notes / comments

[gmd]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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WRITERS AND CRITICS
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The Catholic novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize (1952) Francois Mauriac (b. 1885) gave up writing fiction after Sartre, (b. 1905), a relative newcomer on the French literary scene and an atheist to boot, published an essay critical of his work. This may suggest that a competent critic has the power to deconstruct, demolish, and reduce to silence even a universally admired great writer.
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I look forward to the day when someone with average or even below average intelligence will give me a similar treatment and I will quit writing this stuff and go back to writing fiction. But so far I haven’t had much luck in my critics. If they are not brainwashed partisans or brown-nosing self-appointed Turcocentric pundits, they are intellectually challenged skinheads whose insults I find stimulating rather than wounding.
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Are we heading in the direction of a new renaissance or are we on our way to the devil? If you answer this question by resorting to chauvinist clichés and platitudes, then we have nothing to look forward to.
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I grew up with the notion that there was more truth in an Armenian lie than in an odar truth. It took me many years to realize that a lie is a lie and it makes no difference whether it is spoken in Zulu, Turkish, or Armenian. The same could be said of propaganda.
#

When you finish reading the post below please look in a mirror and spend a few minutes of honest introspection.

propaganda:
–noun 1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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LET’S TALK TURKEY
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Common sense tells us, when two witnesses contradict each other, both can’t be right.
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Experience tells us, to say all politicians lie except ours, is to declare oneself to be a certifiable dupe of nationalist propaganda.
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Warning: If you question the validity of these two assertions, no need to read any further.
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Since some of my Armenian readers are convinced I am a pro-Turkish denialist, and some of my Turkish readers take it upon themselves to correct my occasional pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish lapses, I must conclude I am on the right path. It is not part of my agenda to please, mislead, or accuse anyone. There are already more than enough hirelings who make a comfortable living (thank you very much) by doing these things.
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“The Armenians were punished because they sided with the enemy,” a gentle Turkish reader reminds me. By “punished” he probably means deported and not massacred. Which is it? Since both of my grandmothers survived and both my grandfathers perished, I must conclude some were deported, others “terminated.” As for siding with the enemy, this may indeed be true of Armenians on the Russo-Turkish border, but definitely not of Armenians on the mainland, except for the very few agitators and revolutionaries who may have acted in the name of the people but who represented no one but themselves, very much like the Talaat, Jemal, Enver troika. The overwhelming majority of Armenians in the ghetto of refugees where I grew up were both illiterate and devoid of political awareness. To accuse them of harboring secret territorial ambitions and betraying the Empire is not just wrong but absurd. I don’t remember my father saying anything remotely kind about our political parties or remotely unkind about Turks. I write these lines not as an Armenian but as a human being, and my intention is not to assert moral superiority but to understand why two people who lived side by side for six centuries prefer to believe their political leaders and to ignore the testimony of witnesses who value honesty and objectivity above prejudice and nationalist propaganda.
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How can any tribe, nation, or race assert moral superiority and believe in it? Even worse: How can it also believe that in doing so it will not arouse the contempt and hatred of all men? The ancient Greeks knew better. They believed that pride or arrogance (hubris) is punished by the gods (Nemesis). And yet, in their eyes, all non-Greeks were barbarians. What happened next we know. They were defeated and colonized by Macedonians, Romans, and last but far from least, Turks. And unbelievable as this may see, even after centuries of enslavement, even in their present bastardized condition, they continue to cling to the notion that they are the real Chosen People. Figure that one out if you can.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, November 30, 2006
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BEFORE AND AFTER
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For most of my life others set the terms and conditions and I had no choice but to accept them. (Sounds familiar?) I was born again as a human being on the day I decided to set my own terms and conditions; and even when I lost (which I did most of the time) I felt as though I had won.
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Like parrots, the brainwashed have no use for free speech.
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“Treason and betrayal are in our blood,” Raffi tells us. So are criticism and dissent. Not even our toughest critics, including Gregory of Narek, have gone as far saying “Mart bidi ch’ellank!” (We will never acquire the status of human beings.) Compare this popular mantra with such propaganda lines as “first nation this” and “first nation that,” and “Armenians are smart.” How can anyone be smart who is also deaf and ignorant of what people are thinking and saying?
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For the brainwashed there are two kinds of propaganda – theirs and ours. As for honesty and objectivity: they might as well be subversive concepts. If honesty is subversive and objectivity an instrument of the devil, does that mean we have a marked preference for dishonesty and charlatanism? What’s next? We might as well get out our shovels and start digging – and I mean digging our own graves. Toynbee is right: nations are not killed, they commit suicide.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, December 01, 2006
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A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY
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Why would anyone choose to believe a minor, disgruntled, and marginalized scribbler who can’t make ends meet and ignore textbooks written by established academics? You may choose to believe whomever you wish of course (and I say this to readers of all colors, creeds, and races, including Armenians and Turks) as long as you keep in mind that academics are hirelings of the state, that is to say, politicians, and as such they are as subservient to the power structure as diplomats and bureaucrats. Even the mightiest empire in the world, like the United States of America, cannot afford to choose textbooks written by historians who emphasize its dark side and its crimes against humanity, or textbooks written from the perspective of its victims (“white man speaks with a forked tongue,” or “white man is the devil”). Until the collapse of the USSR, Communist textbooks did not mention the Gulag; so much so that even Nobel-Prize winning intellectuals of the West dismissed all talk of the Gulag as capitalist-inspired anti-Soviet propaganda.
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Textbooks, commentaries, editorials, and memoirs of the Genocide are safe because they stress what has been done to us at the expense of what we could have done and what we can do today to solve our many problems. When it comes to what we can do today, for instance, we are given to understand we can do nothing but wait and hope that in two or three generations the corrupt among us will see the light and solve our problems, after which we may live happily ever after. Our subservience to “the blind forces beyond our control” is such that we have become deaf and dumb to the fact that by adopting a passive stance we are committing genocide by other means (exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora). I am not advocating covering up and forgetting the 1915 Genocide. What I am saying is that we should not allow it to paralyze our will.
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A Turcocentric view of life marginalizes the nation as surely as our bosses, bishops, and benefactors marginalize anyone who refuses to say “Yes, sir!” to whatever they say, no matter how absurd. As for the corrupt seeing the light and solving our problems: don’t hold your breath; they will be too busy proving their integrity, statesmanship, self-sacrifice, patriotism, and moral superiority, not to say defending with everything they’ve got the source of their power, prestige, and wealth, to have any time left for solutions.
#

[gmd]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, December 01, 2006
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A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY
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Why would anyone choose to believe a minor, disgruntled, and marginalized scribbler who can’t make ends meet and ignore textbooks written by established academics? You may choose to believe whomever you wish of course (and I say this to readers of all colors, creeds, and races, including Armenians and Turks) as long as you keep in mind that academics are hirelings of the state, that is to say, politicians, and as such they are as subservient to the power structure as diplomats and bureaucrats. Even the mightiest empire in the world, like the United States of America, cannot afford to choose textbooks written by historians who emphasize its dark side and its crimes against humanity, or textbooks written from the perspective of its victims (“white man speaks with a forked tongue,” or “white man is the devil”). Until the collapse of the USSR, Communist textbooks did not mention the Gulag; so much so that even Nobel-Prize winning intellectuals of the West dismissed all talk of the Gulag as capitalist-inspired anti-Soviet propaganda.
*
Textbooks, commentaries, editorials, and memoirs of the Genocide are safe because they stress what has been done to us at the expense of what we could have done and what we can do today to solve our many problems. When it comes to what we can do today, for instance, we are given to understand we can do nothing but wait and hope that in two or three generations the corrupt among us will see the light and solve our problems, after which we may live happily ever after. Our subservience to “the blind forces beyond our control” is such that we have become deaf and dumb to the fact that by adopting a passive stance we are committing genocide by other means (exodus from the Homeland, assimilation in the Diaspora). I am not advocating covering up and forgetting the 1915 Genocide. What I am saying is that we should not allow it to paralyze our will.
*
A Turcocentric view of life marginalizes the nation as surely as our bosses, bishops, and benefactors marginalize anyone who refuses to say “Yes, sir!” to whatever they say, no matter how absurd. As for the corrupt seeing the light and solving our problems: don’t hold your breath; they will be too busy proving their integrity, statesmanship, self-sacrifice, patriotism, and moral superiority, not to say defending with everything they’ve got the source of their power, prestige, and wealth, to have any time left for solutions.
#

Can you clarify your position or vision for Armenians? What is your ideal Armenian community (either internationally or within a homeland)?

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, December 02, 2006
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GRANDMASTERS OF THE BLAME GAME
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Shortly before she died, one of our self-appointed partisan pundits wrote me an angry letter saying I had ruined the Armenian-American community. There was a time, she explained, when everyone was happy. Now everybody was xxxxxing. And everybody was xxxxxing because my kind of writing had started the trend. She was lying of course. And she was lying because lying comes naturally to our pundits. Had I been born before the Tourian assassination in 1933, she would have pinned that on me too, no doubt.
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The other day I read an editorial in one of our partisan weeklies written by still another self-appointed partisan pundit that said, in effect, Armenians are their own worst enemies because Armenians like Rouben Mamoulian had not helped a single Armenian in Hollywood. The implications were unmistakable: what had prevented the Armenian community from going down the drain had been the idealism, dedication, hard work, and vision of statesmen like him and his kind. As for legitimizing intolerance and promoting divisions and mediocrity: they must be ascribed to my kind of xxxxxing, of course.
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I could have written a letter to the editor but I didn’t. I knew better. Once, many years ago, when I didn’t know better, I wrote a letter to the editor of this same weekly pointing out some factual inaccuracies in an editorial, only to be told: “We don’t as a rule publish letters that question our editorials.” I did not ask why not because I guessed the answer: “Because we are infallible!” If the Catholics have their Pope, if Muslims have their imams, and Turks have their Ataturk, why can’t we have a corresponding figure, and if we don’t have him, why can’t we pretend to have him, and by feeding him royal jelly, elevate him to the status of a king, that is to say, a representative of god on earth?
#

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Turian fully deserved what he got. My only problem with his assassination is that the assassins should have waited untill the Patarak was over.

Nonetheless, you deserve what you are getting as well. Trust me, you are a no one within the greater Armenian community. If I waste time here with you, its only because I want the unsuspecting readers of your brain farts to know how well you are respected as an "intellectual" within the Armenian community. Your memory, your work, will last as long as your earthly existence. Trust me.

Had you not been so self-hating, so twisted, so selfish, so aloof, I would not have been this cruel towards you. But, as I said, you 'deserve' everything you are getting here.

[Vagharshapat]

Re: notes / comments

If the Catholics have their Pope, if Muslims have their imams, and Turks have their Ataturk, why can’t we have a corresponding figure, and if we don’t have him, why can’t we pretend to have him, and by feeding him royal jelly, elevate him to the status of a king, that is to say, a representative of god on earth?

Sir I was just passing by, I am wondering, are you serious with these thoughts, we can switch places if you wish. To have a führer-like leader shows how low a nation is. Because its people are like sheep, they are ignorant and they need a despot to rule. I find this humiliating. I dont follow the footsteps of a dictator leader and do what he dictates. I had admired Armenians because they seemed like a nation formed of people of a higher intellectual level that dont need such an idol. I have always believed in a democratic society where people can express themselves freely. Even though you are all living in democratic countries it is odd that you miss some fascist leaders or kings. Does Canada have such a leader or Norway or Sweden? These are the most advanced democracies and civilizations on earth. I think what you should do is try to reach that level not trying to be like Turkey! I am living in Turkey and have suffered enough from this anti-democratic idolater regime. Everyplace pictures, sculptures and monuments of Ataturk. I am sick of it. He was not a man, he was a God(!). We couldnt accomplished anything because we were retards, Ataturk did everything for us. No, I prefer to be an ikonoklast. And in my opinion if the Armenians could get rid of some bad habits that had been passed onto them from the Turks, today's Armenia would be like Norway and Sweden and would take its place in the EU and would be one of the most civilized nations on Earth. So if I were you I would stop putting the blame on myself. What is unlucky about Armenians is their homelands are on the passageway of invaders so they could never find peace and thrived to be an advanced civilization for themselves. With their tralents and skills they served the lesser nations which is not their fault. If I were an Armenian I would be proud of being a member of a persecuted nation rather than being member of a bully nation who has conqueror dictator führers...

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, December 03, 2006
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WORK IN PROGRESS
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Identifying oneself with a fraction of mankind -- be it race color or creed, or nation, tribe, and party -- means drawing a curtain on the rest of mankind and adopting a propaganda line; and as we know by now, for every propaganda line there will be a counter-propaganda line with all the familiar results – contradictions, conflicts, assertions of superiority, intolerance, and hatred leading to war, massacre, and atrocities. I see this clearly today but for a long time my “betters” did their utmost to make me an unthinking robot who will swallow their venom, ignorance, prejudices, and unsettled scores, and feel as though I were discharging my patriotic duty and acting in the name of a noble cause, as opposed to satisfying some imbecile’s lust for power.
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No one (except perhaps the Pope of Rome) dares to assert infallibility, because doing so would mean provoking ridicule; but everyone argues as if he were infallible in his judgment. The hardest thing for a dogmatist, fanatic, and patriot is to say, “You were right and I was wrong”; and the hardest thing for a self-assessed smart person is to say, “You are smarter than I am.”
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Some may call what I have been doing “masochistic self-examination,” others “deconstruction,” which may not be the same as destruction but shares something with it. But then, all creation begins with destruction.
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When we argue perhaps our real goal is to assert some kind of superiority – if not in IQ than in wisdom or patriotism. But suppose we were to come right out at the beginning of an argument and say, “What I think is right because I am smarter and wiser than you”: would anyone believe us?
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If you think my views are unorthodox or anti-establishment or radical in any way, allow me to quote a passage from a recent commentary (September 30, 2006) by Rev. Frank Morgan, a local faith columnist who died last week at the age of 92: “Don’t claim to have all the truth and don’t claim that other faiths are lesser faiths than your own. And be very sure that if your thinking about God and His will has not changed since you were in public school, then you really need a spiritual refit.” And from another commentary (June 15, 1991): “I believe the Bible to be the greatest and surest guide to faith and life. I am also convinced that if you take it literally, you will lose that guide. It [the Bible] is a story of people’s growing understanding of God and His will for us. We still have a long way to go.” In other words, none of us can claim to be a finished product because we are a work in progress.
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On the subject of having a long way to go: I remember to have heard an old story about a man who went all over the world in search of something or other, only to come back home and discover it in his own backyard.
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Before we engage in an argument, we should ask ourselves: “Is my central concern love or hatred? And worse, is it hatred in the name of love? What is it that motivates me, tolerance or intolerance, arrogance or humility?” If you can’t answer these questions clearly and unequivocally, it only means one thing: you are in deep sh**!
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[gmd]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, December 03, 2006
Before we engage in an argument, we should ask ourselves: “Is my central concern love or hatred? And worse, is it hatred in the name of love? What is it that motivates me, tolerance or intolerance, arrogance or humility?” If you can’t answer these questions clearly and unequivocally, it only means one thing: you are in deep sh**!
#

What motivates me?
I don't want our chance at an independent Armenia to be squandered. I don't want to be the last of the Armenians.
No one force fed me that notion. That is my opinion, arrived at by reading some basic human history. Does it necessarily mean love or hate? Maybe it is just a desire for survival beyond my own skin.