notes / comments

[axel]

Re: notes / comments

I find it ironic that someone who transcribes quotes such as "muslims breed like rats" dare present oneself as a victim of "intolerant" "bullies".

The word "coward" in his mouth has the same flavor as in the mouth of a G.W. Bush or an israeli (people he obviously sympathizes with)

As to his actual nature, the constant whining and victimization as well as the pathological bad faith plead in favor of a very specific extraction (not an armenian one). When Ara Baliozian states one truth, it is to cover up a greater lie.

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

yeah, when we criticize another ideology, is that intolerance? Never really thought about it. Is there some kind of gray area? I have no clue

Concerning "cowards", I believe what he meant was that we could all go on the internet, criticize anybody we want, and remain relatively anonymous, what does this have to do with G.W. Bush or an Israeli? Is he bombarding you with his writings and telling those who don't comply with them that they are cowards?

I'd be more than glad if I didn't have to look like I'm stepping in to defend anybody, because really, I'm just curious.

[axel]

Re: notes / comments

yeah, when we criticize another ideology, is that intolerance? Never really thought about it. Is there some kind of gray area? I have no clue

"Muslims breed like rats" doesn't sound to me as a critique of an "ideology". It rather falls into the category of hate speech.

Concerning "cowards", I believe what he meant was that we could all go on the internet, criticize anybody we want, and remain relatively anonymous

As you say, "relatively anonymous". Everyone knows there is no such thing as anonymity on the net.

what does this have to do with G.W. Bush or an Israeli?

It has to do with cowards designating their adversaries as such.
I apologize for this subtlety apparently beyond the average reader's grasp.

I'd be more than glad if I didn't have to look like I'm stepping in to defend anybody, because really, I'm just curious.

Well your curiosity must have been satisfied then.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, August 24, 2006
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If Beethoven is a revolutionary, Bach fully qualifies as a prophet. “Every piano concerto in the history of Western music,” writes James R. Gaines “has its antecedent in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, when the lowliest member of the orchestra [the harpsichord] was turned loose to become Liszt.”
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In music as well as in all the arts, ideologies, and religions, the medium is not the message, in the same way that the vestments are not the man. To confuse the medium (the packaging, the style, the rituals, and mumbo jumbo) with the message may even be said to be the source of all evil.
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After saying all men are brothers, organized religions divide mankind into two camps, the Cains and the Abels. The message (all men are brothers) is thus perverted to: “Before the Cains kill us, let’s kill them!” In other words, after identifying themselves with Abel, the children of Adam adopt Cain as their role model.
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A crook in denial thinks of himself as an honest man, and Cain in denial thinks of himself as Abel. It follows, to say “God is great!” justifies behaving like swine.
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A few years ago an Armenian by the name of John Douglas published a book on Armenian history. When asked why the false name, he said out of fear of Turkish persecution. Shortly thereafter Vahakn Dadrian published his definitive study of the Armenian Genocide. What happened to him? His book was translated into Turkish and he was invited to Turkey.
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We share this in common with Turks: we identify ourselves with Abel, and when we say Turks are bloodthirsty Asiatic savages, they tell us we are confusing the medium with the message, the message being they are just people like any other people. So are we.
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Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, not only made history but, like Caesar before him and Churchill after him, he also wrote it. In a letter to a friend, he makes the following observation: “To write history is to compile the follies of man and the blows of fate. Everything runs on these two lines, and so the world has gone on for eternity.”
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The quotations above are from EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON: BACH MEETS FRDERICK THE GREAT IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, by James R. Gaines (New York, 2005).
#

Saturday, August 26, 2006
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UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
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There is an old saying, “Even if a blunder were made of the most expensive fur, no one would want to wear it.” We don’t mind admitting that like all human beings we are fallible, but we hate to admit specific blunders, especially when they are of the catastrophic variant. This is true of all of us, including politicians. For a politician to admit an error amounts to admitting incompetence or bad judgment, both of which may be terminal to his career. This point is brilliantly dramatized in WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION, by Thomas H. Kean and Lee Hamilton (New York, 2006). The co-authors, who were also the co-chairs of the Commission, write: “The starting point for our report was that it would focus on facts. We were not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another.” But since the American people were polarized, the challenge they confronted consisted in reconciling two contradictory theories: “…there was no middle ground: either the response to 9/11 was heroic and as good as it could have been, or it was a terrible failure, and individuals had to be blamed.” In its efforts to cover up its failures, the Bush administration set up so many roadblocks that it soon became clear to the authors that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.”
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No one denies the facts surrounding our Genocide, in the same way that no one denies the destruction of the Twin Towers and the death of 3000 innocent civilians. It doesn’t necessarily follow we have all the answers. “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom; we are now afraid of free speech.” These are not the words of a dissident or critic but a darling of our establishment, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian). And in a letter to a friend, Gostan Zarian said this about our political parties: “Their greatest enemy is free speech.” Why? What are they hiding? What is it that they don’t want us to know? In the minds of many Armenians, these questions remain unanswered.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

"Muslims breed like rats" : Fallaci explains that mullahs encourage men to have 3 wives each and each wife to have at least 5 children.
fallaci also explains that her encounters with muslims in italy and the middle east (long before 9/11) have been from sinister to sadistic. but to appreciate her anger and hatred, one must read the book. the rest is mullah propaganda : and i have yet to meet anyone who has anything remotely positive to say about that.
Allah wa akbar!!!!!!!!! / ara

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, August 27, 2006
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CRITICIZING CRITICS
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When I criticize Communists our crypto-Stalinists accuse me of McCarthyism. When I criticize Muslim fundamentalists our anti-Semites (meant to say anti-Zionists) accuse me of racism. And when I criticize Armenians, I am described as a self-hating pro-Turkish whining ignoramus. If I am to believe my critics, verbal abuse is the most legitimate school of criticism or the only good critic is a dead critic.
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I am all for analyzing and understanding hatred, intolerance, and prejudice, but may I confess that I feel helpless with individuals who combine prejudice, hatred, and intolerance with perversion; as when an Armenian expresses nothing but visceral contempt for Americans and xxxs but has nothing remotely unkind to say about Bin Laden, mullahs, ayatollahs, and fundamentalist fascist fanatics who hate not only xxxs and Americans but also modernity, the West, an important fraction of their fellow Muslims, and women in general (which amounts to about 90% of mankind), and in whose eyes all Christians are infidel dogs unfit to share the earth with the children of Allah and the followers of the Guidance.
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When asked in a televised interview about Muslim terrorists killing defenseless civilians, Bin Laden replied: “Americans have killed many more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” I find that many pro-Muslim and anti-American Armenians from the Middle East use the same argument to explain and justify Muslim terrorism, which may suggest that there are self-assessed smart people out there who find Muslim propaganda more credible than its American counterpart. What Bin Laden and his followers forget is that Americans dropped atomic bombs on Japan only after calculating that civilian as well as military casualties on both sides of the conflict would have run into millions had they continued the war with conventional weapons, and that even after Hiroshima the Japanese refused to surrender because to them surrender is worse than death.
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Diplomacy and dialogue become inadequate tools when one’s adversary values death more than life. Muslim extremists believe they will win in the end because, in their own words, “You [in the West] love life; we love death.”
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Europe thinks “that to achieve peace no price is too high: not appeasement, not massacres on its own soil, not even surrender to terrorists… Europe is impotent, a foul wind is blowing through [it]… the idea that we can afford to be lenient even with people who threaten us… This same wind blew through Munich in 1938… It could turn out to be the death rattle of a continent that no longer understands what principles to believe.” This is not Oriana Fallaci speaking but Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Senate. See WITHOUT ROOTS: THE WEST, RELATIVISM, CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera (London, 2006). Please note that Pera’s co-author is today’s Pope of Rome.
#
Monday, August 28, 2006
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When I ignored his repeated insults, a reader complained that it was getting increasingly difficult to insult me, implying perhaps that I have a thick skin. I don’t. I am as vulnerable as anyone else, but I also make allowances for youth, inexperience, ignorance, poor upbringing, Ottomanism, and a taste for the gutter.
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My most cherished illusion, which so far I have been unable to shed, is that Armenia is a state and Armenians are a nation -- as opposed to being fragmented and scattered collections of disoriented tribes without a common language, purpose, and character.
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In our environment, the very same people who created our problems and are now actively engaged in perpetuating them say, “What we need is not criticism but solutions.” But since doubletalk is their only medium of communication, they see nothing inconsistent between their actions and words.
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Never trust anyone who knows more about the law or can afford a better lawyer.
#
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
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WHAT IS AND IS NOT CRITICISM
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Criticism whose aim is to prove the critic’s moral, intellectual, or patriotic superiority is not criticism but hypocrisy whose sole aim is to mislead and deceive.
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The function of a critic is not to solve problems but to expose contradictions. I recognize contradictions because I harbor them. To expose a contradiction also means to identify the individuals who are at its roots.
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The problem with Nazi Germany was National Socialism or Nazism or Hitler. The problem with the USSR was Bolshevism. And the problem with both Nazism and Bolshevism was contempt for human rights and free speech. (What is the aim of Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, if not a detailed documentation of this aberration?)
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Human problems should not be confused with abstract mathematical or scientific problems, which may be solved by a single mind on a piece of paper. To find solutions to human problems is easy (e.g. the problem with alcoholics is alcoholism), implementing them is not.
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I once heard a preacher say that if mankind had followed Christ, there would have been no need for Karl Marx and other reformers who operated on the assumption that they could change the world by ignoring the Word of God. Whenever I am told, “We don’t need critics, we need solutions,” I think of this preacher and cannot help wondering: “If the Son of the Almighty could not solve our problems, what makes anyone think a minor scribbler can?”
*
Why do I go on? Good question. Two tentative answers follow: When you witness an injustice or a crime, you are confronted with two options: to expose the criminals or to join them in covering it up. Since this example may imply moral superiority on the part of the witness, here is a better and more selfish one: The house next door is on fire. You either ignore it and hope for the best or you call 911, which is what I have been doing – calling 911, even after being told repeatedly by the voice at the other end to shut up and mind my own business, as if my own home were not my business.
#
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
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The Word of God: the quintessential hearsay evidence.
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You want to be objective? Begin by thinking against yourself. Question your fondest assertions in which the “I” is present. Your “I” may be your most valuable possession but to the rest of the world it is the least significant.
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I don’t remember to have ever met a man about whom I could not say, “There by the grace of God…”
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As victims of racism, racism comes naturally to us. For many years I instinctively denied the existence of good Turks, and to this day the combination of these two words – “good Turks” – has to me an oxymoronic aura, like “cold fire,” or “compassionate sadist.”
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Charm and honesty are mutually exclusive concepts. In the kind of world we live in, being honest means being obnoxious.
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Caravans are magnates for idle dogs and dung beetles.
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Wars between men end, but wars between gods never do.
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If their Allah and our God ever met, would they need a translator?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, August 31, 2006
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As a child I don’t remember to have ever tried to reconcile the mantra of my elders “mart bidi ch’ellank,” (freely translated, “we shall never acquire the status of human beings”) with the propaganda line that said we are just about the smartest and most civilized people on earth. As an adult I know that our defects and deficiencies, our intolerance, tribalism and incompetence are like a city set of a hill – they cannot be hidden. The world knows us better than we know ourselves – that’s another thing we share in common with Turks, who like to project the image of a civilized nation that has victimized no one, let alone defenseless women, children, and old men.
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In his travel impressions of Turkey, Lord Kinross, a notorious Turcophile and biographer of Ataturk, tells us he met old Turks who not only knew all about the Genocide but also bragged about it to him. He quotes them as saying, “We taught Armenians a lesson they’ll never forget,” or words to that effect.
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We flatter ourselves when we think people can’t see through us. We are not enigmas but walking clichés. Our rhetoric and propaganda may convince the dupes among us but no one else. We like to believe ours is a success story because we survived where many others did not. It is equally valid to say that we are a failure because with solidarity and statesmen as leaders (as opposed to petty tribal wheeler-dealers) we could have been a mighty empire.
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Political correctness deals only with appearances. A man can be politically correct and harbor racist sentiments. An Armenian can say, “I don’t hate Turks,” but given an opportunity he would gladly exterminate not only them but also anyone who disagrees with him.
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Speaking of solidarity: In an article about the recently arrested polygamist “prophet” Warren Jeff and his community of fundamentalist Mormons, I come across the following sentence: “The situation is so toxic that brothers don’t speak to brothers, depending on which leader they follow.” Does that ring a bell?
*
And speaking of intolerance: In the obituary of Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arab writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, I read: Because he was “a strong voice for moderation and religious tolerance… he was accused of blasphemy and survived a stabbing attack twelve years ago.”
#
Friday, September 01, 2006
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We make better servants than masters. As masters we can be merciless, especially if our servants are Armenian.
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We have made many more significant contributions to foreign empires (Byzantine, Ottoman, Soviet, American) than to our own nation. I call that our “Gulbenkian complex” – give only 7% to your own people and 93% to odars.
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When a friend of mine asked the late and lamented Sylva Kaputikian (may the blessings of Karl Marx be upon her) about the chances of having his translation of Nikos Kazantzakis published in Armenia, she replied: “We don’t publish books written in West Armenian.” A big lie that! I have seen many books in West-Armenian (by Zohrab, Baronian, and Odian, among others) published in Yerevan. Why lie? Is it because we can’t handle the truth? We are not worthy of it? Is it more convenient to lie than to speak the truth? Masters are under no obligation to level with servants?
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Pablo Casals to one of his students on how to play Bach: “Put some gypsy in him.” I like that. He didn’t say, “Make it more Germanic!”
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Speaking of Bach: How to explain the fact that the greatest Bach interpreters were not German but Landowska (xxx), Glenn Gould (Canadian), Casals (Spaniard), and Schweitzer (French) -- also the author of the most insightful and readable book on Bach.
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Voltaire on democracy: “Le gouvernement de la canaille [riff-raff].” And yet, it was intellectuals like him who inspired and provided the impetus for the French Revolution.
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Stendhal: “We commit the greatest cruelties but without cruelty.” Perhaps because that which comes naturally to us we don’t consider cruel or criminal or even abnormal. (A possible explanation of Turkish attitude towards the Genocide?)
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There are three ways to wisdom: by way of books, by word of mouth, by one’s own mistakes. The most painful of these is the third way, but also the surest – provided of course one survives.
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God is on the side of bigger battalions and better lawyers.
#
Saturday, September 02, 2006
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Whenever a Christian dares to criticize Muslim fundamentalism, a so-called moderate Muslim is bound to raise his voice against the infidel dog. Oriana Fallaci may be right: a moderate Muslim is only a fundamentalist with a mask.
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When wise men disagree, they may settle their differences without bloodshed. But when fools disagree, the chances of developing a consensus range from slim to nil.
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It is not the truly wise who assume to know better because they know wisdom to be a search without end; it is rather the arrogant ignoramus.
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And speaking of their imams and our commissars (and all their neo- and crypto- variants, of which we Armenians have more than our share) what they have in common is an inability to learn from history or their version of it, which, if it is not the propaganda of the victor, it is the consolation of the loser.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 03, 2006
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In Voltaire’s play MAHOMET OU LE FANATISME, the Prophet says, “Whoever dares to think for himself is not born to believe in me. Silent obedience shall be your only path to glory.” One of Voltaire’s many biographers points out that MAHOMET is not a Christian’s attack on a false religion, but an attack on all organized religions, which “are an imposture in the service of political oppression.” See Roger Pearson, VOLTAIRE ALMIGHTY: A LIFE IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM (New York, 2005).
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Napoleon didn’t like men who could think for themselves either. He once said, “A man with an idea is my enemy.”
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Most of my so-called critics attack not my ideas but my freedom to express them, that is, my fundamental human right of free speech. But like all born and bred fascists, they are not aware of this.
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Nothing enhances wisdom or the appearance of it than silence. But fools being fools are driven by an inner compulsion to confess who and what they are.
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I am not afraid of being wrong. Why should I be? Am I not human? I leave infallibility to imams, commissars, and my critics. What I am afraid of is turning into a fool. Because, according to Nietzsche, that’s what happens to people who make it their business to deal with fools.
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I have been a source of disappointment to many people, beginning with myself. If I knew how to pray I would go down on my knees and say, “O Lord, give me the strength to say ‘A plague on all your houses!’ and fall silent.”
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Samuel Beckett once said that his ambition in life was “to sit on my ass and do nothing but fart.” A line and an ambition worthy of a Zen master.
#
Monday, September 04, 2006
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Since everything is connected with everything else, no one is equipped to know and understand everything about anything. Only god (if he exists) may know and understand everything. We miserable mortals are condemned to know and understand only a fraction of reality.
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All conflicts and disagreements are results of partial understanding and knowledge. Religions are popular because to believe in god means to follow the guidance of one who knows everything and is never wrong. But since “of the gods we know nothing” (Socrates), all assertions made in the name of god are based on total ignorance.
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Perhaps the most useful kind of knowledge is that which reveals to us the depths and breadth of our ignorance.
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Voltaire and Tolstoy saw no merit in Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky loathed Brahms, and Nabokov didn’t much care about “Faulknermann” and “Tolstoevsky.” Great men are poor judges of other great men. So are gods of other gods. And when gods disagree, massacre is sure to follow. Hence the dictum: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors” (Voltaire).
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A wise man once said, “I am willing to worship a man who is searching for the truth, but I would gladly kill him if he said he found it.”
#
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
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Speaking of the mindset of drunk drivers caught on the scene of an accident, a policeman is quoted as having said in today’s paper, they begin with a “sense of invincibility” and end by trying to “blame it on somebody else.” Overconfidence followed by the blame game: it explains so much about human nature, or life as we experience it, reality as we perceive it, and history as we write it.
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You want to learn from history? Examine your own heart.
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There are those who see nothing questionable in being subservient to an imbecile with more money. There are others who find the prospect unspeakably degrading and unbearably repellent.
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Unmasking a lie does not necessarily mean the destruction of the lie. That’s because what motivates most men is not love of truth but loyalty to self-interest. Where self-interest enters, black lies and white truths turn into shades of gray.
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The crimes of capitalism are many – no doubt about that. But so are the crimes of Christianity, Islam, and Communism. Where power enters, abuse of power is sure to follow.
#
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
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Armenian literature is a riskier racket than the mafia, and the only way the survive it is by dying young. Organized crime has two enemies: the police and rival families. Armenian literature has many more, among them tuberculosis (in the 19th century), Talaat and Stalin (in the 20th), and (in the 21st) censorship, audience apathy on the part of the majority, verbal abuse on the part of a faceless and anonymous minority, and last but far from least, the doubletalk of bosses, bishops, and benefactors, and their flunkies, who publicly deliver speeches in support of literature but the moment the sun sets they get their shovels out and start digging.
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I remember one of our bosses once delivering a speech in which he said, “Writers and poets have more influence in shaping the minds and souls of people than anyone else in the community.” Stalin once delivered a similar speech in which he called writers “engineers of the soul.” What happened next we know.
*
I remember another one of our bosses saying in another speech, “My fondest ambition is to retire on a distant island and spend the rest of my life in solitude reading…” That one committed suicide, some say he was assassinated by members of a rival family.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, September 07, 2006
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IN PRAISE OF FREE SPEECH
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The first sentence of a commentary in our paper today that bears the headline, “Newspaper must provide a forum for free speech,” reads: “It is easier to love the theory of free speech than the practice of it.” And the final sentence: “And it is the responsibility of the citizen to accept that free speech includes not only the viewpoints that the citizen agrees with, but also those which cause gravest and most heartfelt offence.” John Roe, the author of this commentary is identified as “the Editorial Page editor.” I should like to see one of our own editors writing and publishing such a commentary. As for our pundits and academics who contribute regularly to our papers: I don’t remember any one of them raising his voice against censorship. John Roe is right: we may love the theory of free speech but we, all of us, (publishers, editors, pundits, and citizens) hate the practice of it. Either that or we define free speech as the freedom to spew anti-Turkish venom.
#
Friday, September 08, 2006
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TOWARDS A MORE BALANCED
VIEW OF REALITY
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Chamfort: “Everything I learned, I have forgotten: the little I remember, I guessed.”
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To understand one thing is to understand many other things.”
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An objective judgment is better than a prejudiced one.”
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By distorting reality, bias obstructs our path to understanding, and ultimately to consensus.
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These may not be as good or original assertions as Descartes’ celebrated “I think therefore I am,” but they are far more accurate than their opposites.
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Sooner or later all Armenians realize that to trust an Armenian on the grounds that he is Armenian is unwise. Among my friends and acquaintances I count several who began by trusting their fellow Armenians and ended by avoiding them like the plague.
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As a child I believed everything I was told by my schoolteachers and parish priest. As an adult I know that trusting mullahs and propagandists (regardless of race, color, and creed) is to consent to be brainwashed.
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To trust no one is as bad as to trust everyone. As an Armenian I may reject the Turkish version of the story. It doesn’t necessarily follow I accept the Armenian version.
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Our nationalist historians tell us the Turks planned to exterminate us long before the actions of our revolutionaries. What they don’t even try to explain is why would Turks do that to their “most loyal millet” at a time when enemies from within as well as without threatened their very existence?
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You don’t have to be a historian or a psychologist to recognize a contradiction when you see one. All you need is common sense, which, according to Descartes, is evenly distributed because no one complains that he doesn’t have enough of it.
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Common sense tells us, to trust the judgment of an objective outsider is wiser than to trust the judgment of participants in a quarrel or controversy. The justice system of the civilized world is based on that assumption.
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In addition to being one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century, Arnold J. Toynbee was also the first scholar to document the Genocide and to publish several studies on Turkish abuses of power. As an anti-nationalist he rejected both Turkish and Armenian versions of the story. In his version, the Genocide is undeniable fact. It is equally undeniable that by making unjustified territorial demands, Armenian nationalists were partly responsible in provoking it.
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If you reject Toynbee’s version on grounds that he is just another cold-blooded, dehumanized imperialist witness with an impaired sense of compassion and justice, I invite you to consider the testimony of an old Armenian lady who was also a survivor of the Genocide: “The Turks are nice people, provided you don’t step on their tails.”
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Is it conceivable that this traumatized old woman on her way to senility and death has a more balanced view of reality than all our pundits combined?
*
A German philosopher once said, “The Germans are the best people in the world, but the trouble is there are so few of them.” Our problem may well be that our “betters” are our worst.
#
Saturday, September 09, 2006
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Voltaire’s favorite prayer: “O Lord, please make all my enemies ridiculous.”
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The intolerant have a sharp eye for someone else’s intolerance, never their own.
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Once when I said that Germans had helped Turks in planning and executing the Armenian genocide, a German Armenologist reminded me that Germans had been the first scholars to establish the Sanskrit roots of the Armenian language. Academics!
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Friedrich Schlegel: “Words often understand each other better than the people who use them.”
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In his biography of Timothy Leary, of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” fame, Greenfield writes: “Tim loved everyone as if they were his own children – except for his own actual children.” Another Saroyan!
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It has been said, when women want to behave like men, they seldom behave like gentlemen. One could also say that when Armenians behave like Turks, they seldom behave like good Turks. I shiver to think what would happen if this type of Armenian were given a yataghan and unleashed against defenseless civilians who happen to disagree with him.
*
Only if you have lived in darkness may you see the light. This cannot happen to someone who assumes his darkness to be light.
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“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Our history in a nutshell. It has been the perennial function of our academics to cover up this obvious fact.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, September 10, 2006
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Pericles as quoted by Thucydides in his PELOPONNESIAN WAR (5th century BC):”What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy, but our own mistakes.”
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Socrates as quoted by Plato in his REPUBLIC (473 BC): “Those who are now called kings and potentates must learn to seek wisdom like true philosophers in order that political power and intellectual wisdom may be joined in one.”
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I have yet to meet the partisan pundit who did not think of himself as smarter than Socrates.
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Socrates had many more questions and doubts than certainties. One of his very few certainties was the quintessentially anti-theological and anti-dogmatic assertion, “Of the gods we know nothing.”
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Gandhi once defined god as “truth.” One could therefore transliterate the Socratic assertion, as “Of truth we know nothing.” We may only aspire to advance in its direction by rejecting lies, half-lies, and propaganda.
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Propaganda does not solve problems, it creates them.
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Propaganda is propaganda regardless of race, color, creed, theology, and ideology
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The ultimate aim of all propaganda is to create bloodthirsty barbarians willing to kill in order to satisfy some moral moron’s lust for power.
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Massacres are not results of Asiatic barbarism but of propaganda.
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At one time or another we have all been dupes of propaganda because we have all been children.
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Dupes have two sets of enemies: (one) other dupes who believe in a propaganda line different from theirs, and (two) anyone who dares to identify them as dupes.
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A dupe without mortal enemies is unthinkable.
#
Monday, September 11, 2006
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PARALLELS
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What happened on 9/11 was a clear-cut case of terrorism, no one denies that. And yet, the Bush Administration did not want it investigated. What happened to us in 1915 was also a clear-cut case of genocide, and yet, anyone who dares to disagree with our official version of the story is reviled as a pro-Turkish revisionist and a traitor to the Cause.
*
Since 9/11 we have learned a great deal about the failures and incompetence of successive administrations in Washington, all of which treated acts of Muslim terrorism that preceded 9/11 as isolated incidents that did not require radical shifts in policy. In the words of a witness to the 9/11 Commission, “the terrorists were not just lucky once, but again and again.” In short, 9/11 could have been prevented if all the warning signs had not been ignored or covered up.
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1915 was also preceded by a series of massacres at the turn of the century except that in our case the number of victims far exceeded the number of American victims, and our position within the Ottoman Empire was far more vulnerable to punitive reprisals.
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1915 may be said to have been a perfect storm in which Turkish tyranny and Armenian incompetence and utter lack of foresight combined to produce what Toynbee called “one of the two greatest tragedies of the 20th Century,” the other being the Holocaust of xxxs during World War II. But unlike our own historians and pundits, Toynbee refused to treat the Genocide as theology even at the cost of being called a Turcophile heretic and a denialist.
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It is the height of cynicism to think that the only lesson we can learn from 1915 is to spew anti-Turkish venom and to pretend that the conduct of our political leadership has been and continues to be blameless.
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We were vulnerable to genocide in the years preceding 1915 as we are vulnerable today to two genocides even if only of the “white” variant – assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland. And what’s being done? The answer to this question seems to be, playing the blame game by voicing the convenient formula “historic and social conditions beyond our control.” It follows, we are in good hands and our establishment types, who happen to be paragons of competence and integrity, are doing everything that needs to be done. To which I can only say, “Give me a break!”
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
KITCHENER-WATERLOO RECORD
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GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE
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It is a thankless task to say the obvious, but there are times when it cannot be avoided. It was neither xxxs nor the U.N. that created Israel but anti-Semites of all nations who prefer to identify themselves today as anti-Zionists. Before these gentlemen accuse the U.S. for its unconditional support of Israel, and Israeli aggression against Muslim terrorists, who prefer to identify themselves as freedom fighters, they should take a good look at themselves in the mirror and consider their contribution in shaping the status quo.

Ara Baliozian
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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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By carefully interpreting news and editing facts, those in power can misrepresent bad news as good news, and the most abject defeat as the most glorious victory.
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Confronted by a tiny Roman legion, our most celebrated emperor, Dikran (or Tigranes) II is said to have run away. And yet, we continue to call him “the Great” instead of “the Coward.”
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Confronted by a mighty Persian horde and a wall of Indian elephants, Vartan Mamikonian is said to have scored our most glorious moral victory, meaning military defeat.
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More about the Battle of Avarair: my Mekhitarist teacher of history, who happened to be a highly respected medievalist and the author of several learned volumes, once said that this particular battle was pure invention, it never happened.
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G.B. Shaw’s dictum, “All professions are conspiracies against the laity,” fits nationalist historians like a glove.
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I once asked one of our historians what he thought of Shaw, and he replied, “He was a fool.”
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It is said to Yeghishe (the historian of Avarair) that he was a propagandist of the Mamikonian dynasty. Which may suggest that, when history is not the propaganda of the victor, it is the consolation of the loser.
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Speaking of the Mamikonians: I am told one of our bosses once bragged that his family tree could be traced all the way back to the Mamikonians. I wonder if this clown was aware of the fact that the Mamikonians were of Chinese descent.
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The only way to acquire an objective account of our past is to avoid our historians.
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If I repeat myself it may be because there is no other way to refute lies that have acquired the status of mantras in our tribal consciousness. And if you tell me, under pretense of exposing lies, I am demolishing whatever pride we may have as Armenians, I say, this so-called pride has created dupes at the mercy of tribal charlatans who have proceeded to divide, alienate, and destroy the nation. Pride that is based on lies is an ephemeral illusion. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for us. It is now time that we give truth or honesty a chance.
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
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FAITH: A BLESSING OR A CURSE?
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If two enemies fight and both believe god is on their side, both will win: the victory of one will be military, the victory of the other, moral.
Faith may not move mountains but it can change defeat to victory.
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If god is on your side, you can’t be wrong because god can’t be wrong.
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If invisible god is the only reality, visible reality is an illusion.
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Faith and science are not mutually exclusive concepts, but religions and religions are.
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Authentic men of faith believe god is incomprehensible; the phonies use the scriptures as if they were god’s political and moral agenda.
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Tolerance teaches us to respect all religions, faiths, and gods. Intolerance tells us, “My god is god, and your god is the devil.”
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Speaking of himself, a man of faith will say, “I believe therefore I am right.” Speaking of heretics and infidels (that is, the majority of mankind): “He believes therefore he is wrong.”
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If I knew how to pray I would say, “O God, save me from all men of god.”
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