notes / comments

[tunot]

Re: notes / comments

Well, I don't think that will happen, but other genocides will happen unless people like Armenian survivors (and a few others around the world) know enough to stop.

YOU CAN LITERALLY STOP A GENOCIDE, right now!! [url] link later

Yes, Darfur is a shame. A very big shame, in fact, on the international community. But it teaches us the same lesson again: we need to take care of our own, instead of expecting others to take care of us.

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

Yes, Darfur is a shame. A very big shame, in fact, on the international community. But it teaches us the same lesson again: we need to take care of our own, instead of expecting others to take care of us.

no, it teaches us how weak and lazy we are for not standing up for them.

[Anonymouse]

Re: notes / comments

Well, I don't think that will happen, but other genocides will happen unless people like Armenian survivors (and a few others around the world) know enough to stop.

YOU CAN LITERALLY STOP A GENOCIDE, right now!! [url] link later

That is a fallacy. There is no reason to believe that somehow teaching about genocides or the Holocaust™ will guarantee that future genocides do not occur.

In fact, as recent history is evidence, it only disproves the claim, as Rwanda and Darfur attest to this.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, June 28, 2006
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C.G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist quoting an African chieftain’s definition of good and evil: “When I steal my enemy’s wives, it’s good. When he steals mine, it’s bad.” We echo this chieftain whenever we say, “Our propaganda line is right, my enemy’s propaganda line is crooked.”
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Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French author: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” It could also be said that real understanding consists not in the reassertion of old arguments but in the acquisition of a new self.
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In disagreements very often the clash is not between two sets of ideas but between two incompatible selves.
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I suspect all explanations whose aim is to legitimize a propaganda line.
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The aim of propaganda is not to promote understanding but to advance a specific political agenda.
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One begins to understand history only after exposing the half-truths and lies of propaganda.
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Not to lose an argument should never be an a priori decision.
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The purpose of an argument is not to win it but to lose it and in losing it to enlarge our horizons.
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One does not reason in order to legitimize irrational conduct, and what could be more irrational than prejudice, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre?
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You may have noticed that when leaders promote war or revolution they do so on an assumption of ultimately victory, which history has proved to be a Big Lie 50% of the time.
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It is no exaggeration to say that wars are lost even when they are won.
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And very often all a war succeeds in doing is to lead to another war.
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Do politicians lie if they believe in their own lies? An irrelevant question, because an honest politician is as inconceivable as a truthful propaganda line.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, June 29, 2006
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OBITER DICTA
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Charles Peguy (1873-1914), French author: “Out of ignorance and a sense of duty most decent people are liable to turn into criminals.”
Why should I be surprised when I hear a so-called self-assessed patriotic Armenian voice the opinions of a skinhead with the brains of a sardine and the voracious energy of a hungry shark?
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When hit-and-run critics hit, they invariably hit below the belt.
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To write a good sentence sometimes it is necessary to reject a dozen or more versions of it. Likewise, to subscribe to a good idea sometimes it is necessary to reject a few of them, beginning with the ones that were foisted on us when we could not yet think for ourselves.
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It is not only politics that makes strange bedfellows. Both Marxist and Catholic thinkers agree on their rejection of charity as a way to solve social problems. According to Jacques Maritain, one of the most respected Catholic philosophers of the 20th Century, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld”; and according to Lenin, charity, by masking the contradictions of an unjust system, succeeds only in postponing the coming revolution.
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Speaking of skinheads and dupes: consider the unspeakable crimes committed in the name of Marx and the number of dupes or “useful idiots,” among them some of the most eminent thinkers of the West, who produced a vast amount of pro-Stalin verbiage worthy of skinheads.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, June 30, 2006
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Whenever I underestimate a fellow Armenian, I am seldom disappointed.
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Mine is a lose/lose situation. I am fighting our leaders and their dupes. It’s an uneven fight -- not just two against one but a thousand against one. My only allies are the alienated and the assimilated most of whom no longer even care to identify themselves as Armenians because they have seen the light and consider themselves born-again human beings.
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Are the alienated a minority or a majority? That’s not a subject we like to discuss because the answer may reflect badly on us. When odars dislike us we can always dismiss them as pro-Turkish, which in our context might as well mean the lowest form of animal life. But how do we explain the alienated who may well be in the majority?
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What’s uppermost in the mind of the average Armenian? If we assume our press to be a reliable index, the answer is the Genocide and its recognition. Speaking for myself (and I don’t pretend to be a typical case) may I say that I am fed up with all the incessant talk of Turks and massacres, which so far have succeeded only in reinforcing our image as perennial losers and victims.
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One does not have to be a mind reader to know that what’s uppermost in the mind of the unemployed is finding a job. What’s uppermost in the mind of an Armenian who works in an alien environment is to return home and be with his family and friends. What’s uppermost in the minds of the old and the sick is proper medical care and living conditions. What’s uppermost in the mind of a student is to graduate and not to be forced into emigration. What’s uppermost in a young woman’s mind is not to be forced into prostitution in Saudi Arabia or babysitting in Bulgaria.
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These are not concerns that are addressed by our self-appointed pundits who prefer to ascribe all our problems on Turks and to pretend we have no other concerns than their failure to recognition the Genocide.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, July 01, 2006
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Cormac McCarthy, in BLOOD MERDIAN (New York, 1985): “Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? Others come in to govern for them.”
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In whatever I read these days I see references to Armenians even when Armenians are not even mentioned.
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In a textbook on history: “A state controlled system of education aims at indoctrination as much as pragmatic instruction.”
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Once, many years ago, when I published an interview with a prominent Tashnak intellectual, a Ramgavar intellectual wrote an angry letter to the editor saying everything the Tashnak said was a big lie. The Tashnak replied by saying everything the Ramgavar said was a bigger lie.
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The choice we confront today is between dead-end contradictions and creative dialectic. You may now guess what we can look forward to.
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Heine’s definition of aristocrats: “Asses who talk about horses.” Something similar could be said of Armenian partisan intellectuals when they speak about one another.
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To those who seem to have all the answers, Martin Heidegger has this piece of advice: “Try to reach the point from which the question can one day be asked.”
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[TomServo]

Re: notes / comments

Once, many years ago, when I published an interview with a prominent Tashnak intellectual, a Ramgavar intellectual wrote an angry letter to the editor saying everything the Tashnak said was a big lie. The Tashnak replied by saying everything the Ramgavar said was a bigger lie.

That's usually true.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, July 02, 2006
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A wrong answer that makes us feel good will always be more popular than a right answer that makes us feel bad.
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There are two radically different ways of viewing our genocide: (a) as an unpredictable occurrence, or act of God (or the devil, depending on your credo) like, say, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, or cancer; and (b) as an inevitable but foreseeable result of actions freely and deliberately undertaken by us, similar to those of a chain smoker who operates on the irrational assumption that he is invulnerable because God, or Right, or justice happens to be on his side. The first school of thought implies that we were innocent victims of satanic forces beyond our control, and the second, that all our actions were symptomatic (see below for a definition) because driven by death wish whose reality we denied or refused to acknowledge.
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Examples of actions driven by death wish: tribal divisions, defeat, unconditional surrender, centuries of subservience, followed by a naive trust in the verbal support of the West, badly executed and catastrophically timed acts of isolated revolt against a ruthless empire fighting for its own survival.
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My primary aim here is not to expose our blunders or to cover up the criminal conduct of the perpetrators, but to emphasize the fact that we have been and continue to be a far greater threat to our own survival than our worst enemies.
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Freud’s definition of symptomatic acts: “Acts which people perform automatically, unconsciously in a moment of distraction; and to which they would like to deny any significance.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, July 03, 2006
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THE WISDOM OF PROVERBS
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It is not at all unusual for a smart man to behave like a fool. That’s because to pretend to know is easy; to preach easier; but to do the right thing something entirely different.
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We know, for instance, that “unanimity is the best fortress,” but throughout our millennial history we have allowed tribal leaders
(princelings, nakharars, and similar riffraff) to divide us; and they have divided us for one and only one reason, to satisfy their lust for power (“too many chiefs, not a single Indian”). Which amounts to saying, we were taken in by their empty verbiage.
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We know that what tribalism does to a nation, nationalism does to mankind. We also know that preachers of nationalism are no better than mongrels (if not literally than morally) who speak with a forked tongue. We also know that “a maker of idols is never an idolater.” And yet, we have shed our blood in the name of nationalism and we continue looking up to speechifiers who go on preach it to us.
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It is an established fact that most of our nationalist leaders survived the Genocide to write their memoirs, some of which run to more than a thousand pages. We are told, “behind an able man there are always other able men.” Likewise, behind a fool there are always other brown-nosing fools. And when their blunders are exposed, they write memoirs to explain why it was not they who were wrong but the rest of mankind; and as always, they find their share of dupes who are more than willing to be taken in by their regurgitated propaganda.
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To those who say, “We did not shed our blood for nationalism, but freedom. Our slogan was not ‘Armenia, Armenia ueber alles!” but “Freedom or Death!” Yes, of course, no doubt about that, it goes without saying, I believe you. And what did we do after gaining our freedom, may I ask? We became the slaves of the Kremlin. We refused to convert to Islam to save our lives only to embrace atheism to advance our careers. And why? The answer must be obvious: after centuries of subservience to foreign tyrants, subservience has become part of our character, and “character is destiny” -- or, “habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.”
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We know that tyrants oppress and liars deceive. The questions to be asked at this point are: Does it make any difference if the tyrant or liar is an odar or one of us? In what way are we better off in the knowledge that the enemy is not at the other side of the wall but among us?
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