notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
**********************************************
ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
******************************************
Remember the case of Zohrab’s Kurdish assassin? If you don’t, allow me to refresh your memory. Shortly before he died, it seems, this Kurd experienced a crisis of conscience, confessed his crime, and provided details as to time, place, and manner, all of which was duly published in the ARMENIAN REVIEW, a Tashnak organ emanating from Boston. We know that this Kurd was acting on orders from Talaat, in the same manner that two decades later and acting on orders of Stalin, our commissars in Yerevan murdered an entire generation of our ablest intellectuals. Now, my question is: Has any one of them come forward, identified himself as a killer, and expressed regret for his actions? My guess is – correct me if I am wrong – these commissars and their offspring are now busy sucking the blood of the people in the Homeland, and in the Diaspora, they are parading as superpatriots and delivering speeches on self-sacrifice and dedication to principles to the rest of us renegades.
I once met such a specimen. He had transparent blue eyes, an open face, and a sincere look. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth or anywhere else for that matter. He spoke at some length of corrupt practices and related atrocities, but added, such things were totally alien to him and he was as appalled by them as any man of integrity. I believed him. I wanted to believe him. Which once more confirms my status as an incurable dupe. Later, I heard from two different sources that this blue-eyed, moon-faced, and Oscar-caliber performed was one of the most corrupt operators in all of Armenia.
There are many forms of denial. When a fool pretends to be smart, or when a crook pretends to be honest, or when a charlatan pretends to be a role model, or when a total ignoramus pretends to have all the answers, is he not a denialist too?
Casting aspersions? No, of course not!
Asking questions? Yes, certainly.
Present company suspected? No comment.
#

ARA HOME PAGE click on:

http://www.narek.com/store/search.php?mode=search

http://baliozian.blogspot.com/

arabaliozian.org

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
*********************************************
THE ART OF OBJECTIVITY
AMONG OTHER FALLACIES AND MISCONCEPTIONS
************************************************** ***********
If after making an assertion you are not haunted by its contradiction, it means you have decided to act as your own attorney, and as is well known in the legal profession, you have a fool for a client.
*
All the misfortunes of mankind may be ascribed to the fact that bad men outnumber good ones and they know how to organize themselves and impose their will on others.
*
In George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, the favorite slogan of the pigs (who represent Stalinists) is “four legs good, two legs bad.” The aim of all slogans is to legitimize prejudice and to organize hatred, and hatred not only of the enemy but also of fellow countrymen who dare to question their infallibility.
*
There are good men in all nations, but they are so few that it would be a serious blunder to alienate even one of them.
*
What’s the difference between an idiot and a dupe? An idiot believes in his own lies; a dupe believes in someone else’s. But that’s semantics. In reality, an idiot will also qualify as a dupe and vice versa. And there is this peculiarity about dupes and idiots: they will never admit to being dupes and idiots.
*
I have spent enough time among Greeks, Italians, Canadians, Americans, and Armenians to know the kind of vicious idiot nationalism can create.
*
Duke of Wellington: “The real test of a general is to know when to retreat and dare to do it.” This is exactly what our heroic revolutionaries did at the outset of the Genocide. They made a strategic retreat and lived long enough to write their multi-volume memoirs in which to recount in great detail their deeds of valor and self-sacrifice. As they are fond of saying in Latin America: Long Live the Revolution!
*
I once heard an Armenian define free speech thus (I abridge and paraphrase as is my wont): “Free speech is what I say it is. If you disagree, shut the f*** up!”
*
We all share the same daydream: to be loved for who we pretend to be.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, September 24, 2007
**************************************************
JOKES
********************
G.B. Shaw: “If you want to tell a person the truth, make him laugh or he’ll kill you.”
*
George Orwell: “The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.”
*
xxxs make great comedians. They love to laugh at themselves. We don’t! Perhaps because we are a joke.
*
“Why did Hitler kill himself? He got his gas bill.”
*
Woody Allen: “I’m very proud of this pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.”
*
Jimmy Carr: “Mother always said, ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say, then f*** off!’”
*
Terry Pratchett: “Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
*
Groucho Marx: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”
*
Woody Allen: “My grandmother left me nothing. She was too busy being raped by Cossacks.”
*
Denis Leary: “I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Price.”
*
“Does the tailor Rabinowitch live here?”
“No.”
“Who are you?”
“Rabinowitch.”
“And aren’t you a tailor?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then why did you say you didn’t live here?”
“You call this living?”
*
Rowan Atkinson: “Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-mouthed perversity. Have you considered a career in the church?”
*
Noel Coward: “You live and learn. Then you die and forget it all.”
*
Wanna read more jokes? See ONLY JOKING: WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH? By Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves (New York, 2006). Not a single Armenian mentioned in it.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007
*******************************************
WHY ANGELS FLY
*****************************
G.K. Chesterton: “The reason angels fly is that they take themselves lightly.”
*
WARNINGS
**************************
Perhaps henceforth I should post the following two warnings at the head of everything I write.
TO MY FRIENDS: No need to read this. I say nothing you don’t already know.
TO MY ENEMIES: You may not enjoy what follows – I may be on target.
*
THE CHEERFUL THOUGHTS OF
A BRIGHT-EYED AND BUSHY TAILED ARMENIAN
************************************************** **********
It is the fate of some writers, very much like some composers and painters, not to be appreciated or understood by their contemporaries because they are ahead of their time. I can’t be one of them because I only recycle the LAMENTATIONS of Khorenatsi and Naregatsi – two medieval writers who wrote fifteen and ten centuries ago respectively.
Several friendly readers have told me they will love me only after I drop dead. Which raises the question: of the approximately one thousand dead Armenian writers (give and take a hundred or two) how many are loved or even read today? I remember an Armenian telling me: “If I can read first-class Greeks, Russians, and Germans, why should I waste my time with our second-raters? I challenge you to name a single Armenian who is as good as Plato, Dostoevsky, and Hesse!”
And speaking of Naregatsi: I once had a talk with Mischa Kudian (may the blessings of the Lord be upon him) -- remember Kudian? He translated Naregatsi, among many other Armenian writers. He was one of the most disappointed Armenians I have ever met. Afterwards I remember to have thought: “I will never be like that. He is too negative about his fellow Armenians. He sees only the worst in them. I will be more positive. I will be more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed…”
I am now told I am consistently negative, and I am told this by the very same Armenians whose favorite subjects are Turks, massacres, and denialists. Human beings are bundles of contradictions, we are told. Nothing new in that. Contradictions in themselves are not dangerous. Unawareness of them is. Unawareness allows a man to behave like swine and parade as a paragon of virtue. Hence the spectacle of garbage-mouth nonentities and control-freak simpletons pretending to be superpatriots with leadership qualities fully authorized to tell better men than themselves what to think.
*
IT IS NOT WRITTEN!
***********************************
Jimmy Carr: “Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.” If God created us for purely experimental reasons, He also gave us a free will with which to disagree with Him.
*
DEMOCRACY
****************************
You say you are right because you have the majority on your side? How do you know? Did you take a vote? How come I wasn’t told?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, September 22, 2007
**********************************************
CALLING A SPADE A SPADE
*************************************
That’s what I have been doing; and if you say anyone can do that, I suggest you think twice before quitting your day job. Far better men than myself have been arrested or assassinated for doing exactly that. That’s because if you call a spade a spade, the chances are sooner or later you will end insulting men with egos the size of Goliath, Godzilla, and King Kong combined.
*
POLITICS AND HISTORY
*********************************
Political leaders will invariably favor a version of history in which their blunders are covered up. It follows; a historian that enjoys the support of a power structure has allowed his objectivity to be contaminated by propaganda.
*
TO BRAG OR NOT TO BRAG
**************************************
Our survival is a positive if we were destined to perish. It is a negative if we were meant to be an empire or a force to be reckoned with.
*
STAGES
*************************
Life advances through many stages, and the truth of one stage becomes the lie of another. We either move forward to the next stage or come to terms with a lie, which also means silencing anyone who dares to call a spade a spade.
*
ON VERBAL ABUSE
********************************
Verbal abuse may intimidate some and stimulate others. So far it has stimulated me. As for our Goliaths, Godzillas, and King Kongs: they are only paper tigers.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, September 21, 2007
*********************************************
PHENOMENA
****************************
For 1500 years our writers failed to penetrate the thick skulls of our Neanderthal leaders and their assorted dupes, hirelings, and brown-nosers. And yet, I go on as if there were a glimmer of hope that this xxxxuation (sic) is about to change. Call me an optimist, though I have also been called a pessimist.
*
I repeat myself only in the eyes of those who read me daily, faithfully, and religiously. But being of modest disposition, I operate on the assumption that most of my readers read me once or at most twice a year, and by the time they read for the second time, they have completely forgotten what they read the first time. In that sense, I do not repeat, I remind.
*
An Armenian who has a score to settle with Turks, will also have a score to settle with his fellow Armenians; and if some day he succeeds in settling all his scores, he will have an unsettled score with himself. If memory serves, it was Nietzsche who said, “In time of peace the warlike man fights with himself.”
*
There are so many books on how to succeed that I can see a time when being a failure will be more interesting, unusual, and fashionable.
*
With every new enemy, I also acquire a new source of inspiration. In that sense I owe more to my hostile readers than to my friendly ones who seldom or never comment on my things perhaps because they no longer read me – and why should they if I express thoughts, which are also theirs?
*
I have had several friends who after a minor political disagreement became enemies, and not just garden-variety enemies, but Armenian enemies, i.e. enemies unto death. Which only means that they were never friends, only potential enemies. But then that’s what an Armenian can ever be at his very best – never a friend, only a potential enemy. In defense of Armenians, may I add that, if we are to believe President Truman (“You want a friend? Get a dog!”) this is not an exclusively Armenian phenomenon.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 20, 2007
*****************************************
ON WRITING AND READING
************************************************
Well-adjusted readers see humor in my writings; others see gloom and doom, even treason and betrayal. The only way to explain these contradictory reactions is to say that because I speak of reality, readers project their perception of their own reality onto me. Briefly stated, they read between the lines, which also means they don’t read me, they read themselves.
*
Notwithstanding the verbal abuse leveled against my person, I intent to go on writing because it is not unreasonable to hope that just because someone speaks like a fool today, he will continue to think like a fool tomorrow. Foolishness, like youth and inexperience, are not permanent conditions but transitory stages.
*
Speaking of minor local historians, the equivalent of our present-day Turcocentric pundits, Polybius comments: “We cannot obtain a comprehensive view from writers of mere episodes. For indeed some idea of a whole may be got from a part, but an accurate knowledge and clear comprehension cannot. Wherefore we must conclude that episodical history contributes exceedingly little to the knowledge and grasp of universal history.” O how I wish Armenians read more historians, real historians, as opposed to monomaniacal ghazetajis “of mere episodes.”
*
A ghazetaji writes what everybody knows – that’s his way of flattering his readers into thinking they know and understand all they need to know and understand because they are just about the smartest people on earth. To a traumatized ego, flattery is manna.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
*********************************************
MARK MY WORDS
******************************
Dissent is unpatriotic only in an environment where propaganda is truth.
*
Never make the mistake of thinking that your status as underdog or victim bestows on you any kind of superiority. If power corrupts, so does weakness. If money is the root of all evil, so is the lack of it.
*
Where there are Armenians there will be disagreements, not the kind that are only stages in a dialogue that move towards consensus, but dead-end disagreements that are nothing but dogmatic assertions in a closed system of thought, and closed systems of thought are favored by closed minds.
*
If I ever regain my childhood faith in God, one of my first prayers (repeated thereafter daily) will be: “Dear Lord, give me a critic who has not undergone a frontal lobotomy or is in no need of professional help.”
*
Memo to a pompous ass:
If tomorrow we vanish from the face of the earth, my guess is we will make fewer headlines than Britney Spears’ haircut or O.J.’s most recent shenanigan.
#

[zourna]

Re: notes / comments

"I have seen the light of objectivity and impartiality"
You've experienced autoscopy of some kind?
How can one ascertain, and lay claim to objectivity when all knowledge is acquainted and/or predisposed in our genetic factors?

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, September 18, 2007
***************************************
DARKNESS AT HIGH NOON
********************************************
Polybius: “Knowledge of the past is the readiest means men can have of correcting their conduct.”
*
Knowledge of the past or understanding history does not mean who did what to whom, where, when, and number of victims – that’s journalism not history – but where did we go wrong?
*
Why is it that he who has seen the light of faith becomes blind to the light of reason? Why is it that when it comes to belief systems, one man’s light is another’s darkness? If two men have seen the light and they disagree with one another, it may be because one of them or both cannot tell the difference between light and darkness.
*
I write as I do because I cannot stomach the spectacle of a poltroon who, after learning one or two things, sits on his fat ass with the conviction that he knows everything he needs to know, when in fact all he knows are a handful of newspaper headlines and a couple of slogans that flatter his ego.
*
On the subject of the Genocide, we speak like jihadists who have seen the light of truth, and the truth is: they are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians. If it took us six hundred years to reach that “obvious” and “self-evident” truth, it may be because either they are consummate dissemblers or we are not as smart as we think we are.
*
Between a lie that flatters his ego and a truth that exposes his limitations, a man will invariably choose the lie, and he will compound the felony by calling it the light of truth. I am reminded of a passage in the Bible that goes something like this (I quote from memory and I paraphrase): “If you think you are smart, be a fool so that you may be really smart.” And I say, amen to that!
#