Sunday, December 28, 2008
****************************************
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
**************************************************
Knowledge is power. Those who know mislead, exploit, and oppress the ignorant as surely as the mighty victimize the weak and defenseless.
*
All my life I wanted to find honest work, and when I finally found one, no one had any use for me. If I persevere, it's because, in Moliere's words: “I prefer a comfortable vice to a tiring virtue.”
*
The danger of belief systems is not their absurdities but the fact that they find strength in numbers, so that the average man with average intelligence feels justified in asking; “Who am I to contradict millions?”
*
If you share the same belief system with a fool, brother, look into it.
*
The language of power: Why try to reason, educate, and convince when you can brainwash, intimidate, and silence those who resist?
*
We like to be massaged – body, ego, soul – and we are willing to pay for it handsomely to speechifiers, sermonizers, and generally speaking, dealers in verbal crapola. As for writers who make us feel uncomfortable, we love to see them starved.
*
As for our so-called cunning: it consists mainly in devising strategies to avoid facing reality.
#
Monday, December 29, 2008
****************************************
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
**************************************************
In politics, and life in general, the meaning that resides between the lines often contradicts the meaning in the lines.
*
Only an unspeakably self-satisfied simpleton with the IQ of a jackass would violate someone's free speech on the grounds that free speech is not a fundamental human right but a privilege bestowed only on those who are infallible, among them himself.
*
My message: We may not be as good as we think we are.
The message of our leadership: We may be better than we think we are.
Needless to add, the naïve souls among us cannot see the connection between this shamelessly flattering self-assessment and the unspoken punch line that inevitably and invariably will follow, “mi kich pogh...”
*
My morning paper informs me today that the prime minister of Turkey called Israeli air strikes in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” He could have said, in war bad things happen to good people. But he didn't. He said “crimes against humanity” -- and so far only 300 dead. I suggest this may well be a new chapter in Turkish foreign policy.
*
The ambition of every Armenian dunghill is to be Mt. Ararat.
*
Thomas Mann: "The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him."
#
Tuesday, December 230, 2008
****************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
**************************************************
“My grandmother once said to me...”
If your grandmother said that, who am I to contradict grandmotherhood, shish-kebab and pilaf?
*
If you are honest, you expose the dishonest. If you do something well, you drive the incompetent to bankruptcy.
*
My great failure in the eyes of my Armenian readers is that I write not as an Armenian but as a human being, as if being Armenian and being human were mutually exclusive concepts.
*
We owe all progress to losers. Winners are only the beneficiaries of the struggle initiated and carried out by losers. Winners only deliver the coup de grace.
*
If a fool refuses to learn from the wise, he will have to learn from life, and reality can be a harsh teacher.
*
Whatever wisdom I have I owe it to my folly.
#
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
to life
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
****************************************
L'CHAIM
**************************************************
In arithmetic, one plus one makes two. In life, the answer may be eleven or any other given number.
*
The Mekhitarist order was divided into two – the Venetian and Viennese branches. But I am told they have now decided to unite. The friend who communicates this news bulletin to me, remarks: “Now that they are both dead, they want to be buried together.” Which reminds me of the fact that while being “educated” by the Venetian branch, “Armenian solidarity” might as well have been a taboo subject.
*
Once upon a time there was a Chinese emperor whose ambition was to change the world. When he realized the world wasn't exactly in a cooperative frame of mind, he lowered his sight to trying to change his realm, then his circle of relatives and friends, and so on until he realized that he couldn't even change himself.
*
Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad, came close to changing the world, whether for the better or worse remains to be seen.
*
In life, the unpleasant surprises outnumber the pleasant ones perhaps because man is more easily addicted to wishful thinking than objective judgment.
#
Thursday, December 25, 2008
****************************************
HO HO HO!
**************************************************
Speaking of Galileo, Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as having said, he had helped “the faithful to better understand and contemplate with gratitude the Lord's works.” It seems to me, the far more important lesson to be learned from the most famous victim of the Inquisition is that faith can sometimes lead those in power into punishing the innocent and intimidating the rest into blind obedience. In other words, what happened to Galileo is not an injustice that belongs to the irrevocable past, but an aberration inherent in all organized religions.
According to a cardinal, “Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God.” The unmistakable implication being that those who speak in the name of God sometimes behave like functional illiterates.
*
Friends tell me I should not waste my time writing about nonentities. But what if these nonentities are in charge of our destiny?
*
Troubles come from unexpected directions, and like bullets, they hit you before you hear them coming because they travel faster than the speed of sound.
*
Anyone can get a lawyer. The trick is getting a good lawyer; and with a good lawyer you lose even when you win – when, that is, you get his bill.
*
I am fascinated by people who know or understand something that I don't; and I am repelled by people who believe things that I believed when I was a dupe.
#
Friday, December 26, 2008
****************************************
TWO BOOKS
**************************************************
The two funniest books I read this year are Christopher Buckley's satirical novel, SUPREME COURTSHIP, and Shalom Auslander's FORESKIN'S LAMENT: A MEMOIR.
Buckley's central character is a combination of Sarah Palin and Bugs Bunny (my favorite American of all time). I noted the presence of two Armenians: Setrakian, a prosecutor, and Harmookian, a senator.
Auslander's name is Shalom but his memoir is more like a declaration of war against Jewish beliefs, scriptures, customs, traditions, and dietary laws.
*
We all view reality from a different angle. If we want to enhance our understanding of the world, we must first come to terms with the fact that what we see is not what we get because what we see is only a fraction of reality, and a fraction so minuscule that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.
*
There is a type of Armenian whose penetrating gaze sees and understands everything except the dimensions and depths of his own ignorance.
*
According to some eminent historians, the present conflict between the West and the Muslim world is “a clash of civilizations.” I disagree. Neither Bush and his gang of neo-cons, nor Saddam, Osama, and their brainwashed thugs represent anything remotely allied to civilization. Barbarism, yes. Civilization, no!
#
Saturday, December 27, 2008
****************************************
RECAP (II)
**************************************************
From our millionaires, we want money.
From our bishops, constant reminders of our moral superiority.
From our fund-raisers, declarations of our generosity.
From our people, credulity.
From our writers, flattery.
From our critics, silence.
Armenians are complex and unpredictable?
Nonsense!
We are more predictable than Pavlov's salivating canines.
*
Where there is a free press, fascism doesn't stand a chance.
One of the worst things that happened to America in the last century was Senator McCarthy. But McCarthy, unlike Franco, Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, didn't kill anyone. Neither did he last as long for the simple reason that he was exposed as a bully by a free press.
*
Where there is no free press, or where there are barriers raised against the free flow of ideas (as that of “insulting Turkishness”), the people will be exposed to only one set of views. The result will be a society that is unhealthy and easily manipulated by those in power. This may explain why our bosses, bishops, and benefactors are unanimous in supporting our Turcocentric ghazetajis and in opposing dissent.
*
The trouble with any kind of barrier against free speech is that it tends to suppress legitimate criticism too and eventually creates a class of individuals who consider themselves beyond criticism.
*
If you say, Armenians don't like me on the grounds that I am consistently negative,
my answer is, you mean I insult Armenishness?
Is it being negative pointing out the obvious fact that, as members of the human race, we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including of course Turks, and that all suggestions of moral superiority are not just lies but asinine absurdities?
*
Where courage of one's convictions is equated with hostility or even treason, the result will be a generation of conformists, yes-men, and cowards afraid of their own shadows.
#
****************************************
L'CHAIM
**************************************************
In arithmetic, one plus one makes two. In life, the answer may be eleven or any other given number.
*
The Mekhitarist order was divided into two – the Venetian and Viennese branches. But I am told they have now decided to unite. The friend who communicates this news bulletin to me, remarks: “Now that they are both dead, they want to be buried together.” Which reminds me of the fact that while being “educated” by the Venetian branch, “Armenian solidarity” might as well have been a taboo subject.
*
Once upon a time there was a Chinese emperor whose ambition was to change the world. When he realized the world wasn't exactly in a cooperative frame of mind, he lowered his sight to trying to change his realm, then his circle of relatives and friends, and so on until he realized that he couldn't even change himself.
*
Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad, came close to changing the world, whether for the better or worse remains to be seen.
*
In life, the unpleasant surprises outnumber the pleasant ones perhaps because man is more easily addicted to wishful thinking than objective judgment.
#
Thursday, December 25, 2008
****************************************
HO HO HO!
**************************************************
Speaking of Galileo, Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as having said, he had helped “the faithful to better understand and contemplate with gratitude the Lord's works.” It seems to me, the far more important lesson to be learned from the most famous victim of the Inquisition is that faith can sometimes lead those in power into punishing the innocent and intimidating the rest into blind obedience. In other words, what happened to Galileo is not an injustice that belongs to the irrevocable past, but an aberration inherent in all organized religions.
According to a cardinal, “Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God.” The unmistakable implication being that those who speak in the name of God sometimes behave like functional illiterates.
*
Friends tell me I should not waste my time writing about nonentities. But what if these nonentities are in charge of our destiny?
*
Troubles come from unexpected directions, and like bullets, they hit you before you hear them coming because they travel faster than the speed of sound.
*
Anyone can get a lawyer. The trick is getting a good lawyer; and with a good lawyer you lose even when you win – when, that is, you get his bill.
*
I am fascinated by people who know or understand something that I don't; and I am repelled by people who believe things that I believed when I was a dupe.
#
Friday, December 26, 2008
****************************************
TWO BOOKS
**************************************************
The two funniest books I read this year are Christopher Buckley's satirical novel, SUPREME COURTSHIP, and Shalom Auslander's FORESKIN'S LAMENT: A MEMOIR.
Buckley's central character is a combination of Sarah Palin and Bugs Bunny (my favorite American of all time). I noted the presence of two Armenians: Setrakian, a prosecutor, and Harmookian, a senator.
Auslander's name is Shalom but his memoir is more like a declaration of war against Jewish beliefs, scriptures, customs, traditions, and dietary laws.
*
We all view reality from a different angle. If we want to enhance our understanding of the world, we must first come to terms with the fact that what we see is not what we get because what we see is only a fraction of reality, and a fraction so minuscule that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye.
*
There is a type of Armenian whose penetrating gaze sees and understands everything except the dimensions and depths of his own ignorance.
*
According to some eminent historians, the present conflict between the West and the Muslim world is “a clash of civilizations.” I disagree. Neither Bush and his gang of neo-cons, nor Saddam, Osama, and their brainwashed thugs represent anything remotely allied to civilization. Barbarism, yes. Civilization, no!
#
Saturday, December 27, 2008
****************************************
RECAP (II)
**************************************************
From our millionaires, we want money.
From our bishops, constant reminders of our moral superiority.
From our fund-raisers, declarations of our generosity.
From our people, credulity.
From our writers, flattery.
From our critics, silence.
Armenians are complex and unpredictable?
Nonsense!
We are more predictable than Pavlov's salivating canines.
*
Where there is a free press, fascism doesn't stand a chance.
One of the worst things that happened to America in the last century was Senator McCarthy. But McCarthy, unlike Franco, Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, didn't kill anyone. Neither did he last as long for the simple reason that he was exposed as a bully by a free press.
*
Where there is no free press, or where there are barriers raised against the free flow of ideas (as that of “insulting Turkishness”), the people will be exposed to only one set of views. The result will be a society that is unhealthy and easily manipulated by those in power. This may explain why our bosses, bishops, and benefactors are unanimous in supporting our Turcocentric ghazetajis and in opposing dissent.
*
The trouble with any kind of barrier against free speech is that it tends to suppress legitimate criticism too and eventually creates a class of individuals who consider themselves beyond criticism.
*
If you say, Armenians don't like me on the grounds that I am consistently negative,
my answer is, you mean I insult Armenishness?
Is it being negative pointing out the obvious fact that, as members of the human race, we are as bad as the rest of mankind, including of course Turks, and that all suggestions of moral superiority are not just lies but asinine absurdities?
*
Where courage of one's convictions is equated with hostility or even treason, the result will be a generation of conformists, yes-men, and cowards afraid of their own shadows.
#
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
justice
Sunday, December 21, 2008
****************************************
RECAP
**************************************************
Some people don't feel the need to listen to a sermon or read a book on ethics in order to do the right thing, but they are invariably and consistently outnumbered by those who are convinced they are doing the right thing even when they behave like swine. Like all nations, we too have our share of black sheep. For a long time that's how I justified the existence of our riffraff. Not any more. I no longer feel the need to be their advocate. On the contrary, I consider it my duty to call a spade a spade. I realize of course that mine is not exactly a pleasant task or a profitable undertaking, but someone has to perform it, and if not I, who? Our Turcocentric ghazetajis are too busy delivering lectures on ethics to Turks; and our fundraisers know that the best way to appeal to the generosity of their victims is by flattering the hell out of them.
We all know that during the Soviet era our brothers and sisters in the Homeland had to cheat in order to survive. And who among us will dare to suggest that long centuries of subservience have had no influence in shaping our character as yes-men and brown-nosers? And who is naïve enough to say that this character trait of ours is not fully exploited by our leaders who take full advantage of it by making untenable dogmatic assertions that are as absurd as the claims of denialists. So what if in the process they alienate anyone who dares to think for himself? So what if they decimate the nation? Who says one must wear a shalvar and wield a yataghan in order to qualify as a Turk?
#
Monday, December 22, 2008
****************************************
ENEMIES
**************************************************
Fascist regimes label anyone who refuses to be brainwashed an enemy to cover up the fact that they are the real enemies.
*
There was a time when both Tashnak and Ramgavar weeklies published my critical commentaries on the assumption that I was being critical only of the opposition. When after more than ten years they finally realized I was being critical of both sides, they stopped publishing me. That's when I was labeled an enemy.
*
An enemy of the nation: what does that really mean? What do we mean when we speak of the nation, or Homeland, or Armenia? Do we mean the real estate (mountains, rivers, and valleys?), or the culture (literature, music, and the arts?). I dare anyone to quote a single line from my books and commentaries that is critical of our real estate or music, architecture, and writers from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi, and from Abovian to Zarian..
*
Am I critical of the people? Yes, but only of the fraction that has been brainwashed and sees nothing wrong in it. Consider the case of Charents who allowed himself to be brainwashed by the Kremlin. When somewhere along the line he realized what had been done to him, he wrote to his muse:
“You were like a sister to me,
Truthful, pure and bright;
But I spat on your face.
I betrayed you one night
With a cold mistress,
Who sang to me dreams of iron,
And took me into a world without love.”
*
Bakounts went further and compared ideologies and regimes to temporary ailments, here today, gone tomorrow; and I quote: “They are just passing phenomena, a period when history is suffering from the flu, so to speak, a temporary ailment, after which, all the dead cities will rise again from the ashes, as long as there are still people in this world like Hovnatan March [the central character of his story], who will burst into tears whenever they hear the word Armenia, and who embrace this ideal as an alcoholic would grab his last bottle of brandy.”
*
I suggest the Armenia of Charents and Bakounts, or for that matter, the Armenia of Abovian, Raffi and Zarian, is not the same entity as that of our partisan propagandists and dividers, who silence anyone who dares to think for himself.
#
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
****************************************
JUSTICE
**************************************************
In a commentary by an American academic I read today that there has been progress on all fronts in China except the judicial system. Lawyers who defend unpopular causes or dissidents are sometimes arrested, jailed, beaten, and tortured.
Armenia's abuses of power escape international notice because no one much cares what happens there, not even Armenians. Human rights is not exactly a topic we like to discuss even in the Diaspora. As far as I know none of our pundits has ever written a single commentary on free speech. To most of them, and especially to our Turcocentric ghazetajis, the freedom to write about massacres in the Ottoman Empire is the alpha and omega of free speech. And speaking of lawyers: a friend of mine, who happens to be a critic of the regime, tells me he is not allowed to enter Armenia and no lawyer wants to take his case.
#
****************************************
RECAP
**************************************************
Some people don't feel the need to listen to a sermon or read a book on ethics in order to do the right thing, but they are invariably and consistently outnumbered by those who are convinced they are doing the right thing even when they behave like swine. Like all nations, we too have our share of black sheep. For a long time that's how I justified the existence of our riffraff. Not any more. I no longer feel the need to be their advocate. On the contrary, I consider it my duty to call a spade a spade. I realize of course that mine is not exactly a pleasant task or a profitable undertaking, but someone has to perform it, and if not I, who? Our Turcocentric ghazetajis are too busy delivering lectures on ethics to Turks; and our fundraisers know that the best way to appeal to the generosity of their victims is by flattering the hell out of them.
We all know that during the Soviet era our brothers and sisters in the Homeland had to cheat in order to survive. And who among us will dare to suggest that long centuries of subservience have had no influence in shaping our character as yes-men and brown-nosers? And who is naïve enough to say that this character trait of ours is not fully exploited by our leaders who take full advantage of it by making untenable dogmatic assertions that are as absurd as the claims of denialists. So what if in the process they alienate anyone who dares to think for himself? So what if they decimate the nation? Who says one must wear a shalvar and wield a yataghan in order to qualify as a Turk?
#
Monday, December 22, 2008
****************************************
ENEMIES
**************************************************
Fascist regimes label anyone who refuses to be brainwashed an enemy to cover up the fact that they are the real enemies.
*
There was a time when both Tashnak and Ramgavar weeklies published my critical commentaries on the assumption that I was being critical only of the opposition. When after more than ten years they finally realized I was being critical of both sides, they stopped publishing me. That's when I was labeled an enemy.
*
An enemy of the nation: what does that really mean? What do we mean when we speak of the nation, or Homeland, or Armenia? Do we mean the real estate (mountains, rivers, and valleys?), or the culture (literature, music, and the arts?). I dare anyone to quote a single line from my books and commentaries that is critical of our real estate or music, architecture, and writers from Khorenatsi to Naregatsi, and from Abovian to Zarian..
*
Am I critical of the people? Yes, but only of the fraction that has been brainwashed and sees nothing wrong in it. Consider the case of Charents who allowed himself to be brainwashed by the Kremlin. When somewhere along the line he realized what had been done to him, he wrote to his muse:
“You were like a sister to me,
Truthful, pure and bright;
But I spat on your face.
I betrayed you one night
With a cold mistress,
Who sang to me dreams of iron,
And took me into a world without love.”
*
Bakounts went further and compared ideologies and regimes to temporary ailments, here today, gone tomorrow; and I quote: “They are just passing phenomena, a period when history is suffering from the flu, so to speak, a temporary ailment, after which, all the dead cities will rise again from the ashes, as long as there are still people in this world like Hovnatan March [the central character of his story], who will burst into tears whenever they hear the word Armenia, and who embrace this ideal as an alcoholic would grab his last bottle of brandy.”
*
I suggest the Armenia of Charents and Bakounts, or for that matter, the Armenia of Abovian, Raffi and Zarian, is not the same entity as that of our partisan propagandists and dividers, who silence anyone who dares to think for himself.
#
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
****************************************
JUSTICE
**************************************************
In a commentary by an American academic I read today that there has been progress on all fronts in China except the judicial system. Lawyers who defend unpopular causes or dissidents are sometimes arrested, jailed, beaten, and tortured.
Armenia's abuses of power escape international notice because no one much cares what happens there, not even Armenians. Human rights is not exactly a topic we like to discuss even in the Diaspora. As far as I know none of our pundits has ever written a single commentary on free speech. To most of them, and especially to our Turcocentric ghazetajis, the freedom to write about massacres in the Ottoman Empire is the alpha and omega of free speech. And speaking of lawyers: a friend of mine, who happens to be a critic of the regime, tells me he is not allowed to enter Armenia and no lawyer wants to take his case.
#
Saturday, December 20, 2008
yes-men
Thursday, December 18, 2008
****************************************
WORDS (II)
**************************************************
A man once went up to a French writer (may have been Valéry) and said: “I have a great idea for a book.” The writer interrupted him by saying, “Books are written with words, not ideas.”
*
Marx had all the ideas, but Casanova knew the right words.
*
You want to know why I write one-liners? To write a book, one must first learn to write a good line. Only then one may learn to write two lines....
*
When Moliere's “bourgeois gentilhomme” delivers the celebrated line, “You mean to tell me I spoke prose all my life and didn't know it?” Moliere's teacher could have replied: “Just because you speak prose, it doesn't mean you can also write it.”
*
It is easy to have all the answers if you ask the wrong questions.
*
In his recently published biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French quotes him as having said: “I am enraged by the way Indians don't wish to understand their history, I am enraged.” Naipaul's book on India is titled A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION. The first Armenian novel in ashkharapar or the spoken idiom is by Khachatur Abovian (1805-1848) and it's titled THE WOUNDS OF ARMENIA. And to think that Abovian wrote his novel nearly a century before the real wound.
*
The worst thing that can happen to a wounded nation is to be obsessed with its wound,
*
A nation with a wounded soul will have a traumatized understanding and view anyone who says otherwise as an enemy of the nation.
*
What is Naipaul's rage to India? What is an ant's rage to an elephant?
#
Friday, December 19, 2008
****************************************
TWO WRITERS
**************************************************
Adrienne Rich: “Lying is done with words and also silence.”
*
In his “Reply to historians who are against senators voting for legislation against anti-Armenian denialists” (LE POINT, November 27, 2008), the French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy, writes that these historians expect us to believe that such a law, if passed, would terrorize historians' freedom of expression. “Who's kidding whom?” he writes. “It is not anti-denialist laws that terrorize historians, it is denialists who terrorize them.” To the question, “Why the necessity of a French law about a crime in which France is not implicated,” Levy writes: “I am not sure about that. We know for a fact that at least in two instances in 1919, in Marash and Hedjin in Cilicia, when the French army stood by and did nothing to protect the victims.” Where there is a crime against humanity, he goes on, all of mankind is implicated. “We cannot therefore justify ourselves by saying, we are not guilty of a crime, we only allowed others to commit it.”
*
In his introduction to L'OLOCAUSTO ARMENO (The Armenian Holocaust), Alberto Rosselli informs the reader that the bibliography on the subject is “vastissima” (very vast). In addition to Armenian sources, “which are obviously numerosissimi (very numerous), there are sources in French, American, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, English, and Russian.” In addition there are eyewitness accounts of diplomats from as many countries, including Germany, “at a time when Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire.” Among the Turkish sources he mentions Taner Akcam and Orhan Pamuk. He also discusses the recent work of the German historian, Hilmar Kaiser. The book is divided into chapters devoted to the history of Armenia, the Armenian Church, the Hamidian massacres, the regime of the Young Turks, and Armenia today. In addition the reader will find here a chronology of the Ottoman Empire and a bibliography of books in Italian, English, and French.
After reading this book, I doubt very much if there will be a single Italian who will doubt the reality of the Genocide and the self-inflicted blindness of denialists.
Rosselli is a prolific historian and journalist who has authored books on Canada, the United States, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, Germany, Turkey, and Africa.
*
Groucho Marx: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”
#
Saturday, December 20, 2008
****************************************
A CIVILIZED ARMENIAN
**************************************************
Reading Evelyn Waugh's DIARY – over 800 pages of boring gossip and venomous assessments.
On Edmund Wilson: “An insignificant Yank.”
On President Truman: “A wholly comic man.”
On Aldous Huxley: “I find his scientific imagery very flat and ugly.”
On Alberto Moravia: “A wop highbrow.”
In a December 1944 entry in Yugoslavia, he speaks of an encounter with “a toothless Armenian named Major Karmel...: he is quick-witted, funny, fond of wine and cigars, and with the adaptability of his race quickly dropped his original line-regiment heartiness and became human and civilized...”
A month later: “Illiterate Montenegrin Armenian called and was given clothes.”
There is more talk of food and booze here than books and literature. And this: “It is impudent and exorbitant to demand truth from the lower classes.”
*
BERNIE MADOFF
***************************
A Jewish friend recently made fun of Armenian monks brawling in a church. Today I sent him the following e-mail: “I'd much rather see monks beating one another to a pulp in a church than a swindler like Bernie Madoff sucking the blood of his fellow Jews – and I am not implying here we don't have our share of mini-Madoffians.”
*
GUTLESS YES-MEN
*********************************
A nation without dissidents is a gutless nation afraid of words and ideas. And those who support such a nation in the name of patriotism are misguided fools who believe ideas and intellectuals are irrelevant luxuries, perhaps even hostile elements.
#
****************************************
WORDS (II)
**************************************************
A man once went up to a French writer (may have been Valéry) and said: “I have a great idea for a book.” The writer interrupted him by saying, “Books are written with words, not ideas.”
*
Marx had all the ideas, but Casanova knew the right words.
*
You want to know why I write one-liners? To write a book, one must first learn to write a good line. Only then one may learn to write two lines....
*
When Moliere's “bourgeois gentilhomme” delivers the celebrated line, “You mean to tell me I spoke prose all my life and didn't know it?” Moliere's teacher could have replied: “Just because you speak prose, it doesn't mean you can also write it.”
*
It is easy to have all the answers if you ask the wrong questions.
*
In his recently published biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French quotes him as having said: “I am enraged by the way Indians don't wish to understand their history, I am enraged.” Naipaul's book on India is titled A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION. The first Armenian novel in ashkharapar or the spoken idiom is by Khachatur Abovian (1805-1848) and it's titled THE WOUNDS OF ARMENIA. And to think that Abovian wrote his novel nearly a century before the real wound.
*
The worst thing that can happen to a wounded nation is to be obsessed with its wound,
*
A nation with a wounded soul will have a traumatized understanding and view anyone who says otherwise as an enemy of the nation.
*
What is Naipaul's rage to India? What is an ant's rage to an elephant?
#
Friday, December 19, 2008
****************************************
TWO WRITERS
**************************************************
Adrienne Rich: “Lying is done with words and also silence.”
*
In his “Reply to historians who are against senators voting for legislation against anti-Armenian denialists” (LE POINT, November 27, 2008), the French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy, writes that these historians expect us to believe that such a law, if passed, would terrorize historians' freedom of expression. “Who's kidding whom?” he writes. “It is not anti-denialist laws that terrorize historians, it is denialists who terrorize them.” To the question, “Why the necessity of a French law about a crime in which France is not implicated,” Levy writes: “I am not sure about that. We know for a fact that at least in two instances in 1919, in Marash and Hedjin in Cilicia, when the French army stood by and did nothing to protect the victims.” Where there is a crime against humanity, he goes on, all of mankind is implicated. “We cannot therefore justify ourselves by saying, we are not guilty of a crime, we only allowed others to commit it.”
*
In his introduction to L'OLOCAUSTO ARMENO (The Armenian Holocaust), Alberto Rosselli informs the reader that the bibliography on the subject is “vastissima” (very vast). In addition to Armenian sources, “which are obviously numerosissimi (very numerous), there are sources in French, American, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, English, and Russian.” In addition there are eyewitness accounts of diplomats from as many countries, including Germany, “at a time when Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire.” Among the Turkish sources he mentions Taner Akcam and Orhan Pamuk. He also discusses the recent work of the German historian, Hilmar Kaiser. The book is divided into chapters devoted to the history of Armenia, the Armenian Church, the Hamidian massacres, the regime of the Young Turks, and Armenia today. In addition the reader will find here a chronology of the Ottoman Empire and a bibliography of books in Italian, English, and French.
After reading this book, I doubt very much if there will be a single Italian who will doubt the reality of the Genocide and the self-inflicted blindness of denialists.
Rosselli is a prolific historian and journalist who has authored books on Canada, the United States, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, Germany, Turkey, and Africa.
*
Groucho Marx: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”
#
Saturday, December 20, 2008
****************************************
A CIVILIZED ARMENIAN
**************************************************
Reading Evelyn Waugh's DIARY – over 800 pages of boring gossip and venomous assessments.
On Edmund Wilson: “An insignificant Yank.”
On President Truman: “A wholly comic man.”
On Aldous Huxley: “I find his scientific imagery very flat and ugly.”
On Alberto Moravia: “A wop highbrow.”
In a December 1944 entry in Yugoslavia, he speaks of an encounter with “a toothless Armenian named Major Karmel...: he is quick-witted, funny, fond of wine and cigars, and with the adaptability of his race quickly dropped his original line-regiment heartiness and became human and civilized...”
A month later: “Illiterate Montenegrin Armenian called and was given clothes.”
There is more talk of food and booze here than books and literature. And this: “It is impudent and exorbitant to demand truth from the lower classes.”
*
BERNIE MADOFF
***************************
A Jewish friend recently made fun of Armenian monks brawling in a church. Today I sent him the following e-mail: “I'd much rather see monks beating one another to a pulp in a church than a swindler like Bernie Madoff sucking the blood of his fellow Jews – and I am not implying here we don't have our share of mini-Madoffians.”
*
GUTLESS YES-MEN
*********************************
A nation without dissidents is a gutless nation afraid of words and ideas. And those who support such a nation in the name of patriotism are misguided fools who believe ideas and intellectuals are irrelevant luxuries, perhaps even hostile elements.
#
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
as i see it
Sunday, December 14, 2008
****************************************
SUMMING UP (II)
**************************************************
Free speech is a fundamental human right not only for men who know and understand everything and are therefore seldom or never wrong, but also for poor mortals whose knowledge and understanding are limited and whose opinions are more often than not more wrong than right.
*
A man with a heavy burden of guilt is safer to deal with than a man who is innocent by reason of insanity or absence of conscience.
*
A Turk who can tell right from wrong is morally superior to an Armenian who violates someone's human right in the name of patriotism.
*
To say, because I know better and am therefore better qualified to silence you, is at the root of all massacres. To put it differently: All crimes against humanity begin with the violation of a single individual's human rights.
*
I have yet to meet a patriotic Armenian with more certainties than doubts who did not harbor fascist sentiments.
*
The brainless are more easily brainwashed to believe, even when they behave like swine, they are fully qualified to assert moral superiority.
*
To those who say I have been silenced because I am an irrelevant mediocrity of no interest to the general reader, I say: Not all of us are endowed with superior intellects or able to discriminate what is and is not relevant.
*
Nothing comes easier to a self-assessed genius than to look down on his fellow men as misguided fools in need of his political, intellectual, and moral guidance.
*
Like all nations we too have our share of misguided fools and criminal minds who operate on the assumption they are leaders of men.
#
Monday, December 15, 2008
****************************************
THE POSITIVE IN THE NEGATIVE
**************************************************
Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
*
At the turn of the last century, the Great Powers of the West were on our side and against our enemies. But no one ever bothered to ask them if they would be willing to sacrifice the life of a single soldier to save a hundred, a thousand, or even a million Armenian lives. Had they asked, they wold have been surprised at the answer.
*
It is not true that I receive only hostile or negative assessments of my work. To be fair to my readers, I also receive friendly or positive ones. Two reasons why I don't mention them is that (one) I may provoke my enemies to accuse me of self-promotion, and (two) I may make my friendly readers vulnerable to verbal abuse.
*
Saroyan was a “positive” write because he wrote for an American audience. If I write like Scrooge it may be because I write for an Armenian audience. Different strokes for different folks. On the positive side: in America we enjoy not only freedom of speech but also freedom of choice when it comes to reading matter. If you are the kind of reader who is big on positive stuff, by all means, feel free to bury your head in the sand until the next catastrophe, which, if lucky, you may not live long enough to experience or witness.
*
Some of our most brilliant humorists (Baronian, Odian, Massikian) were also the most negative.
*
My negative readers are positive in the sense that they are my main source of inspiration. Without them I would dry up and wither away.
*
There are visible catastrophes, and there are invisible ones, as when you witness the collapse of your belief system.
*
When a reader insults me, I know I have hit paydirt; and I would like to thank him for letting me stay in his consciousness rent-free.
#
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
****************************************
OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
**************************************************
After gloating over the collapse of Communism, Americans are now witnessing the collapse of Capitalism and the triumph of the Welfare State not only for the poor but also for the rich; and when the rich apply for welfare, they speak in billions; and unless they get their way, they threaten the collapse of the economic structure.
Capitalists don't beg; they blackmail.
*
Instead of speaking of cabbages and kings, let's speak of truth and lies; and if truth is beyond our reach, let's expose liars.
*
It is in failure that the lies of an ideology are exposed.
*
If you live by the sword, or if you use nationalism or patriotism as a sword, the writing on the wall will be the same.
*
In a commentary today I read that President Bush has supported and invited to the White House dissidents from “China, Burma, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.” Are you thinking what I am thinking?
*
George Will in ONE MAN'S AMERICA (New York, Random House, 2008): “The use of genocide as a plaything for political posturing is contemptible” (page 197). I urge all our Turcocentric ghazetajis, dime-a-dozen self-appointed pundits, and baloney artists to think of this line next time they use the word genocide. Further down George Will speaks of the “trivialization of a huge tragedy” that has become “fodder for semi-intellectual wisecracks...” and, I would add, an occasion for self-righteous riffraff to assert moral superiority. Elsewhere he speaks of “the beguiling simplicity of pure stupidity.”
*
Where mediocrities enter, men of vision are blinded.
#
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
****************************************
WORDS
**************************************************
Rudyard Kipling: “Words are, of course, the post powerful drugs used by mankind.”
*
The defeated and deported Azeri who lives in a tent or ghetto is my brother. He is as guilty as the overwhelming majority of Armenians at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire – Armenians like my mother (who was a baby) and father (not yet a teenager) who had no political ambitions or, for that matter, awareness. Next time you speak of war, think of the children.
*
There is Russian roulette, and there is Armenian roulette. In Armenian roulette there are no empty chambers.
*
If you insult me and I insult you back, who wins?
*
By writing I hope to change the world. I know this to be an illusion on my part but I go on writing. Notwithstanding the fact that so far I have failed to change the mind of a single fanatic, hoodlum, partisan or fascist, I go on writing in the hope that some day I may hit on the right combination of words and ideas that may connect.
I know this to be another illusion but I go on writing in the hope that the invisible forces of history and the universe will combine to create the kind of fertile soil in which ideas may germinate into action. If this is another illusion, so be it!
#
****************************************
SUMMING UP (II)
**************************************************
Free speech is a fundamental human right not only for men who know and understand everything and are therefore seldom or never wrong, but also for poor mortals whose knowledge and understanding are limited and whose opinions are more often than not more wrong than right.
*
A man with a heavy burden of guilt is safer to deal with than a man who is innocent by reason of insanity or absence of conscience.
*
A Turk who can tell right from wrong is morally superior to an Armenian who violates someone's human right in the name of patriotism.
*
To say, because I know better and am therefore better qualified to silence you, is at the root of all massacres. To put it differently: All crimes against humanity begin with the violation of a single individual's human rights.
*
I have yet to meet a patriotic Armenian with more certainties than doubts who did not harbor fascist sentiments.
*
The brainless are more easily brainwashed to believe, even when they behave like swine, they are fully qualified to assert moral superiority.
*
To those who say I have been silenced because I am an irrelevant mediocrity of no interest to the general reader, I say: Not all of us are endowed with superior intellects or able to discriminate what is and is not relevant.
*
Nothing comes easier to a self-assessed genius than to look down on his fellow men as misguided fools in need of his political, intellectual, and moral guidance.
*
Like all nations we too have our share of misguided fools and criminal minds who operate on the assumption they are leaders of men.
#
Monday, December 15, 2008
****************************************
THE POSITIVE IN THE NEGATIVE
**************************************************
Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
*
At the turn of the last century, the Great Powers of the West were on our side and against our enemies. But no one ever bothered to ask them if they would be willing to sacrifice the life of a single soldier to save a hundred, a thousand, or even a million Armenian lives. Had they asked, they wold have been surprised at the answer.
*
It is not true that I receive only hostile or negative assessments of my work. To be fair to my readers, I also receive friendly or positive ones. Two reasons why I don't mention them is that (one) I may provoke my enemies to accuse me of self-promotion, and (two) I may make my friendly readers vulnerable to verbal abuse.
*
Saroyan was a “positive” write because he wrote for an American audience. If I write like Scrooge it may be because I write for an Armenian audience. Different strokes for different folks. On the positive side: in America we enjoy not only freedom of speech but also freedom of choice when it comes to reading matter. If you are the kind of reader who is big on positive stuff, by all means, feel free to bury your head in the sand until the next catastrophe, which, if lucky, you may not live long enough to experience or witness.
*
Some of our most brilliant humorists (Baronian, Odian, Massikian) were also the most negative.
*
My negative readers are positive in the sense that they are my main source of inspiration. Without them I would dry up and wither away.
*
There are visible catastrophes, and there are invisible ones, as when you witness the collapse of your belief system.
*
When a reader insults me, I know I have hit paydirt; and I would like to thank him for letting me stay in his consciousness rent-free.
#
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
****************************************
OF CABBAGES AND KINGS
**************************************************
After gloating over the collapse of Communism, Americans are now witnessing the collapse of Capitalism and the triumph of the Welfare State not only for the poor but also for the rich; and when the rich apply for welfare, they speak in billions; and unless they get their way, they threaten the collapse of the economic structure.
Capitalists don't beg; they blackmail.
*
Instead of speaking of cabbages and kings, let's speak of truth and lies; and if truth is beyond our reach, let's expose liars.
*
It is in failure that the lies of an ideology are exposed.
*
If you live by the sword, or if you use nationalism or patriotism as a sword, the writing on the wall will be the same.
*
In a commentary today I read that President Bush has supported and invited to the White House dissidents from “China, Burma, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.” Are you thinking what I am thinking?
*
George Will in ONE MAN'S AMERICA (New York, Random House, 2008): “The use of genocide as a plaything for political posturing is contemptible” (page 197). I urge all our Turcocentric ghazetajis, dime-a-dozen self-appointed pundits, and baloney artists to think of this line next time they use the word genocide. Further down George Will speaks of the “trivialization of a huge tragedy” that has become “fodder for semi-intellectual wisecracks...” and, I would add, an occasion for self-righteous riffraff to assert moral superiority. Elsewhere he speaks of “the beguiling simplicity of pure stupidity.”
*
Where mediocrities enter, men of vision are blinded.
#
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
****************************************
WORDS
**************************************************
Rudyard Kipling: “Words are, of course, the post powerful drugs used by mankind.”
*
The defeated and deported Azeri who lives in a tent or ghetto is my brother. He is as guilty as the overwhelming majority of Armenians at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire – Armenians like my mother (who was a baby) and father (not yet a teenager) who had no political ambitions or, for that matter, awareness. Next time you speak of war, think of the children.
*
There is Russian roulette, and there is Armenian roulette. In Armenian roulette there are no empty chambers.
*
If you insult me and I insult you back, who wins?
*
By writing I hope to change the world. I know this to be an illusion on my part but I go on writing. Notwithstanding the fact that so far I have failed to change the mind of a single fanatic, hoodlum, partisan or fascist, I go on writing in the hope that some day I may hit on the right combination of words and ideas that may connect.
I know this to be another illusion but I go on writing in the hope that the invisible forces of history and the universe will combine to create the kind of fertile soil in which ideas may germinate into action. If this is another illusion, so be it!
#
Saturday, December 13, 2008
massacres
Thursday, December 11, 2008
****************************************
AMBITIONS
**************************************************
When it comes to others, we like to speak the truth. We may even consider it our duty. But when it comes to ourselves, we become pathological liars. This mode of perception is developed so gradually that it escapes notice.
*
“You should write more like Saroyan,” I am told once in a while. But Saroyan wrote like Saroyan because had he written like Melville or Mark Twain he would have been a failure.
*
Chekhov thought the only way to be taken seriously as an author was by writing a novel in the manner of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. He tried very hard and never made it. But he became the greatest short story writer in world literature – with the possible exception of Guy de Maupassant, who also wanted to write a novel in the manner of Balzac and Flaubert, and he came close only by linking half a dozen of his short stories.
*
Speaking of short stories, below a short list of my favorite American short stories:
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce;
“Kneel to the Rising Sun” by Erskine Caldwell;
“The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway;
“The Princess with the Golden Hair” by Edmund Wilson;
“For Esme – with Love and Squalor” by J.D. Salinger.
I notice immediately that the most remarkable thing about these stories is their uniqueness in style, character, plot, and atmosphere.
*
Trying to write like someone else is the surest way to fail; and if failure is your goal, you might as well fail your own way.
*
Once upon a time, when I went into this business, I did so with the aim of saving the nation. All my efforts are now concentrated on saving my soul. The paradox here is that I thought I was being modest in my initial ambition because I promised myself to be kind to everyone, including those who were rude to me. Not any more. The other day when a reader said something to the effect that after reading me he feels like committing suicide, I told him in his case that would indeed be an excellent idea.
#
Friday, December 12, 2008
****************************************
THE TROUBLE WITH MASSACRES
**************************************************
The trouble with massacres is that the overwhelming majority of victims are almost always the most innocent and defenseless.
*
If I survived World War II and the Civil War in Greece, it was by pure luck. I cannot be proud of that. But I am proud of the fact that I have survived countless Armenian verbal massacres.
*
No one has ever voted for me because I have never run for office, neither do I plan to do so. When I speak, I speak only for myself. If wrong, I can be exposed or corrected. My question is: Where is the harm in talking to people who never listen?
*
A brainwashed person loses not only his power to think for himself, but also an important fraction of his other faculties, among them hearing and vision; and by hearing and vision I mean that which is clearly audible and visible to the rest of mankind.
*
Has any one of our writers in the USSR ever victimized a single commissar? Has any one of our poets in the Diaspora ever silenced or starved a single boss, bishop, and benefactor, or for that matter, a single editor and moderator? Why then am I branded a dangerous offender by these gentlemen?
*
If an Armenian cannot tell the difference between a victimizer and his victim, can he declare himself to be an Armenian, or for that matter, a human being?
*
If brainwashing were declared a crime against humanity, as it should be, which one of our speechifiers, sermonizers, and ghazetajis would escape hanging?
*
They speak of unity but after they divide us from the rest of mankind they divide us from our brothers and sisters; and they do these things in the name of God and patriotism.
*
Hell is a creation of men who deserve to go there.
*
With a little effort I could be more understanding and compassionate in my criticism, if only these things were not confused with symptoms of timidity and cowardice.
*
What would be the value of a writer if he were to join a choir and sing in unison with the others? And yet, this is what's expected of me.
#
Saturday, December 13, 2008
****************************************
RANDOM THOUGHTS
**************************************************
If you read historians with the mindset of a lawyer, you will find enough evidence to accuse even the most civilized nations with some of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity.
*
In all organized religions, reason is a liability and credulity an asset. The same applies to all ideologies and superstitions.
*
I have never brainwashed a child, or speechified in the name of patriotism or sermonized in the name of God. And yet, those who do these things look down on me as an undesirable intruder and an enemy of the people.
*
Nobody deserves to be told the truth because nobody is equal to the challenge of facing reality. This is why at all times and everywhere propagandists have been more prosperous, popular, and powerful than thinkers, who more often than not have been treated like common criminals.
*
Driving defensively means to assume not all drivers on the highway are sober. Leading competently means to assume not all political leaders are sane.
#
****************************************
AMBITIONS
**************************************************
When it comes to others, we like to speak the truth. We may even consider it our duty. But when it comes to ourselves, we become pathological liars. This mode of perception is developed so gradually that it escapes notice.
*
“You should write more like Saroyan,” I am told once in a while. But Saroyan wrote like Saroyan because had he written like Melville or Mark Twain he would have been a failure.
*
Chekhov thought the only way to be taken seriously as an author was by writing a novel in the manner of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. He tried very hard and never made it. But he became the greatest short story writer in world literature – with the possible exception of Guy de Maupassant, who also wanted to write a novel in the manner of Balzac and Flaubert, and he came close only by linking half a dozen of his short stories.
*
Speaking of short stories, below a short list of my favorite American short stories:
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce;
“Kneel to the Rising Sun” by Erskine Caldwell;
“The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway;
“The Princess with the Golden Hair” by Edmund Wilson;
“For Esme – with Love and Squalor” by J.D. Salinger.
I notice immediately that the most remarkable thing about these stories is their uniqueness in style, character, plot, and atmosphere.
*
Trying to write like someone else is the surest way to fail; and if failure is your goal, you might as well fail your own way.
*
Once upon a time, when I went into this business, I did so with the aim of saving the nation. All my efforts are now concentrated on saving my soul. The paradox here is that I thought I was being modest in my initial ambition because I promised myself to be kind to everyone, including those who were rude to me. Not any more. The other day when a reader said something to the effect that after reading me he feels like committing suicide, I told him in his case that would indeed be an excellent idea.
#
Friday, December 12, 2008
****************************************
THE TROUBLE WITH MASSACRES
**************************************************
The trouble with massacres is that the overwhelming majority of victims are almost always the most innocent and defenseless.
*
If I survived World War II and the Civil War in Greece, it was by pure luck. I cannot be proud of that. But I am proud of the fact that I have survived countless Armenian verbal massacres.
*
No one has ever voted for me because I have never run for office, neither do I plan to do so. When I speak, I speak only for myself. If wrong, I can be exposed or corrected. My question is: Where is the harm in talking to people who never listen?
*
A brainwashed person loses not only his power to think for himself, but also an important fraction of his other faculties, among them hearing and vision; and by hearing and vision I mean that which is clearly audible and visible to the rest of mankind.
*
Has any one of our writers in the USSR ever victimized a single commissar? Has any one of our poets in the Diaspora ever silenced or starved a single boss, bishop, and benefactor, or for that matter, a single editor and moderator? Why then am I branded a dangerous offender by these gentlemen?
*
If an Armenian cannot tell the difference between a victimizer and his victim, can he declare himself to be an Armenian, or for that matter, a human being?
*
If brainwashing were declared a crime against humanity, as it should be, which one of our speechifiers, sermonizers, and ghazetajis would escape hanging?
*
They speak of unity but after they divide us from the rest of mankind they divide us from our brothers and sisters; and they do these things in the name of God and patriotism.
*
Hell is a creation of men who deserve to go there.
*
With a little effort I could be more understanding and compassionate in my criticism, if only these things were not confused with symptoms of timidity and cowardice.
*
What would be the value of a writer if he were to join a choir and sing in unison with the others? And yet, this is what's expected of me.
#
Saturday, December 13, 2008
****************************************
RANDOM THOUGHTS
**************************************************
If you read historians with the mindset of a lawyer, you will find enough evidence to accuse even the most civilized nations with some of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity.
*
In all organized religions, reason is a liability and credulity an asset. The same applies to all ideologies and superstitions.
*
I have never brainwashed a child, or speechified in the name of patriotism or sermonized in the name of God. And yet, those who do these things look down on me as an undesirable intruder and an enemy of the people.
*
Nobody deserves to be told the truth because nobody is equal to the challenge of facing reality. This is why at all times and everywhere propagandists have been more prosperous, popular, and powerful than thinkers, who more often than not have been treated like common criminals.
*
Driving defensively means to assume not all drivers on the highway are sober. Leading competently means to assume not all political leaders are sane.
#
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
as i see it
Sunday, December 7, 2008
****************************************
ON EDITORS AND MODERATORS
**************************************************
When I am told there are divisions even in the best and most progressive nations, all I can say is that they can afford them.
*
Diasporan Armenians, who have not solved a single minor problem in their own community, think they are fully qualified to solve problems in Armenia on the grounds that the farther away a problem is, the easier it is to solve it.
*
A nation whose mullahs and priests outnumber its intellectuals is a nation on its way to the devil.
*
If we have more money we would have fewer problems, or so we like to think. This may explain why there are thousands of crooks on the Internet who are eager to share their wealth with us. Problems attract charlatans the way carrion attracts vultures.
*
I have readers who review my writings the way pigeons review statues.
*
What our editors and moderators share in common is fear of free speech, and of all fears, fear of free speech is the most cowardly.
*
To violate human rights is to support those who plot the destruction of the nation.
*
When it comes to free speech, our editors and moderators have made even of America another USSR.
*
Only fascist regimes violate human rights with impunity.
Only fascist regimes commit genocide.
All genocides begin with the violation of the human right of a single individual.
#
Monday, December 8, 2008
****************************************
FREEDOMLAND
**************************************************
My guess is, I would have been a better Christian had I been given the opportunity to choose being one. Likewise, I would have been a better human being, perhaps even a better Armenian, had I not been programmed to identify myself as one.
As a teenager in Italy I would wonder why successful Italian-Americans would choose to share their existence with foreigners when they could afford to live with their brothers and sister in their own lovely homeland. It never occurred to me to think that an Italian, any Italian, would prefer to identify himself as an American.
Brought up in an authoritarian environment, I was brainwashed to value patriotism above freedom.
*
No one ever proved the existence of Zeus, Venus, or Mars. And yet, Greeks believed in them. Which may suggest that a god doesn't have to exist in order to be worshiped.
*
Albert Einstein: “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.” I wonder how many religious propagandists quote this line minus the last word.
*
I don't think God and Allah are one and the same Being. The same word, maybe. The same Being, no! I think God is God, and Allah only a pretender to the throne. That's how deep childhood indoctrination goes.
*
If you are disposed to believe in something, you will believe it regardless of the quality of the evidence. The words “I believe” are invariably followed by an assertion based on hearsay.
*
It is to be noted that in our context, when I speak of freedom, I don't just mean such unheard of and un-Armenian luxuries as free speech, but the freedom to work and provide for one's family.
*
If you were to ask a faithful card-carrying member of the Party, he will tell you we enjoy free speech and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. One such specimen once said to me: “I contribute articles for our Weekly and so far none of them has been rejected or edited.” And it is this type of fool who asserts Armenians are smart.
#
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
****************************************
DEBUNKING AN ARMENIAN MYTH
**************************************************
When Lincoln said, “You can't fool all the people all the time,” he should have added, like all rules, this one too has its exceptions. Consider the case of the Armenians who were successfully fooled for 600 years by the Turks.
*
In the Ottoman Empire we were told, if you are loyal to the Sultan, and by loyal we mean, if you let us fornicate with your most beautiful daughters and brainwash your healthiest and strongest sons to fight in our wars, and if your best and brightest talents serve the Empire with their Allah-given gifts, we will take good care of you.
And they kept their word. They took good care of us all right, but only in the way in which American gangsters use that expression.
*
The idea that we are smart is so deeply ingrained in us that I have met Armenians who don't even qualify as inbred morons but who think of themselves as great intellects, men of vision, and defenders of the faith. Figure that one out if you can.
*
We like to say Turks are dumb, and we forget that they ran a mighty empire for 600 years and we can't even run a small community without creating a thousand and one irreconcilable differences and internecine conflicts. How smart is that?
*
Gulbenkian was smart. That's why he left most of his fortune to the Portuguese. Now that's what I call being really smart.
*
Consider what's happening in our discussion forums today. Calling them forums is a misnomer. They are either clubs of mutual admiration or cesspools of verbal abuse.
*
I am told I am consistently negative. Do you know what does being positive really mean in our context? It means to blind oneself in one eye in order not to see that which may not be flattering to our collective vanity. And whenever one of us refuses to mutilate himself in order to adopt that mode of observation, we label him a defeatist, a pessimist, an enemy, a Turk in disguise.
Result? Honesty is out, charlatanism is in.
*
“Yes im anoush Hayastani.” He wrote that when he was young, brainwashed and very probably drunk.
“Yes im aboosh hayrenagitsneri.” Very probably his last unspoken words as he was banging his head against the wall of his cell in a Yerevan jail.
Now, let us pray.
#
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
****************************************
REFLECTIONS
**************************************************
Some day Armenians and Turks may break bread together. But Armenians and Armenians?...
*
If we blame others for all our misfortunes, we must then ask ourselves: What has been our contributions to our history? If nothing, what right do we have to complain? If something, what exactly?
*
My critics hate my honesty more than I hate their dishonesty.
*
Damaged egos are the biggest.
*
Armenians read me for two reasons: (one) I write about them; and (two) to be ignored is the greatest insult.
*
In a world where underdogs believe they shall inherit the earth and top dogs are convinced their position of eminence is a blessing from God, we will have self-satisfied cowards and guiltless bloodsuckers.
*
Explaining things to someone who has no desire to understand is like trying to reason with the unreasonable.
*
After they silence dissenters, brainwash children, and surround themselves with yes-men, tyrants assume God and the silent majority to be on their side.
#
****************************************
ON EDITORS AND MODERATORS
**************************************************
When I am told there are divisions even in the best and most progressive nations, all I can say is that they can afford them.
*
Diasporan Armenians, who have not solved a single minor problem in their own community, think they are fully qualified to solve problems in Armenia on the grounds that the farther away a problem is, the easier it is to solve it.
*
A nation whose mullahs and priests outnumber its intellectuals is a nation on its way to the devil.
*
If we have more money we would have fewer problems, or so we like to think. This may explain why there are thousands of crooks on the Internet who are eager to share their wealth with us. Problems attract charlatans the way carrion attracts vultures.
*
I have readers who review my writings the way pigeons review statues.
*
What our editors and moderators share in common is fear of free speech, and of all fears, fear of free speech is the most cowardly.
*
To violate human rights is to support those who plot the destruction of the nation.
*
When it comes to free speech, our editors and moderators have made even of America another USSR.
*
Only fascist regimes violate human rights with impunity.
Only fascist regimes commit genocide.
All genocides begin with the violation of the human right of a single individual.
#
Monday, December 8, 2008
****************************************
FREEDOMLAND
**************************************************
My guess is, I would have been a better Christian had I been given the opportunity to choose being one. Likewise, I would have been a better human being, perhaps even a better Armenian, had I not been programmed to identify myself as one.
As a teenager in Italy I would wonder why successful Italian-Americans would choose to share their existence with foreigners when they could afford to live with their brothers and sister in their own lovely homeland. It never occurred to me to think that an Italian, any Italian, would prefer to identify himself as an American.
Brought up in an authoritarian environment, I was brainwashed to value patriotism above freedom.
*
No one ever proved the existence of Zeus, Venus, or Mars. And yet, Greeks believed in them. Which may suggest that a god doesn't have to exist in order to be worshiped.
*
Albert Einstein: “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.” I wonder how many religious propagandists quote this line minus the last word.
*
I don't think God and Allah are one and the same Being. The same word, maybe. The same Being, no! I think God is God, and Allah only a pretender to the throne. That's how deep childhood indoctrination goes.
*
If you are disposed to believe in something, you will believe it regardless of the quality of the evidence. The words “I believe” are invariably followed by an assertion based on hearsay.
*
It is to be noted that in our context, when I speak of freedom, I don't just mean such unheard of and un-Armenian luxuries as free speech, but the freedom to work and provide for one's family.
*
If you were to ask a faithful card-carrying member of the Party, he will tell you we enjoy free speech and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. One such specimen once said to me: “I contribute articles for our Weekly and so far none of them has been rejected or edited.” And it is this type of fool who asserts Armenians are smart.
#
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
****************************************
DEBUNKING AN ARMENIAN MYTH
**************************************************
When Lincoln said, “You can't fool all the people all the time,” he should have added, like all rules, this one too has its exceptions. Consider the case of the Armenians who were successfully fooled for 600 years by the Turks.
*
In the Ottoman Empire we were told, if you are loyal to the Sultan, and by loyal we mean, if you let us fornicate with your most beautiful daughters and brainwash your healthiest and strongest sons to fight in our wars, and if your best and brightest talents serve the Empire with their Allah-given gifts, we will take good care of you.
And they kept their word. They took good care of us all right, but only in the way in which American gangsters use that expression.
*
The idea that we are smart is so deeply ingrained in us that I have met Armenians who don't even qualify as inbred morons but who think of themselves as great intellects, men of vision, and defenders of the faith. Figure that one out if you can.
*
We like to say Turks are dumb, and we forget that they ran a mighty empire for 600 years and we can't even run a small community without creating a thousand and one irreconcilable differences and internecine conflicts. How smart is that?
*
Gulbenkian was smart. That's why he left most of his fortune to the Portuguese. Now that's what I call being really smart.
*
Consider what's happening in our discussion forums today. Calling them forums is a misnomer. They are either clubs of mutual admiration or cesspools of verbal abuse.
*
I am told I am consistently negative. Do you know what does being positive really mean in our context? It means to blind oneself in one eye in order not to see that which may not be flattering to our collective vanity. And whenever one of us refuses to mutilate himself in order to adopt that mode of observation, we label him a defeatist, a pessimist, an enemy, a Turk in disguise.
Result? Honesty is out, charlatanism is in.
*
“Yes im anoush Hayastani.” He wrote that when he was young, brainwashed and very probably drunk.
“Yes im aboosh hayrenagitsneri.” Very probably his last unspoken words as he was banging his head against the wall of his cell in a Yerevan jail.
Now, let us pray.
#
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
****************************************
REFLECTIONS
**************************************************
Some day Armenians and Turks may break bread together. But Armenians and Armenians?...
*
If we blame others for all our misfortunes, we must then ask ourselves: What has been our contributions to our history? If nothing, what right do we have to complain? If something, what exactly?
*
My critics hate my honesty more than I hate their dishonesty.
*
Damaged egos are the biggest.
*
Armenians read me for two reasons: (one) I write about them; and (two) to be ignored is the greatest insult.
*
In a world where underdogs believe they shall inherit the earth and top dogs are convinced their position of eminence is a blessing from God, we will have self-satisfied cowards and guiltless bloodsuckers.
*
Explaining things to someone who has no desire to understand is like trying to reason with the unreasonable.
*
After they silence dissenters, brainwash children, and surround themselves with yes-men, tyrants assume God and the silent majority to be on their side.
#
Saturday, December 6, 2008
essays
Thursday, December 4, 2008
****************************************
ON SPEECHIFIERS, SERMONIZERS,
AND RELATED ATRCOTITIES
**************************************************
If you want to understand the soul of a nation, read its writers.
If you want to know the way people deceive themselves, read a collection of political speeches.
*
You may ignore writers, but you cannot ignore the voice of your conscience. That is why the first thing tyrants do is silence writers.
*
Everything I have been saying could be reduced to a single sentence: “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”
*
I repeat myself only to the same degree that our sermonizers paraphrase the Scriptures.
I remember once when I said as much, the secretary of a bishop wrote an angry letter to the editor saying in effect, how dare I compare myself to the prophets of the Bible?
If our sermonizers paraphrase prophets, I paraphrase Plato; and as far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever dared to suggest that Jewish prophets are greater thinkers than Greek philosophers.
*
Deception and self-deception are favorite themes of the Scriptures.
Adam and Eve allowing themselves to be taken in by the Serpent who, according to my anti-American friends from the Middle East, was an agent of the CIA in disguise.
Moses thinking he can take a short leave of absence without losing his grip on the people.
Consider the case of the muscleman/ judge Samson and his nemesis/barber Delilah. And Goliath laughing at his puny but technologically more advance challenger armed with a stick.
God Himself fooling poor old man Abraham into thinking that He wants him to butcher his own son Isaac.
Last but not least, consider the present economic crisis hatched by the very same financial and political leaders whose responsibility it is to protect the interests of the people, and afterwards making demands on taxpayers' money for a bailout, thus trying to defraud the people for the second time.
Now then, go ahead and try to convince me that our own bloodsuckers are morally superior to their counterparts in the West.
#
Friday, December 5, 2008
****************************************
MYSTICISM AND PRAGMATISM
**************************************************
Like most people, Armenians too are easily satisfied with one side of the story. I once had the following conversation with a Tashnak friend, a woman in her fifties. When after reading an exposé on Tashnak shenanigans I mentioned it to her, she wanted to know where I had read it.
“In one of our weeklies,” I said.
“Ramgavar?”
“No, chezok.”
“Lies.”
“Its main source is a former high-ranking Tashnak.”
“A turncoat.”
“Don't you want to read it?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“A waste of time.”
“What if it's true?”
“I don't think so.”
*
In politics I am a liberal, but once in a while I enjoy reading conservative pundits because I learn there things that I would never learn in the liberal press.
*
I am a great admirer of Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and Sartre, but I find it stimulating reading critics like Koestler and Nabokov (whom I also admire) willing to speak of the dark side of the moon.
*
One reason I love rereading Toynbee's RECONSIDERATIONS (volume 12 of his STUDY OF HISTORY) is that in it he quotes all his critics – except Trevor-Roper – and on occasion is willing to plead guilty as charged. And the reason he doesn't quote Trevor-Roper is that Trevor-Roper didn't just disagree with him; he wanted him tarred and feathered on the grounds that he (Toynbee) had strayed from the straight and narrow path of empiricism and pragmatism into the vague and amorphous realm of mysticism by saying the only way to establish permanent peace in the world was by uniting all religions into a single universal religion. Recent events have proved Toynbee more right than wrong, and Trevor-Roper more wrong than right. Establishing one universal religion may seem Utopian, but it doesn't necessarily follow mankind cannot move in that direction by being less dogmatic and more tolerant. After millennia of conflict and two world wars, who would have thought some day European Union would become a reality in our own time?
*
At the center of all our problems stands a Trevor-Roper who would like to see anyone who doesn't agree with him tarred and feathered or branded as a liar and an enemy.
#
Saturday, December 6, 2008
****************************************
CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE
**************************************************
You cannot solve a nation's problems the way you solve mathematical, scientific, medical, or philosophical problems. Power is not open to reason or common sense and decency. Those in power will not give it up without a bloody fight, Hegel says somewhere, and so it is.
A friend of mine, a philosopher, tried to expose the roots of our problems in a philosophical treatise of over 500 pages. Now he is not allowed to enter Armenia. Long before my friend, a Greek philosopher tried to convince Athenian politicians that they cannot discharge their duties as rulers if their ideas are based on false definitions, and we all know what happened to him: he was arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death.
Marx came very close in his efforts to prove with mathematical precision that capitalism is a dead man walking, and yet, it took bloody revolutions everywhere from Russia, China, and Cuba to convince those in power to give it up.
Where there is free speech, you may speak truth to power (whether power will listen remains to be seen). But in an authoritarian or corrupt environment, the only result of speaking truth to power from a safe distance will be making the speaker feel morally or intellectually superior.
Do you want to end prostitution, corruption, incompetence, and violations of human rights in our beloved homeland? Go ahead and write an essay, a letter to the editor, a declaration signed by a hundred or even a thousand names, but don't be disappointed if nothing happens.
At this point you may well ask: “Why do you go on writing then?” My answer is a simple one: habit – and habits, as everyone knows, are easier to keep than to give up. Add to habit the satisfaction of seeing a pompous ass deflated, a charlatan ridiculed, and a liar exposed. Last but not least, I write because irreverence where irreverence is due is a virtue, and I have so few of them that I cling to those I have like a drowning man clings to the wreckage.
#
****************************************
ON SPEECHIFIERS, SERMONIZERS,
AND RELATED ATRCOTITIES
**************************************************
If you want to understand the soul of a nation, read its writers.
If you want to know the way people deceive themselves, read a collection of political speeches.
*
You may ignore writers, but you cannot ignore the voice of your conscience. That is why the first thing tyrants do is silence writers.
*
Everything I have been saying could be reduced to a single sentence: “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”
*
I repeat myself only to the same degree that our sermonizers paraphrase the Scriptures.
I remember once when I said as much, the secretary of a bishop wrote an angry letter to the editor saying in effect, how dare I compare myself to the prophets of the Bible?
If our sermonizers paraphrase prophets, I paraphrase Plato; and as far as I know, no one in his right mind has ever dared to suggest that Jewish prophets are greater thinkers than Greek philosophers.
*
Deception and self-deception are favorite themes of the Scriptures.
Adam and Eve allowing themselves to be taken in by the Serpent who, according to my anti-American friends from the Middle East, was an agent of the CIA in disguise.
Moses thinking he can take a short leave of absence without losing his grip on the people.
Consider the case of the muscleman/ judge Samson and his nemesis/barber Delilah. And Goliath laughing at his puny but technologically more advance challenger armed with a stick.
God Himself fooling poor old man Abraham into thinking that He wants him to butcher his own son Isaac.
Last but not least, consider the present economic crisis hatched by the very same financial and political leaders whose responsibility it is to protect the interests of the people, and afterwards making demands on taxpayers' money for a bailout, thus trying to defraud the people for the second time.
Now then, go ahead and try to convince me that our own bloodsuckers are morally superior to their counterparts in the West.
#
Friday, December 5, 2008
****************************************
MYSTICISM AND PRAGMATISM
**************************************************
Like most people, Armenians too are easily satisfied with one side of the story. I once had the following conversation with a Tashnak friend, a woman in her fifties. When after reading an exposé on Tashnak shenanigans I mentioned it to her, she wanted to know where I had read it.
“In one of our weeklies,” I said.
“Ramgavar?”
“No, chezok.”
“Lies.”
“Its main source is a former high-ranking Tashnak.”
“A turncoat.”
“Don't you want to read it?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“A waste of time.”
“What if it's true?”
“I don't think so.”
*
In politics I am a liberal, but once in a while I enjoy reading conservative pundits because I learn there things that I would never learn in the liberal press.
*
I am a great admirer of Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and Sartre, but I find it stimulating reading critics like Koestler and Nabokov (whom I also admire) willing to speak of the dark side of the moon.
*
One reason I love rereading Toynbee's RECONSIDERATIONS (volume 12 of his STUDY OF HISTORY) is that in it he quotes all his critics – except Trevor-Roper – and on occasion is willing to plead guilty as charged. And the reason he doesn't quote Trevor-Roper is that Trevor-Roper didn't just disagree with him; he wanted him tarred and feathered on the grounds that he (Toynbee) had strayed from the straight and narrow path of empiricism and pragmatism into the vague and amorphous realm of mysticism by saying the only way to establish permanent peace in the world was by uniting all religions into a single universal religion. Recent events have proved Toynbee more right than wrong, and Trevor-Roper more wrong than right. Establishing one universal religion may seem Utopian, but it doesn't necessarily follow mankind cannot move in that direction by being less dogmatic and more tolerant. After millennia of conflict and two world wars, who would have thought some day European Union would become a reality in our own time?
*
At the center of all our problems stands a Trevor-Roper who would like to see anyone who doesn't agree with him tarred and feathered or branded as a liar and an enemy.
#
Saturday, December 6, 2008
****************************************
CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE
**************************************************
You cannot solve a nation's problems the way you solve mathematical, scientific, medical, or philosophical problems. Power is not open to reason or common sense and decency. Those in power will not give it up without a bloody fight, Hegel says somewhere, and so it is.
A friend of mine, a philosopher, tried to expose the roots of our problems in a philosophical treatise of over 500 pages. Now he is not allowed to enter Armenia. Long before my friend, a Greek philosopher tried to convince Athenian politicians that they cannot discharge their duties as rulers if their ideas are based on false definitions, and we all know what happened to him: he was arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death.
Marx came very close in his efforts to prove with mathematical precision that capitalism is a dead man walking, and yet, it took bloody revolutions everywhere from Russia, China, and Cuba to convince those in power to give it up.
Where there is free speech, you may speak truth to power (whether power will listen remains to be seen). But in an authoritarian or corrupt environment, the only result of speaking truth to power from a safe distance will be making the speaker feel morally or intellectually superior.
Do you want to end prostitution, corruption, incompetence, and violations of human rights in our beloved homeland? Go ahead and write an essay, a letter to the editor, a declaration signed by a hundred or even a thousand names, but don't be disappointed if nothing happens.
At this point you may well ask: “Why do you go on writing then?” My answer is a simple one: habit – and habits, as everyone knows, are easier to keep than to give up. Add to habit the satisfaction of seeing a pompous ass deflated, a charlatan ridiculed, and a liar exposed. Last but not least, I write because irreverence where irreverence is due is a virtue, and I have so few of them that I cling to those I have like a drowning man clings to the wreckage.
#
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
notes
Sunday, November 30, 2008
****************************************
BOMBAY
********************************************
We may call it Mumbai, but i am told Indians themselves prefer to call it Bombay.
*
MUSLIM TERRORISM IN INDIA
***************************************
“Hindus and Muslims must work together to overcome rising level of terrorism in India,” reads a headline of a commentary by a pundit. What this pundit doesn't tell us is that Muslim resentment against Hindus in India runs as deep as Armenian resentment against Turks, Black resentment against Whites, and Jewish resentment against anti-Semites (who now prefer to identify themselves as anti-Zionists). Hinduism is said to be one of the most tolerant religions. Not so from the perspective of the Untouchables who, following the Muslim conquests in India, converted to Islam because they were told, in the eyes of Allah all men are equal. In the eyes of Allah, maybe; but in the eyes of their fellow Hindus they continued to be treated as subhuman Untouchables. Which meant they had to put up with a lot of Hindu crap (literally). I am not justifying terrorism, only providing the context.
*
THE HOMELAND AND THE DIASPORA
******************************************
In Armenia we have a regime. In the Diaspora we have a dysfunctional collection of communities with tribal loyalties. In that sense, the Homeland is ahead of us. Some day there may be progress there. I am less optimistic about the Diaspora.
*
OUR PROBLEMS
*********************************
They are as old as mankind. So are their solutions. When someone says “we need solutions,” he speaks two lies: (one) mankind has at no time experienced what we are experiencing today; and (two) all of human thought moves in a dimension that is outside our orbit.
#
Monday, December 1, 2008
****************************************
WANTED: MANDELA
*********************************
In the opinion page of our paper I read this morning that Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid was one reason why Obama decided to enter politics. I suspect several other names had something to do with that decision, among them Martin Luther King, whose role model was Gandhi, who in his turn was greatly influenced by Tolstoy's doctrine of non-violence and Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience. Mandela reminds me of a reader who once sent me a venomous e-mail in which the kindest thing he said was that I was a total failure and I would never amount to anything because I did not qualify as Armenia's Nelson Mandela. All I can say in my defense is that I have been and continue to be a great admirer of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi.
*
Internecine conflict is the opium of the Armenians, oneupmanship their favorite pursuit, and the blame-game their favorite sport.
*
If all anti-Semites are as dumb as Armenian anti-Semites, the Jews are justified in clinging to the absurd notion that they are the Chosen.
*
When liars speak of freedom, they mean the freedom to brainwash and deceive.
*
Every superficial explanation echoes a propaganda line and appears to make perfect sense to those who think they are thinking. That is why the world is in the kind of mess it is in.
*
The problem: we are what we have become because we are not open to explanations. The solution: tabula rasa, or the assumption that we know nothing or everything we know is without foundation in reality. Not an easy position to assume for an Armenian who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart, he knows all he needs to know, he knows better, and if explanations are needed, they will flow from him, never from the opposite direction.
*
I don't write for readers who know better but for readers who are as confused as I am, readers who have more questions than answers, more doubts than certainties, more ignorance than knowledge, readers who are more foolish than wise. If I were half as wise as most of my readers, I would say, if hell is your destination, who am I to obstruct your path?
#
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
****************************************
ARMENIANS IN ISTANBUL
*********************************
In his superbly illustrated coffee-table book, NEW EUROPE, Michael Palin has a section on Armenians in Istanbul, where he discusses the assassination of Hrant Dink, the photographer Ara Guler (“a Jew and also an Armenian”), and “a debonair art dealer” by the name of Raffi Portakal.
*
No need to read any further: I may be repeating myself. But then, what choice do I have? Suppose you have a suicidal friend: what choice do you have but to keep telling him life is better than death, until he realizes he has been on the wrong path and chooses to embrace life with all its failures, miseries, and troubles, like the rest of mankind.
*
If our perception of reality has been shaped by our educational system, in what way are we different from the average Turk? Next question: To what extent our leadership uses Turkish criminal conduct to cover up its own blunders and incompetence? For more on the moral and intellectual degeneration of our turn-of-the-century leadership in the Ottoman Empire, read Baronian and Odian, most of whose works, for obvious reasons, are not available in English.
*
A gentleman never insults another anonymously. I dare anyone to enter an Armenian discussion forum where anonymity is the rule and find there a single gentleman, or for that matter, lady.
*
And speaking of anonymous Armenians: you may notice that the more patriotic they are, the lower they sink.
#
Wednesday, December 23, 2008
****************************************
HISTORIANS, METAHISTORIANS,
GHAZETAJIS AND PROPAGANDISTS
**************************************************
History is not a science or a belief system, but an art. Instead of saying, I believe this is what happened, we should say, according to some historians or eyewitness accounts, or official documents, etc.
Trial lawyers will tell you eyewitness accounts are not always reliable; official documents can be doctored, edited, selected, destroyed, and even forged; and for every historian who says one thing there will be another who says something else and sometimes even the exact opposite. This is especially true of nationalist historians who are ideologically or politically compromised. In the eyes of metahistorians (philosophers of history like Spengler and Toynbee) nationalist historians are no better than propagandists.
Speaking of Toynbee: it is widely known that he at no time denied the reality of the Armenian genocide, and this even after he acquired Turkish friends, heard their side of the story, became a Turcophile, and learned the Turkish language. The difference between Toynbee and our nationalist historians is that Toynbee exposed not only the criminal conduct of the Turks but also the blunders of our own leadership, something our historians have at no time dared to do; which may suggest they have not dared to say everything that needed to be said; in other words, their version of the past is only partly true (which is also how propaganda is defined). I feel therefore justified in suggesting that under the guise of supporting our cause, our nationalist historians and Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded only in damaging our credibility in the eyes of the world and thus reducing the issue to the status of political football.
#
****************************************
BOMBAY
********************************************
We may call it Mumbai, but i am told Indians themselves prefer to call it Bombay.
*
MUSLIM TERRORISM IN INDIA
***************************************
“Hindus and Muslims must work together to overcome rising level of terrorism in India,” reads a headline of a commentary by a pundit. What this pundit doesn't tell us is that Muslim resentment against Hindus in India runs as deep as Armenian resentment against Turks, Black resentment against Whites, and Jewish resentment against anti-Semites (who now prefer to identify themselves as anti-Zionists). Hinduism is said to be one of the most tolerant religions. Not so from the perspective of the Untouchables who, following the Muslim conquests in India, converted to Islam because they were told, in the eyes of Allah all men are equal. In the eyes of Allah, maybe; but in the eyes of their fellow Hindus they continued to be treated as subhuman Untouchables. Which meant they had to put up with a lot of Hindu crap (literally). I am not justifying terrorism, only providing the context.
*
THE HOMELAND AND THE DIASPORA
******************************************
In Armenia we have a regime. In the Diaspora we have a dysfunctional collection of communities with tribal loyalties. In that sense, the Homeland is ahead of us. Some day there may be progress there. I am less optimistic about the Diaspora.
*
OUR PROBLEMS
*********************************
They are as old as mankind. So are their solutions. When someone says “we need solutions,” he speaks two lies: (one) mankind has at no time experienced what we are experiencing today; and (two) all of human thought moves in a dimension that is outside our orbit.
#
Monday, December 1, 2008
****************************************
WANTED: MANDELA
*********************************
In the opinion page of our paper I read this morning that Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid was one reason why Obama decided to enter politics. I suspect several other names had something to do with that decision, among them Martin Luther King, whose role model was Gandhi, who in his turn was greatly influenced by Tolstoy's doctrine of non-violence and Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience. Mandela reminds me of a reader who once sent me a venomous e-mail in which the kindest thing he said was that I was a total failure and I would never amount to anything because I did not qualify as Armenia's Nelson Mandela. All I can say in my defense is that I have been and continue to be a great admirer of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi.
*
Internecine conflict is the opium of the Armenians, oneupmanship their favorite pursuit, and the blame-game their favorite sport.
*
If all anti-Semites are as dumb as Armenian anti-Semites, the Jews are justified in clinging to the absurd notion that they are the Chosen.
*
When liars speak of freedom, they mean the freedom to brainwash and deceive.
*
Every superficial explanation echoes a propaganda line and appears to make perfect sense to those who think they are thinking. That is why the world is in the kind of mess it is in.
*
The problem: we are what we have become because we are not open to explanations. The solution: tabula rasa, or the assumption that we know nothing or everything we know is without foundation in reality. Not an easy position to assume for an Armenian who has been brainwashed to believe he is smart, he knows all he needs to know, he knows better, and if explanations are needed, they will flow from him, never from the opposite direction.
*
I don't write for readers who know better but for readers who are as confused as I am, readers who have more questions than answers, more doubts than certainties, more ignorance than knowledge, readers who are more foolish than wise. If I were half as wise as most of my readers, I would say, if hell is your destination, who am I to obstruct your path?
#
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
****************************************
ARMENIANS IN ISTANBUL
*********************************
In his superbly illustrated coffee-table book, NEW EUROPE, Michael Palin has a section on Armenians in Istanbul, where he discusses the assassination of Hrant Dink, the photographer Ara Guler (“a Jew and also an Armenian”), and “a debonair art dealer” by the name of Raffi Portakal.
*
No need to read any further: I may be repeating myself. But then, what choice do I have? Suppose you have a suicidal friend: what choice do you have but to keep telling him life is better than death, until he realizes he has been on the wrong path and chooses to embrace life with all its failures, miseries, and troubles, like the rest of mankind.
*
If our perception of reality has been shaped by our educational system, in what way are we different from the average Turk? Next question: To what extent our leadership uses Turkish criminal conduct to cover up its own blunders and incompetence? For more on the moral and intellectual degeneration of our turn-of-the-century leadership in the Ottoman Empire, read Baronian and Odian, most of whose works, for obvious reasons, are not available in English.
*
A gentleman never insults another anonymously. I dare anyone to enter an Armenian discussion forum where anonymity is the rule and find there a single gentleman, or for that matter, lady.
*
And speaking of anonymous Armenians: you may notice that the more patriotic they are, the lower they sink.
#
Wednesday, December 23, 2008
****************************************
HISTORIANS, METAHISTORIANS,
GHAZETAJIS AND PROPAGANDISTS
**************************************************
History is not a science or a belief system, but an art. Instead of saying, I believe this is what happened, we should say, according to some historians or eyewitness accounts, or official documents, etc.
Trial lawyers will tell you eyewitness accounts are not always reliable; official documents can be doctored, edited, selected, destroyed, and even forged; and for every historian who says one thing there will be another who says something else and sometimes even the exact opposite. This is especially true of nationalist historians who are ideologically or politically compromised. In the eyes of metahistorians (philosophers of history like Spengler and Toynbee) nationalist historians are no better than propagandists.
Speaking of Toynbee: it is widely known that he at no time denied the reality of the Armenian genocide, and this even after he acquired Turkish friends, heard their side of the story, became a Turcophile, and learned the Turkish language. The difference between Toynbee and our nationalist historians is that Toynbee exposed not only the criminal conduct of the Turks but also the blunders of our own leadership, something our historians have at no time dared to do; which may suggest they have not dared to say everything that needed to be said; in other words, their version of the past is only partly true (which is also how propaganda is defined). I feel therefore justified in suggesting that under the guise of supporting our cause, our nationalist historians and Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded only in damaging our credibility in the eyes of the world and thus reducing the issue to the status of political football.
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