charge, the wise are sure to be persecuted.
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We are like blind men advancing towards the precipice with the certainty that, since we cannot see it, it is not there.
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It was Graham Greene, I think, who once said something to the effect that a writer is a capitalist among communists, and a communist among capitalists, because his main function is to challenge, disturb, and provoke.
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Let us worship god, if we must, but let us not pretend to understand him.
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It is written: "When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are conversing."
#
Saturday, January 22, 2005
************************************
NATIONAL TABOOS
***************************
In Turkey, it's the Armenian Genocide; among us, it's all mention of Turkish humanity. But if we refuse to think of Turks as human beings worthy of our understanding, we shall have to think of them as bloodthirsty savages worse than vermin - which is the mistake they made when they tried to exterminate us. Even assuming Turks are no better than Asiatic barbarians: it would be poor diplomacy to address them as such, if only because barbarians are not in the habit of compromising or making concession or engaging in dialogue.
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THEM AND US
***********************
A headline in our paper this morning reads: "We're OK, It's Everyone Else Who Needs to Change." Perhaps the function of a writer is to point out the fact that this happens to be a universal illusion and none of us is in a position to plead immunity.
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THE BRAIN AND THE GUT
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This much said, I am willing to concede that my thoughts run much faster than my gut feelings, and very probably I will continue to think of Turks as bloodthirsty savages and Asiatic barbarians until the day I die.
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OUR AXIS OF EVIL
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Our bishops are accountable only to god; our benefactors are accountable only to capital; and our political bosses continue to think of themselves as the brains of the people, thus feeling no need to be accountable to the brainless. The massacre continues…
#

[arabaliozian]

from my diary

Thursday, January 27, 2005
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The aim of politics is power, not truth. Where there are political parties there will be propaganda. And where there is propaganda, education will be subservient to it. Which means, between the whole truth and a fraction of it (which is how propaganda is defined: a fraction of the truth), propaganda will be given priority. It is this and nothing else that allows the armies of two nations to go to war and kill with the conviction that they are performing their sacred patriotic duty and they deserve universal admiration for their sacrifice.
*
Wars are not encounters between a truth and a lie, but between two lies.
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Some day if mankind enters a Golden Age of Universal Enlightenment, there will be only one history text book taught in the schools of all nations and tribes. That's because the past of mankind is one and the moment you start slicing it, it ceases being history and it becomes propaganda, that is to say, baloney. It follows, so-called nationalist historians are not historians but baloney artists.
*
Today, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our local paper has published a series of illustrated articles, commentaries and reminiscences by survivors. In none of them is the Armenian genocide mentioned, though several other more recent genocides are. Ours, I suppose, might as well be ancient history.
*
Our genocide may be "ancient history," but World War I is not. In Canada, where I live, World War I is remembered every year on November 11 - veterans march, bands play, speeches are delivered, government employees are given the day off, and at 11:00 AM a moment of silence is observed.
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What about us? How many of us have been taught to remember the anniversary of any other genocide? I have even met Armenians who deny the reality of the Holocaust. After all is said and done, who among us is in a position to plead not guilty to the charge of having been at one time or another the dupe of a baloney artist?
#
Friday, January 28, 2005
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IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM
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If you are for honesty, the dishonest will gang up against you, but they will never say, "We are against honesty because we have been dishonest all our lives and we have no intention of changing." What they will do instead is invent other reasons, and needless to add, these reasons will be dishonest ones.
*
The greatest temptation is not sex but wishful thinking, and wishful thinking has a way of insinuating itself in our most cherished convictions.
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Once, after verbally abusing me almost daily for a number of years, one of my gentle readers telephoned to apologize, and he apologized so profusely that I believed him. Shortly thereafter he went back to abusing me again, all in the name of patriotism, of course.
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It is written: "If you hear a mountain has moved, believe it. But if you hear a man has changed, believe it not."
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One could also say that 600 years of Ottoman oppression on their part, and Ottoman brown-nosing on ours, cannot be obliterated from our collective subconscious by an act of will.
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During the Soviet era, whenever I published a critical commentary about the regime, I would get abusive calls and letters from our fellow travellers. Nothing evil ever dies. Some of my readers today engage in verbal hooliganism in defense of patriotism, and it doesn't even occur to them that massacres too have been committed and covered up in the name of patriotism.
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Some of our phony superpatriots operate on the assumption that patriotism and civilized conduct are mutually exclusive concepts.
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It is written: "Patriotism is a very convenient refuge of rascals, ruffians, and riffraff." And so it is.
#
Saturday, January 29, 2005
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The function of an Armenian writer today is similar to that of a composer of music for the movies - to provide background noise, and at best, to emphasize the action on the screen: in our case, the clichés of our speechifiers and sermonizers.
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They warned me about the starving part, but nobody ever said, "You will be writing for an audience with a marked preference for recycled chauvinist crapola."
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If a writer does not go beyond the known and the familiar, he might as well go into the recycling business too.
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The more ignorant the man, the more satisfied with his ignorance.
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Shame on female interrogators at the Guantanamo Detention Center who used sex and such shocking devices as menstrual blood (red ink, actually) to break down the resistance of Muslim prisoners. It would have been much more humane and compatible with their religious beliefs and practices if the poor bastards had been beheaded. Beheaded, they would now be in paradise making whoopee in their private harem of 73 virgins.
#

[Thai-Samurai]

Some day if mankind enters a Golden Age of Universal Enlightenment, there will be only one history text book taught in the schools of all nations and tribes. That's because the past of mankind is one and the moment you start slicing it, it ceases being history and it becomes propaganda, that is to say, baloney. It follows, so-called nationalist historians are not historians but baloney artists.


Is that your personnel opinion? Do you write these every day? Why would we want to have only one history book. The past of mankind isn't one. The past of mankind is very different. The history of the Native Americans is a lot different from the history of the Chinese.

[Thai-Samurai]

I also want to add that I agree to this one:

"When two fools agree, they think they have achieved wisdom."

[Thai-Samurai]

Never mind, carry on.

[arabaliozian]

comments

Sunday, February 06, 2005
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If you are an honest man, you will make many enemies but very few friends.
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My patriotism is as necessary to me as air and water. My enemy's patriotism might as well be carbon monoxide and arsenic.
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In my salad days I wrote a number of dishonest books. When I wrote them I did not think of myself as being dishonest but as being patriotic. And I was outraged when a Canadian critic accused me of racism for my uncompromising pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish stance. It took me twenty years to realize that he was right and I was wrong. It may take me another twenty years to realize that when I write an honest line today I should not expect to have the agreement and support of our chauvinist charlatans.
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Patriotism, we are taught to believe, is a far more important attribute than honesty. Unfortunately for us and for mankind in general, our enemies are similarly brainwashed. Result? Millions of innocent victims. It may take not twenty but two thousand more years for humanity to realize the obvious fact that patriotism is not a virtue but an integral part of our killer instinct.
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History is clear on this point: territoriality and terrorism might as well be synonymous.
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Pablo Neruda: "I only know the skin of the earth, / And that it has no name."
#
Monday, February 07, 2005
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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
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I was brought up to believe in the moral superiority of Armenians. Since then I have been disappointed so many times that I no longer believe in the moral superiority of any race, nation or tribe; neither do I believe in their moral inferiority. We all swim in the same soup. Germans as well as Russians, Americans as well as Africans - they have all produced their share of swine, and Armenians as well as Turks are no exception to this rule.
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It is not the best among us who assert moral superiority, but the worst. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a good look at himself in the mirror and question his readiness to accept racist propaganda as the final arbiter of morality.
#
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
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BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS
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In the second half of this wonderful historical novel by Louis de Bernieres, we read the following:
"The Armenians and the Kurds have loathed each other for centuries, and, owing to the fact that there are many Armenian units and commanders in the Russian army, the same banal atrocities have been committed against the Kurds that the latter have always enjoyed committing against Armenians."
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Further down there is a similar passage dealing with Adana.
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May I confess that I read similar passages in foreign books with a sense of relief and malicious pleasure. I for one am tired of seeing Armenians portrayed as perennial victims of bloodthirsty savages.
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Perhaps we owe our survival not to our religious faith or superior intelligence or degree of civilization (probably all myths created by our propagandists), but to the fact that, in human affairs, past conduct is not always an infallible index of future conduct and appearances can be misleading. So much so that, only the naïve and the ignorant are perplexed when sheep behave like wolves.
#
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
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OUR GREATEST ENEMY
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Gostan Zarian (20th-century author): "Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech."
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Avedik Issahakian (20th-century poet): "Our three curses: earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, brainless leaders."
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Yeghishe (5th-century historian): "If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subject will perish."
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To those who say, "Yeghishe was wrong because after 1500 years of his prediction we are still around," I say: "We may be around, yes, but one could also say that we have been perishing the death of a thousand cuts."
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Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran Contra, Clinton and Monica: politicians never admit errors of judgment until caught in the mesh of an inflexible justice system. If it were up to our Ramgavars, all Tashnak leaders would be forced to resign on grounds of criminal misconduct, and vice versa - all Ramgavar leaders would hang from the nearest tree for their support of a criminal regime in the Homeland.
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That's one reason why these two entities cannot engage in dialogue. There is no honor among charlatans.
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As an anti-partisan, I would like to see leaders of both parties cross-examined by an unbiased panel. Will that ever happen? One can only hope and pray. But I have every reason to suspect that both parties would rather disband than admit any errors of judgment. Their only defense so far: "We are not perfect, no one is." Ask them to expand and they will say "No comment," or words to that effect. They admit their imperfection only to appear more human - that is to say, more perfect in their humanity.
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I began by quoting a medieval historian and two contemporary writers. Let me conclude by quoting three more intellectual leaders:
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Raffi (1835-1888): "Those who are responsible for our safety are themselves a gang of criminals…We are like sheep without a shepherd."
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Nigoghos Sarafian (1905-1973): "Our history is a litany of lamentation, anxiety, horror, and massacre. Also deception and abysmal naiveté
mixed with the smoke of incense and the sound of sharagans."
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Shavarsh Missakian (1884-1957): "I see charlatanism and cheap chauvinism everywhere but not a single trace of self-sacrifice and dedication to ideals and principles."
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It is to be noted that Shavarsh Missakian was himself an intellectual as well as a Tashnak political leader.
#

[arabaliozian]

as i see it

Thursday, February 10, 2005
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ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
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A capitalist version of American history is to be trusted as much as a communist version of Russian history. Likewise, since nationalism is also an ideology, a Turkish version of Turkish history is as trustworthy as a Greek version of Greek history, or a Jewish version of Jewish history, or a Palestinian…and so on and so forth.
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There are those who maintain the Armenian version of Armenian history is an exception to this rule. I am not one of them.
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But to speak of an Armenian version of history is a misnomer because we don't have one but several - provided we define history not just as what happened by why.
*
In one version of our history, General Antranik is represented as a great military leader and a hero. In another, he is described as a war criminal. And in the General's own version, Armenian political leaders are the real war criminals who should be crucified because they must be held partly responsible for the massacres.
*
Why does the average Turk trust Turkish historians more than any other? For the same reason that the average Greek, Jew, Russian, American, and Armenian trusts his own historians.
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Historians are motivated not by love of truth, but, at best, by love of God and Country; and it is a universally acknowledged fact that, in a world where gods and geographic boundaries are in conflict, my god and my geography will be closer to the truth than my enemy's.
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As he is drowning while Smyrna is in flames, a Greek character in BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres, is quoted as saying to an imaginary audience: "Don't misunderstand me, it isn't that I think Greeks are worse than Turks, what irritates me is that they think they're so much better when really they're exactly the same."
Such admissions are made only in works of fiction written by foreign writers. I was born and raised in Greece and I now live in a Canadian city with a substantial Greek community, and I have never heard a Greek expressing sentiments remotely similar to these and I doubt if I will live long enough to hear an Armenian admit that Turks too are human beings who deserve to live.
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Whenever a Jewish writer says anything critical of Jews, he is told: "If Hitler were alive today, he would enjoy reading you." And whenever I try to humanize Turks, I am accused of covering up the Genocide. It comes with the territory, I guess -- the territory being an attempt to view the past without bias.
#
Friday, February 11, 2005
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BACK TO SQUARE ONE
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To qualify for membership in the EU and under mostly French pressure, Turkey is now willing to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Henceforth, we are told, the Armenian Genocide will no longer be "a national taboo" subject in Turkey, and all mention of it will not be viewed as a crime punishable by law.
*
Before we celebrate our "paper" victory, however, let me warn the reader that this sudden change of heart comes with strings attached. Our genocide will be discussed in Turkish textbooks, yes, but it will be placed in its proper context, and the word context, as everyone ought to know by now, has the authority of making what is true, false, and vice versa.
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Our genocide in context means equal space will be given to the suffering of the Turks. According to BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis de Bernieres, unspeakable atrocities were committed on all sides, including Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians, Kurds, and Armenians. At least a million Turks were deported from Greece and the Balkans under conditions similar to our own deportations. It is this fact that converted Toynbee from an uncompromising Armenophile to a modified Turcophile.
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It will be remembered that Toynbee began his brilliant career as historian by publishing several books on the tyranny of the Turks and the massacre of the Armenians. But shortly after the war he stated that in these books he had told only a fraction of the story and when he wrote them he was not an independent agent but a member of the British civil service. He further explained that when he investigated the Turkish side of the story after acquiring Turkish friends and learning the Turkish language, he realized that Armenian demands had been unreasonable and Turkish actions if not justifiable than explainable. Even so, he at no time denied the reality of the Genocide.
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After researching the subject for ten years, Louis de Bernieres reached the same conclusion.
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Tolstoy's own daughter, who was a nurse in Van during the Russo-Turkish war, writes in her memoirs that it was impossible to tell Armenian from Turk, or victim from victimizer, because both behaved in an indistinguishable manner.
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My guess is the Turkish textbooks will reduce the events to a controversy of abstract numbers. If we claim our victims number two million, they will say theirs number more than that, and Armenophiles as well as Turcophiles will continue to believe what they like to believe, because no one is in a position to assert "I was there, I counted them, and these are the exact number of Turkish and Armenian victims."
*
This much said, let me add that if we ever reach a consensus (which means working together rather than agreement) we may have to consider the Turkish side of the story. As for reparations: the Turks would have to borrow the money from the EU for 99 years with no interest.
#
Saturday, February 12, 2005
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BLACK AND WHITE
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The more I read about the past, the more I treat the Hollywood version of it with suspicion. In real life the good guys don't always come in white and the bad guys in black. I am not implying our enemies may not be as bad as we think they are. I am willing to concede that they may even be infinitely worse than any of us can imagine. I for one have no sympathy for serial killers and I believe lethal injection is too good for them. What I am saying is that we may not be as good as we assess ourselves to be.
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GRAY AND BLACK
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Engaging in verbal massacre and adopting the fascist method of treating dissent may even change the color of our wardrobe from white to gray, and the distance from gray to black is shorter than we think, or short enough for those who believe in human rights to feel ill at ease in the company of self-righteous charlatans who pretend to have all the answers. And they pretend to have all the answers because the answers happen to endow them with a sense of moral superiority. They forget that some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind - among them our genocide - were committed in the name of God and patriotism.
*
ON GOD
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There are two schools of thought: the first says God created man in His own image; the second says it is the other way around: it is man who created God in his own image. I disagree with both schools. I suspect man created the devil in his own image and called him god.
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BRAIN-DEAD THINKERS
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Readers who demand that I write what they think operate on the assumption that their thinking days are over and henceforth they will rely on the old brain and reject anything that may be alien to it.
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ON PATRIOTISM
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No amount of patriotism can justify hooliganism and fascism. Patriotism justifies nothing, not even patriotism.
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TWO QUESTIONS
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Why is it that in our environment it is dangerous to have an opinion, unless it is someone else's opinion and preferably that of a boss, bishop, or benefactor.
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Why is it that common sense is so uncommon?
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OVERHEARD
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"It is better to be hated by a democracy than to be loved by a dictatorship."
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[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 13, 2005
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THROUGH THE EYES OF THE WORLD
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Henry Brooks Adams, American historian (1838-1918): "Politics has always been the systematic organization of hatred."
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We had the sympathy of the world in 1915, and we may still have it today, 90 years later. But let us not ask for more lest we are thought of as beings whose greed knows no bounds.
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"Truth shall set you free," we are told. If true, what shall lies, propaganda, and hatred lead us into?
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Wars are blunders. World War I was a colossal blunder. The blunders and crimes of World War II on both sides are too many to catalogue here.
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If our genocide has become a controversial topic today it may be because we emphasize what happened to us, and the Turks concentrate on why they did what they did. We say they slaughtered us by the million, and they say we were guilty of treason because we supported the enemy and even fought side by side with the Russians and the French. And, in time of war, treason is a capital offense.
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I remember to have read somewhere that some Armenians in Istanbul cheered openly whenever news of Russian victories reached the capital, in the same way that Palestinians cheered on 9/11.
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We say our victims number two million. The Turks say their own victims number more than that. The Turks further assert we made territorial demands on a dismembered and moribund empire.
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Consensus may be reached only if both sides compromise and admit that in time of war objective thinking, reason, common sense and decency become obsolete commodities.
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This much said, let me also mention the fact that there were many decent and distinguished Armenians who opposed the actions and policies of our revolutionaries. Artin Dadian, an important player in the Ottoman administration, begged them repeatedly not to engage in acts of terrorism. General Antranik warned them not to cooperate with the Young Turks. They were both ignored.
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As for the people in general: most of them, especially those in the interior provinces, were functional illiterates who lacked political awareness. Others considered the Ottoman Empire as their only homeland. Still others (mostly merchants and the upper classes) were against the revolutionaries. To complicate matters even more, many others (no one quite knows the percentage) were the offspring of mixed marriages. And when I say mixed marriages, I don't just mean Armenians and Turks, but also Armenians and Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians, Armenians and Kurds, Armenians and Jews, Armenians and Circassians, and so on,
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In this connection I should also cite the cases of Krikor Zohrab and Roupen Sevag, the first a lawyer, writer, editor, and political leader, and the second a doctor and author. Zohrab trusted the Turks to such a degree that he saved Talaat's life by risking his own. The second, when asked by his German wife to quit Istanbul and emigrate to Europe because she did not like the Turks, reassured her by saying deep down Turks were nice folk and she had no reason to mistrust them. Both were slaughtered by the Turks.
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Confused? So is the world, except perhaps those who are in the business of organizing hatred.
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It is not that the world doesn't know the truth, the world doesn't even care to know or listen. The world has problems of its own and it can't be bothered with old tribal feuds and "ancient history."
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Speaking for myself, I say: As we lecture the world on our genocide in 1915, let us not ignore the two genocides or "white massacres" that are taking place today, even as I write these lines: namely, the exodus from the Homeland and assimilation in the Diaspora.
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Monday, February 14, 2005
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ON THE PERPLEXITY OF EVIL
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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) American political philosopher: "Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
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The knowledge that I now have faithful readers willing to scold me whenever I stray from the straight and narrow allows me to relax and write with greater freedom.
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I write not as an Armenian but as a member of the human family, and what is even more to the point, I don't consider that an act of treason.
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For every truth there are a thousand lies, for every propaganda line there is another that contradicts it, and the world is a mess because the majority of mankind prefers a convenient lie to an inconvenient truth.
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From Arnold J. Toynbee I learned that an incompetent leadership can make a bad situation worse.
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From Louis de Bernieres I learned that the Turks victimized their Christian minorities in Turkey because as Muslim minorities in the Balkans they had been victimized by Christians.
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From Tatyana Tolstoy I learned that, given the right combination of circumstances, an Armenian will behave like a Turk. Or, as Puzant Granian once put it more bluntly: "There is a Turk in all of us."
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Tatyana Tolstoy, Arnold J. Toynbee, and Louis de Bernieres do not deny the reality of the Genocide. What they do perhaps is make the perplexity of radical evil less incomprehensible.
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The problem with ideologues and partisans is that their arguments convince no one but themselves and members of the club.
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Long before the Genocide, Raffi urged Armenians to get out of the Ottoman Empire because, he explained, the Turks had no respect for human life. (Remember that the sultans had their male offspring, except one, strangled with silk cords to avert civil war).
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Shortly before the Genocide, Krikor Zohrab urged Armenians to get out because, he explained, this time around, the Turks were planning a campaign of total extermination. "Zohrab effendi is exaggerating," they said.
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In retrospect, exodus from the Ottoman Empire would have been the preferred course of action, as it is today from the Homeland.
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Our partisans lament the fate of our silenced writers in the Ottoman Empire and the USSR even as they themselves silence anyone who refuses to recycle their propaganda line.
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If an Armenian ignores the Turkish side of the story, in what way is he different from a Turk who is brainwashed to ignore the Armenian side of the story?
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005
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Anonymous: "There should be no enmity among seekers after truth."
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You cannot engage in dialogue with someone who thinks good manners to not apply to him because he speaks in the name of God and Country.
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We will not reach a consensus with the Turks so long as we call them Asiatic barbarians, cold-blooded murderers, and bloodthirsty savages. Diplomacy requires a different vocabulary.
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On the subject of vocabulary: Do we have a word for consensus? If we do, when was the last time you saw it in print? Why is it that there is so much talk of "corruptsia" and so little of consensus? Is it because we have an abundance of the first and a scarcity of the second?
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To qualify as an Armenian writer you need the skin of a crocodile, the obstinacy of a mule, and the lifestyle of an ascetic.
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Where the human rights of dissidents and minorities are not respected, the tyranny of the majority can be as ruthless as the tyranny of sultans.
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"There is a Turk in all of us." You want proof? Follow a discussion in an Armenian forum.
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Our partisans alienate two, brainwash one, and call it preserving the Armenian identity.
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In an environment of philistines who view literature as a waste of time and a matter of complete indifference, to have a reader's scorn and to be exposed to his venom must be seen as a step in the right direction.
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When it comes to understanding the past, it is better to begin with doubts than with certainties.
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A monologue cannot lead to consensus.
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Our partisans think to question the partisan line or to deviate from it even by a fraction of an inch is an act of treason.
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It is said, "all men naturally desire to know." But history tells us most men persecute those who may know something they don't know.
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Wednesday, February 16, 2005
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Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American writer: "HISTORY. An account of events brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
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It is also written: "History is made by hoodlums and written by dupes."
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Turks view history as the propaganda of the victor. We view it as the consolation of the loser - the idea that the whole world is rotten to the core except us. Some day both Turks and Armenians may realize that history ought to be an objective account of the past, which means, devoid of all partisan, patriotic, nationalist prejudices, fallacies, distortions, and misconceptions.
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Today a Turkish historian who dares to be critical of Turkish conduct at the turn of the last century is called a "pro-Armenian bastard." And any Armenian who questions the wisdom of Armenian actions is vilified as a " pro-Turkish hireling." The (verbal) massacre continues…
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Our revolutionaries did not ask the people if they wanted a revolution. Neither did the Turks ask them if they wanted deportation and massacre. That's the problem with authoritarian rulers. They think the people are sheep and they the shepherds who sometimes also double as butchers.
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If Armenian cannot agree with Armenian, how will he ever manage to agree with a Turk?
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I have committed many blunders in my life, probably many more than there are stars in heaven, and I will continue to commit them until the day I die. I understand blunders and the ease with which they are made. What I find difficult to understand are self-assessed morally superior individuals whose conduct has been, continues to be, and will ever be beyond criticism and reproach.
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We will be more credible in the eyes of the world (who may or may not give a damn one way or the other) if we claim to be only 99% right. If, on the other hand, we paint ourselves all white and our enemies pitch black, we may succeed only in raising doubts in the minds of the jury.
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We don't judge a man by his opinion of himself. Why should we judge a nation by its propaganda?
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Some day if I ever compile a list of common fallacies, I will begin with this one: "To think that what you believe must be true."
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I have no interest in convincing or converting anyone. I am neither a preacher nor a propagandist; I am simply writing down thoughts that I would have been afraid to confide even to myself ten years ago.
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