notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, December 16, 2007
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THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
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When the Greeks executed Socrates, they did not just kill a man but someone who represented the very best of Greek wisdom. To silence a thinker is like burning down a library.
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The difference between an editor violating someone’s human right of free speech and a head of state ordering a massacre is one in degree. In both instances power is being abused at its maximum. Promote the editor (or a forum moderator) to head and state, and vice versa, demote a head of state to editor, and they will behave the same way.
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Stalin or Hitler saying they have no use for intellectuals is the same as an architect saying he has no use for higher mathematics. The result will be buildings that collapse as surely as Stalin’s USSR and Nazi Germany did.
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Hitler had no use for xxxish scientists. As a result, he lost to America some of Germany’s ablest minds, including Einstein. Had he been less of a racists, he would have won World War II and I would now be writing this in German. Toynbee is right: civilizations and empires are not killed, they commit suicide.
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What our critics were saying about Levon Der Bedrossian and Robert Kocharian, they are now saying about each other; and if what they say is true, they both deserve the hangman’s noose.
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Those who declare wars have a better chance to survive them than those who do the actual fighting.
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[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

Hitler had no use for xxxish scientists. As a result, he lost to America some of Germany’s ablest minds, including Einstein. Had he been less of a racists, he would have won World War II and I would now be writing this in German. Toynbee is right: civilizations and empires are not killed, they commit suicide.

Stop talking out of your ass, it took a allied power, comprised of three of greatest superpowers, to subdue the Third Reich. No nation in the history of "mankind" has as effectivly fought a 2 front war as well as the Third Reich. And once it was "subdued", it was robbed of its intellectual capital (Not the other way around!). They pardoned most of the German and Japanese scientist in order to steal their war time research. The 21st century hegemony of the United States has its roots in German science. You are grossly dillusional in thinking that it was few "xxxish scientist" that won the war, the atomic bomb came into existence after Berlin fell. What truly won the war and many Americans will disagree because it does not bolster the point of view of the American state, what won the war was the Russian ground forces that penetrated Berlin and pushed the German front back.

Yes, I agree, the atomic bomb was largly instramental in forcing the Japanese to surrendor and it did save countless of lives. However, was the actually using of the bomb really necessary, meaning, wouldn't the threat of the bomb have been more useful then relying on the bomb? Yes, the threat of the "bomb" would have forced the Japanese to surrender, they only dropped the bomb to declare that the United States has come out of the war as the "supreme" super power.

I would like to point out a few things with your "analysis" (A mule paints a more accurate picture), you are quoting Toynbee, but yet, you refuse to adhere to his principle view that if civlizations fail to strenghten and secure their military and economic development, respectivally, they will go into decline. As Toybee points out, a state that refuses to "accept" and "confront" these "challenges" will go into decline, this is what he means when he refers to commiting suicide. Incidently, this is exactly what I have championed on these boards, but yet at every corner, I am confronted with ridiculous "pseudo intellectuals" trying to derail me and my comrades.

And how might a state procure the assets to secure these investments for the glory of the state? They would have to convince each and every citizen on the micro level that there does exist a need for them to spend their lifetime fighting for the needs of a state (i.e. fundimental idea of "nationalism"), the idea that a nation groups together a people under one banner and under this banner every individual in the state strives to push forward the needs of the newly formed state. What you do when attacking nationalist feelings in Armenians is essentially, stripping them of their political handgun, their intrinsic need to champion their values.

When the Greeks executed Socrates, they did not just kill a man but someone who represented the very best of Greek wisdom. To silence a thinker is like burning down a library.

Socrates was not a "sophist", I agree, he was truly gifted, but Sophist (i.e. Greek intellectuals) did deserve what was coming to them because they were trying to sell the idea that their exist no "right" and no "wrong". They were motivated by wealth and did not care about how Greek society was developing, all that mattered to Sophist was to win the debate. Translated, Greek society was economically fragmented, you had the land owners and the people working on the land, this is what essentially lead to them colonizing the then "known world". In this kind of scenario where you have citizens that can offered a education that sophist provided, but a education that has no emphasis on "justice" and "moral values", then eventually, versus citizens that can not offered one, you create a fragmented society in which the rich continually exploit the poor because the poor do not have the means to protect their interests.

If character is destiny, as the ancient Greeks thought, the question we should ask is: To what extent our character as a nation has been shaped by 600 years of Ottoman oppression followed by 60 years of Bolshevik tyranny? If this question has so far gone unanswered it may be because our nationalists and masters of the blame-game have done their utmost to ignore or cover up that aspect of our identity.

Greeks thought many things, but what ever they did "think" and whatever you decide to "quote" from them, understand that the Greek state only existed as long as it did because the various city-states opted to unite and defend their interests and stop foreign invasion (i.e. Persians), unlike, what you preach which essentially amounts to Armenians just laying down and dying a cowards death.

Let me ask you, since you are talking about the "blame game", Ara, did you go the Nagorno-Karabagh? What were you doing in the early 1990's? Writing? "Thinking"? "Arguing"? "Blaming"? Blaming who? The "nationalist", but yet like a coward you opted to sit behind a "intellectual" safe haven and attack the very same "nationalists" that were in the front lines fighting for the Armenian cause of self determination. The door swings both ways, so can you at least have the courage to admit that "nationalist" and "nationalism" is not entirely evil? The picture you paint is a illusional, a world that does not exist. You are derailing our national struggle and motivation with your incoharent writing that contributes to nothing but your inflated ego. You need to take some of your own advice and stop blaming others, instead, muster some courage and go claim your right as a Armenian to your land, history, and culture, whatever that remains of it, as you cleaverly "point out".

[crusader1492]

Re: notes / comments

...instead, muster some courage and go claim your right as a Armenian to your land, history, and culture, whatever that remains of it, as you cleaverly "point out".

I think effendi Ara lost the privilege to do that long ago.

[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

Apres Virgil,

Some of my earlier posts in this thread: http://forum.armenianclub.com/showpo...&postcount=246

http://forum.armenianclub.com/showpost.php?p=175565&postcount=756

http://forum.armenianclub.com/showpost.php?p=167868&postcount=478

This thread is essentially a depository of Ara's self-hate, ego, delusion, hysteria and disgruntlement. More you push him the worst he will get with his hypocrisy, hate towards Armenians and contradictions. Word of caution. In his mind Ara is trying to engage us in a 'debate.' Ara is bored, he is alone, his literary works are collecting dust. So Ara simply wants company to talk to, and he has found a 'captive' audience here. As a result, he is trying to be controversial, he is trying to be a humanitarian, he is trying to be sage like, he is trying to be eccentric, aloof, etc. Most probably, his 'internet' experience has been the most excitement he has had in decades.

I have observed Ara's written garbage for the past fifteen-twenty years. I can confidently say he has been repulsive throughout his life. As anyone can see from his written crap, the depth of his self-hate, delusion and ignorance is bottomless. I come into this thread and read Ara's rants just to observe first hand the kind of psychological damage diasporan Armenian suffer from. I suggest individuals here to make periodic posts to show the unsuspecting reader, be it Armenian, Jew or Turk, that this person in question speaks only for himself and no one else.

In short: the "notes and comments" found here are nothing but 'brain-farts' of a self-hating egomaniac. There are Armenians who assimilate and disappear without a trace. And then there are assimilated ones like Ara... The problem with his kind, however, is that once they 'assimilate' they continue sticking around to give us 'advise.'

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, December 17, 2007
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ILLUSIONS
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“Nothing you say makes sense!” a reader writes; and another: “Tell us something we don’t know.” These two contradictory comments suggest that I may well be on the right track. But perhaps I am deluding myself.
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I understand illusions. I have quite a few of them myself, as a matter of fact. I believe reason matters. I believe common sense is transferable. I believe explanations work. I think I may be able to make a difference. I like to hope where far better men than myself failed, I may succeed. Call it optimism run riot. Call it hubris. Whatever it is, it allows me to go on.
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“You repeat yourself,” I am reminded once in a while. So do our Turcocentric pundits. So do our sermonizers who quote the Scriptures from hundreds of pulpits every Sunday. Has anyone ever dared to stand up and accuse them of repeating themselves? Once when I said as much in a commentary, the secretary of an archbishop wrote an angry letter to the editor in which she said: “How dare you, sir, comparing the trash you dish out [I am now abridging and paraphrasing] with the Holy Scriptures which happen to be the word of God?” My answer: Almost everything I write may be considered a paraphrase or variations on the Biblical dictum “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
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Scratch a defender of the status quo and expose a hireling for whom the establishment is manna.
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There are no new ideas, only subtle adjustments of old ones.
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I should like to meet an Armenian whose first impulse is to understand rather than to dismiss as absurd that which he makes no effort to understand.
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[Armenian]

Re: notes / comments

This thread is essentially a depository of Ara's self-hate, egomania, delusion, hysteria and disgruntlement. As any self-respecting Armenian can see from his written crap, the depth of Ara's self-hate, delusion and ignorance is bottomless. I read Ara's rants just to observe first hand the kind of psychological damage diasporan Armenian suffer from. In short: the "notes and comments" found here are nothing but 'brain-farts' of a self-hating egomaniac. There are Armenians who assimilate and disappear without a trace. And then there are assimilated ones like Ara... The problem with his kind, however, is that once they 'assimilate' they continue sticking around to give us 'advise.'

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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TYRANNY VERSUS DEMOCRACY
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A community or a nation is not a congregation that will sing the same tune in unison. There will always be discordant voices. Get used to them. Our degree of tolerance and civilization depends on the manner in which we handle dissent.
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I have been rereading Herodotus. What a great storyteller he was! Speaking of a certain Greek city-state, he writes that its citizens preferred tyranny to freedom. Impossible, I thought. Who in his right mind would choose tyranny when he can live in freedom? And then I thought of my fellow countrymen and remembered the words of our progressive and enlightened citizens (self-assessed of course) who tell us we are not yet ready for democracy. If by “we” they mean our leaders, they may be right. If they mean a fraction of the people that have been brainwashed, ditto. But I have no doubt whatever in my mind that, given a choice, the overwhelming majority will choose to live in a democracy. You want proof? Consider Armenians in the United States and Canada who did not immigrate en masse to Armenia under Stalin.
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After centuries of oppression we have accumulated vast stores of resentment, anger, and bitterness. Our leaders are aware of this. That is why they channel this suppressed fury in the direction of the Turks. What motivates them to do that is self-preservation.
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The chances of the unthinkable happening will be diminished if we think about it. If the unthinkable did happen it is because those who thought about it were ignored. “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating,” they said…
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There is a type of critic (make it, kibitzer) who is so blinded by his own brilliance that he does not mind making an ass of himself. But he is smart enough to do so anonymously and dumb enough to add cowardice to narcissism.
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[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

“Nothing you say makes sense!” a reader writes; and another: “Tell us something we don’t know.” These two contradictory comments suggest that I may well be on the right track. But perhaps I am deluding myself.

Armenian is right, you have a inflated ego. No, you are not "deluding" yourself, you are just promoting a destructive ideology that is not condusive to state building or maintaing a identity. And yes, nobody exactly understands your point of view, you quote Toynbee but yet at the same time knock down nationalists and state builders. Your a walking contradiction and maybe, I should not be responding to you because it only fuels the fire, but more than half the time you contradict yourself and recycle the same garbage ideas. There is no ounce of original ideas or opinions, just a take recorder tryign to prove a...exactly what is it you are trying to prove? That Armenians should do what exactly? Please, have the courage to lay out a opinion and have the courage to defend it or else everything else is useless window dressing.

Ara, understand, I have read better "pseudo-intellectuals", your opinions are just a recycling of many great thinkers, but instead of posting them in the context presented, you employ "relativism" and this, parapharses their ideas out of the context they were presented.

I understand illusions. I have quite a few of them myself, as a matter of fact. I believe reason matters. I believe common sense is transferable. I believe explanations work. I think I may be able to make a difference. I like to hope where far better men than myself failed, I may succeed. Call it optimism run riot. Call it hubris. Whatever it is, it allows me to go on.

Hmm....common sense? You talking about common sense? What exactly are you talking about? Lets hear it Ara, put your money where your mouth is and reveal to us your "grandiose" ideas? Stop hiding behing your image of being "above it", of being this great "intellectual", you far from both. You are so full of yourself that instead of addressing anyone directly with healthy debate, you resort to creating incoherant scribbles that lead to nothing but stagnation, your point being that "I am so great that you need to dechipire my reply to you", your full it.

“You repeat yourself,” I am reminded once in a while. So do our Turcocentric pundits. So do our sermonizers who quote the Scriptures from hundreds of pulpits every Sunday. Has anyone ever dared to stand up and accuse them of repeating themselves? Once when I said as much in a commentary, the secretary of an archbishop wrote an angry letter to the editor in which she said: “How dare you, sir, comparing the trash you dish out [I am now abridging and paraphrasing] with the Holy Scriptures which happen to be the word of God?” My answer: Almost everything I write may be considered a paraphrase or variations on the Biblical dictum “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

"A house divided against itself cannot stand"? We are already divided you jackass, we are in four corners of the planet, the reality is this idea of "unifying" is a failed ideology that has caused our people to be "divided", Monte Melkonyan, the most left leaning Armenian patriot (Actually, he was truly a human citizen), refers to this problem in Rights to Struggle, this very same idea of "unifying" for the sake of "unifying" is only rehetric used by cowards because they are not brave enough to accept the mantle of leadership. Essentially, what you are saying that everyone's opinions are the same, that one idea is the equal to the next, that ideas on different political and socio-economic don't matter because "we are all Armenian". The reality is this, you have a opinion, I have a opinion, only one will be adopted by the Armenian people and which every direction they choose, right or wrong, will determine our future. I can not unite with you nor anyone else that has a "different" view point because fundimentally, their view is wrong. I will have to fight them to earn the people's hearts and mind because people, historically, only follow individuals that are willing to put themselves in the fire for their beliefs.

You on the other hand, just want every "Jack Nahapetian" to just give in to assimilation and adopt your views that only promote stagnation. I will not allow it because at the root, your ideas are the same ones that lead the Armenian people to such a lowly state.

And stop claiming anyone is "Turkocentric", the reality is that Turks want to annex Armenia. They are infact more racist and prejudice, if you need to preach to anyone it is to them or else your "psuedo-intellectual" bukaka has already been adopted by Armenians in the west.

Are you honestly promoting the idea that Armenians don't have the right to question Turks after all we have been through and after all that has happend with regards to Azerbaijan and Turkey? What the xxxx is wrong with you? You are disarming your people, it is like when Israelis and xxxs call everyone else "Anti-Semites" to silence them, but the only difference is, the latter works for the xxxish cause, while your attempt to label us as "Turkocentric" only gives more weight to Turkey and Azerbaijan on the geopolitical level. Now, apprently, we are "Turkocentric", now our attempt to point the radical mistreatment of minorties in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire can be silenced by calling us "Turkocentric". Your a idiot, I am not suprised to find out why the nationalists failed because back then people like you existed as the majority, truly, truly, history repeats itself.

Scratch a defender of the status quo and expose a hireling for whom the establishment is manna.

Defender of what "status quo"? Are you dillusional? The reality is that you are the one defending the "status quo", I am changing the world. You are sitting there, behind your little computer, in the safety of your home, in a foreign country, quoting shakesphere, when in fact there is a Armenia state today, in this state Armenians are suffering, futhermore, you are disarming Armenians by taking away their political handgun when you refer to them as "Turkocentric".

There are no new ideas, only subtle adjustments of old ones.

More like plagiarism, you just steal other ideas and try to coin them as your own. There is no ounce of origanality in what you say and I could understand the point better by reading it from the source.

I should like to meet an Armenian whose first impulse is to understand rather than to dismiss as absurd that which he makes no effort to understand.
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Really, you provide nothing to understand, you just want Armenians to worship you and adopt your self-hating ideology and most have, believe me, most have, that is exactly the problem. You don't need to convince anyone of being "Turkocentric" and accepting a "world citizenship", Armenian women are already have Turkish babies yev lav en Turk khunoom and we are already adapting.

[Virgil]

Re: notes / comments

This thread is essentially a depository of Ara's self-hate, egomania, delusion, hysteria and disgruntlement. As any self-respecting Armenian can see from his written crap, the depth of Ara's self-hate, delusion and ignorance is bottomless. I read Ara's rants just to observe first hand the kind of psychological damage diasporan Armenian suffer from. In short: the "notes and comments" found here are nothing but 'brain-farts' of a self-hating egomaniac. There are Armenians who assimilate and disappear without a trace. And then there are assimilated ones like Ara... The problem with his kind, however, is that once they 'assimilate' they continue sticking around to give us 'advise.'

Ditto, I don't know why even reply to this wall, it only fuels his fire. My only fear is that some Armenian youth comes and reads his "infinite wisdom" and adopts his self hating views or looks to him as a "credible" source when in fact the man's life work is worthless to the Armenian people.

You know what is funny in all of this? The Armenian intellectuals that were breed under the Armenian state are not "intellectuals" but the many half witt Turkish Armenians, in Ara's opinion, are the "true intellectuals", talk about being a "Turkamole".

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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EITHER / OR
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If we are unique, that’s because every individual, tribe, nation, or for that matter, snowflake and grain of sand is unique. Whether this uniqueness is an asset or a liability I will let you decide, provided you don’t adopt one of our ubiquitous dealers of chauvinist crapola as your guide. Speaking for myself, I will say that our uniqueness is not what concerns me. What concerns me is our problems and there is nothing – repeat, nothing -- unique about them. Corruption, incompetence, divisiveness, authoritarianism, prejudice, and intolerance are as old as mankind. So is unawareness of them or self-deception. We either confront our shortcomings and make an honest effort to overcome them or we pretend there is nothing we can do because they are an integral part of the human condition. Again, speaking for myself, I am all for calling a spade a spade, a charlatan a phony and a wheeler-dealer not a man of vision or a noble specimen of humanity but a low-life and a bottom feeder.
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