notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, January 26, 2007
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CRITICS AND MAD DOGS
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Stand long enough at the edge of an abyss and someone is sure to push you.
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Whenever a faceless anonymous hooligan on the Internet verbally abuses me, my first reaction is to believe everything he says. Paul Valéry is right: when a mad dog bites, it hurts.
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There is nothing wrong in saying “I believe in god.” But there is something horribly wrong in saying “My god is the only true god.”
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To those who tell me I go about my criticism the wrong way, I say: Name an Armenian critic, or any critic, who went about it the right way and I will be more than happy to adopt him as my role model.
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Has anyone ever written a treatise on critical etiquette and, having done so, has not been torn to shreds by critics?
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Speaking of a Sorbonne-educated avant-garde poet, a friend tells me: “When I told him I didn’t understand his poetry, he said you will, in 25 years. I met him again last week and told him the 25 years were up and I still can’t make heads or tails of it…”
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Nothing comes easier to a charlatan than to assume everyone else is a charlatan.
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Three of our most abundant national products: bragging, backbiting, and bullxxxxting.
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My favorite 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not aim at perfection in an imperfect world.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, January 27, 2007
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WHAT I UNDERSTAND ABOUT
POWER STRUCTURES
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You may not understand power structures but power structures understand you; and they understand you because they have only one criterion: “You are either with me or against me.” You may have the IQ of a genius but if you are not with the power structure body and soul, you might as well be an idiot, and worse, a nuisance. That’s why some of the best men in the history of mankind were persecuted and sometimes even condemned to death. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying those in power are all vicious fools. No. Most of them may even be highly able men – smart, sophisticated, cunning. What they lack is not smarts but moral compass. And they are moral morons because they place their own powers and privileges above all other considerations. This is true of all power regardless of race, color, and creed. Which is why sentences like “Their politicians are crooks, but ours are honest men” make sense only to the naďve and brainwashed dupe.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

For Shame Ara! An intellectual such as yourself resorting to swear words. Your words, they puncture my very soul.

Oh! i am sure you'll get over it!

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 28, 2007
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SHUT UP! HE EXPLAINED
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I don’t apportion and adapt what I know and understand; I share all of it. I respect my readers too much to tell them there are things they will understand only when they grow up.
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A LETHAL COMBINATION
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Where there is war and massacre you will also find charlatans and dupes. As for just wars: that’s another way of saying my god is better than yours.
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THE SEARCH
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Since the beginning of time man has searched for god the way a blind man in a dark room searches for a black hat that isn’t there. It may be elsewhere, but not there.
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CONFESSION
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By the time a dupe figures out he has been one all his life, the chances are he is either dead or senile. I speak from experience.
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DEAD-END JOBS
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Messiahs, prophets, and philosophers: they will never be as much in demand as plumbers, pimps, and lawyers.
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PLEASURES
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The pleasures of preaching to the converted: I know all about them. I too have published several hundred commentaries and book reviews in which the Genocide is mentioned. The question that haunts me today is: What’s the use of being right if you end up as a pillar of salt?
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MEMO
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Propaganda is taken for granted and thought of as an inevitable fact of life, but in reality it is as dangerous as a loaded gun in the hands of a child.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, January 29, 2007
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If you say something kind about xxxs, an Armenian is sure to accuse you of being a paid agent of the Mossad. I speak from experience. And if you say something kind about Americans, don’t be surprised if you are accused of being an agent of the CIA. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. Once I was even accused of being a hireling of the Vatican, not because I had said anything remotely kind about the Pope but because I was brought up as a Catholic. Disagree with an Armenian and run the risk of being fingered as a traitor.
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I have heard it said that Judas did not hang himself. He went to Armenia. Raffi expressed an awareness of this when he said, “Treason and betrayal are in our blood.”
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In another version of the story, Judas went to America, became a stockbroker on Wall Street, invested his silver, made a killing in the market, and became a benefactor. Not being a historian I am in no position to testify on the accuracy of either version.
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What does it take to be a historian? The first thing to know about writing history is that it is not a science but an art. A historian orchestrates data (facts, documents, witnesses). He is as much of an artist as a composer.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Partisans have called me “vicious” for my remarks on their bosses. But the truth is, I respect our political parties and their leaders as much as they respect one another.
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Those in power at one time or another have legitimized every kind of injustice and perversion – from incest and slavery to war and massacre. Next time you decide to place your trust in your pharaoh, fuehrer, Pope, boss or bishop, think about that.
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To speak the truth means attacking liars, who will counterattack by speaking more lies.
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If I were to compose an Armenian Credo, it would begin with the lines: “I believe monologue is better than dialogue,” and “I believe I am right and all those who disagree with me are in cahoots with the devil.”
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Montaigne: “The difference between one man and another is greater than the difference between man and beast.”
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Henry James: “It’s a complex fate, being an American.” He should try being an Armenian.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Philosophy is not an illusion. It is the algebra of history.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
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TELL ME!
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Jean-Paul Sartre: “We need the light of two suns to see the depths of human stupidity.”
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Tell me, has anyone ever succeeded in reasoning with Armenians?
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It never pays to generalize: I know Turks who couldn’t hurt a fly, and I know Armenians who would kick a man when he is down just for the pleasure of it.
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To those who hate Turks, I ask: Would you still hate them if you knew or suspected half of them to be half Armenian?
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If you say you don’t hate Turks, but you love justice, I ask: Is it just to accuse all Turks of genocide if the perpetrators numbered no more than 1% of the population? And if you say, with very few exceptions all Turks are denialists, I ask: Is it their fault if they have been brainwashed?
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One of the most frightening things about Armenians is that they are so obsessed with their hatred, so self-righteous and devoid of all doubt, that they think it is a positive, a virtue, something that makes them better patriots and morally superior human beings; and armed with that article of faith, they give themselves the license to verbally abuse others who refuse to share their neurosis.
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What it takes to be a commissar of culture: (a) not to have published a single line worth reading? (b) to believe “culture” to be a dirty word; (c) to use the word “intellectual” as if it were an insult; and (d) to confuse ideology with idology. There you have it: portrait of an average Armenian partisan.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, February 01, 2007
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GOD AND MUSIC
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Hector Berlioz: “Bach is Bach as God is God.”
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If music ennobles the soul, why is it that it failed to ennoble Nero and Hitler – both great lovers of music? What if music only enhances the inherent qualities of a man – makes the good better and the bad worse? Either that or the evil spell of power is mightier than the delicate charms of music. Even religious faith (or God), it seems, cannot resist the evil spell of power. Think of the Crusades, the vicious conduct of Renaissance Popes, the Inquisition, religious wars, and more recently, the epidemic of priests molesting children. I won't even bother mentioning the daily atrocities committed in the name of Allah.
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God and music, faith and beauty: in their absence man would have found substitutes in whose name he would have spoken with a forked tongue and proceeded to follow his gut and ignore his brain.
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E.M. Cioran: “”Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.” (As opposed to pretending to be the morally superior winner.)
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Alain-Fournier: “Getting there is better than being there.”
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Asked how he writes his plays, Tennessee Williams is quoted as having said, “I start with a sentence.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, February 02, 2007
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Both the massacre of innocent civilians and the violation of someone’s human right of free speech have the same root: the arrogance of power. Now then, tell me, what’s the difference between them and us?
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Whenever I get emotionally involved in an argument I know I have lost it, because emotion betrays more ego and less reason.
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There are as many versions of a historic occurrence as there are paintings of Fuji-Yama and Ararat.
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When I was dead wrong it never even occurred to me to consider the possibility of not being right. Another way of saying, I too was a believer and a fanatic.
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Are we perennial victims or morally superior victors? Can lamentation be reconciled with bragging? Tell me, do you have an answer?
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Why should love of homeland stand in opposition to love of truth?
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Paul Klee: “Art does not reproduce what we see. Rather, it makes us see.” (Or, it exposes our blindness.)
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George Orwell: “We are living in a world in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.”
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What’s the difference between racism based on blood, and a racism based on ideas? Do you see any difference between “My blood is better than yours,” and “My ideas are better than yours”?
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, February 03, 2007
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MEMOIRS
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In the memoirs of two contemporary English novelists there is endless talk of several troubled marriages, lovers by the dozen, substance abuse (both alcohol and pills), psychiatrists, and attempted suicides, among other problems. So far I have relied only on alcohol. Couldn’t afford the rest. Sometimes it pays to be poor. During the war years and after our breakfast consisted of tea, bread, and olives. My cousin in America by contrast breakfasted on eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. Result? Open-heart surgery, pacemaker, and a dozen pills a day, among other problems.
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Speaking of lovers: in the final page of her memoirs, a filthy rich American celebrity in her eighties describes her latest gigolo as “the Nijinsky of cunnilingus.”
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“The pleasures of love last no more than a moment, its regrets a lifetime.” Has this old proverbial saying stopped anyone from resisting the temptations of the flesh? Instinct rules even the lives of reasonable men, perhaps because reason only whispers, more often than not inaudibly, where instinct is as loud as thunder. As for writers and philosophers: they may think they are in the business of dispensing wisdom, but all they can hope to do is provide a few moments of harmless entertainment.
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