Sunday, February 24, 2008
******************************************
A PROBLEM EXPOSED
************************************
A clearly stated problem has a better chance to be solved than one that is covered up, ignored, or explained and justified as an integral part of the human condition, like death and taxes. Perhaps one reason we have so far failed to solve our problems is that we consider them to be so complex that they might as well be insoluble, when all we need to solve them is a touch of honesty, such as a more or less independent judiciary. I am not talking here about total honesty, which in a political context may well be a utopian daydream, but only a touch or even a willingness to move in that direction. What is so complex to the point of being insoluble about an independent judiciary? Have all honest Armenians been systematically eliminated by Stalin and his neo-Stalinist and crypto-Stalinist successors? These gentlemen are neither invisible nor grey eminences working behind the scenes. Their names and the names of their victims are not buried in inaccessible archives written in invisible ink. They are familiar figures to the natives. Let’s talk to them. Let’s publish their stories. Let’s expose the crooks instead of allowing them to make headlines in our diasporan press as if they were statesmen or servants of the people. And if so far we have failed to do that, is it because they enjoy the full support of our equally corrupt and incompetent diasporan leadership? What else? And if we can’t take care of our own backyard, how can we ever hope to clean up the mess in Yerevan?
#
Monday, February 25, 2008
**********************************************
THE ROAD TO HELL
*********************************
It is not easy for a human being to kill another human being, but much easier if one of them hangs a label on the other. Labels are useful because they reduce, simplify, and dehumanize. Facing an enemy (a useful label) you don’t feel the need to think of him as a fellow human being or someone’s son, husband, brother, friend, or even uncle or neighbor. If it weren’t for labels, nations would not declare war on other nations, religious leaders would lose an important fraction of their powers and privileges, and prejudices would be exposed for what they really are -- extensions of ignorance. Labels are good for the few (the men at the top) but bad for the overwhelming majority. The road to hell is paved with labels.
#
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
**********************************************
DUPES
****************************
Pro-establishment arguments travel with the speed of light, become common currency, and are repeated ad nauseam. By contrast, anti-establishment arguments are immediately buried, ignored, and forgotten. An example of pro-establishment argument: It may take two or three generations before our brothers in the Homeland are de-Sovietized. Examples of anti-establishment arguments: Avedik Issahakian’s reference to our leaders as “brainless” and Zarian’s as “useless” -- and more precisely: “Our political parties have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.”
The absence of free speech may explain why our pro-establishment bias has become a permanent condition. When the establishment controls the press, the podium, and the altar, the result will be a brainwashed community that will behave like sheep even when the sheepdogs behave like ravenous wolves.
Where everyone thinks alike, no one thinks. And when our panchoonies say “mi kich pogh oughargetsek,” they will never add, “to support the status quo, that is to say, number one,” but “to help the needy.”
As for those who ascribe our present condition to factors beyond our control, I ask: Why should war, earthquake, and the collapse of a morally and politically bankrupt regime promote profiteering, corruption, incompetence, lies, and cannibalism? When Zarian said, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another,” he did not have in mind hard-working stiffs who survive by cheating and exploiting no one, but our sermonizers, speechifiers, and holier-than-thou parasites, charlatans, and bloodsuckers.
A final note on free speech: If Armenianism (whatever the hell that means, because as far as I know, so far no one has bothered to define it)…if, I say, Armenianism cannot be reconciled with human rights, then it is time that we consign it to the dustbin of history.
#
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
************************************************
AN ARMENIAN PROPHET
*************************************
The only way to survive during the Soviet era was to be critical of the world but not the commissars and everyone connected with them. We don’t have commissars in the Diaspora. What we have instead are bosses, bishops, and benefactors – a holy trinity as untouchable as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Hence our academics and dime-a-dozen Turcocentric ghazetajis whose number two concern is Turks -- number one being number one. As for the welfare of the nation: Nothing could be further from their thoughts. That’s as good a definition of Armenianism as any. And if you think what I am saying is new or unpatriotic, listen to Raffi: “Every man for himself: that’s the prevalent mentality among us. As long as I can take care of myself, why should I give a damn about anyone else?”(English translation: “I’m all right, Jack!”)
Here is Raffi again, in a prophetic message to our academics and ghazetajis: “What’s done is done. What we must do now is assess the damage and figure out how to avoid the next catastrophe.”
And here is Raffi again on our leadership: “We are like sheep without a shepherd…We have no leaders. What we have are merchants and clergymen. Merchants are trash. As for the clergy: they have always been against individual freedom.”
*
Shaw once said that he had solved all of mankind’s problems but people went on speaking about their impenetrable complexities. To those who speak about the complexities of our problems, I say, “Read Raffi!”
*
What to do about our problems? You have a number of options: (one) Shut up about them; (two) pretend they don’t exist; (three) blame them on everyone else but our leadership; and (four) speak of massacres.
#
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
comments
Thursday, February 21, 2008
********************************************
GETTING WISDOM
***********************************
If your aim is the acquisition of wisdom, real time-tested wisdom, rely on popular sayings by Anonymous, the greatest philosopher of all time.
“Don’t believe everything you are told.” “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.” “Believe what you see, ignore what you hear.” “Drumbeats sound better from a distance.” “Don’t stir the pot too much, you may expose the manure.” “Some people will say and do anything for money.”
Cases in point: During the Soviet era, a highly respected Armenian academic taught “scientific atheism” in Yerevan. But when the Kremlin collapsed, he immigrated to America, saw the light, was born again, and is now making a comfortable living as a professor of theology.
After being paid a goodly sum by the Gulbenkian Foundation, a British academic and notorious drunkard, wrote a lavishly illustrated book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION.
When another one of our brilliant academics, whose education and political career were subsidized by one of our political parties, was made a more attractive offer by the opposition, he promptly switched loyalties.
Moral: Our “betters” may well be our worst.
If you find all this depressing, remember, “Better to sob with the wise than to laugh with fools.”
#
Friday, February 22, 2008
*********************************************
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN ARMENIAN LIFE
******************************************************
In his REPUBLIC, Plato writes that in an anti-intellectual environment, a philosopher cannot but be like “a man who has fallen among wild beasts, who is unwilling to share in their misdeeds and is unable to hold out singly against their savagery.”
*
Our bishops represent the Almighty, our benefactors represent another Almighty, and our bosses represent their respective little mafias. Who represents the people? The voice of the people continues to be an absent factor in our collective existence.
*
Albanians are ahead of us. They are now willing to concede that they allowed themselves to be manipulated and moronized by a petty dictator like Enver Hoxa because he was successful in convincing them they were just about the smartest people on earth. (For more on this subject, see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES.)
Something similar happened to Germans under Hitler: by convincing them they belong to a superior race, Hitler was successful in making them behave like swine. Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao – the secret of their success was flattering the masses by brainwashing them to believe a glorious destiny awaits them.
*
What happened to our intellectuals? Even after Talaat and Stalin slaughtered two generations of our ablest writers, we had giants like Shahnour, Zarian, Oshagan, and Massikian. We don’t even have midgets today. And why? The answer is obvious. Consider the way we treated Zarian. Insulted, abused, and ignored in America, he was lured behind the Iron Curtain with promises none of which were kept. Shahnour was forced to write in French in order to survive as a ward of the State. Oshagan spent an important part of his life flattering idiots. And when Massikian offered to give away his books free of charge, there were no takers.
*
Somewhere Antranik Zaroukian writes: “Even as they speak of crucifixion, they nail us to the cross.” And by “they” he didn’t mean the people, but their “betters” and their gangs of dupes, who, even as they praise dead writers, they bury living ones.
#
Saturday, February 23, 2008
**********************************************
BITCHING
*****************************
What have we learned from our genocide? “All you do is bitch,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji tells me. “Isn’t that what you do too?” I wanted to know. He replied with an insult. End of discourse.
*
“After reading four or five of your posts, I can guess what you are going to say next,” a reader informs me. “Why bitch, if you can stop reading me?” I am tempted to ask. Instead I say: “Sorry to be a source of disappointment to you, my good friend.” Perhaps from now on I should append the following lines after everything I post: “If not perfectly satisfied, your money will be cheerfully refunded.”
*
We see the best in ourselves and the worst in others. Or perhaps what we really do is project the worst in us on others, and it makes no difference who the other is – a Turk, an Armenian, or, like Sultan Abdulhamid II, a half-Armenian. If only we could see the worst in ourselves and the best in others! Am I bitching again?
#
********************************************
GETTING WISDOM
***********************************
If your aim is the acquisition of wisdom, real time-tested wisdom, rely on popular sayings by Anonymous, the greatest philosopher of all time.
“Don’t believe everything you are told.” “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.” “Believe what you see, ignore what you hear.” “Drumbeats sound better from a distance.” “Don’t stir the pot too much, you may expose the manure.” “Some people will say and do anything for money.”
Cases in point: During the Soviet era, a highly respected Armenian academic taught “scientific atheism” in Yerevan. But when the Kremlin collapsed, he immigrated to America, saw the light, was born again, and is now making a comfortable living as a professor of theology.
After being paid a goodly sum by the Gulbenkian Foundation, a British academic and notorious drunkard, wrote a lavishly illustrated book titled ARMENIA: CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION.
When another one of our brilliant academics, whose education and political career were subsidized by one of our political parties, was made a more attractive offer by the opposition, he promptly switched loyalties.
Moral: Our “betters” may well be our worst.
If you find all this depressing, remember, “Better to sob with the wise than to laugh with fools.”
#
Friday, February 22, 2008
*********************************************
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN ARMENIAN LIFE
******************************************************
In his REPUBLIC, Plato writes that in an anti-intellectual environment, a philosopher cannot but be like “a man who has fallen among wild beasts, who is unwilling to share in their misdeeds and is unable to hold out singly against their savagery.”
*
Our bishops represent the Almighty, our benefactors represent another Almighty, and our bosses represent their respective little mafias. Who represents the people? The voice of the people continues to be an absent factor in our collective existence.
*
Albanians are ahead of us. They are now willing to concede that they allowed themselves to be manipulated and moronized by a petty dictator like Enver Hoxa because he was successful in convincing them they were just about the smartest people on earth. (For more on this subject, see Paul Theroux’s THE PILLARS OF HERCULES.)
Something similar happened to Germans under Hitler: by convincing them they belong to a superior race, Hitler was successful in making them behave like swine. Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao – the secret of their success was flattering the masses by brainwashing them to believe a glorious destiny awaits them.
*
What happened to our intellectuals? Even after Talaat and Stalin slaughtered two generations of our ablest writers, we had giants like Shahnour, Zarian, Oshagan, and Massikian. We don’t even have midgets today. And why? The answer is obvious. Consider the way we treated Zarian. Insulted, abused, and ignored in America, he was lured behind the Iron Curtain with promises none of which were kept. Shahnour was forced to write in French in order to survive as a ward of the State. Oshagan spent an important part of his life flattering idiots. And when Massikian offered to give away his books free of charge, there were no takers.
*
Somewhere Antranik Zaroukian writes: “Even as they speak of crucifixion, they nail us to the cross.” And by “they” he didn’t mean the people, but their “betters” and their gangs of dupes, who, even as they praise dead writers, they bury living ones.
#
Saturday, February 23, 2008
**********************************************
BITCHING
*****************************
What have we learned from our genocide? “All you do is bitch,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji tells me. “Isn’t that what you do too?” I wanted to know. He replied with an insult. End of discourse.
*
“After reading four or five of your posts, I can guess what you are going to say next,” a reader informs me. “Why bitch, if you can stop reading me?” I am tempted to ask. Instead I say: “Sorry to be a source of disappointment to you, my good friend.” Perhaps from now on I should append the following lines after everything I post: “If not perfectly satisfied, your money will be cheerfully refunded.”
*
We see the best in ourselves and the worst in others. Or perhaps what we really do is project the worst in us on others, and it makes no difference who the other is – a Turk, an Armenian, or, like Sultan Abdulhamid II, a half-Armenian. If only we could see the worst in ourselves and the best in others! Am I bitching again?
#
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
more...
Sunday, February 17, 2008
*********************************************
MEMO:
TO OUR TURCOCENTRIC PUNDITS
************************************
If you treat them as enemies, you should not be surprised if they behave as enemies. One way to define diplomacy is to say that it consists in treating an adversary as if he were a future ally. History provides us with many instances of past enemies who are now the best of friends. Another point worth emphasizing: it is a tragedy not an unsettled score. To treat it as if it were an unsettled score is to make of it a political football game. But perhaps before we teach ourselves to treat them as potential friends, we should learn to treat one another, if not as brothers, than at least, as human beings, who like all human beings may not always see eye to eye with us. Am I making too many unreasonable demands on you? If so, then please accept my heartfelt apologies.
*
FURTHER READING
*************************************
The literature on the subject is vast to the point of being limitless. If you are interested, I suggest you begin with the Gospels. I am not suggesting taking the Gospels literally and loving them. What I am suggesting is that we treat them less as once bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians always bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians, but as fallible human beings with their own share of blind spots, prejudices, and failings, always keeping in mind that very probably half of them may well be half-Armenian.
#
Monday, February 18, 2008
*******************************************
HONESTY
***************************
Most of my readers are smarter than I am. If they were as honest, they would be far ahead of me.
*
Events in history are like the final paragraphs in mystery novels, or like plants with very deep roots. We planted the seed of our genocide on the day we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan.
*
I once heard David Suzuki, a well-known Canadian dissident, identify himself as a “shit-disturber.” Writes Carlos Fuentes, a prolific Mexican writer and diplomat: “You can only live by sticking your neck out, dirtying your fingers, exposing yourself.” I prefer the Canadian’s version of the story.
*
When it comes to belief systems, objectivity may be difficult, even impossible to achieve. But honesty is not. An honest Christian or Muslim will have to concede that his religion has been a mixed blessing and, for countless innocent victims, an unmitigated curse.
#
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
*****************************************
HOMELAND & DIASPORA
***********************************************
According to foreign observers, there is freedom of the press in Armenia. If true, that means our brothers in the Homeland have been more successful in de-Stalinizing themselves than we in the Diaspora have been in de-Ottomanizing ourselves.
*
Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, be on the side of a victim whose secret ambition is to be a victimizer?
*
An important part of life consists in being assessed by individuals who have assessed themselves as competent judges.
*
One good thing about alienation is that it allows one to be more objective.
*
Education allows the educated classes to acquire more ways to mislead and deceive the uneducated.
*
To be a nationalist in the Diaspora amounts to living where the money is and saying your heart is on Mt. Ararat. The true definition of homeland is not where your ancestors were born but where you are allowed to work and provide for your family.
#
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
*********************************************
STRAIGHT TALK
*****************************
If you think my approach to Armenian issues is blunt and undiplomatic – too much vinegar and not enough honey – it may be because my target is not the general reader but myself. Once upon a time, when I was young, I too thought like a dupe, spoke like a moron, and behaved like a prick. I know now that you cannot expose double-talk with a forked tongue. Diplomacy doesn’t work with white men with black hearts.
And speaking of straight talk: I just read a brief memoir of an Armenian writer by her son who says his mother contracted cancer and died because her readers made her life a misery. Nothing further, your Honor.
"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer
*********************************************
MEMO:
TO OUR TURCOCENTRIC PUNDITS
************************************
If you treat them as enemies, you should not be surprised if they behave as enemies. One way to define diplomacy is to say that it consists in treating an adversary as if he were a future ally. History provides us with many instances of past enemies who are now the best of friends. Another point worth emphasizing: it is a tragedy not an unsettled score. To treat it as if it were an unsettled score is to make of it a political football game. But perhaps before we teach ourselves to treat them as potential friends, we should learn to treat one another, if not as brothers, than at least, as human beings, who like all human beings may not always see eye to eye with us. Am I making too many unreasonable demands on you? If so, then please accept my heartfelt apologies.
*
FURTHER READING
*************************************
The literature on the subject is vast to the point of being limitless. If you are interested, I suggest you begin with the Gospels. I am not suggesting taking the Gospels literally and loving them. What I am suggesting is that we treat them less as once bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians always bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians, but as fallible human beings with their own share of blind spots, prejudices, and failings, always keeping in mind that very probably half of them may well be half-Armenian.
#
Monday, February 18, 2008
*******************************************
HONESTY
***************************
Most of my readers are smarter than I am. If they were as honest, they would be far ahead of me.
*
Events in history are like the final paragraphs in mystery novels, or like plants with very deep roots. We planted the seed of our genocide on the day we surrendered our destiny into the hands of the Sultan.
*
I once heard David Suzuki, a well-known Canadian dissident, identify himself as a “shit-disturber.” Writes Carlos Fuentes, a prolific Mexican writer and diplomat: “You can only live by sticking your neck out, dirtying your fingers, exposing yourself.” I prefer the Canadian’s version of the story.
*
When it comes to belief systems, objectivity may be difficult, even impossible to achieve. But honesty is not. An honest Christian or Muslim will have to concede that his religion has been a mixed blessing and, for countless innocent victims, an unmitigated curse.
#
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
*****************************************
HOMELAND & DIASPORA
***********************************************
According to foreign observers, there is freedom of the press in Armenia. If true, that means our brothers in the Homeland have been more successful in de-Stalinizing themselves than we in the Diaspora have been in de-Ottomanizing ourselves.
*
Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, be on the side of a victim whose secret ambition is to be a victimizer?
*
An important part of life consists in being assessed by individuals who have assessed themselves as competent judges.
*
One good thing about alienation is that it allows one to be more objective.
*
Education allows the educated classes to acquire more ways to mislead and deceive the uneducated.
*
To be a nationalist in the Diaspora amounts to living where the money is and saying your heart is on Mt. Ararat. The true definition of homeland is not where your ancestors were born but where you are allowed to work and provide for your family.
#
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
*********************************************
STRAIGHT TALK
*****************************
If you think my approach to Armenian issues is blunt and undiplomatic – too much vinegar and not enough honey – it may be because my target is not the general reader but myself. Once upon a time, when I was young, I too thought like a dupe, spoke like a moron, and behaved like a prick. I know now that you cannot expose double-talk with a forked tongue. Diplomacy doesn’t work with white men with black hearts.
And speaking of straight talk: I just read a brief memoir of an Armenian writer by her son who says his mother contracted cancer and died because her readers made her life a misery. Nothing further, your Honor.
"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Saturday, February 16, 2008
diary
Thursday, February 14, 2008
*****************************************
CLICHÉS
****************************
The starving Armenian writer is as much a cliché among us as “the starving Armenian” was to the world during World War I. On more than one occasion my anonymous detractors, whom I suspect to be either bishops or sons of bishops, have accused me of living on welfare. It is an undeniable fact that in a barbarian environment writers either starve or have no choice but to depend on the charity of swine. But in a civilized society writers enjoy the support of the state by means of literary prizes, grants, royalties, public lending rights, and copyright laws, which means, whenever a book is borrowed from a public library or even a single page is xeroxed, a writer gets his cut. To my detractors I therefore say: I may write for barbarians like you but I live in Canada, which happens to be a civilized country. I say this for another reason, namely, to let boys and girls with literary ambitions know that there is life before death even for Armenian writers, provided of course they avoid living and working among philistines with a forked tongue who praise writers only after they are safely dead and buried.
*
Once, when I addressed one of my persistent and anonymous critics as “Your Eminence,” he was never heard from again.
*
Even when not bishops, my detractors share with them two important features: dogmatism and infallibility.
*
A definition of dogmatism: “50% wishful thinking and 50% dishonesty.”
#
Friday, February 15, 2008
*********************************************
THE REAL STORY
**************************************
We speak about our genocide in order to avoid speaking about a greater tragedy: our leadership.
*
When it comes to writing and reading, I prefer the stench of reality to the perfume of imagination.
*
Even the smartest man on earth is no match for “the cunning of Reality” (Hegel) with an infinite number of tricks and traps up its sleeve.
*
Changing water into wine – that’s nothing. The fact that water exists is the real miracle.
*
After saying something, have you ever wondered why you said it? What that means is that our words spring from a source that is beyond our understanding.
*
The beauty of free speech is that it allows a fool to make a bigger fool of himself.
*
They tell me I am consistently negative. What nonsense! To write is to hope. I will stop writing only on the day I give up all hope.
*
To those who demand solutions, I say: History provides us with an infinite number of precedents and solutions; and by history I don’t mean the history of nationalist historians. Nationalist historians are to real historians what Inspector Clouseau is to Sherlock Holmes.
#
Saturday, February 16, 2008
********************************************
THE WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE
***********************************
Jon Wynne Tyson: “The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.”
*
Nothing can be more naïve than to say, since someone’s words, ideas, or actions are motivated by patriotism, they must be good; and nothing can be more infantile to the point of being idiotic than to confuse dissent with treason. Against how many innocent men has the charge of treason been leveled by the likes of Hitler and Stalin?
*
Because I try to be objective, they tell me I am motivated by self-loathing. It is true, I am not particularly fond of myself. To those of the opposite disposition, I say: No honeymoon under heaven is endless. Let’s talk when your honeymoon with yourself is over.
*
I am reminded of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire and their ideals and dreams. Their infatuation with themselves and the righteousness of their cause was such that they had a Plan B only for themselves. They made the same mistake Hitler did, with one difference. At the end of the story, Hitler committed suicide.
*
Charlatans come in groups because there are so many of them.
#
*****************************************
CLICHÉS
****************************
The starving Armenian writer is as much a cliché among us as “the starving Armenian” was to the world during World War I. On more than one occasion my anonymous detractors, whom I suspect to be either bishops or sons of bishops, have accused me of living on welfare. It is an undeniable fact that in a barbarian environment writers either starve or have no choice but to depend on the charity of swine. But in a civilized society writers enjoy the support of the state by means of literary prizes, grants, royalties, public lending rights, and copyright laws, which means, whenever a book is borrowed from a public library or even a single page is xeroxed, a writer gets his cut. To my detractors I therefore say: I may write for barbarians like you but I live in Canada, which happens to be a civilized country. I say this for another reason, namely, to let boys and girls with literary ambitions know that there is life before death even for Armenian writers, provided of course they avoid living and working among philistines with a forked tongue who praise writers only after they are safely dead and buried.
*
Once, when I addressed one of my persistent and anonymous critics as “Your Eminence,” he was never heard from again.
*
Even when not bishops, my detractors share with them two important features: dogmatism and infallibility.
*
A definition of dogmatism: “50% wishful thinking and 50% dishonesty.”
#
Friday, February 15, 2008
*********************************************
THE REAL STORY
**************************************
We speak about our genocide in order to avoid speaking about a greater tragedy: our leadership.
*
When it comes to writing and reading, I prefer the stench of reality to the perfume of imagination.
*
Even the smartest man on earth is no match for “the cunning of Reality” (Hegel) with an infinite number of tricks and traps up its sleeve.
*
Changing water into wine – that’s nothing. The fact that water exists is the real miracle.
*
After saying something, have you ever wondered why you said it? What that means is that our words spring from a source that is beyond our understanding.
*
The beauty of free speech is that it allows a fool to make a bigger fool of himself.
*
They tell me I am consistently negative. What nonsense! To write is to hope. I will stop writing only on the day I give up all hope.
*
To those who demand solutions, I say: History provides us with an infinite number of precedents and solutions; and by history I don’t mean the history of nationalist historians. Nationalist historians are to real historians what Inspector Clouseau is to Sherlock Holmes.
#
Saturday, February 16, 2008
********************************************
THE WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE
***********************************
Jon Wynne Tyson: “The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.”
*
Nothing can be more naïve than to say, since someone’s words, ideas, or actions are motivated by patriotism, they must be good; and nothing can be more infantile to the point of being idiotic than to confuse dissent with treason. Against how many innocent men has the charge of treason been leveled by the likes of Hitler and Stalin?
*
Because I try to be objective, they tell me I am motivated by self-loathing. It is true, I am not particularly fond of myself. To those of the opposite disposition, I say: No honeymoon under heaven is endless. Let’s talk when your honeymoon with yourself is over.
*
I am reminded of our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire and their ideals and dreams. Their infatuation with themselves and the righteousness of their cause was such that they had a Plan B only for themselves. They made the same mistake Hitler did, with one difference. At the end of the story, Hitler committed suicide.
*
Charlatans come in groups because there are so many of them.
#
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
comments
Sunday, February 10, 2008
**********************************************
MEDITATIONS
**************************************
Nothing comes easier to an Armenian than to overestimate himself to the same degree that he underestimates his fellow men. Hence the familiar phenomenon of the inbred moron who assesses himself as a genius.
*
You may think you know more about yourself than anyone else, but the truth is, what you know is so biased that it might as well be devoid of all value.
*
Sometimes you are judged less by what you know, what you can do, or who you are, and more by your underarm deodorant.
*
The aim of propaganda is to mislead and deceive not the enemy but ourselves.
*
Patriotism is invariably connected to militarism, and the end of militarism is the slaughter of the enemy – in the name of self-defense, of course.
*
It’s when you think you can do no wrong that you commit your greatest blunders.
#
Monday, February 11, 2008
*********************************************
TURKISHNESS & ARMENISHNESS
***************************************************
A nearby university town plans to build a 75-foot tall tower proclaiming its “intelligence.” In a letter to the editor I read the following comment: “If we go ahead with this foolishness, most thoughtful people will regard our city as a bunch of idiots.” I agree. Nothing can be as idiotic as bragging about how smart we are.
*
In the Ottoman Empire our daughters were forced into harems. Today they are driven into prostitution, as our sanctimonious benefactors spend millions building churches and museums, which are nothing but monuments proclaiming their greed, wealth, big egos, and arrogance rivaling that of sultans.
*
That some of my readers hate me (and they never lose an opportunity to say so) I know. What I don’t know is whether they hate me more than they hate Turks.
*
The more I deal with Armenians the better I understand Turks.
*
To use love of country as a license with which to hate fellow countrymen is thought of not as a perversion and a liability but as a virtue and an asset called patriotism.
*
We are united by hatred of the enemy but divided by hatred of one another. You may now guess which hatred is more damaging to the nation.
*
The ugly Armenian is convinced that Armenishness is superior to Turkishness.
*
Our second greatest tragedy, which we don’t even mention, is the fact that they had 600 years during which to successfully re-create us in their own image.
#
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
**********************************************
PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS
*******************************************************
In his NATURAL HISTORY, Pliny writes, “Not even for God are all things possible – for He cannot commit suicide.” Maybe not, but He can walk out on us, as He has done on more than one occasion. The question we should ask is: What if we gave Him more than one good reason to do so?
*
The Armenian paradox: we don’t support one another but we demand the support of the world.
*
With us, friendship is a sometime thing. Whenever I make an Armenian friend, I think of him as a future enemy and I am seldom disappointed.
*
After deceiving himself, he deceives others with a clear conscience.
*
We have been so thoroughly tribalized that sometimes the distance between two Armenians is as great as the distance between an Armenian and a Turk.
*
Whatever understanding I have acquired of Turks it has been through my fellow Armenians.
*
Armeno-Turkish friendship will be possible only on the day Armeno-Armenian friendship becomes a reality.
#
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
***********************************************
PROBLEMS
*****************************
As soon as you solve a problem you are faced with another. That’s life – an endless succession of problems the last of which no one can solve.
*
A good story cannot be the whole story, and a happy ending is only a beginning.
*
Dupes can be easily manipulated to think they are too smart to be duped.
*
I don’t write for Armenians as an Armenian. I write as a human being for fellow human beings.
*
Academics write in a jargon-ridden turgid prose because they don’t want to be read and “understood” by laymen. Criticism by fellow academics is bad enough. What’s unbearable is verbal abuse by idiots.
*
Studies show that getting involved in Armenian affairs can be as hazardous to your health as smoking four packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.
#
**********************************************
MEDITATIONS
**************************************
Nothing comes easier to an Armenian than to overestimate himself to the same degree that he underestimates his fellow men. Hence the familiar phenomenon of the inbred moron who assesses himself as a genius.
*
You may think you know more about yourself than anyone else, but the truth is, what you know is so biased that it might as well be devoid of all value.
*
Sometimes you are judged less by what you know, what you can do, or who you are, and more by your underarm deodorant.
*
The aim of propaganda is to mislead and deceive not the enemy but ourselves.
*
Patriotism is invariably connected to militarism, and the end of militarism is the slaughter of the enemy – in the name of self-defense, of course.
*
It’s when you think you can do no wrong that you commit your greatest blunders.
#
Monday, February 11, 2008
*********************************************
TURKISHNESS & ARMENISHNESS
***************************************************
A nearby university town plans to build a 75-foot tall tower proclaiming its “intelligence.” In a letter to the editor I read the following comment: “If we go ahead with this foolishness, most thoughtful people will regard our city as a bunch of idiots.” I agree. Nothing can be as idiotic as bragging about how smart we are.
*
In the Ottoman Empire our daughters were forced into harems. Today they are driven into prostitution, as our sanctimonious benefactors spend millions building churches and museums, which are nothing but monuments proclaiming their greed, wealth, big egos, and arrogance rivaling that of sultans.
*
That some of my readers hate me (and they never lose an opportunity to say so) I know. What I don’t know is whether they hate me more than they hate Turks.
*
The more I deal with Armenians the better I understand Turks.
*
To use love of country as a license with which to hate fellow countrymen is thought of not as a perversion and a liability but as a virtue and an asset called patriotism.
*
We are united by hatred of the enemy but divided by hatred of one another. You may now guess which hatred is more damaging to the nation.
*
The ugly Armenian is convinced that Armenishness is superior to Turkishness.
*
Our second greatest tragedy, which we don’t even mention, is the fact that they had 600 years during which to successfully re-create us in their own image.
#
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
**********************************************
PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS
*******************************************************
In his NATURAL HISTORY, Pliny writes, “Not even for God are all things possible – for He cannot commit suicide.” Maybe not, but He can walk out on us, as He has done on more than one occasion. The question we should ask is: What if we gave Him more than one good reason to do so?
*
The Armenian paradox: we don’t support one another but we demand the support of the world.
*
With us, friendship is a sometime thing. Whenever I make an Armenian friend, I think of him as a future enemy and I am seldom disappointed.
*
After deceiving himself, he deceives others with a clear conscience.
*
We have been so thoroughly tribalized that sometimes the distance between two Armenians is as great as the distance between an Armenian and a Turk.
*
Whatever understanding I have acquired of Turks it has been through my fellow Armenians.
*
Armeno-Turkish friendship will be possible only on the day Armeno-Armenian friendship becomes a reality.
#
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
***********************************************
PROBLEMS
*****************************
As soon as you solve a problem you are faced with another. That’s life – an endless succession of problems the last of which no one can solve.
*
A good story cannot be the whole story, and a happy ending is only a beginning.
*
Dupes can be easily manipulated to think they are too smart to be duped.
*
I don’t write for Armenians as an Armenian. I write as a human being for fellow human beings.
*
Academics write in a jargon-ridden turgid prose because they don’t want to be read and “understood” by laymen. Criticism by fellow academics is bad enough. What’s unbearable is verbal abuse by idiots.
*
Studies show that getting involved in Armenian affairs can be as hazardous to your health as smoking four packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.
#
Saturday, February 9, 2008
book review
BOOK REVIEW
**********
LA VIE COMME ELLE EST (Life as it is): Short stories. By Krikor Zohrab. Translated into French by Mireille Besnilian. 110 pages. Marseilles. Editions Parentheses. 2005.
**********
A highly respected lawyer, politician, editor, and author, Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915) is remembered today as one of our ablest short story writers. Writes Hagop Oshagan: "Zohrab is one of those rare individuals who do the work and live the lives of eight or ten men and excel in each. He is the most brilliant, accomplished and enduring figure in the Realistic movement of our literature."
According to Mesrob Janashian: "Zohrab viewed conservatives as hidebound obscurantists. He attacked the Armenian establishment of Constantinople - the Church as well as the bosses. He constantly urged the youth to adopt progressive Western ideas. Even when he went to extremes, he at no time passed the bounds of reason and common sense."
In American terms he might best be imagined as a hybrid of President Kennedy (Zohrab was likewise assassinated at the height of his powers), and Hemingway - though as a short story writer he is more like Guy de Maupassant in his subtle depiction of feminine psychology, and Anton Chekhov in his sympathetic treatment of the lower classes.
The collection under review contains some of his most widely admired stories. Their translation is so elegantly executed that they read as though they were originally conceived and written in French.
*
The recent study of Armenian women writers by the Canadian academic Victoria Rowe, and now this translation by Mireille (not an Armenian) Besnilian, may suggest that odars are more interested in our literature than our academics and pundits from the Middle East, most of whom happen to be fluent in half-a-dozen languages (or so they tell us), who are, it seems, too busy with far more important projects to have any time left for translating our writers, a great deal of whose works remain terra incognita not only to odars but also to the overwhelming majority of Armenians in the Diaspora who cannot read Armenian.
#
**********
LA VIE COMME ELLE EST (Life as it is): Short stories. By Krikor Zohrab. Translated into French by Mireille Besnilian. 110 pages. Marseilles. Editions Parentheses. 2005.
**********
A highly respected lawyer, politician, editor, and author, Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915) is remembered today as one of our ablest short story writers. Writes Hagop Oshagan: "Zohrab is one of those rare individuals who do the work and live the lives of eight or ten men and excel in each. He is the most brilliant, accomplished and enduring figure in the Realistic movement of our literature."
According to Mesrob Janashian: "Zohrab viewed conservatives as hidebound obscurantists. He attacked the Armenian establishment of Constantinople - the Church as well as the bosses. He constantly urged the youth to adopt progressive Western ideas. Even when he went to extremes, he at no time passed the bounds of reason and common sense."
In American terms he might best be imagined as a hybrid of President Kennedy (Zohrab was likewise assassinated at the height of his powers), and Hemingway - though as a short story writer he is more like Guy de Maupassant in his subtle depiction of feminine psychology, and Anton Chekhov in his sympathetic treatment of the lower classes.
The collection under review contains some of his most widely admired stories. Their translation is so elegantly executed that they read as though they were originally conceived and written in French.
*
The recent study of Armenian women writers by the Canadian academic Victoria Rowe, and now this translation by Mireille (not an Armenian) Besnilian, may suggest that odars are more interested in our literature than our academics and pundits from the Middle East, most of whom happen to be fluent in half-a-dozen languages (or so they tell us), who are, it seems, too busy with far more important projects to have any time left for translating our writers, a great deal of whose works remain terra incognita not only to odars but also to the overwhelming majority of Armenians in the Diaspora who cannot read Armenian.
#
translations from Shahnour
QUOTATIONS FROM
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR'S
CORRESPONDENCE, VOLUME II.
Collected, edited, and annotated by Krikor Keusseyan.
**************************************************
On Vazken Shoushanian:
"I have read only one book by him, an epistolary novel, which is a definite failure because it happens to be a youthful work. Has he written anything better? I asked this question to an associate of his, Nartuni, who answered: "He is a worthless man. He will write nothing of any value."
I don't accept this verdict at face value because these two Tashnaks can't stand each other."
*
On Antranik Zaroukian:
"When he was young, he was a fanatic Tashnak. And more. He confused swearing with reasoning. He is wrong if he thinks I hold a grudge against him. No, never! Even if he had remained an obstinate partisan I could not have harbored vengeful thoughts in his direction, only pity and scorn."
*
About the shenanigans of the Jerusalem Monastery:
"Among other thing, Nartuni told me all about the wheeling-and-dealing in Jerusalem and the scandalous conduct of our Holy Fathers there - their alcoholism, contrabandism, womanizing, gambling, thievery…He knows them well having spent some time in their company. He tells me these high-ranking ecclesiastics are themselves former orphans [survivors of the massacres] gathered from the desert. Alas!"
*
On our press:
"In order for our press to play a useful role in our social and political life, there must be such things as public opinion and collective memory, in whose absence blunders will be forgotten and incompetent leaders glorified."
*
On the literary scene in the Diaspora:
"Our literary market place is now in the hands of senior citizens - Vratsian, Chobanian, Oshagan - individuals who don't have to work for a living and they have all the time in the world to write and write…Let them write so long as they don't give us a headache with their endless arguments and senile problems."
*
In my recent review of this book I neglected to mention that half of it consists of endnotes, that can be read as a brief introduction to 20th-century Armenian history and culture. In addition to being a dedicated fan of Shahnour, Krikor Keusseyan is a meticulous scholar whose comments are as informative as Shahnour's observations and insights.
#
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR'S
CORRESPONDENCE, VOLUME II.
Collected, edited, and annotated by Krikor Keusseyan.
**************************************************
On Vazken Shoushanian:
"I have read only one book by him, an epistolary novel, which is a definite failure because it happens to be a youthful work. Has he written anything better? I asked this question to an associate of his, Nartuni, who answered: "He is a worthless man. He will write nothing of any value."
I don't accept this verdict at face value because these two Tashnaks can't stand each other."
*
On Antranik Zaroukian:
"When he was young, he was a fanatic Tashnak. And more. He confused swearing with reasoning. He is wrong if he thinks I hold a grudge against him. No, never! Even if he had remained an obstinate partisan I could not have harbored vengeful thoughts in his direction, only pity and scorn."
*
About the shenanigans of the Jerusalem Monastery:
"Among other thing, Nartuni told me all about the wheeling-and-dealing in Jerusalem and the scandalous conduct of our Holy Fathers there - their alcoholism, contrabandism, womanizing, gambling, thievery…He knows them well having spent some time in their company. He tells me these high-ranking ecclesiastics are themselves former orphans [survivors of the massacres] gathered from the desert. Alas!"
*
On our press:
"In order for our press to play a useful role in our social and political life, there must be such things as public opinion and collective memory, in whose absence blunders will be forgotten and incompetent leaders glorified."
*
On the literary scene in the Diaspora:
"Our literary market place is now in the hands of senior citizens - Vratsian, Chobanian, Oshagan - individuals who don't have to work for a living and they have all the time in the world to write and write…Let them write so long as they don't give us a headache with their endless arguments and senile problems."
*
In my recent review of this book I neglected to mention that half of it consists of endnotes, that can be read as a brief introduction to 20th-century Armenian history and culture. In addition to being a dedicated fan of Shahnour, Krikor Keusseyan is a meticulous scholar whose comments are as informative as Shahnour's observations and insights.
#
observations
Thursday, February 07, 2008
*********************************************
THE UNMENTIONABLE IN PURSUIT
OF THE UNEATABLE
***************************************************
If I am to believe my critics, I am a self-hating narcissist. To which I can only say, “No comment.”
*
One can master the demanding discipline of suffering fools gladly only with the help of the Good Lord. Which is why this particular discipline is less accessible to agnostics and atheists.
*
We all labor under the inflexible law of demand and supply, and the demand these days is for flattering and chauvinist crapola. That’s why everybody speaks about Turkish criminal conduct and no one even dares to mention our “brainless” and “useless” leadership. And because I stress that aspect of our history and status quo, I have become persona non grata and I am called a self-hating s.o.b. with illusions of grandeur, one of which is that I think of myself as a writer. If I am not a writer, why bother reading me in a world that is abundant in unread masters, including our own? Instead of reading our great writers, they read massacre books, which reinforce their image of themselves as perennial victims, after which they wallow in self-pity.
*
Two of the dangers of Turcocentrism is (one) allowing ourselves to be defined by our enemies, and (two) offering them a rent-free permanent residence in our psyche -- which also means allowing them to carry on re-creating us in their own image. Hence the ubiquitous presence of anonymous borodakhos and anpardavan srigas in our internet discussion forums whose idea of criticism is slinging mud hoping some of it will stick, and when none of it even hits the intended target, they keep slinging hoping they will have better luck next time – just like our revolutionaries, who, after repeated massacres, refused to reconsider their tactics, in the same way that now they refuse to acknowledge any responsibility. Learning from our blunders? No time for that. We are too busy trying to educate our enemies who have made it abundantly clear they do not intend to be educated by their former slaves.
#
Friday, February 08, 2008
*********************************************
ON ARMENIAN ANTI-ARMENIANISM
***************************************************
Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915): “Oppression corrupts everything it touches, even the highest moral virtues.”
*
Derenik Demirjian (1877-1956): “Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy.”
*
Lucretius (98-55 B.C.): “Differences among men, which reason is unable to expel, are so exceedingly slight that there is nothing to hinder us from living a life worthy of gods.”
*
The anti-Armenian Armenian is as real as the anti-Semitic Jew; but whereas the anti-Semitic Jew is an exception, an anomaly, and an aberration, the anti-Armenian Armenian is the rule.
The anti-Armenian Armenian is against any Armenian who does not subscribe to his definition of Armenianism – a definition that is as authoritarian, inflexible, dogmatic, and narrow as himself. In his view, abstractions like tolerance, free speech, fundamental human rights, dialogue, compromise, consensus, and solidarity are degenerate Western concepts whose sole intent is the destruction of the nation; and when he speaks of the nation or nationalism, what he really means is his tribe and tribalism. Fully aware of this collective complex, our leaders have done their utmost to exploit it to their advantage and in defense of their tribal powers and privileges.
Left to their own devices, people do not divide themselves. Divisions are introduced and legitimized by leaders for the simple reason that the average Armenian has no interest in subtle ideological and theological theories. He is too busy trying to survive in an alien, and sometimes even hostile and despotic environment to waste any time on metaphysics.
The Turks have a law (article 301) that says it is a crime to insult Turkishness. We don’t have such a law not because we are more civilized or progressive but because every Armenian is a prosecutor with his own article 301, and if anyone dares to violate it, he runs the risk of being buried beneath an avalanche of verbal abuse. I speak from experience.
#
Saturday, February 09, 2008
**********************************************
A WRITER AND HIS READERS
*****************************************************
If I understand some of my readers correctly, the function of a writer is to know and understand his readers in order that he may better pander to their needs. If his readers are prejudiced, he should legitimize their prejudices. If his readers hate Turks, he should say they love everybody, they only want justice. A writer who fails to cover up or justify his readers’ failings and limitations ceases being a writer and becomes – in the words of these readers -- a fool and an s.o.b.
I am flattered. I am read by readers so smart that compared to them I am a fool. I must therefore conclude that, if they continue to read me, I must have a special gift, a gift that all writers dream to have, namely, that of being irresistible. Which amounts to saying I am on my way to achieving immortality.
#
*********************************************
THE UNMENTIONABLE IN PURSUIT
OF THE UNEATABLE
***************************************************
If I am to believe my critics, I am a self-hating narcissist. To which I can only say, “No comment.”
*
One can master the demanding discipline of suffering fools gladly only with the help of the Good Lord. Which is why this particular discipline is less accessible to agnostics and atheists.
*
We all labor under the inflexible law of demand and supply, and the demand these days is for flattering and chauvinist crapola. That’s why everybody speaks about Turkish criminal conduct and no one even dares to mention our “brainless” and “useless” leadership. And because I stress that aspect of our history and status quo, I have become persona non grata and I am called a self-hating s.o.b. with illusions of grandeur, one of which is that I think of myself as a writer. If I am not a writer, why bother reading me in a world that is abundant in unread masters, including our own? Instead of reading our great writers, they read massacre books, which reinforce their image of themselves as perennial victims, after which they wallow in self-pity.
*
Two of the dangers of Turcocentrism is (one) allowing ourselves to be defined by our enemies, and (two) offering them a rent-free permanent residence in our psyche -- which also means allowing them to carry on re-creating us in their own image. Hence the ubiquitous presence of anonymous borodakhos and anpardavan srigas in our internet discussion forums whose idea of criticism is slinging mud hoping some of it will stick, and when none of it even hits the intended target, they keep slinging hoping they will have better luck next time – just like our revolutionaries, who, after repeated massacres, refused to reconsider their tactics, in the same way that now they refuse to acknowledge any responsibility. Learning from our blunders? No time for that. We are too busy trying to educate our enemies who have made it abundantly clear they do not intend to be educated by their former slaves.
#
Friday, February 08, 2008
*********************************************
ON ARMENIAN ANTI-ARMENIANISM
***************************************************
Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915): “Oppression corrupts everything it touches, even the highest moral virtues.”
*
Derenik Demirjian (1877-1956): “Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy.”
*
Lucretius (98-55 B.C.): “Differences among men, which reason is unable to expel, are so exceedingly slight that there is nothing to hinder us from living a life worthy of gods.”
*
The anti-Armenian Armenian is as real as the anti-Semitic Jew; but whereas the anti-Semitic Jew is an exception, an anomaly, and an aberration, the anti-Armenian Armenian is the rule.
The anti-Armenian Armenian is against any Armenian who does not subscribe to his definition of Armenianism – a definition that is as authoritarian, inflexible, dogmatic, and narrow as himself. In his view, abstractions like tolerance, free speech, fundamental human rights, dialogue, compromise, consensus, and solidarity are degenerate Western concepts whose sole intent is the destruction of the nation; and when he speaks of the nation or nationalism, what he really means is his tribe and tribalism. Fully aware of this collective complex, our leaders have done their utmost to exploit it to their advantage and in defense of their tribal powers and privileges.
Left to their own devices, people do not divide themselves. Divisions are introduced and legitimized by leaders for the simple reason that the average Armenian has no interest in subtle ideological and theological theories. He is too busy trying to survive in an alien, and sometimes even hostile and despotic environment to waste any time on metaphysics.
The Turks have a law (article 301) that says it is a crime to insult Turkishness. We don’t have such a law not because we are more civilized or progressive but because every Armenian is a prosecutor with his own article 301, and if anyone dares to violate it, he runs the risk of being buried beneath an avalanche of verbal abuse. I speak from experience.
#
Saturday, February 09, 2008
**********************************************
A WRITER AND HIS READERS
*****************************************************
If I understand some of my readers correctly, the function of a writer is to know and understand his readers in order that he may better pander to their needs. If his readers are prejudiced, he should legitimize their prejudices. If his readers hate Turks, he should say they love everybody, they only want justice. A writer who fails to cover up or justify his readers’ failings and limitations ceases being a writer and becomes – in the words of these readers -- a fool and an s.o.b.
I am flattered. I am read by readers so smart that compared to them I am a fool. I must therefore conclude that, if they continue to read me, I must have a special gift, a gift that all writers dream to have, namely, that of being irresistible. Which amounts to saying I am on my way to achieving immortality.
#
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
comments
Sunday, February 03, 2008
****************************************
REFLECTIONS
*******************************
When told non-violence is for cowards, Gandhi replied: “I prefer violence to cowardice. A coward has no right to call himself a member of the human race.”
*
A nation whose rulers are ignorant philistines, both ignorance and philistinism will be the norm and anyone who refuses to conform will be an enemy of the people – not an enemy of ignorance and philistinism, but a traitor to the cause.
*
There are honest men and there are liars, and i prefer an honest Turk to a lying Armenian.
*
In his efforts to assert his Armenianism, one of our nationalist leaders claimed to have traced his ancestry all the way back to the Mamikonians (Chinese) -- or was it the Bagratunis (Jews)?
*
“There is no such thing as a Turk,” a Turkish friend once informed me. “We have all been bastardized and mongrelized. We are all the offspring of mixed marriages that go back hundreds of years. There is a Greek, an Armenian, a Jew, a Kurd, and an Albanian in all of us.”
*
In the Armenian ghetto where I was born and raised there was a blond barber called Alaman (German in Turkish) and a greengrocer named Kurdoghlanian (Son of a Kurd). They were accepted as Armenians and no one questioned their pedigree, perhaps because everybody was too busy trying to survive in an alien environment to care about such impure concepts as “pure blood.”
*
No matter how hard they try, they will never convince me that honesty and objectivity are anti-Armenian, or that the statement “All men are brothers” is pro-Turkish.
*
To brainwashed dupes who question my Armenianism on the grounds that I am critical of fellow Armenians, I ask: If I speak the truth and in doing so I expose liars, am I good or bad? After long centuries of living in fear, aren’t you tired of lies? Why should truth be a source of dread? What if in treating an honest Armenian as if he were a Turk, you succeed only in exposing your Ottomanism?
*
A historian is not judged by the degree of his patriotism, nationalism, loyalty or subersvience to a power structure, but by his honesty and impartiality. For more on this subject see Michael Grant’s GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORIANS: INFORMATION AND MISINFORMATION (London, 1995).
#
Monday, February 04, 2008
***********************************************
RANDOM THOUGHTS
***********************************
If you speak the truth to liars, they will call you a liar. What else can they do? If you are an honest man among crooks, they will call you a crook. That’s their only line of defense and they will take it for all it’s worth.
*
To deprogram someone against his will can be a formidable undertaking and it doesn’t always work. The alternative – to hope that he will deprogram himself – may take years and sometimes decades, depending on a number of variables which are not worth going into. The fact remains that because we are all products of a cultural milieu with its own specific and clearly defined educational system and dominant ideas, we cannot claim to be who we are in the same way that a wooden table of chair can no longer claim to be a tree in a virgin forest.
*
Crooks and liars are relatively easy to deal with because they are aware of who they are and they feel vulnerable to exposure. Dupes who have been brainwashed to believe they are honest men are infinitely harder to deal with because the lies they recycle are not theirs but someone else’s. This fact makes them invulnerable to reason because there exists between them and reality an impenetrable wall of illusions, and nothing comes more naturally to us than to confuse illusions with reality. Consider what happened to us at the turn of the last century when our revolutionaries thought the Great Powers cared for us. And consider what happens to us today whenever a political candidate, for obvious reasons of his/her own, promises to recognize the Genocide.
*
It is said, investigative reporters are the eyes and ears of a nation. Where are our investigative reporters? Do we have them? Did we ever have them? Why is it that we have dozens of papers but not a single investigative reporter? Are we afraid of what they will uncover?
*
Turks worry me less than the Turk within us.
#
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
********************************************
TURCOPHOBIA
**************************************
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century B.C.), in THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF ROME: “The majority of the Hellenic public have been misled by the false view that founders of Rome were uncivilized vagrants and outlaws who were not even freeborn; and that the secret of Rome’s gradual advance in world dominion has not been her righteousness or her fear of God or any moral quality, but some blind, mechanical and immoral operation of Fortune, who has bestowed her greatest gifts upon her most unprofitable servants, and the lowest of savages…It is my hope that the discovery of the truth may induce a proper appreciation of Rome, unless they are her fanatical and irreconcilable enemies.”
*
Istanbul is not Rome, granted; but neither is Armenia the Garden of Eden.
*
A reader born and raised in Turkey tells me, “Turks can be very nasty if you ever dare to say anything remotely critical about them in their presence.”
Are we different?
“Maybe not, but they massacred us, we didn’t massacre them.”
According to impartial witnesses whenever we had the upper hand, we did to them what they did to us.
“They massacred two million; how many did we massacre, two thousand or two hundred?”
That doesn’t make us more civilized or morally superior. To say otherwise is to confuse military inferiority with moral superiority. You cannot live under a ruthless master for six hundred years without assimilating part of his ruthlessness. Neither can you say to a man, “I want to be friends with you but only on condition that you admit to being a cold-blooded murderer, a thief, a liar, and a bloodthirsty barbarian who should have stayed in Mongolia and never ventured westward where you will never be accepted as a member of a civilized community.” But if you do, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t respond with expressions of gratitude and joy.
*
Do you want to know why sooner or later Hitler’s name props up in Armenian arguments? The following easy-to-remember formula may be as good an explanation as any:
nationalism + antiSemitism + anti-intellectualism = fascism.
#
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
*************************************************
OUR BETTERS OR OUR WORST?
**************************************************
Since time immemorial man has known that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” And yet, the only enterprise in which our leaders have been consistently successful throughout our millennial existence has been in dividing us and in keeping us divided.
Our writers have called them “useless” (Zarian) and “brainless” (Issahakian), and if you think they overstated their case, you should hear what they (our leaders) call one another.
Once, many years ago, when I published an interview with a Tashnak leader, which dealt not with politics or history but with childhood reminiscences and the personalities that had shaped his character and worldview, a Ramgavar leader published an attack so nasty that I was left speechless. This may explain the gutter mentality of some of my brainwashed partisan critics.
*
When things didn’t work out for them, the Bagratunis moved to Georgia, and from Georgia to Russia. When our revolution in the Ottoman Empire failed, our revolutionaries abandoned the people at the mercy of butchers and kept themselves busy by writing long-winded memoirs. They had a Plan B for themselves but only a Plan A for the people.
*
They flatter us by bragging about our survival in an environment where many others perished. They are right: “they” survived all right while countless others did not. They survived to what end and for what purpose? To divide us, of course, and to make sure we stay divided. That’s because that is the only undertaking in which they excel – after all, they had millennia of practice in which to refine and master the technique.
*
Are they our betters or our worst? I will let you answer that question in the hope you will come up with the right answer not because you are smart (I will let them use the maneuver of treating you like fools after flattering you to believe you are just about the smartest people on earth) but because I trust you are capable of using your common sense, which, it has been said, is the least common of all faculties.
#
"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer
****************************************
REFLECTIONS
*******************************
When told non-violence is for cowards, Gandhi replied: “I prefer violence to cowardice. A coward has no right to call himself a member of the human race.”
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A nation whose rulers are ignorant philistines, both ignorance and philistinism will be the norm and anyone who refuses to conform will be an enemy of the people – not an enemy of ignorance and philistinism, but a traitor to the cause.
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There are honest men and there are liars, and i prefer an honest Turk to a lying Armenian.
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In his efforts to assert his Armenianism, one of our nationalist leaders claimed to have traced his ancestry all the way back to the Mamikonians (Chinese) -- or was it the Bagratunis (Jews)?
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“There is no such thing as a Turk,” a Turkish friend once informed me. “We have all been bastardized and mongrelized. We are all the offspring of mixed marriages that go back hundreds of years. There is a Greek, an Armenian, a Jew, a Kurd, and an Albanian in all of us.”
*
In the Armenian ghetto where I was born and raised there was a blond barber called Alaman (German in Turkish) and a greengrocer named Kurdoghlanian (Son of a Kurd). They were accepted as Armenians and no one questioned their pedigree, perhaps because everybody was too busy trying to survive in an alien environment to care about such impure concepts as “pure blood.”
*
No matter how hard they try, they will never convince me that honesty and objectivity are anti-Armenian, or that the statement “All men are brothers” is pro-Turkish.
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To brainwashed dupes who question my Armenianism on the grounds that I am critical of fellow Armenians, I ask: If I speak the truth and in doing so I expose liars, am I good or bad? After long centuries of living in fear, aren’t you tired of lies? Why should truth be a source of dread? What if in treating an honest Armenian as if he were a Turk, you succeed only in exposing your Ottomanism?
*
A historian is not judged by the degree of his patriotism, nationalism, loyalty or subersvience to a power structure, but by his honesty and impartiality. For more on this subject see Michael Grant’s GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORIANS: INFORMATION AND MISINFORMATION (London, 1995).
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Monday, February 04, 2008
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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If you speak the truth to liars, they will call you a liar. What else can they do? If you are an honest man among crooks, they will call you a crook. That’s their only line of defense and they will take it for all it’s worth.
*
To deprogram someone against his will can be a formidable undertaking and it doesn’t always work. The alternative – to hope that he will deprogram himself – may take years and sometimes decades, depending on a number of variables which are not worth going into. The fact remains that because we are all products of a cultural milieu with its own specific and clearly defined educational system and dominant ideas, we cannot claim to be who we are in the same way that a wooden table of chair can no longer claim to be a tree in a virgin forest.
*
Crooks and liars are relatively easy to deal with because they are aware of who they are and they feel vulnerable to exposure. Dupes who have been brainwashed to believe they are honest men are infinitely harder to deal with because the lies they recycle are not theirs but someone else’s. This fact makes them invulnerable to reason because there exists between them and reality an impenetrable wall of illusions, and nothing comes more naturally to us than to confuse illusions with reality. Consider what happened to us at the turn of the last century when our revolutionaries thought the Great Powers cared for us. And consider what happens to us today whenever a political candidate, for obvious reasons of his/her own, promises to recognize the Genocide.
*
It is said, investigative reporters are the eyes and ears of a nation. Where are our investigative reporters? Do we have them? Did we ever have them? Why is it that we have dozens of papers but not a single investigative reporter? Are we afraid of what they will uncover?
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Turks worry me less than the Turk within us.
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008
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TURCOPHOBIA
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Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century B.C.), in THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF ROME: “The majority of the Hellenic public have been misled by the false view that founders of Rome were uncivilized vagrants and outlaws who were not even freeborn; and that the secret of Rome’s gradual advance in world dominion has not been her righteousness or her fear of God or any moral quality, but some blind, mechanical and immoral operation of Fortune, who has bestowed her greatest gifts upon her most unprofitable servants, and the lowest of savages…It is my hope that the discovery of the truth may induce a proper appreciation of Rome, unless they are her fanatical and irreconcilable enemies.”
*
Istanbul is not Rome, granted; but neither is Armenia the Garden of Eden.
*
A reader born and raised in Turkey tells me, “Turks can be very nasty if you ever dare to say anything remotely critical about them in their presence.”
Are we different?
“Maybe not, but they massacred us, we didn’t massacre them.”
According to impartial witnesses whenever we had the upper hand, we did to them what they did to us.
“They massacred two million; how many did we massacre, two thousand or two hundred?”
That doesn’t make us more civilized or morally superior. To say otherwise is to confuse military inferiority with moral superiority. You cannot live under a ruthless master for six hundred years without assimilating part of his ruthlessness. Neither can you say to a man, “I want to be friends with you but only on condition that you admit to being a cold-blooded murderer, a thief, a liar, and a bloodthirsty barbarian who should have stayed in Mongolia and never ventured westward where you will never be accepted as a member of a civilized community.” But if you do, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t respond with expressions of gratitude and joy.
*
Do you want to know why sooner or later Hitler’s name props up in Armenian arguments? The following easy-to-remember formula may be as good an explanation as any:
nationalism + antiSemitism + anti-intellectualism = fascism.
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
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OUR BETTERS OR OUR WORST?
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Since time immemorial man has known that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” And yet, the only enterprise in which our leaders have been consistently successful throughout our millennial existence has been in dividing us and in keeping us divided.
Our writers have called them “useless” (Zarian) and “brainless” (Issahakian), and if you think they overstated their case, you should hear what they (our leaders) call one another.
Once, many years ago, when I published an interview with a Tashnak leader, which dealt not with politics or history but with childhood reminiscences and the personalities that had shaped his character and worldview, a Ramgavar leader published an attack so nasty that I was left speechless. This may explain the gutter mentality of some of my brainwashed partisan critics.
*
When things didn’t work out for them, the Bagratunis moved to Georgia, and from Georgia to Russia. When our revolution in the Ottoman Empire failed, our revolutionaries abandoned the people at the mercy of butchers and kept themselves busy by writing long-winded memoirs. They had a Plan B for themselves but only a Plan A for the people.
*
They flatter us by bragging about our survival in an environment where many others perished. They are right: “they” survived all right while countless others did not. They survived to what end and for what purpose? To divide us, of course, and to make sure we stay divided. That’s because that is the only undertaking in which they excel – after all, they had millennia of practice in which to refine and master the technique.
*
Are they our betters or our worst? I will let you answer that question in the hope you will come up with the right answer not because you are smart (I will let them use the maneuver of treating you like fools after flattering you to believe you are just about the smartest people on earth) but because I trust you are capable of using your common sense, which, it has been said, is the least common of all faculties.
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"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Saturday, February 2, 2008
from my notebooks
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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FRAGMENTS
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Theophylactus Simocatta the Egyptian (500-630 A.D.) in the preface to his UNIVERSAL HISTORY: “History [is] the universal teacher of mankind, who lays before us what we should attempt and what we should leave alone as being unlikely to succeed. I am resolved to throw myself into her embraces, even though the enterprise be greater than my powers in view of the vulgarity of my style, the imbecility of my ideas, the awkwardness of my phraseology, and the unskilfulness of my composition. If any reader should find here and there a touch of felicity in my narrative, he must attribute it to chance, for most certainly it will not be due to the competence of the writer.”
*
The only morally superior Armenian I can name with any degree of certainty is Naregatsi and he represents himself as the most corrupt and evil of men. As for the others: the higher they rise, the lower they sink. To our ghazetajis and all dealers in chauvinist crapola, I say: Read Naregatsi’s LAMENTATION from beginning to end and if that does not have any effect on you, declare yourself a dangerous offender and place yourself under constant surveillance.
*
Self-righteous fools and fanatics are more prone to spew venom than moderates and middle-roaders.
*
I am afraid to say this but it must be said: It is not unreasonable to speculate that the constant harping on Turks in our press and internet forums, and the proliferation of massacre books and videos runs the risk of being classified as hate paraphernalia.
#
Friday, February 01, 2008
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FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
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On the day a belief system is established, it begins to degenerate. A religion or an ideology may not lobotomize or moronize its converts but it takes them a step away from their individuality by depersonalizing them. That may explain why the inevitable movement in all institutions, organizations, and mass movements is towards the lowest common denominator. Christianity resulted in religious wars, the persecution of heretics, and serial child molesters; Islam in suicidal fanatics slaughtering innocent civilians; Marxism in commissars and the cold-blooded murder of millions; and nationalism in genocides.
Jesus and Mohammad were not historians, but Marx was. Hence his declaration: “I am not a Marxist.” Had Jesus known about the future abuses of Christianity, my guess is he would have given up preaching for carpentry.
To say my brand of ideology or orthodoxy is better than yours or someone else’s, raises the question: Has anyone ever said the opposite? Namely, My orthodoxy is polluted, my religion is second rate, my ideology is not the best, or my belief system is of an inferior brand? To believe also means to believe that one’s belief system is la crème de la crème even when it is la crème de la scum. Hence the phenomenon of skinheads, fascist thugs, and nationalist hooligans.
And now a question: if our nationalists engage in hooliganism against their own kind, what are they capable of doing to an unfriendly, alien, and defenseless minority in their midst when the law is on their side? Answer that question honestly and you may have a better insight into the Turkish mindset during World War I when the whole world was against them and when their own existence was in peril. I said “Turkish mindset.” I should have said “human nature,” and even better, “yourself.”
#
Saturday, February 02, 2008
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HOW TO WRITE HISTORY
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Lucian of Samosata (125-200 A.D.): “My own ideal historian is fearless, incorruptible, high-minded and a frank exponent of the truth. The impartiality of his judgment will not be affected by sympathy or antipathy, good feeling or sentiment, shame or shyness. He will do his best for all his characters so far as he can do it without favoring one at the expense of another. He will be a law unto himself acknowledging no allegiances. He will not stop to consider what A or B will think, but will state the facts.”
*
Something is bound to go wrong in everyone’s life. A great many things have gone wrong in mine. The temptation to blame it one others has been overwhelming. But I am now old enough and objective enough to see that my contribution to my misfortunes has been infinitely greater than the combined hostility of all my adversaries of whom I have had my share, perhaps even more than my share.
*
Mother Teresa, “the saint of the gutter,” is a proof of the fact that you don’t have to be a believer to be a saint. Likewise, you don’t have to be wise to see the truth. All you need is a touch of humility, honesty, and objectivity.
*
A victim may be as deficient in grasping reality as his victimizer.
*
After defining themselves as good Armenians, some of my readers call me a bad Armenian, and worse, anti-Armenian. I am nothing of the kind. I am not even anti-Turkish. I want to be friends with everybody, and some day I may even acquire Turkish friends. As for acquiring Armenian friends: that may prove to be a more demanding enterprise.
#
********************************************
FRAGMENTS
**************************************
Theophylactus Simocatta the Egyptian (500-630 A.D.) in the preface to his UNIVERSAL HISTORY: “History [is] the universal teacher of mankind, who lays before us what we should attempt and what we should leave alone as being unlikely to succeed. I am resolved to throw myself into her embraces, even though the enterprise be greater than my powers in view of the vulgarity of my style, the imbecility of my ideas, the awkwardness of my phraseology, and the unskilfulness of my composition. If any reader should find here and there a touch of felicity in my narrative, he must attribute it to chance, for most certainly it will not be due to the competence of the writer.”
*
The only morally superior Armenian I can name with any degree of certainty is Naregatsi and he represents himself as the most corrupt and evil of men. As for the others: the higher they rise, the lower they sink. To our ghazetajis and all dealers in chauvinist crapola, I say: Read Naregatsi’s LAMENTATION from beginning to end and if that does not have any effect on you, declare yourself a dangerous offender and place yourself under constant surveillance.
*
Self-righteous fools and fanatics are more prone to spew venom than moderates and middle-roaders.
*
I am afraid to say this but it must be said: It is not unreasonable to speculate that the constant harping on Turks in our press and internet forums, and the proliferation of massacre books and videos runs the risk of being classified as hate paraphernalia.
#
Friday, February 01, 2008
********************************************
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
*********************************************
On the day a belief system is established, it begins to degenerate. A religion or an ideology may not lobotomize or moronize its converts but it takes them a step away from their individuality by depersonalizing them. That may explain why the inevitable movement in all institutions, organizations, and mass movements is towards the lowest common denominator. Christianity resulted in religious wars, the persecution of heretics, and serial child molesters; Islam in suicidal fanatics slaughtering innocent civilians; Marxism in commissars and the cold-blooded murder of millions; and nationalism in genocides.
Jesus and Mohammad were not historians, but Marx was. Hence his declaration: “I am not a Marxist.” Had Jesus known about the future abuses of Christianity, my guess is he would have given up preaching for carpentry.
To say my brand of ideology or orthodoxy is better than yours or someone else’s, raises the question: Has anyone ever said the opposite? Namely, My orthodoxy is polluted, my religion is second rate, my ideology is not the best, or my belief system is of an inferior brand? To believe also means to believe that one’s belief system is la crème de la crème even when it is la crème de la scum. Hence the phenomenon of skinheads, fascist thugs, and nationalist hooligans.
And now a question: if our nationalists engage in hooliganism against their own kind, what are they capable of doing to an unfriendly, alien, and defenseless minority in their midst when the law is on their side? Answer that question honestly and you may have a better insight into the Turkish mindset during World War I when the whole world was against them and when their own existence was in peril. I said “Turkish mindset.” I should have said “human nature,” and even better, “yourself.”
#
Saturday, February 02, 2008
***********************************************
HOW TO WRITE HISTORY
************************************
Lucian of Samosata (125-200 A.D.): “My own ideal historian is fearless, incorruptible, high-minded and a frank exponent of the truth. The impartiality of his judgment will not be affected by sympathy or antipathy, good feeling or sentiment, shame or shyness. He will do his best for all his characters so far as he can do it without favoring one at the expense of another. He will be a law unto himself acknowledging no allegiances. He will not stop to consider what A or B will think, but will state the facts.”
*
Something is bound to go wrong in everyone’s life. A great many things have gone wrong in mine. The temptation to blame it one others has been overwhelming. But I am now old enough and objective enough to see that my contribution to my misfortunes has been infinitely greater than the combined hostility of all my adversaries of whom I have had my share, perhaps even more than my share.
*
Mother Teresa, “the saint of the gutter,” is a proof of the fact that you don’t have to be a believer to be a saint. Likewise, you don’t have to be wise to see the truth. All you need is a touch of humility, honesty, and objectivity.
*
A victim may be as deficient in grasping reality as his victimizer.
*
After defining themselves as good Armenians, some of my readers call me a bad Armenian, and worse, anti-Armenian. I am nothing of the kind. I am not even anti-Turkish. I want to be friends with everybody, and some day I may even acquire Turkish friends. As for acquiring Armenian friends: that may prove to be a more demanding enterprise.
#
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