notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 15, 2006
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A writer is first and foremost a national nuisance. On the day he achieves popularity he has outlived his usefulness.
*
There are as many explanations of the past as there are perspectives. God's perspective is the only one that matters. But since a worm cannot have the perspective of an eagle, to speak in the name of god must be just about the surest symptom of charlatanism.
*
If you are brought up to believe you are right, you can be sure of only one thing: that's the worst kind of being wrong.
*
To sum up: We may not be dumb but we are far from smart, and in politics our performance has been an unmitigated fiasco. Our leaders may be compared to a drunk driver without a license who keeps having head-on collisions but is allowed to go on driving. And the source of our poor performance has been and continues to be intolerance of dissent, which also means a total inability or stubborn unwillingness to engage in dialogue.
*
To those who ascribe my views to 20/20 vision, I say it doesn't take the expertise of a political scientist or the foresight of a historian to guess that a tribal revolution against an empire, and a wounded empire at that, has the chance of a snowball in hell.
#
Monday, January 16, 2006
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Most of my thinking goes into exposing what they are thinking.
*
Propaganda works because it flatters the go; criticism doesn't for the opposite reason.
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If you ignore the ignorance factor in human affairs a great many things remain unexplained or they are ascribed to so-called "unforeseen factors beyond our control."
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The past is a seamless web and everything is connected with everything else. Understanding consists in connecting two apparently unconnected dots.
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If anyone ever dares to criticize one of our bosses, bishops or benefactors, an entire chorus of brown-nosers, parasites, hangers-on, flunkies and yes-man rise to his defense. But if a dissident is silenced, it's like a tree that falls in the middle of an uninhabited forest on a different planet.
#
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
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I don't believe in the moral superiority of the victim if his secret ambition is to be a victimizer.
*
My conception of great distances: that which exists between what politicians know when they speechify and what they don't know when they are accused of an offense or a blunder.
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If the average Armenian doesn't much care about the integrity and competence of his leadership, why should the world give a damn?
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If I were to identify the most repellent facet of our collective existence today, it would have to be the blatant opportunism and cowardice of our academics that jabber endlessly about the Middle Ages and the Genocide as if our present degrading conditions were of no concern to anyone.
*
We talk too much about God and Country and not enough about honesty. It should be the other way around. Only then may we count on God's cooperation.
*
I shall attain wisdom on the day I give up writing. But as long as I think by writing I can change things or anyone's mind I am condemned to remain an obstinate fool.
#
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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Whenever our editors see a positive story about Armenians and a negative one about Turks they print it to reinforce the by now familiar propaganda line that says Armenians are good and Turks evil. As an Armenian I find this editorial policy prejudicial and embarrassing. In the name of tolerance, objectivity and fair play I should like to see more stories about the thousands of Armenians who live happy lives as Turkish citizens and at least one story about a happy Turk in Yerevan. To those who say "We are not guilty of genocide, they are!" I say I have every reason to suspect, for the same reason that I would hate to be identified with any Armenian political party or regime, there are many Turks today with a similar disposition, and they may turn out to be our best friends, or at least much better friends than countless other people who know little or nothing and care even less about what happened to us at the turn of the last century.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 19, 2006
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Learning from history is a special faculty: some people have it and some don't. If an entire generation of smokers were to die of cancer tomorrow, they would be replaced by a new generation of smokers. Something similar could be said of thieves, drunk drivers, sexual molesters, prostitutes, johns, pimps, and corrupt politicians who go on about their business as if they were immune to prosecution.
*
Speaking of smokers, I read the following in the paper this morning: "Doctors worry about face transplant patient because she is using her new lips to take up smoking again which could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection." Obviously what this patient needs more than a new face is a brain transplant.
*
Are corrupt politicians obstinate ignoramuses who view history as a meaningless succession of chance occurrences? I am not sure. I suspect greed or power deprives them not only of their moral compass but also of their reason.
#
Friday, January 20, 2006
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THOMAS MANN
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MANN ON MANN
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"The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made."
*
He could write about medicine with the competence of a physician (see THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN), about music with the expertise of a composer (DOKTOR FAUSTUS), and about ancient Egypt with the authority of an Egyptologist (JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS).
*
MANN IN MY LIFE
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It was at the age of 14 or 15 and in Venice that I first read DEATH IN VENICE in an Italian translation. Failed to make contact. Found his fictional characters cold and distant. But I persevered. I went on to read ROYAL HIGHNESS and TONIO KROEGER. Again nothing happened. Then, in my early twenties I read CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN, his last unfinished novel, in an English translation, and that's when I got religion.
*
MANN AND NABOKOV
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Notwithstanding the fact that LOLITA and DEATH IN VENICE share a common theme (the morbid and obsessive infatuation of an adult for a minor - an American girl and a Polish boy respectively -- that ultimately ends in the early death of both men) Nabokov loathed Mann with the contempt of an aristocrat for the bourgeois. Mann's international popularity and Nobel Prize were no doubt two more contributing factors to Nabokov's hostility.
*
MANN AND SARTRE
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As a bourgeois, Mann lacked Sartre's ferocious hatred of the bourgeois and a clearly defined political line. In the words of a critic: "He was always both conservative and radical, thoroughly proper and deeply demonic." His fictional characters (like Naphta and Settembrini in THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN) argue endlessly about all the central political and philosophical issues of the day without reaching any apparent conclusion. As a youth, and unlike his brother Heinrich, Mann was seduced by German nationalism, but when it evolved into Hitler's National Socialist (or Nazi) Party, he rejected it violently (see below). His attitude towards the United States, where he lived for a number of years during World War II and after, changed from admiration for FDR's New Deal to outrage and disgust for the abuses of McCarthyism.
*
LUKACS ON MANN
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"There is in Mann's writing that now vanishing sense of bourgeois dignity which derives from the slow movement of solid wealth."
*
MANN ON HITLER
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"A brother - a rather unpleasant and mortifying brother. He makes me nervous, the relationship is painful to a degree. But I will not disclaim it. For I repeat: better, more productive, more honest, more constructive than hatred is recognition, acceptance, the readiness to make oneself one with what is deserving of our hate." And,
"Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own."
*
Hitler attempted to have him assassinated but failed. Hitler's antagonism was not just political. He resented the fact that THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN sold more copies than MEIN KAMPF.
#
Saturday, January 21, 2006
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The first paragraph of a front page article in one of our weeklies today reads: "A top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) renewed late Thursday calls for President Robert Kocharian to take tough action against widespread corruption and other manifestations of 'injustice' in Armenia."
This to me is a typical instance of empty verbiage compounded by double-talk. There is only one way to combat injustice and corruption in high places and that's by strengthening the judiciary. Because without an independent and co-equal judiciary, the executive branch is bound to run amok. Sometimes even with an independent judiciary (as in a well-established democracy like the United States) the executive branch has a tendency to abuse its powers.
And now the question we should ask is did we in the Diaspora ever have anything resembling an independent judiciary? And if we by a miracle acquired such an institution tomorrow, how many of our leaders would escape impeachment on grounds of corruption, abuse of power and incompetence?
##

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 22, 2006
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If you think my contempt of our leaders is exaggerated, ask one of them what he thinks of the opposition.
*
All analysis is self-analysis of the old self by the new self.
*
I have had many unforgettable encounters and experiences but I did not think of them as unforgettable until much later.
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Whenever we are understood better than we understand ourselves we say we have been misunderstood.
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When I was a boy I thought I could achieve anything I wanted. I had the appetite of a giant. But as I grew older I began to resign myself to the fact that one cannot afford to have the appetite of a giant with the stomach of a midget.
*
Everything is connected with everything else. You cannot step into the same river twice because countless imperceptible changes have taken place within us as well as in our surroundings, including the position of the planets and stars.
*
Nothing can be as vulgar as the need to prove oneself smarter than others.
#
Monday, January 23, 2006
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BOOK REVIEW
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ESTABLISHMENT: STORIES, ARTICLES, POEMS, TRANSLATIONS. By Vahe Avetian (290 pages, Yerevan, 2005).
************************************************** *******
In her review of Vahe's first book, INDEPENDENCE ARMY (Yerevan, 2005) Ashkhen Keshishian said it was "the best thing that could happen to our otherwise gray and moribund literary scene." Another reviewer went further and called it "a volcanic eruption." In his second book, ESTABLISHMENT, Vahe continues his struggle against ignorance and intolerance, the twin sources of most of our problems.
When told by hostile readers - make it, psychoanalyzed by phony Freudians - that his criticism is a result of a suppressed childhood trauma and a way of settling personal scores with unidentified adversaries, he explains he is only introducing critical criteria established in the West. At best, he goes on, "I only translate and paraphrase for readers who may not be familiar with foreign languages."
Elsewhere he writes: "The consensus about me seems to be that I am a megalomaniac and a self-centered egoist because I speak incessantly about myself. It follows, as night follows day, that those who speak in the name of the nation and mankind are humble altruists." I find this type of scorching sarcasm irresistible. If others find it unsettling, so much the better.
A word of warning: Vahe's style is colloquial, direct and deliberately crude. If you are easily ruffled by unbuttoned exuberance or provoked by unleashed fury this book is not for you. But if you like to be exposed to the testimony of an honest witness, if you prefer your vodka straight, and if you are not afraid to shake the hand of an hombre whose grip is bone-crushing, Vahe is your man!
#
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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One reason I enjoy writing for my fellow Armenians is that it allows me to play Pollyanna's glad game and say, "I am glad we don't live in the USSR and my readers are in no position to denounce me anonymously to a commissar of culture."
*
If 1% of the charges leveled against me were true, I would not wait to be tried and found guilty by a jury of my peers. I would hang myself from the nearest tree.
*
There is a type of prejudiced individual who thinks by saying, "I am not prejudiced," he absolves himself of all prejudice. That's what I call confusing abracadabra with thinking.
*
Some of my readers are disappointed, even angry, when I refuse to join the chorus of our sermonizers and speechifiers in order to make it unanimous. It doesn't even occur to them how ridiculous, not to say absurd, their position is. Unanimity among us is like Mark Twain's weather, everyone talks about it but nobody does a damn thing - nobody, especially those who are in a position to do something…such as bishops. Why do we need two bishops within the same city and neighborhood? The answer must be obvious: if we needed only one, the other one will have to be discarded, or even worse, relegated to number two position; and in case you didn't know, number two is the most hated number among Armenians, especially those who have achieved number one status.
#
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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You cannot separate politics from literature. Everybody, including tyrants, know this except our dime-a-dozen pundits who analyze our present problems (some of which are as old as our history) without first reading our major writers (all of whom wrote about them).
*
If you cannot separate politics from literature, neither can you separate literature from politics. The Mekhitarists thought they could do that and they condemned themselves to irrelevance. The Vienna branch has been reduced to an empty library and the Venice branch to a museum.
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Some of our pundits don't even write about Armenian politics. They write about Turkish politics of which they know and understand even less.
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And what do our pundits know about our history beyond the usual clichés - first nation to convert to Christianity and first nation to be subjected to wholesale massacres in the 20th Century? At best they may also know about the Tourian assassination in New York in 1933. What else? And they know whatever they know from a nationalist and partisan perspective, which means their judgment has been polluted with recycled propaganda.
*
To sum up: we continue to be at the mercy of dupes who succeed only in covering up the blunders of our corrupt and incompetent leadership and reinforcing our image as perennial victims. They thus end up doing more harm than good. So what else is new?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 26, 2006
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Underdogs interest me much more than top dogs because I am myself the offspring of a long line of underdogs, and the question I ask myself again and again is: What makes some people underdogs and others top dogs? One possible answer: an underdog or a slave (to use Hegelian terminology) becomes a slave because fear prevented him to fight unto death against his future master. In other words, a slave is a slave because he values survival over death.
*
Like most Armenians, I was not educated by Hegelians. I was taught to believe we became underdogs because we faced an adversary that was much more powerful than we were. As a tiny, civilized, and peace-loving nation we were overwhelmed by countless hordes of barbarians from the East. This of course is not history but propaganda designed to explain, justify and console our bruised collective ego.
*
When 600 years ago we surrendered our destiny into the hands of our enemies and said in effect "You may do with us what you will," we were a majority and they a tiny minority. Our military architecture was one of the most advanced in the world. What we lacked was not strength but unity, solidarity, national consciousness. Every valley and every mountain was more or less autonomous with its own tribal chief, prince or nakharar.
*
We may be the first nation to convert to Christianity but to this day we choose to ignore one of the most important and much-quoted ideas in the Scriptures, namely, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
*
I could probably fill an entire volume of quotations from our own writers stressing this failing in us. Here is a sample from Raffi (1835-1888): "The prevalent mentality among us is every man for himself. As long as I am left alone, why should I give a damn about anyone else?"
*
I have every reason to suspect that our pundits with their Turcocentric worldview are as fully aware of this fact as Raffi was more than a hundred years ago, but they are afraid to mention it because it may prevent them from playing the blame-game, our favorite national sport.
#
Friday, January 27, 2006
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When an Armenian queen in the Middle Ages was about to die, she divided her kingdom (queendom?) into two equal parts for her two sons. She even ordered the construction of a church and had her deed carved into stone above the gate.
What did the Ottoman sultans do when they had two sons? They had one of them strangled with a silk cord (because it was against the law to shed royal blood) in order to avoid the possibility of a future civil war.
What the Armenian queen did was of course much more humane, but in the long run disastrous to the future of the state.
What the sultans did dramatizes the fact that states and empires are not born but made, and they are made by the adoption of policies that require discipline, self-abnegation, forethought, and even Biblical sacrifice.
*
The main function of a state, we are told, is the conciliation of interests that are irreconcilable on a tribal level. I cite this definition to illustrate another point, and more specifically, the statement of a Turkish diplomat during a visit in the United States: "There has never been such a thing as an Armenian nation-state."
*
After centuries of subservience to alien and sometimes ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrants, to say that we have emerged from the experience unscathed amounts to saying that after being spread by a skunk we smell like roses.
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Is what I am saying true or only a stage towards the ultimate truth, which I will never know and which, if it exists, may contradict everything I have been saying?
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When I was young I had as many certainties as I have doubts today.
#
Saturday, January 28, 2006
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Once upon a time there was an Armenian discussion forum that instead of welcoming new members removed anyone on more or less flimsy and arbitrary grounds. Inevitably its membership dwindled to a handful…and then there was none. Moral of the story: a policy of exclusion might as well be a death warrant.
*
On more than one occasion I have been informed by Armenian writers and academics that I do not qualify as an Armenian writer because I write in English. Whether I am an Armenian or a Guatemalan or Hottentot writer is of no concern to me. Why should it be of concern to anyone else? - unless of course it's meant to satisfy an instinctive need to exclude, expel, and excommunicate.
*
There are in contemporary French literature many writers who are not French but Romanian, xxxish, Algerian, Irish, Czech, and even Armenian. Some of the greatest and most popular writers in America today are xxxish. That's because both France and the United States have adopted a policy of inclusion. I challenge anyone to name a single Armenian writer of foreign extraction. In a few years my question may well be: I challenge anyone to mention a single Armenian writer.
*
To those who say you can't compare big France and America to little Armenia, I say, at a time when we had a golden age neither France nor the United States existed. What made them what they are today is a policy of inclusion. And what has reduced us to irrelevance is a policy of exclusion.
*
It is our policy of exclusion that has reduced us to the status of perennial victims and underdogs dependent on the goodwill of others and forever subservient to them. It is our intolerance, which is at the root of our instinct to exclude, that continues to justify our tribalism. And to be tribal in a world dominated by imperial powers is to condemn ourselves to irrelevance.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 29, 2006
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CONVERSATIONS
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My fascination with books of conversation began with Jean-Jacques Brousson's CONVERSATIONS WITH ANATOLE FRANCE, followed by CONVERSATIONS WITH CLEMENCEAU (I forget the author's name). What I liked about both books was their informality and accessibility.
*
Two of the most insightful books about music that I have read are Joseph Corredor's CONVERSATIONS WITH CASALS and Robert Craft's CONVERSATIONS WITH IGOR STRAVINSKY.
*
May I confess that the only book by Goethe that I have enjoyed is his CONVERSATIONS WITH ECKERMANN.
*
It is such a pity that none of the great 19th-century Russians had a Boswell. The nearest to one was Maxim Gorky who left a slim volume of REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY, CHEKHOV AND ANDREYEV, which according to Thomas Mann is his best book, but in my view, too short to be satisfying.
*
If I were to name one of the most deliciously malicious and gossipy books it would have to be Lawrence Grobel's CONVERSATIONS WITH TRUMAN CAPOTE. Grobel has also published a shorter book of CONVERSATIONS WITH MARLON BRANDO, about whom Capote has written one of the most devastating portraits ever penned titled THE DUKE IN HIS DOMAIN. After reading it, Brando is said to have vowed to kill him.
#
Monday, January 30, 2006
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The less you know the more easily you can convince yourself to know better.
*
A gentleman does not insult someone anonymously and from a safe distance because to do so would make him vulnerable to the charge of cowardice.
*
Once upon a time I too was a teenager and behaved like a hoodlum. I understand hoodlums. That doesn't mean I forgive them, especially when they happen to be adults.
*
When on the eve of the Genocide Zohrab warned of the coming catastrophe nobody believed him. "Zohrab effendi is exaggerating," they said. Which may suggest that our belief systems are not dependent on their credibility. A man will believe the absurd and reject the reasonable.
*
Socrates and Christ were condemned to death because most of their contemporaries believed them to be dangerous charlatans. More recently millions believed in Hitler and Stalin as if they were messianic figures.
#
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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If I don't understand myself, what can I possibility understand?
And if we don't understand ourselves, what can we possibly understand?
*
What does it mean to be Armenian? If you ask yourself this question, don't be surprised if you answer with a handful of mantras that have been repeated to you so many times that it doesn't even occur to you to question their accuracy. And if you meet an Armenian who refuses to echo these mantras don't be surprised if you suspect him to be an enemy of the people, perhaps even a crypto-Turcophile denialist, which in our context means the lowest form of animal life.
*
One of these mantras says, "Armenians are smart, civilized, and peace-loving." But according to a popular saying of anonymous provenance, "One Armenian eats one chicken, two Armenians eat two chickens, three Armenians eat each other." What's smart, civilized, and peace loving about that, may I ask? Whose judgment do we trust? The judgment of our speechifiers and sermonizers with an ax to grind or that of an anonymous witness?
*
Such a pity that nations, unlike individuals, can't consult a psychiatrist whenever they experience conflicting emotions that they are unable to resolve on their own. They rely instead on their leaders and elites, or sermonizers and speechifiers, whose only solution is to deliver mantras whose intent is to convince us we don't have any problems, it's the rest of the world that does. As for objectivity: who has ever heard of an objective ideology, religion, regime, revolution, war, and massacre?
#
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
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Both Bush and Bin Laden are convinced they are right. Or rather, both believe God is on their side - a God that is not only just but also merciful and compassionate. It follows, it is not Bush and Bin Laden who disagree but their Gods, or rather, their cultural environments and historic experiences.
*
Understanding men is not an easy task. The only time I come close to understanding them is when they think or believe what I thought or believed once upon a time when I was naïve and gullible. When, that is, I could not yet think for myself and trusted the judgment of my elders and those in places of authority - in other words, men like Bush and Bin Laden.
*
Man is not born a killer. He is educated (make it, brainwashed) to be one. Theologians tell us man cannot understand the mind of God. Politicians take advantage of this by ascribing to God their bloodthirsty disposition, and like "good Germans," dupes follow orders by killing innocent civilians with a clear conscience.
*
Any idiot can speak in the name of God. I should like to see the politician who can also act with His wisdom.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 02, 2006
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In a recent speech Iran's president called for the destruction of Israel, and in the next he called his critics in the West "bullies." Under Stalin those responsible for the destruction of the Soviet Empire called dissidents "enemies of the people." Which may suggest that power also means the power to redefine and pervert the meaning of words and to be believed by millions of dupes.
*
The very same people whose misguided policies lead to "white massacre" (exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora) call me "negative," and they too are believed by self-assessed smart, civilized, and patriotic dupes.
*
Because I stress the importance of honesty and solidarity I am negative; and because they sermonize, speechify, and editorialize endlessly and ad nauseam about the massacres they assess themselves as positive. How does one go about educating a brainwashed generation that cannot tell the difference between positive and negative?
*
Religion has been defined as "the principal reason we have found to kill one another" (Sam Harris). Atheists kill too, of course, but only when atheism acquires the status of a religion under the leadership of a messianic figure, as it did in the USSR and Nazi Germany.
#
Friday, February 03, 2006
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BOOKS THAT I HAVE READ MORE THAN ONCE
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"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are."
I doubt it.
"Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are."
Better.
"Tell me what books you have reread and I will tell you who you are." Even better.
*
What follows is a short list of books that I have reread twice and sometimes three or four times:
Jane Austen, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,
Lesley Blanch, SABERS OF PARADISE,
Raymond Chandler, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY,
Anton Chekhov, THE LADY WITH THE PET DOG,
Thomas Mann, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN,
DOKTOR FAUSTU
THE STORY OF A NOVEL,
Vladimir Nabokov, LOLITA,
Jean-Paul Sartre, WORDS,
Georges Simenon, WHEN I WAS OLD,
Leo Tolstoy, HADJI MURAD,
Arnold J. Toynbee, RECONSIDERATIONS (volume 12 of his STUDY OF HISTORY).
*
I have not mentioned Gostan Zarian whose books I have translated because to translate a book is equivalent to rereading it ten times.
*
ON THE DA VINCI CODE
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Several academics have written books refuting the theories in Dan Brown's best-selling novel, THE DA VINCI CODE. These academics make the mistake of treating this cunningly plotted thriller with little or no claim to credibility as if it were non-fiction. And what's even worse, some of their arguments in defense of the Scriptures are shallow, misleading, and false. Far more serious writers than Dan Brown have exposed the many inconsistencies and contradictions in both the Old and the New Testament, among them George Bernard Shaw in the Preface to his play ANDROCLES AND THE LION, and Bertrand Russell in his WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. It is to be noted that Shaw's book-length Preface is much longer than the play.
In his novel Dan Brown portrays Leonardo da Vince as a prankster. Dan Brown's book too may be called a gigantic prank perpetrated at the expense of Catholic academics.
#
Saturday, February 04, 2006
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Explanations are also adaptations. We adapt our explanations to our audience. We don't explain things to children the way we would explain to adults. By emphasizing some points and ignoring others, explanations are also incomplete and sometimes even biased arrangement of perspectives, values and judgments.
*
Our explanations are products of a thousand and one factors, experiences, and motivations some of which may escape our consciousness.
*
The only way to understand another is to relive his life. Hence the multiplicity of misunderstandings and disagreements.
*
In the kind of world we live in, truth has become an extension of power. It follows those in power enjoy more understanding and agreement than those without it.
*
Our role in history so far has been that of being a negotiating tool in the hands of others. If they agree with us it is because they want to weaken the position of their adversary, and not because truth is their central concern.
*
When power or self-interest speaks, truth is shunted aside. To say that France or Germany or Canada supports our cause and the United States doesn't is to misrepresent reality. No one is for or against us. Everyone is for his own self-interest.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, February 05, 2006
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Corrupt and incompetent regimes survive by creating an enemy, thus persuading the people to blame their problems on external factors and to ignore internal ones. The Nazis had the xxxs, the Soviets the capitalist West, Americans the Communists (during the Cold War) and more recently, Al Qaida. And we have Turks.
*
We say we hate no one, we only want justice. But instead of cleaning our own backyard we concentrate our efforts on decontaminating someone else's street. We say Turks and Americans do not recognize the reality of our Genocide because they are morally corrupt. But instead of teaching morality to our own leaders, we try to reform theirs.
*
What are our chances of success? If the past is an index, nil. And if you think I am sharing privileged or inside information, some kind of Da Vince code, think again. What I have said so far is known to every journalist, historian, politician and layman who has acquired the ability to use his common sense and the confidence to trust his own judgment.
*
To those who say what the Turks did to us was evil and to reject its reality is a crime, I say, yes, certainly, no doubt about that, I agree. But it is also true that neither Germans nor Russians, neither Yanks nor Turks are evil. They commit evil acts only when they behave like dupes and allow themselves to be taken in by corrupt, incompetent, and degenerate leaders who legitimize prejudice and promote hatred. I say therefore, instead of focusing our hatred on a specific enemy, let us oppose all corrupt power structures that commit crimes against humanity regardless of race, color and creed, beginning with our own, not because we are worse than others but because we are in a better position to reform ourselves.
#
Monday, February 06, 2006
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Faith, we are told, can move mountains. What we are not told is that more often than not it can also misleads us into biting more than we can chew. The Soviets believed they were going to change the world and they ended up destroying themselves. Something similar happened to the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy. While aiming at immortality they committed suicide.
*
Speaking of suicide: suicidal Muslim fanatics today believe they will be rewarded with 73 virgins.
*
All nations that declare war believe victory will be theirs, if not military victory than moral victory, because God or Right is on their side. The list of believers and losers could sketch to infinity.
*
Closer to home, our revolutionaries at the turn of the last century believed the Ottoman Empire was about to collapse and they were the rightful inheritors of our historic lands.
*
Another definition of faith: a faculty designed to lead Homo sapiens to the abyss of nothingness.
*
Whenever I am accused of being a pessimist I cannot help thinking: If only our revolutionaries had been more pessimistic!
*
Today we believe our cause is right but after countless demonstrations around the world, editorials, memoirs, monographs, speeches and sermons, what have we accomplished? Not a single red cent in reparations, not a single inch of historic soil annexed, not a single victim resurrected. And what are the chances that in the next century we shall achieve that which we failed to achieve in the last? The question of a pessimist or a realist? You decide.
*
Here is another question for you: Can an Armenian with a Turcocentric worldview be an authentic human being? Or, How much of his Armenianism or humanity must he sacrifice in order to acquire a Turcocentric worldview?
*
About faith, I will say this: Don't believe everything you read in books or hear in sermons. Rely more on your own reason, common sense, and experience. To think the worst sometimes makes more sense than to believe in miracles. And remember, during the last five millennia Ararat has not moved an inch.
#
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
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There are two kinds of words: words that are spoken at the right time and place and words that are spoken at the wrong time a place. Example of the second kind: when you shout "Fire!" in a crowded place and create panic. There are also two kinds of ideas: ideas that have been handed down like second-hand shoes, and ideas that are based on one's own sweat and tears. A Turcocentric worldview belongs to the first category.
*
I grew up in a ghetto surrounded by survivors of the Genocide. They did not have a Turcocentric worldview not only because they were too busy trying to survive in an alien and hostile environment but also because they were too pragmatic to allow the past to define their future.
*
As a student in Italy I met a good number of Armenians from Istanbul and their attitude was very similar to that of survivors.
*
The French have an expression that speaks volumes: "C'est la guerre!" - meaning, in time of war, or in time of troubles (to use Toynbee's terminology) things happen, all kinds of things, including unspeakable things. Sometimes unspeakable things happen even in time of peace.
*
When party bosses push their young editors to print dozens of Genocide stories in every issue of their weeklies, they do so to cover up the fact that they are lobotomizing Armenian culture.
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I am not saying we should forgive and forget. What I am saying, there is a difference between dealing with today's problems (whose solutions are within the realm of possibilities) and making the Genocide a collective obsession that paralyzes our will, poisons our worldview, and in the end may lead us to a dead end.
*
Speaking of dead ends: we sometimes forget that so-called historic Armenia happens to be historic Kurdistan too. So that if by some miracle we are successful in annexing our historic lands we may have to contemplate the very real possibility of a war on two fronts, which raises the question: How many of our sermonizers and speechifiers are prepared to die in defense of Mount Ararat?
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Wednesday, February 08, 2006
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When I was a child I believed everything I was told. I had no reason to question the authority of my elders. If they had told me to kill and die in the name of a cause I would have obeyed. Since I could not think for myself I confused subservience with wisdom. I suppose all fanatics could plead not guilty by reason of infantilism.
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It is true that criminals don't respect authority either. But compared to the crimes legitimized by authority (slavery, terrorism, war, and massacre) criminals, even the worst of them, are only isolated petty amateurs.
*
We are told Islam forbids any illustrations of the prophet for fear they
could lead to idolatry. Does that mean Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism are idolatries? And is not to kill and die in the name of a cause whose legitimacy is questioned by the majority of mankind the surest symptom of idolatry?
*
Kofi Annan: "Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam." But is not "peaceful Islam" an oxymoron? Has not Islam been warlike from its inception? Did it not conquer a good fraction of three continents by fire and sword?
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In a letter to the editor by a local Muslim praising religious tolerance in Canada and condemning the publication of cartoons of the prophet in Europe, I read: "Government is a guardian over all private and pubic (sic) sectors." I like to believe the misprint was intentional.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 09, 2006
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Once upon a time I was a fascist and I didn't know it. I didn't know it because I was brainwashed by fascists who didn't know it either. Since I could not think for myself I aped my elders who were too traumatized by six centuries of tyranny that culminated in wholesale massacres, deportation, life in the ghetto, and still another World War to even begin to understand the difference between fascism and democracy. I understand their confusion and political disorientation. What I refuse to understand is the pretended confusion of individuals born and raised in a democracy who behave like fascists in the name of patriotism, as if patriotism and fascism were incompatible or mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. As far as I know no one has ever accused Hitler and Mussolini of being unpatriotic. It was Stalin himself who named World War II a "Patriotic War."
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I define a fascist as anyone who thinks nothing of violating someone's fundamental human right of free speech in the name of a misguided or self-serving definition of patriotism. A fascist has no use for free speech and does not consider that a serious aberration because he is either ignorant or pretends not to know that the worst crimes against humanity begin with the violation of someone's human right.
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Friday, February 10, 2006
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Once more I have been asked to solve our problems. Once more we are invited to pretend that solutions are obscure verbal formulas like abracadabra that when spoken they will usher us into a new Golden Age. Once more I shall have to remind our dupes that solutions cannot be ordered the way you order pizza with or without anchovies.
*
In the 5th century (that's 1500 years ago) two of our foremost historians (Khorenatsi and Yeghishe) exposed two of our central problems (corruption in high places and divisiveness) and provided their solutions (honesty and solidarity). I will let you decide what are two of our central problems today.
*
I have said this before, I will say it again, and it bears repeating: Finding solutions is not our problem, implementing them is.
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After lobotomizing our literature our leaders spread the rumor that so far our writers have failed to solve our problems.
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Let us assume for the sake of argument that our literature has been a waste of time and an irrelevant commodity that has ignored our problems. Let's go further and declare all our writers to have been mental masturbators who did nothing but sing songs about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the glories of the Armenian language. What about our faith? We brag about being the first nation to convert to Christianity but fail to practice what we pretend to believe. What could be easier than to convert to Christianity and what could be more difficult than to be good Christians?
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When Yeghishe spoke against divisiveness he was only paraphrasing a well-known passage from the Scriptures: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." When was the last time our leaders behaved as though they had read and understood the meaning of this passage?
*
After quoting two medieval historians allow me to quote a 20th-century author if only to illustrate the distance we have traveled during the last fifteen centuries. "Our political parties," Gostan Zarian tells us, "have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech." And, "Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another."
#
Saturday, February 11, 2006
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Once in my salad days when I contradicted a fellow Armenian with some degree of vehemence, he said, "You may be right" with complete indifference, smiled, and turned his back on me. That's when I learned an important lesson: in an argument let the facts speak for themselves. No need to assert the moral strength of your argument. Believing in the moral strength of your argument may color your perception of the facts and thus weaken your position.
*
If the Pope doubts his faith seven times every day (as Italians are fond of saying) one is justified in questioning all belief systems, especially if they are based on the words of a schoolteacher, a parish priest, a bishop, a mullah, an ayatollah, or a political boss - especially a political boss.
*
Politicians and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts. Sometimes you will be much closer to the truth if you believe the opposite of what a politician says, and sure enough, for every politician who says one thing there will be another who says the opposite.
*
Facts are important provided you also keep in mind that they do not exist in isolation. You may not be able to contradict facts but you may argue against their context. I suspect one reason we don't see eye to eye with the Turks on the Genocide is that we emphasize the facts and they emphasize the context.
*
There are honest Turkish writers and historians today who are willing to accept the facts of the Genocide. On the day some of our own historians (most of whom enjoy the support of a political boss, which might as well be the kiss of death on their objectivity) express a willingness to consider their context, we may have a better chance of reaching a consensus.
*
And if, at this point, you are tempted to contradict me with vehemence and accuse me of being a revisionist, a denialist, a traitor to the Cause, and perhaps even the lowest form of animal life, I will say, "You may be right" with a smile.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, February 12, 2006
*************************************
Please note that the following notes and comments are meant for a mature audience. For children of 14 years of age and under, and Armenians of all ages, parental guidance is advised.
*
When I retire I may go into crocodile wrestling. After thirty years of writing for Armenians, it may be a safer and an easier way to make a living. It may even be more fun.
*
My credibility with some readers goes south whenever I assert that the very same people who speechify and sermonize about our culture are engaged in lobotomizing our literature. But consider the facts: under Sultan Abdulhamid II in Istanbul and under Stalin in Yerevan, we had many more brilliant writers than we have today under the leadership of our bosses, bishops, and benevolent benefactors.
*
Writing for Armenians is like fighting a war on two fronts - against the leadership and against the readership (as you can see I have successfully resisted the temptation of replacing the letter p with t). Instead of wrestling with a single crocodile maybe I should wrestle with two…
*
You cannot argue with someone who is in a position to silence you, as Socrates discovered 2500 years ago, and more recently Solzhenitsyn. As the French are fond of saying, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde."
*
Writers cannot solve the problems created by politicians for the simple reason that politicians are the ones who acknowledge the existence of problems, and whenever they create them they refuse to acknowledge them. The reason why we have so far failed to solve our problems is not that we lack the IQ and the motivation but that the men at the top (a) hate to share power, and (b) they have become masters of the blame game. Which means that as long as there are Turks (and it looks like they will be around for some time) the blame-game will continue to be our national sport.
#
Monday, February 13, 2006
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NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER
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My guess is the EU will eventually agree with us on the Genocide controversy and ask the Turks to acknowledge responsibility. It may also agree with Turks by saying Armenian claims of monetary reparations and territorial claims are unrealistic because monetary compensation would make Turkey even more economically dependent on the EU, and because territorial concessions would create more problems than solve them.
*
ANOTHER SCENARIO
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If the Turks agree to offer monetary compensation to survivors, they may set up criteria so easy that many phony claimants will abuse them. At which point they will set up a bureaucratic system so complex and tough that it will be a nightmare for the applicants and enrich only their lawyers.
*
DO YOU WANT TO BE POPULAR?
***************************************
If you say capitalists amass their fortunes by exploiting cheap labor or overpricing their products or both, you will not be very popular with our benefactors and their assorted hirelings. If you say the universal medium of all political parties regardless of race, color, and creed is propaganda, our partisans will call you an enemy of the people. If, on the other hand, you teach yourself to say "Yes, sir!" to everything you are told, you have a much better chance to achieve popularity.
*
MEMO TO MY CRITICS
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What you say is not what you think. What you say is what you were told when you could not yet think for yourself.
*
TWO INDECENT PROPOSALS
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Our benefactors are avid readers of our weeklies but only of articles in which their selfless generosity is discussed. This suspicion became a certainty to me when one of them once asked me to ghost his memoirs.
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An editor once complained to me that a benefactor had agreed to support his weekly only if the editor agreed to publish a minimum of one article about him per week.
#
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
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In the Byzantine Empire Christians who supported the depiction of images (iconolaters) and their opponents (iconoclasts) fought wars and massacred one another. Did the defeat of iconoclasts make for a better brand of Christianity? An irrelevant question. I mention this to point out the fact that history teaches us that man has consistently refused to learn from past blunders.
*
We say we want the truth but we are willing to die only for a lie -- the bigger the lie the better.
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Propaganda cannot solve problems. It can only create new ones. When Czarist propaganda in the 19th century was replaced by Communist propaganda in the 20th, things went from bad to worse.
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By brainwashing people propaganda narrows their minds and reduces them to the status of apes who cannot think for themselves, they can only echo their leaders who rule by lies, coercion, and terror.
*
In a letter to the editor in our local paper I read the following Arab proverb: "The truth is good, but better to talk of the palm trees."
*
For every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line. In the same way that for every organized religion there will be one or more heresies. That's because truth is one, but lies many.
*
One could also say that truth is one but the roads leading to it many; and when one kills one does not kill in the name of truth or God but in the name of a lie or Satan.
*
To say my road is the only true road is the biggest of all lies.
#
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
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In a commentary in our paper this morning I read: "Muslims are offended and insulted, and rightly so, by the controversial cartoons published in papers around the world." If I were to demonstrate every time I feel offended and insulted, I would be a full-time 24/7 demonstrator and the earth from where I stand to the horizon would be scorched.
*
Perhaps I should feel sorry for the lawyer accidentally shot by Vice-President Cheney, but I don't. He should have been more careful in his choice of friends and hunting companions. If I feel sorry for anyone it's the quails.
*
Speaking of hunting expeditions, one of Norman Mailer's novels is titled WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM which is about a hunting expedition in an American forest and in which the word Vietnam is not even mentioned. To dramatize the kind of mindset that drove the U.S. to the war in Vietnam, what Mailer does, and he does it brilliantly, is to quote from the hunters' incessant talk which is crude, coarse, and peppered with profanities. To some Americans, Mailer is saying here, war is nothing but a hunting expedition.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 16, 2006
**************************************
"Free speech? What the hell is that? One is either right or wrong. If wrong, one has no business spreading lies and corrupting the young." That's what I thought as a boy when God was on my side, I knew everything, and I was never wrong.
*
When I write about our fascists and dupes today I don't have to guess or imagine anything. All I have to do is to remember.
*
I had an Armenian education and I don't remember anyone teaching me about democracy and human rights, and if someone had mentioned these things to me I would have dismissed him as an instrument of the degenerate West that had stood by and watched us being slaughtered by the million. It was some years later that I read in the Preface of Shaw's ANDROCLES AND THE LION that the Great Powers had been too busy slaughtering one another (by the million too) to help us.
*
Fascists are not born but made, and in my case, made by victims who were too confused, disoriented, and traumatized to be objective about anyone who dared to disagree with them.
*
A victim or loser is equipped to think only in terms of "you are either with me or against me; and if you are against me you are an enemy, that is to say, a Turk in disguise." Contrast this mindset with the British slogan: "We have neither friends nor enemies, only interests."
*
Who is right and who wrong? I am willing to concede that unlike my "betters" I do not speak in the name of Truth, God or capital (or is it Capital and god?). I speak only as an overworked and underpaid minor scribbler. That is to say, in the eyes of my fellow Armenians, the lowest form of animal life.
*
Not that far better writers than myself were treated more kindly by their fellow Armenians - Abovian (committed suicide), Voskanian (silenced), Baronian (betrayed to the Ottoman police), Daniel Varoujan, Siamanto, Roupen Sevag, and many others (betrayed to Talaat's butchers), Charents, Bakounts, Zabel Yessayan and many others (betrayed to Stalin's executioners), Massikian (silenced), Zarian (silenced, driven to the USSR by our partisans and ideologues in America, and eventually murdered in Yerevan)…
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Friday, February 17, 2006
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Speaking of the Byzantine Empire which lasted over a thousand years, Zarian writes: "Notwithstanding their precursors, the Greeks, not a single school of philosophy." Something similar could be said of the Ottoman centuries that followed - "not a single school of philosophy."
*
What is Ottomanism? When Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat went about massacring us, they did so because they could get away with it - or so they thought. One could say that to do something simply because you can get away with it is an idea that belongs to the Ottoman school of philosophy or anti-philosophy.
*
It is not my intention here to cast aspersions on Turks. We have more than our share of massacrist academics and Turcocentric pundits who have adopted that department of intellectual endeavor as their central concern. My intention here is to expose our own contradictions by raising a parallel question: "Why did we silence or violate the fundamental human right of free speech of our major intellectuals from Abovian to Zarian? The only plausible answer I can come up with is, because we could get away with it.
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The Turks massacred us because they saw us as alien infidels who were conspiring with the Great Powers of the West as well as the Greeks, Kurds, and Assyrians to dismember their homeland.
*
What about our silenced intellectuals? What were they up to? Whom did they threaten? Who were their co-conspirators? Both Abovian and Zarian tried to enlighten their fellow countrymen. They threatened no one. Neither did they conspire with anyone. To enlighten means to educate brainwashed dupes who live in darkness. If our leaders consider that a crime punishable by law, then I deserve to be hanged from the nearest tree if only because I have translated some of our writers, among them Zarian.
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Saturday, February 18, 2006
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A mullah in Pakistan has announced a $30,000 reward for killing the Danish artists who lampooned Muhammad. My guess is, if a Muslim hitman carries out this mission, a millionaire in the West will announce a $300,000 reward for killing the mullah who thinks he can behave like a Mafia don and get away with it.
*
If I were to make a list of my failings, I would begin with the irrational need to share my understanding with readers knowing that it will change no one and nothing.
*
No matter how absurd the flattery, there is always something in us that is tempted to believe it.
*
Some day we may run out of authoritarian leaders but we will never run out of commissars of culture.
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When I speak of massacres as routine occurrences in history, I do not do so to explain or justify Turkish conduct but to expose the abysmal ignorance of our revolutionaries who thought they could challenge the might of a ruthless empire without paying a heavy price.
*
If I am wrong I like to believe I am wrong as a human being and not as a dupe. To be wrong as a dupe means (a) being someone else's instrument and (b) never learning from one's mistakes.
*
When asked if he has a last wish, the condemned man facing a firing squad replies: "To learn how to play the violin."
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