notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, October 26, 2007
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ON MORAL SUPERIORITY
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Whenever I make an honest effort to understand and explain my fellow Armenians, I invariably run across a self-righteous charlatan who reacts with such hatred and venom that I am reminded of a born-again Armenian in his eighties who once said to me: “The Turks were right to massacre Armenians. Armenians are evil. The Genocide was God’s punishment.”
Never mind about being tolerant of xxxs and Turks, most of whom have done no harm to us and may even be on our side. We must first learn to be tolerant of our fellow Armenians.
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But perhaps, instead of speaking of xxxs, Turks, and Armenians, we should teach ourselves to speak of our fellow men.
As children we are all brought up to believe we are normal and we can rely on our understanding of what’s right and wrong. Some of us never outgrow that infantile stage. What does it mean to be normal? Who decides? Our environment of course, or rather, the majority within our environment. What if the majority is abnormal? In Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, the majority was dead wrong but only assumed to be right. It went further and it persecuted the minority by supporting a criminal regime. Hence the post-World War II slogan: “We are all assassins!”
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Well, not quite. Where there are assassins, there will be victims. Is it not safe to assume that the victims are morally superior to their victimizers?
Who is a victim? At all times and everywhere societies may be divided into masters and slaves, top dogs and underdogs, exploiters and workers, killers and victims. One way to define a victim is to say that given the opportunity he would prefer to be a master rather than a slave, a top dog rather than an underdog, and a killer rather than his victim. Now then, who is right and who wrong? Who is morally superior, the killer or the victim who would gladly change places with him? (Remember, even the Church sanctions killing in self-defense.) In such a context, can one really speak of moral superiority?
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God and his angels may be right or morally superior but for reasons of their own they don’t get involved in human affairs or take sides. Why not? Theologians have come up with many answers that may make sense to them and to their brainwashed disciples and followers but to no one else.
Where does mankind stand today? When it comes to morality and justice, have we made any progress? Do you think God is on your side? You are of course free to think so but don’t expect others to agree with you.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, October 27, 2007
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ON FORGIVENESS AND UNDERSTANDING
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My Turkish friend and I agree on many things except the word genocide. He denies its reality with the same visceral certainty that I assert it. Last time the subject came up, I suggested the source of our disagreement may well be the fact that as children we were brainwashed by two different sets of charlatans. The main thing is, we don’t allow our disagreement to end our friendship. This is not what happens with fellow Armenians. Even when the disagreement is minor to the point of being insignificant, the friendship comes to a violent end with a torrent of verbal abuse.
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When I was a little boy I would try to see the positive in the negative and I would invariably find it. Like Pollyanna, after every misfortune, I would play the glad game. At one point I even saw something good in the Genocide: if it weren’t for the Genocide, I thought, we would still be Turkish citizens and share our existence with bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians, instead of living in the enlightened West. One good thing about the Genocide was that it had liberated us from the shackles of Ottomanism!
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What does the average citizen know what goes on in the world or, for that matter, in the next village? He has no choice but to rely on politicians, editors, and ghazetajis – at best dupes (like our own Zohrab) and at worst, riffraff.
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In 1981 a Turk by the name of Ali Agca (who, like most Turks, may have been part-Armenian) tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Three years later the Pope visited him in his cells and forgave him. He forgave him, yes, but he did not set him free. He set himself free. To forgive is a selfish act. It sets one free from the shackles of hatred. It does not say let bygones be bygones, let’s forget the past and bury the hatchet. It does not cancel the debt the criminal owes to society.
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Unlike the Pope, who forgave his would-be assassin, we are no longer in a position to forgive Talaat and the perpetrators of the Genocide. But perhaps what we can do is understand the denialists who are denialists not by choice but by indoctrination.
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[Lucin]

Re: notes / comments

You are indeed the Turcocentric, a deranged one of course... Harts e tsagum te inchi masin eir grelu yete trker@ (ko amenakarevor nersh'nchumnerits) ch'linein?

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

You are indeed the Turcocentric, a deranged one of course... Harts e tsagum te inchi masin eir grelu yete trker@ (ko amenakarevor nersh'nchumnerits) ch'linein?

The "writer" in question is a self-hating deranged lunatic. I have observed his garbage for the past fifteen-twenty years. He was repulsive throughout his life, and now in his senior years he is a lowly angry soul suffering from senility. As anyone can see from his written crap, the depth of his self-hate, delusion and ignorance is bottomless. I come into this thread to observe the kind of psychological damage Armenian diasporans suffer from. I suggest individuals here to make periodic posts to show the unsuspecting reader, be it Armenian, J-e-w or his favorite Turk, that this person in question speaks only for his deranged self and no one else.

[zourna]

Re: notes / comments

What you fail to understand, Lucin and the like, is that the WRITER in question is inspired indeed by our aversions towards other races, our compatriots and even ourselves!
May be the man speaks for himself, Armenian, but I often see myself in character in many of his writings.
And oh boy would I see you playing the leading role...

[Lucin]

Re: notes / comments

What you fail to understand, Lucin and the like, is that the WRITER in question is inspired indeed by our aversions towards other races, our compatriots and even ourselves!

I don't understand. What "aversion" are you talking about? LOL, Do you expect me to go and cuddle every time I see a Turk? And which races are you talking about?

but I often see myself in character in many of his writings.

Oh really? Do you, for instance, see yourself in Ali Agca or in Talaat??

May be the man speaks for himself, Armenian,

He speaks for himself? Fine, then I would sugggest him not spew his "speakings" everywhere or replace the words Armenia by 'Planet Earth' and Armenian by a 'citizen of planet earth'. ( as he is one)


Never ever in my whole life, I had seen such a 'yerevuyt'; someone spewing nonsense about his own people, ridiculing them, bashing them sickly and morbidly on a daily basis, on the Net or in books. Name me please, just one writer or critic who is mud-slinging his own people the way he does? Nobody objects him for healthy criticism but his depressive, nihilistic writings have no sense of objectivity.
He is someone with a morbid imagination and obsession.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Lucin jan, these people are the filth in our society. This zourna character, whoever he/she is, exemplifies just of how out of touch and disillusioned diasporan Armenians are. These kinds of people are off-springs of Turkified Armenians and petty Anatolian wh-ores that somehow survived the Armenian Genocide and reproduced. Sadly, they seem to be permanent fixture in our society. Most of our extended families have this type of self-hating Armenians, including mine. On the good side, this kind tends to assimilate very fast. And in times of war they will be dealt with accordingly. If you read the biographies of Armenian war heroes such as Drastamat and Andranik, you will see that on many occasions they had to eliminate these types of Armenians to ensure the safety of others.

The good Armenian amongst us, I'm afraid, is a minority. Majority of Armenians today, the average Armenian, is useless and worthless as Armenians. And the psychologically disturbed low-lives such as Ara B that go around speaking to the world in our name are longterm dangers to our national aspirations. During ottoman times the fate of senile self-haters like Ara B would have been one of the following two:

Complete Turkification, the fate suffered by many "peace loving" Ottoman Armenians

Murdered by Turks, the fate suffered by most "peace loving" Ottoman Armenians.

[Azad]

Re: notes / comments

Ignoring the "writer" in question is the best thing you can do.
Since his only left glory are the objections to his constant insults for attention.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Ignoring the "writer" in question is the best thing you can do. Since his only left glory are the objections to his constant insults for attention.

Levon jan, if this deranged self-hater kept to himself within this board I would have just pitied him and left it at that. However, he goes around in Turkish and J-e-wish discussion boards disseminates his garbage about Armenians. As a result, he is somewhat of an attraction here. I personally feel as if sometimes I have to make some noise.

For example: Ara B keeps referring to something called "gazetajeez." I wanted to find out what it meant, so I did a Google search. I did not find the meaning of the word but I did came up with was several J-e-w-ish and Turkish discussion boards he posts his crap in.

Ara is obviously a disgruntled person with a lot of self-hate and disillusion.

This comment about him from Narek:

Ara Baliozian is one of the most controversial Armenian contemporary writers, but unfortunately most Armenians do not know about him or his works. He has published close to 20 books over the last 20 years and is acclaimed highly by the foreign media, like Gosdan Zarian and Shahan Shahnour before him, which goes to prove that our anti-establishment writers are not rejected because of the literary quality of their works, but only because of their ideas and their criticism of the Armenian establishment. Armenian papers used to publish his commentaries/book reviews, but lately he has been ignored by most of them (Armenian Life Weekly and New Life [Nor Gyank] which had been publishing his writings for years, among other papers, have been turning down his works lately).

And this one by a Shant Norashkharian:

Ara Baliozian is one of the greatest Armenian contemporary writers, but unfortunately most Armenians do not know about him or his works. He has published close to 20 books over the last 20 years and is acclaimed highly by the foreign media, like Gosdan Zarian and Shahan Shahnour before him, which goes to prove that our anti-establishment writers are not rejected because of the literary quality of their works, but only because of their ideas and their criticism of the Armenian establishment. Armenian papers used to publish his commentaries/book reviews, but lately he has been ignored by most of them (Armenian Life Weekly and New Life [Nor Gyank] which had been publishing his writings for years, among other papers, have been turning down his works lately). He is sixty years old, and lives in seclusion and poverty in Ontario, Canada.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, October 28, 2007
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WHO IS A FASCIST?
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People may think, feel, and speak like fascists but they object strenuously to being identified as such. How to recognize a dyed-in-the wool, real McCoy fascist? Easy! Follow the instructions below.
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THE THREE PILLARS OF FASCISM
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They are nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism.
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NATIONALISM
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Not only are we nationalists, we also brag about it. We wear our nationalism like a badge. We look down on anyone who dares to say anything against it. We may even cover him with verbal abuse. I speak from experience.
How do we define nationalism? Answer: Love of country, contempt for fellow countrymen.
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ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
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Read a history of our literature and draw your own conclusions. But if you are too busy to read books of no interest to you, take my word for it: our treatment of intellectuals has been a disaster area and we could easily qualify as one of the most anti-intellectual people on earth. We lost two generations of intellectuals under Talaat and Stalin, and both “purges” (to use a euphemism) with the cooperation of our philistines. But the worst was yet to come. Where Talaat and Stalin failed, our bosses, bishops, and benefactors (“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation!”) succeeded. Our intellectual class today has been so thoroughly marginalized that it might as well be extinct. The very few who exist, if at all, have gone underground, sometimes literally.
Oh! don’t get me wrong. We love and venerate poets who sing the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the “sunripe flavor” of our language (whatever the hell that means) but we prefer to speak English in America, French in France, Greek in Greece, Turkish in Turkey, and with a forked tongue with one another.
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ANTI-SEMITISM
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Anecdotal evidence: after visiting New York City, an old schoolteacher of mine came to see me. “We saw a lot of xxxs there,” said he. “They are people like us, don’t you know. They dress like ordinary folks, they walk like ordinary folks, and they look like the rest of us. Zarmatsa mnatsi!”
What about xxxs who are pro-Turkish and anti-Armenian? Speaking for myself, I do not see them in terms of pro and anti, and if I were cornered to do so, I would say they are pro-themselves, and they have every right to be, and more power to them. Why are we surprised (like my senile schoolteacher) to learn that xxxs are like everyone else, not to say, like us? So what if after millennia of persecution they have learned the hard way to place their own survival above the survival of others (who may or may not be anti-Semites)? When was the last time we placed the survival and welfare of other nations above ours?
Speaking of Armenians and survival, allow me to conclude by quoting Zarian, one of the greatest connoisseurs of the Armenian psyche: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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P.S. ON NATIONALISM
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After writing these lines, I read a long article-interview with Serge Tankian, leader of System of a Down, who is identified as an Armenian from Beirut and “a thoughtful, erudite man…a fervent social crusader with a special interest in the Armenian genocide.” We are further told he espouses the thesis that “nationalism” is one of the three evils that haunt mankind, the other two being “greed” and “indifference.”
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