notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
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HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
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To kill the enemy without guilt, he must first be dehumanized and whenever possible demonized. This is what the Turks did to us during World War I; this is what the Germans did to the xxxs during World War II; this is what African-Americans do whenever they voice the slogan “White man is the devil”; this is what Sartre did when, speaking of the human condition, he delivered the dictum “Hell is other people”; and this is what we do today when we speak of Turks or, for that matter, fellow Armenians who disagree with us.
There is only one way to demonize another and that’s by projecting the evil that is within us.
To avoid facing reality by admitting the evil that is within him, man has invented the blame-game. If we can blame our misfortunes on others, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and we are born again as exemplary human beings without blemish. That is why the Turks cannot acknowledge the genocide, and that is why our self-righteous dividers cannot compromise and reach a consensus even as they speechify on patriotism or nationalism and practice tribalism.
The blame-game allows us to ignore the evil that is within us by concentrating on the evil that is within the enemy, even when the enemy happens to be our brother. Hence Zarian’s dictum “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, November 15, 2007
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BOOK REVIEW
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IDEAS: BRILLIANT THINKERS SPEAK THEIR MINDS. Edited by Bernie Lucht. Fredericton, N.B. 2005. 376 pages.
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In the 19th century, nationalism was thought to stand for freedom and independence, writes Bernard Lewis in one of the essays collected here. This in theory. In practice, “they [freedom and independence] have often proved to be mutually exclusive.” He goes on: “The ending of imperial domination and the establishment of independent national regimes all too often meant the replacement of foreign overlords by domestic tyrants, more adept and more intimate and less constrained in their tyranny.”
This may explain why under the sultans we enjoyed a Silver Age of literature, and under our own petty tyrants, its decline and death. I speak of literature not only because it happens to be close to my heart but also because free speech (without which literature is unthinkable) has always been a reliable index of a free and civilized society.
Further down Bernard Lewis writes: “In the old Ottoman Empire, when a new sultan succeeded to the throne, he was greeted by the crowds, which cheered him and shouted, “Sultan, don’t be proud, God is greater than you.” Compare that greeting with our own unspoken slogan: “Capital is greater than god.”
In another essay, titled “The Secular Messiahs” by George Steiner, we read: “In any struggle one begins to become like one’s opponent.” Hence the Ottomanism of our Turcocentric pundits. Or our own secular mini-, or rather, pseudo-messiahs who expect us to believe, on the day they convince the Turks to come clean, they will save the national honor and usher in a new Golden Age.
*
For more details on 20th-century domestic tyrants, see TALK OF THE DEVIL: ENCOUNTERS WITH SEVEN DICTATORS, by Riccardo Orizio, translated from the Italian by Avril Bardoni (Prince Frederick, MD 2003, 280 pages). A good subtitle of this fascinating little book could have been “Studies in Sadism and Megalomania.”
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[Azad]

Re: notes / comments

"the reality of the Armenian genocide results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people."
Anti Armenian Racist Bernard Lewis (joo)

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, November 16, 2007
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REFLECTIONS ON PROPAGANDA
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About Orizio’s book on dictators (mentioned above): without exception, all of them, including the most psychopathic, homicidal megalomaniacs, like Idi Amin Dada, portray themselves as selfless superpatriots dedicated to the welfare of the nation. Such are the dangers of self-assessment.
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“Realism implies seeing ourselves as we really are and the world as it actually is,” I read in the Op-Ed page of our paper this morning. One could say that the aim of self-assessment and propaganda consists in making us see ourselves as we are not and the world as it is not.
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The beauty of propaganda is that it is invariably positive, hence its popularity. The offensiveness of criticism is that sometimes it is right.
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One of the big lies in all propaganda is its refusal to identify itself as propaganda.
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Propaganda makes two false claims as if they were self-evident truths: (one) you are morally superior, and (two) those who disagree with you are wrong. Both claims are false because the morally superior do not as a rule assert any kind of superiority; and disagreement or dissent, or contradiction, is an essential ingredient in all dialogue.
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To silence dissent in the hope that it will fade away is an empty illusion. All dictators silence dissenters until they are themselves silenced by events over which they have no control. Churchill put it best when he said a dictator is like a man riding a tiger, and the tiger is getting hungry.
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The best and most effective way to silence a writer is to stop reading him. All other ways belong to fascists and fanatics who are afraid to be exposed as bullies and cowards.
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TURCOCENTRISM & OTTOMANISM
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Our Turcocentric pundits are incapable of writing a single line about us without mentioning Turks or without making us sound as if we were a passive extension of their will, thus depriving us of all power to shape our own destiny as free agents. It is almost as if after six centuries of subjection, we continue to think of them as our lords and masters.
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"Our political parties have been of no political use to us.
Their greatest enemy is free speech"
Gostan Zarian

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, November 17, 2007
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IDIOSYNCRASIES
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Americans love to write about Americans – American history, politics, wars, presidents, American music, art, theater, movies, American cities, American wildlife, and so on. The favorite subject of the French is of course the French – what else? The Germans write mostly about Germans, Italians about Italians, and Greeks about Greeks. But Armenians prefer to write about Turks. On the day we develop a school of group psychology, I suspect our Turcocentrism will be their first topic of study and analysis.
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To reject one of my arguments a reader once wrote: “In this context history, reality, and facts are irrelevant,” thus exposing another one of our idiosyncrasies – namely, our preference to operate within a realm of fantasy and wishful thinking. Since reality is beyond our reach, we prefer manipulating abstractions.
*
We produce more artists, writers, pundits, historians, political leaders, bishops, chiefs, vodanavorjis and mdavoragans than we have any use for. And yet, we wallow in a sea of mediocrity. How to explain this idiosyncrasy? I suspect there are as many explanations as there are Armenians – so what else is new? My own take is an American cliché: Too many chiefs, no Indians. Too many commissars of culture, no culture.
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[freakyfreaky]

Re: notes / comments

I suspect Armenians don't know enough about themselves to write about it and share it with others. That's why you have those that are not famous or celebrities claiming to be so without any resistance from the public. As for us, our wedding singers and priests are our celebrities. Such a pity.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

I suspect Armenians don't know enough about themselves to write about it and share it with others. That's why you have those that are not famous or celebrities claiming to be so without any resistance from the public. As for us, our wedding singers and priests are our celebrities. Such a pity.

I don't think so freak, speak for yourself. Wedding singers and priests? WTF are you talking about? There is a lot written about Armenians by Armenians, it's just that self-hating vermin in our society tend to disregard and/or belittle such literature as "ethnocentric." And a lot of the material written is printed in Armenia and it's in Armenian. When was the last time to sought after such materials to read? Some of you seem to readily absorb anything and everything that happens to be written by non-Armenians as gospel. So, in life you find what you seek and you attract people that tend to be of your kind. If you are surrounded by low lives, or if the only thing you see around you are low lives, its time to take a close look at yourself...

[Lucin]

Re: notes / comments

I suspect Armenians don't know enough about themselves to write about it and share it with others.

No, freakyfreaky. I suspect some Armenians have nothing to do, no life but to go around and "criticize" everything Armenian.
I know you are not Armenian and have probably not familiarized yourself with the Armenian literature but needless to say, that we have such a harust and hnamya literature which is not "turcocentric" so I suggest you not take seriously such absurd comments made by our 'Ara Baliozians'.

What's more, if you take a close look at different literatures; almost all of them be it Armenian, Persian, French or Russian, at some point are influenced, to a degree by their country's history, ups and downs. This is quite natural. So I don't get his point.
By stating such absurd comments, he just proves his sense of "objectivity", his ignorance of literary works and literature in general.

(And ironically, Turks and their primitive barbarian attitudes have 'inspired' more, the non-Armenian writers ( such as French, English, Persian, etc.) to picture them in some of their works.)

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, November 18, 2007
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SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM
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We have three popular schools of criticism: (i) the verbal-abuse or hoodlum school; (ii) the censorship or shut-up-he-explained school; and (iii) the commissar school. All three schools are based on the assumption of self-assessed superiority in wisdom, morality, and patriotism.
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If I were to paint myself all white and my adversaries all black, who would believe me? My guess is, not even my friends. If I were to say I am always right and those who disagree with me always wrong, who would agree with me? Not even myself, for I know better than anyone else my limitations, prejudices, and blind spots. Why is it that some of us find it so difficult coming to terms with the fact that we are more or less like everyone else, including our enemies?
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For six centuries they shaped our destiny, which also means our worldview and character. During six long centuries they re-created us in their own image -- not as masters but as subjects. And our subservience was so total that they declared us to be their most loyal subjects. I once asked one of our pundits, who like all self-appointed pundits is convinced just because he is Armenian he knows all there is to know about them and us, why would they massacre their most loyal subjects at a time when their very existence was in peril? He gave no answer and shortly thereafter accused me of refusing to answer my critics.
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My critics: do I have them? What is a commissar if not a master whose word is law? And his word is law because a master is never wrong.
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At least two readers have taken me to task recently for quoting too many dead writers, the implication being that it would be better if I were to rely on the wisdom, patriotism, morality, and authority of living charlatans.
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[freakyfreaky]

Re: notes / comments

Lucin,

I am Armenian.

My father was a prominent artist in Iran.

My uncle was a prominent artist in Iran.

I live in California.

Here, in the U.S., I can tell you that my impression having lived here in the community is that Armenians hold their priests and wedding singers in high regard and they are considered our 'celebrities'.

You are from Iran correct, Lucin? Please identify the most accomplished Armenian male ballet dancer. No, Baryshnikov is not Armenian.

Lucin, you don't even know about famous or accomplished Armenians from your own country.

Here, ANCA advertises that an Armenian archbishop meets with Congressional members on Capitol Hill. http://www.anca.org/press_releases/p....php?prid=1318

Do you think these congressional members were really impressed by the Archbishop??

Who is this guy and how is he the representative for thousands of Armenians in the Western U.S?